Wild & Queer Ecologies

by Russ McSpadden / from the 30th Anniversary Edition of the Earth First! Journal, Vol. I, 2010

Wilderness, the biodiversity of life that exists where sexual creativity and adventure flourish, is pan-sexual, poly-gendered, orgiastic and playful. The sun engages the soil with titillating light, radiation, chemical explosion and the magnetism of its flaring body in a queer ecology that spreads across the Earth.

Flora cast their seed through the embracing bodies of wind and water. Bees enter their petals. Male hummingbirds, moist from floral nectar, thrust frantically to forest canopies to copulate together — not for reproduction, but joy. Groups of female bottle nose dolphins use tails and fins to massage each others genitals, entering the folds of their sexual openings. Female hedgehogs perform cunnilingus. Male African elephants, female grizzly bears, white-tailed deer and flamingos form homosexual bonding trios. Canadian gees and black swans form bisexual trios. West Indian manatees cavort in polyamorous bisexual orgies. Lesbian bird pairs, which engage with males for reproduction only, often exhibit larger nests with more eggs than heterosexual pairings. Transgendered animals thrive. Bighorn sheep, which live in sex-segregated herds for most of the year, nevertheless exhibit male-sexed individuals that adopt female-sexed behavior patterns and remain year-round in the female-sexed herds. Numerous species of fish and bear undergo the their sexual and reproductive system to other sexualities. Testes transition to ovaries. Ovaries transition to include testes. Gender playfulness and genderlessness teem.

To date, scientists have recorded the queer lives of gray wolves, red fox, elk, bison, kestrels, barn owls, ravens, monarch butterflies, walrus, bats, giraffes, lions, penguins, hyenas, dragonflies, humans and so on, to a total of 1,500 species and counting.