Queer ecology, de/colonialism and solidarity

A conversation with Jo Meier

Welcome to the first guest conversation here with the wonderful Jo Meier!

Kes:

Hi Jo! I’m so glad that we’re doing this.

Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and what brought you to the (deeply interconnected) topics of queer ecology and de/colonialism?

Jo:

Hi Kes! It’s so nice that we’re doing this.

I started working in museum education about five years ago, and the first two exhibitions I was involved with focused on gender and queer ecology. Through my university studies, I learned about gender and post-colonial theories as well, so that would be my "official" answer.

Of course, being a queer, BIPOC person, the topics I was reading and teaching about were also deeply connected to me personally. Since then, I’ve done a lot of museum education work on de/colonialism, which I see as intrinsically tied to (queer) environmentalism. I think something that really helped me understand how deeply queer environmentalism and de/colonialism are connected is the poetry of Natalie Diaz in her excellent book Postcolonial Love Poem (yes, I’m a literature nerd). I was really excited to discover that there’s quite a bit of work on queer ecology out there!

What about you — when was the first time you heard of queer ecology?

Kes:

Thank you for introducing me to Natalie Diaz - when you read from her poem last year at the queer ecology and de/colonialism weekend we organised together, it nearly broke me. There were so many emotions that weekend, it’s become one of my fondest memories.

The term, queer ecology itself, is relatively new to me, I probably heard it the first time six or seven years ago, but some of the themes have been with me since I was very small.

I grew up in a military family next to airforce bases and some of my clearest memories are of being alone in the woods (’alone’ in the sense of not being with other humans which was definitely related to my queerness/transness/general weirdness back then). There was a little brook that was perpetually polluted by the airbase and I remember being filled with sadness and rage to protect it - and the orange-tip butterflies who lived nearby.

And more recently, a nerdy scene in my first novel, in which two characters fall in love walking through the countryside sharing knowledge of queerness in non-humans, accidentally became a whole thing - spawning zines, workshops and an upcoming book. I’m not sure when I started thinking of any of it as ‘queer ecology’ though and that term can still feel so academic to me (although I do have a Bachelor’s in ecology). Let’s say I have some strongly mixed feelings about it.

How do you relate to queer ecology as a discipline or as a practice? Apart from your ‘official’ work, how does it show up in your life these days?

And could you tell us more about those intrinsic ties between de/colonialism and (queer) environmentalism?

Jo:

Similarly to you, I’m somewhat skeptical—or in a constant dialogue—with the concept of “queer ecology.” I had never heard the term before the exhibition, but instinctively, it was clear to me that the stories we tell about nature are deeply shaped by a specific human perspective.

I remember loving the Planet Earth documentaries as a child. We had the DVD set, and I would watch them over and over again. Looking back, they’re narrated from such a human-centric and heteronormative point of view. So I guess, for me, pushing back on the idea that there’s a “papa” bird and a “mama” bird who live happily with their two children in a house is one way queer ecology manifests in my everyday life.

Also, since the pandemic, I’ve become much more aware of houseplants as housemates—with lives of their own.

The intersection between queer ecology and colonialism is something I’ve also become increasingly interested in. The very binary of nature versus civilization stems from a colonial context and was used to justify horrific crimes against Indigenous communities. This binary suggested that civilization and scientific progress were superior and therefore worth preserving, while nature and other forms of knowledge were things to exploit, categorize, or eliminate.

Because this binary is so deeply embedded in Western thinking, it reinforces the idea that there’s no “nature” in cities and no social structures in nature. Something I’ve started doing to challenge this is appreciating my urban environment—going to the local river (the Rhein) every morning and greeting it, getting to know the birds, and paying attention to the trees around me. Still, I find it really challenging to unlearn the concept of “nature” I was taught.

How about you? Is there anything you’re trying to unlearn about this fundamental binary?

How was it for you to emerge yourself in the intersection of queer ecology and colonialism for our workshops?

Kes:

I love this idea of being in dialogue with queer ecology - it really feels like that!

And I can so connect with the idea of houseplants as housemates. I remember the beautiful Boston Fern who lives with you and showed up in our slideshow for that weekend as an example of queer kinship and horizontal gene transfer. So nerdy and cute.

I loved Planet Earth as well! David Attenborough actually shows up in the Queering Nature tour a team of us are giving at the Berlin Natural History museum. Apparently he’s had 50 species or genera named after him and we use it as an example of the tendency in colonial Linnaean taxonomy to name species after famous individuals - often white men. And you’re so right, there’s so much myth-making in these documentaries. It’s really objectifying.

Thank you for talking about these important binaries and their impacts. The city/civilisation - nature binary is such a pervasive one. Learning more about it and connecting directly with my ecosystems feels like a good place for me to start, but I’m unlearning every day and it will be the work of a lifetime for me to fully understand the impacts of that schism. I feel really inspired by the work you’ve done to destabilise these culturally-specific myths about what is ‘natural’ or not.

For the book I’m working on, I’ve been thinking a lot about the colonial legacies of (western, industrial) ecology and - as I’m always fascinated by the edge cases - I kind of want to explore the problems of queer ecology as well.

