In Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson's introduction, they describe the project as interested in how understandings of nature inform sexuality and how sexuality shapes both material nature and our understandings of nature. They want to queer ecology and to green queer politics.
What does this mean? Why is it important?
For the purposes of this post, please unpack an idea that you had never thought of before reading these chapters. Even though I am immersed in this scholarship (indeed, this book is making very similar arguments I make in my own book about the relationship between corporeal fitness and environmental discourse), many of the ideas I am reading in Queer Ecologies are blowing my mind!
I look forward to what jumps out and grabs you about the relationships between sexuality, desire, and nature explored in these pages...
In “Queernaturecultures,” David Bell addresses the role and implications of sexuality within nature and culture through the lenses of Fuck For Forests, non-human sexual research, and naturism. He does not praise or condemn any of these. He simply shows what he sees them to be and how they relevant to queer theory and ecology. Fuck For Forests is an eco-porn organization in which people fuck in both settings both public and natural. They do this in an attempt to challenge common understandings of sexuality and nature, which the organization view as connected and subject to destructive forces that must be counteracted. By making sex a public and natural activity, their practice is meant to smear the lines between the public sphere, nature and human sexuality. The study of non-human animal sexuality opens a space to question binary oppositions such as human/non-human and culture/nature. Attempting to understand or explain the nature of animal sexuality is not the purpose of queer theory, which is bound to a powerful anti-essentialism (139). Bell’s third and final lens is naturism, which tries to undo -- what it takes as – the negative affects of culturally mediated notions of sexuality. It deprioritizes sexual pleasure, replacing it with the freedom of nakedness in nature (142). Bell ends his discussion of naturism with, “ In naturism, then, the nature of sex is naturally restrained, civilized by the very fact of its nakedness” (142).
ReplyDeleteCiting Foucault – especially History of Sexuality – in the introduction, his notion that in the Victorian Era sexuality would come to be understood not as a sexual act or series of sexual acts, but a naturalized, essential element of the self – an element that was understood biologically and, subsequently, as an object of knowledge (8). This has led me to a question that I have asked myself many times this semester. What is the difference between Nature and Essence? These term can become easily interchangeable, but there must be an important distinction to be made, especially in eco-critical – perhaps sexual – terms.
I guess I didn't quite follow the directions, but I wrote this before they were posted.
DeleteSorry I was so late on this; totally slipped my mind.
DeleteI meant to ask you to share an idea that you found to be new and interesting...
Sammy
ReplyDeleteIn the introduction of Queer Ecologies there is a subsection titled, “Desiring Nature? Queer Attachments” where the authors begin to talk about what it means to ask questions about, “what is desired in and through nature” and the ways in which this relates to Queer Theory. They state, “Queer Ecology allows us to understand the links provided by queer theory to understand that our pleasures are not merely between humans, but are expanded and significantly shaped by the production of nature and the space around us” (37). As you can imagine this made me think about human powered travel in wilderness areas and also the literature that surrounds it. How would the pleasure of mountaineering and adventure travel literature change if viewed through a Queer Theory lens? What I think I am getting from the authors is that through the ability to question openness surrounding the ways in which pleasure and desire are formulated through views of nature we then become open to new ideas of nature, and also eradicate the idea of nature as a solely heterosexual place. I think that this is really interesting. They state, “queer desire for nature offers not just moments of pleasure, but… moments in which we can make the necessary connections between the policing of sexuality and the increasing destruction of nonhuman life” (37). What if we were to equate the desire for nature as pleasure to that of the desire of sexual pleasure? Would this change the way in which we view/protect/talk about/perceive wild/natural spaces. If queer ecology is attempting to understand the ways in which sexual relations organize and influence both the “material world of nature and our perceptions, experiences, and constitutions of that world” then I want to see some queer ecology criticism applied to the rhetoric of outdoor literature, especially in regards to desire and pleasure.
