Ecosexuality

Ecosexuality is a term used to indicate the ecological entanglements of human sexuality. It is the topic of Stefanie Iris Weiss’ Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (2010), and has been widely circulated in the work of artists Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle. Broadly speaking, ecosexuality describes a growing movement of art, activism, theory, and social practice exploring the intersections of sexuality and ecological relations in a number of different forms and contexts. The concept of ecosexuality indicates the ways in which sexuality is already ecological, and the ways that recognizing and appreciating ecological entanglements can affect understandings of sexuality.^[1] For some, ecosexuality indicates a sexual orientation or sexual identity.^[2]

Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens

During their seven-year project the Love Art Laboratory, Stephens and Sprinkle declared themselves ecosexuals, and in 2008, married the Earth in a performance art wedding in Santa Cruz, California.^[3] Since their initial wedding to the Earth in 2008, Stephens and Sprinkle have continued to stage ecosexual weddings in which they make vows of love and care to various elements and entities throughout the nonhuman world: they married the Sky in Oxford, England, and the Sea in Venice, Italy (2009); the Moon in Los Angeles, California, and the Appalachian Mountains in Athens, Ohio (2010); the Snow in Ottawa, Canada, the Rocks and Coal in Spain, and the Sun in San Francisco, California (2011); Lake Kallavesi in Finland (2012) and the soil in Krems, Austria (2014). They have written an Ecosex Manifesto, produced national and international Ecosex Symposiums, and continue to produce performances, workshops, “ecosex walking tours,” gallery exhibitions, and films that enact their vision of ecosexuality. They have pioneered a new field of research and artistic practice called “sexecology,” through which they continue to develop and explore ecosexuality and the places where sexology and ecology intersect.

In their Ecosex Manifesto, which was released at the second Ecosex Symposium in 2011, Stephens and Sprinkle writes:

(i) We are the ecosexuals. The Earth is our lover. We are madly, passionately, and fiercely in love, and we are grateful for this relationship each and every day. In order to create a more mutual and sustainable relationship with the Earth, we collaborate with nature. We treat the Earth with kindness, respect and affection.

(ii) We make love with the Earth. We are aquaphiles, terraphiles, pyrophiles and aerophiles. We shamelessly hug trees, massage the earth with out feet, and talk erotically to plants. We are skinny dippers, sun worshipers, and stargazers. We caress rocks, are pleasured by waterfalls, and admire the Earth’s curves often. We make love with the Earth through our senses. We celebrate our E-spots. We are very dirty.

(iii) We are a rapidly growing global community of ecosexuals. This community includes artists, academics, sex workers, sexologists, healers, environmental activists, nature fetishists, gardeners, business people, therapists, lawyers, peace activists, eco-feminists, scientists, educators, (r)evolutionaries, critters and other entities from diverse walks of life. Some of us are SexEcologists, researching and exploring the places where sexology and ecology intersect in our culture. As consumers we aim to buy less. When we must, we buy green, organic, and local. Whether on farms, at sea, in the woods, or in small towns or large cities, we connect and empathize with nature.

(iv) We are ecosex activists. We will save the mountains, waters and skies by any means necessary, especially through love, joy and our powers of seduction. We will stop the rape, abuse and poisoning of the Earth. We do not condone the use of violence, although we recognize that some ecosexuals may choose to fight those most guilty for destroying the Earth with public disobedience, anarchist and radical environmental activist strategies. We embrace the revolutionary tactics of art, music, poetry, humor, and sex. We work and play tirelessly for Earth justice and global peace. Bombs hurt.

(v) Ecosexual is an identity. For some of us being ecosexual is our primary (sexual) identity, whereas for others it is not. Ecosexuals can be GLBTQI, heterosexual, asexual, and/or Other. We invite and encourage ecosexuals to come out. We are everywhere. We are polymorphous and pollen-amorous. We educate people about ecosex culture, community and practice. We hold these truths to be self evident: that we are all part of, not separate from, nature. Thus all sex is ecosex.

(vi) The ecosex pledge. I promise to love, honor and cherish you Earth, until death brings us closer together forever.”^[2]

Stephens has written about her own work with Annie Sprinkle as the Love Art Laboratory, identifying as “eco-sexuals,” developing the field of “sexecology”—exploring places where sexology and ecology overlap—and reflecting on how they came to this work and these identities in the Canadian Theatre Review.^[4] Stephens and Sprinkle have also co-authored a critical reflection on their own weddings to the moon and the Appalachian Mountains in Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts.^[5]

In 2013, Stephens released Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story, a documentary examining the use of mountain-top removal in West Virginia and the violence these mining techniques enact on the ecosystems and communities in which they are practiced. In the documentary, Stephens and Sprinkle offer ecosexuality and eroticism as resources for developing more ethical relationships with the planet and towards furthering environmental activism. Ecosexuality in this context functions specifically as a mode of cultivating more care for the Earth.^[6]

