“How to Queer Ecology, One Goose at a Time”

By: Alex Johnson

Alex Johnson uses the personal example of his own identity as a queer male to begin the discussion about the necessity of “queering” ecology. Johnson feels that ecology, as it presently stands, is incredibly uncomfortable with embracing ambiguity, and resultantly reinforces rigid and exclusionary ideas of “natural”. He discusses the reluctance of scientists to acknowledge and conclude same-sex partnerships within geese as an example of this rigidity. The rigidity of the concept of nature is something that Johnson argues is part of a structure that puts certain groups in power over the other and further entrenches dominant identities as “normal”. He lists men/women, white/people of color, and straight/queer as several examples of these power dynamics where the “norm” is valorized as the “natural”, thus giving it power. This is the one aspect of Johnson’s argument that I don’t entirely agree with, as the binaries always present complications. For example, if the men/women dynamic places men as the “powerful” and thus “natural” group, that is in opposition with the narrative of women being “more natural” and men being “more cultural”. The real distinction he needed to make was between the ideas of something being “natural” versus “found in nature”. Additionally, while Johnson aims to argue for a comfort in ambiguity, he doesn’t address the overlap of identities and how that “further queers” the picture. Despite this, the main argument of queer ecology being “the study of dynamics across all phenomena” is an important point to expand currently inflexible constructions of “natural”.