I hadn't spent much time thinking about any of the ideas in this book. One of the new concepts that I hadn't considered before was the idea of an acceptable gay. The gay characters in modern television and the gay icon of pride and equal right movements is a stereotype that is deemed okay by mainstream culture. But this character is always an icon of "good american consumer culture". This person is always on the up and up of fashion and has what is stylish. A person's sexual preference doesn't dictate so many aspects of their personality and role in the economy. America's acceptance of the homosexual is a very limited definition in comparison to the whole spectrum of gay people. Another really important idea I took from this book was on page 29: "queers are feminized, animalized, eroticized and naturalized in a culture that devalues women, animals, nature and sexuality". In this way, the "openness" to this type of homosexual is a false acceptance.
ReplyDeleteWhat an evocative book this is! Queer Ecologies is boldly taking on a unique perspective of evaluating nature and its relation to humans, and the changes that have occurred between the two. The most interesting thing that I would like to highlight here is that the very same things that have made sex ‘taboo’ are the very same things that have made nature ‘other’. So, in a sense – nature develops this new aspect of taboo as well, especially on a sexual level. I can see how it is easy to draw connections between sex and nature because sex is a natural and biological function of reproduction, and nature itself is reproduction in its purest sense. The institutionalized perception of using nature and sex as a source of economic benefit has allowed for an exploitative aspect of nature and sex to be established, but one that emphasizes the control and power over both things which is then used to further the destruction of both as well. If sex has become a product of culture, and has lost its essence of ‘natural’, then wouldn’t we have to address our culture in order to change our perspective of sex and nature itself? With the actions of ‘sexual activists’, or whatever you would like to call them, in Queer Ecologies, I feel might not necessarily be the best route to attempt to re-unite nature and sex once again but, I feel that it more so has a negative effect, and does just the opposite of that. To me it is this question of exploitation. One has to be so very careful that the message which they are trying to get across is loud and clear, and has no outstanding variables that could influence and alter the message being sent, its purpose, strength, and lasting impression. Having sex on stage during a concert does not allow for a reassurance of distinct connections to be made that are asking to be made. Forgive me but, it will be a very long time before sex is seen as purely natural again – through and without the whole of American society and culture. The use of sex has lost its natural qualities through the abuse of sex, just as nature has lost its privilege, voice, and abundance through human use and abuse as well. I feel that sex has become perverted, and nature has become converted. But, my overall question is – does sex really help our perspective towards nature or does it hurt it even more – due to the social construct that has been established about sex? And how exactly can sex help natures voice when the voice of sex itself is privatized and silenced?
ReplyDeleteThe correlations between the degradation of urban spaces and the creation of places of purity as a response in Queer Ecology sheds new light on the old debate between conservationism and preservationism. The masculine idols of preservationism portrayed natural areas as places of purity untouched by modernity. In the turn towards pure places of heterosexual dominance we can find correlations with the creation of the prison system. Both acts represent a turning away from areas and problems of urban development where poverty, femininity, homosexuality, and racial diversity appeared to flourish. Both acts are an escape from the complexities of a diverse society. It has been noted that prisons were created in response to black bodies, to the freedom of black bodies, and that the subsequent creation of the prison machination would, and did, sweep up white bodies as well. Without qualifying (as the author herself intended) this, a connection can be made with the a contemporary sense that is now a truism amongst those who find themselves entrenched in rural settings, that being that those from urban areas, regardless of relation to ideals about normality, are all effeminate and unqualified/unable to develop the masculinity “required” of living in a rural setting.
ReplyDeleteQueer Ecology also highlights the construction of “queer” and “homosexual” identities that were permanent and unassailable. These ideals are latent and return the ideals and actions of any subject as permanent and thereby an object. This transfer of subject to object occurs in many creations and confrontations with the “Other.” There is a possibility that this transfer is immediate. Even if this is the case we are then left with a problem of patience, of being open and attentive.