Ecosexuality in Business Practices

Sex toy companies, such as Good Vibrations, Babeland, and As You Like It have all contributed to the growing definition and understanding of ecosexuality in relation to sex and lifestyles. For example, when discussing the release of Good Vibrations' Ecorotic® Green Sex Toy Collection, sexologist Dr. Carol Queen writes, “Sex is part of our lives, so any issue that concerns us out of the bedroom has implications inside it: if we recycle, buy local produce, watch our carbon use, and think ecologically in other ways, it makes sense to do the same when we make sexual choices. Our well-being and that of the earth are connected.”^[7] As You Like It—based in Portland, OR—was created by environmental and social justice activist Kim Marks and positions itself as both “a leader in Eco-Sexuality” and “a gender inclusive, body positive, sex positive, and environmentally conscious sexual health shop that is wholly committed to being sustainable” in their practices.^[8] By prioritizing long-lasting, rechargeable, non-toxic materials, and offering a comprehensive guide of typical toxic materials that you will not find in their products, As You Like It brings “sexual health and consumer information to the forefront,” and provides environmentally friendlier products that minimize impacts on the biosphere. Moves towards environmental sustainability and sexual health from an ecological perspective with companies such as As You Like It, Good Vibrations, and Babeland have been influential in the growing social consciousness around ecosexuality.

Additional Writing About Ecosexuality

In her book Eco-Sex, Stefanie Iris Weiss focuses on practical ways in which people’s sex lives produce ecological effects, such as condoms and birth control medication ending up in sewers, water systems, oceans, and landfills, the materials used in sex toys and lubricants, the global effects of manufacturing and shipping health and beauty products, and the planetary strain related to overpopulation and reproduction. Her book covers "important bedroom basics like eco-friendly birth-control methods, organically grown cotton and bamboo linens, and vegan sex toys,"^[9] as well as ways to "green" courtship and dating practices, and expanding environmental consciousness throughout our sex lives.

Ecosexuality has also been the focus of several scholars, including Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Ph.D., Jennifer Reed, and Michael J. Morris. Anderlini-D’Onofrio is the co-editor, along with Lindsay Hagamen, of the forthcoming Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love, which they position as “the first book to give voice to the emerging ecosexual movement.”^[10] Including chapters by thirty different authors, this book demonstrates the plurality and multiplicity of perspectives to which ecosexuality can refer. Anderlini-D’Onofrio has also written about ecosexuality in relation to bisexuality, ecological sustainability, and eros/love as ecological resources in the Journal of Bisexuality.^[11]

Jennifer Reed's sociological research focuses on the ecosexual movement as “a growing grassroots transnational social movement that blends sustainability, environmental and climate justice with gender, sexual and reproductive rights activism.”^[12] A contributor to Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love, her writing “Nature as Erotic: Is ‘Earthing’ Ecosexual?” is also featured on The Green Divas Eco-Sexy Blog.

Dance and performance studies scholar Michael J. Morris defines ecosexuality as “an orientation toward intra-active material relations within which the human is not finally separable from the nonhuman and all sexuality is already populated by that which is not human.”^[1] Morris has also written about ecosexuality in the work of the Love Art Laboratory in the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, edited by Nadine George-Graves (2015), developing ecosexuality as a framework for performance analysis.

Kim Tallbear has written about ecosexuality in relation indigenous identities and perspectives of nature.^[13]

Symposiums and Gatherings

Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle organized the first Ecosex Symposium in Santa Monica, CA in 2010, bringing together academics, artists, sex-workers, and performers to share and present work relating to the development of ecosexuality.^[14] They organized the second Ecosex Symposium in San Francisco, CA in 2011,^[15] and the first International Ecosex Symposium in 2013.^[16]

The EcoSex Symposium in Portland, OR identifies ecosexuality as an emerging field of study, a discipline, and a movement. They write: "Ecosexuality can be an expression of sexuality inspired by nature, as a part of nature, or actually having sex with nature (natural products, toys, sunshine, water, ect.), a dating preference (ecosexuals only dating other ecosexuals), and or the belief that sex is natural and that all orientations and preferences are valid and part of the vast erotic landscape of the complex human being."^[17]

Surrender: The Ecosex Convergence is an annual gathering bringing together those "who express a love for Life by stewarding and merging with the Earth through the whole of their bodies, minds and spirits."^[18]

Related

While not identical in focus, ecosexuality shares concerns with ecofeminism and ecological feminism, queer ecologies,^[19] deep ecology, posthumanism, and other philosophies, critical theories, and perspectives that broaden definitions of sexuality, bring attention to human/nonhuman relations and the sexual behaviors of nonhuman lives, and consider environmentalism in relation to issues of gender, sex, sexuality, and personhood.

References