Queering the Climate

Abstract

Many scholars offer diverse yet mutually reinforcing critiques of Euro-Western cultural constructions of masculinity. They note traits of maturity-as-separation, with male self-identity and self-esteem based on dominance, conquest, workplace achievement, economic accumulation, elite consumption patterns and behaviours, physical strength, sexual prowess, animal “meat” hunting and/or eating, and competitiveness. These traits represent discourses of appearances (strength and size), affects (work ethic and emotional strength), sexualities (queer or trans vs. cis-gendered heterosexual), behaviours (violent and aggressive), occupations (valuing career over family and housework), and dominations (subordination of women and children). In this chapter, I reject abstract individualism, noting that feminist eco-masculinities would recognise that all human identities and moral conduct are best understood through relational networks. I argue that these contra-hegemonic forms must be explored through cross-cultural and multicultural perspectives to protect against privileging any specific race, region, or ethnicity. Such eco-masculinities must recognise and resist the identity-shaping economic structures of industrial capitalism, its inherent rewards based on hierarchies of race/class/gender/age/ability/species/sex/sexuality, and its implicit demands for ceaseless work, production, competition, and achievement. With ecofeminist values at heart, the eco-masculinities proposed here reach beyond merely rejecting the bifurcation of hetero-gendered traits, values, and behaviours. Instead, they enact a diversity of ecological behaviours that celebrate and sustain biodiversity, ecological and interspecies justice, eco-eroticisms, ecological economics, playfulness, and direct action resistances to corporate capitalist eco-devastations.