I’ve often seen queer ecology projects be cissexist and classist for example. Under the umbrella of ‘queer environmentalism’ I’ve even recently heard people make the argument that heteronormative reproduction causes overpopulation - which causes resource overuse - which destroys the planet. Therefore, by embracing non-reproductive sexuality, queers are good for the environment (or something.) Sometimes there’s more nuance, sometimes less, but I find it all horrifying. Firstly because not all queers are ‘people who have only had non-reproductive sex with same-sex partners’ - it’s a misleading and inherently biphobic, transphobic definition. More importantly though, this argument that the ‘breeders’ are damaging the environment, is Malthusianism, pure and simple. It’s conflating the extreme resource use of a few with everyone else and it effectively dispenses with a large proportion of the global population in the name of the environment and, somehow, queer rights, or something. It all strikes me as incredibly dangerous. Anyway, rant over :) I guess stories of queer ecology, like so many things, can tell us more about the story-teller than the subject.

My last question is where you see the intersections between, for example, queer struggle and environmental defence? Are there things these movements can learn from each other? Are they even as separate as they appear or are we all challenging the same systems?

Jo:

It’s interesting to me how the idea that “this is just the way nature is – it’s natural” can be used to justify almost anything. I think your rant really demonstrates this. For instance, we can argue that queerness is inherent in nature because other species do things that we think of as queer (same-sex sexuality among other animals, for example). Therefore, being queer is natural, and it may even serve an evolutionary purpose—like helping to prevent overpopulation or ensuring there are people who care for orphaned babies, or something along those lines.

What really bugs me about these kinds of naturalizations is that nothing in our society is purely “natural” (because there’s no such thing, it has always been a human concept), and that once we start arguing something is “good” because it’s natural, we enter very shaky territory. So I really feel your frustration with the way queer environmentalism can sometimes take a problematic direction.

That being said, I truly hope we continue to strengthen the visibility of the intersections between environmental defense and queer struggles, as well as with the struggles of Indigenous communities and people of color (which, of course, are often overlapping groups). As queer people, we have a lot of experience building resilient and autonomous structures—and that’s exactly what I feel we’ll need more of in the future.

In a recent on-the-job training, I had a long conversation about how we can build solidarity among adolescents. The main question was: How can we get young, cis-het, white adolescents to build solidarity with other groups—in this case, queer people? We gathered some strategies, like connecting to their everyday lives and showing how stereotypes harm them too. But in the end, we had to admit that it’s really, really difficult to do this without it feeling like a bargain or transaction. Especially now, as a hard backlash seems to be building and unfolding, it’s tough to see how we can create the conditions for different struggles to support and reinforce each other.

I know this may be a tough last question, but: What do you think is needed to build solidarity?

Kes:

This feels like such an important point you’ve made here - that calling something ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ is a very problematic way of justifying anything. I’m pretty sure my medications wouldn’t be considered natural by some of the light-and-love hippies I know. But those meds keep me alive, so am I no longer natural? Surely humans are part of nature so everything we make and do is also natural?

Or maybe it means nothing and is just a weapon.

As we’ve often pointed out, queerphobes can switch effortlessly between two violent framings, from “animals aren’t gay so you must be unnatural” to “okay, animals sometimes do gay stuff so you’re nothing more than dirty animals”.

I think the question of who is justifying what is also crucial - the ways we live, love, identify or organise for our survival should never need justification. And if, as recent research suggests, our ancestral condition wasn’t heterosexuality at all - that we were always queer until some of us weren’t - then justification starts to look very different.

To answer your question… I needed to take a deep breath here. I feel your frustration and despair. As you and I have discussed in private, sometimes it can be easier when there’s a ‘hook’ of marginalisation that we can point to so people can understand the other ways that people are repressed. If you experience one thing, maybe you can understand how other people experience other things. But for those (very very few) who seem to have all the intersecting privileges it’s hard to find that.

In my heart, I think intersectional class struggle is a part of it. Most people are fucking poor, many of us are lonely and hurting. And even if someone is relatively comfortable today, that can all fall apart fast and I think in our hearts we all feel that. When we can highlight the interconnectedness between, for example, austerity and racism, exploitative labour and ableism, colonialism and transmisogyny, then perhaps there can be some understanding that we are all (or nearly all) facing the same enemies and structures. When people understand how dispossessed they have been from land, from connection, from community, then they might be prepared to push back.

If not, then the far right will for sure tell them that it’s the migrants or trans people or whoever who are responsible for life being so difficult (and not the billionaires and the centuries-old structures that have created them.)

It’s good to be reminded that people all over the world are making those connections and pushing back, and always have been - those intersecting struggles and autonomous structures you mentioned. It’s easy to think that if I don’t see the revolution happening right now in my back yard in big, easy to understand ways then it doesn’t exist. It’s so easy to forget everyone who has fought before us and feel disconnected from that stream of history. But we’re not alone and I firmly believe the starlings and the nettles are in this with us.

Any last words of hope before we wrap up the conversation (for now)?

Jo:

Thank you so much for your answer Kes! It really feels supportive and it is exciting to know that we will continue conversations such as these. I started to swim in the river again a couple of weeks ago, and in the water, and being carried by water, it is really easy to feel the interconnectedness and togetherness of everything.

Kes:

Beautiful. Thanks so much!🩷