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In part, queer ecology emerged from the work done in the ecofeminist field. Although queer ecology rejects traits of essentialism found in early ecofeminism, ecofeminist texts such as Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology (1978) laid the foundation for understanding intersections between women and the environment. Queer ecology develops these intersectional understandings that began in the field of ecofeminism about the ways sex and nature have been historically been depicted. As a political theory that insists ecological and social problems are enmeshed, queer ecology has been compared to Murray Bookchin’s concept of social ecology[7] since both are political theories that insist that ecological and social problems are enmeshed.

Arts and Literature

In addition to visual arts, applications of queer ecology can be found in the literature of writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, and Djuna Barnes. These writers complicate the common belief that environmental literature is exclusively comprised of heterosexual doctrine and each of their work sheds light on the ways that human sexuality is connected to environmental politics. Texts such as Robert Azzarello’s Queer Environmentality explore the connection between queer studies and environmental studies in American Romantic and post-Romantic literature, offering insight and explanations of how the previously mentioned writers challenge conventional notions of the natural through their writing. (cite Azzarello)

Reimagining Scientific Perspectives

Queer ecology can also be applied to areas of study such as biology, allowing us to deconstruct and reconstruct what is meant by “natural” and “living” and minimize the disconnect between queer theory and the natural sciences. For example, In Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, Roughgarden argues that Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is false, claiming that “diversity reveals the evolutionary stability and biological importance of expressions of gender and sexuality that go far beyond the traditional male/female binary”.

Heterosexism and the Environment

Queer ecology merges “natural” in the sense of heterosexuality with “natural” in the category of wilderness, refuting heteronormative views of nature and the natural world that are predominant in the scientific community. Texts such as Giffney and Hird’s Queering the Non/Human expose the ambiguous contrast between what is human and non-human using “queer theoretical interest in fluidity and indeterminacy” seeking to challenge what really makes us human and the binary of what is natural/unnatural in the environment.