trabjo de sociales aceca de humanidades, Diapositivas de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales

¡Descarga trabjo de sociales aceca de humanidades y más Diapositivas en PDF de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales solo en Docsity! [Article Title: Toward a Queer Ecofeminism. Contributors: Greta Gaard - author. Journal Title:Hypatia. Volume: 12. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 1997. Page Number: 137.] TOWARD A QUEER ECOFEMINISM By GRETA GAARD Although many ecofeminists acknowledge heterosexism as a problem, a systematic exploration of the potential intersections of ecofeminist and queer theories has yet to be made. By interrogating social constructions of the "natural," the various uses of Christianity as a logic of domination, and the rhetoric of colonialism, this essay finds those theoretical intersections and argues for the importance of developing a queer ecofeminism. Progressive activists and scholars frequently lament the disunity of the political left in the United States. Often characterized as a "circular firing squad," the left or progressive movement has been known for its intellectual debates and hostilities, which have served to polarize many groups that could be working in coalition: labor activists, environmentalists, civil rights activists, feminists, animal rights activists, indigenous rights activists, and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (G/L/B/T) activists. Meanwhile, it is observed, the conservative right in the United States has lost no time in recognizing the connections among these various liberatory movements and has launched a campaign (most recently articulated in the "Contract with America") to ensure their collective annihilation. As a result, it seems the future of progressive organizing may well depend on how effectively scholars and activists can recognize and articulate our many bases for coalition. In theory and in practice, ecofeminism has already contributed much to this effort. At the root of ecofeminism is the understanding that the many systems of oppression are mutually reinforcing. Building on the socialist feminist insight that racism, classism, and sexism are interconnected, ecofeminists recognized additional similarities between those forms of human oppression and the oppressive structures of speciesism and naturism. An early impetus for the ecofeminist movement was the realization that the liberation of women-the aim of all branches of feminism -- cannot be fully effected without the liberation of nature; and conversely, the liberation of nature so ardently desired by environmentalists will not be fully effected without the liberation of women: conceptual, symbolic, empirical, and historical linkages between women and nature as they are constructed in Western culture require feminists and environmentalists to address these liberatory efforts together if we are to be successful (Warren 1991). To date, ecofeminist theory has blossomed, exploring the connections among many issues: racism, environmental degradation, economics, electoral politics, animal liberation, reproductive politics, biotechnology, bioregionalism, spirituality, holistic health practices, sustainable agriculture, and others. Ecofeminist activists have worked in the environmental justice movement, the Green movement, the anti-toxics movement, the women's spirituality movement, the animal liberation movement, and the movement for economic justice. To continue and build on these efforts toward coalition, I would like to explore in this essay the connection between ecofeminism and queer theory. "We have to examine how racism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, and sexism are all related to naturism," writes ecofeminist author Ellen O'Loughlin (1993 , 148). Chaia Heller elaborates: "Love of nature is a process of becoming aware of and unlearning ideologies of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism so that we may cease to reduce our idea of nature to a dark, heterosexual, 'beautiful' mother" (1993, 231). But as Catriona Sandilands astutely comments, "It is not enough simply to add 'heterosexism' to the long list of dominations that shape our relations to nature, to pretend that we can just'add queers and stir' " (1994, 21). Unfortunately, it is exactly this approach that has characterized ecofeminist theory to date, which is the reason I believe it is time for queers to come out of the woods and speak for ourselves.2 The goal of this essay is to demonstrate that to be truly inclusive, any theory of ecofeminism must take into consideration the findings of queer theory; similarly, queer theory must consider the findings of ecofeminism. To this end, I will examine various intersections between ecofeminism and queer theory, thereby demonstrating that a democratic, ecological society envisioned as the goal of ecofeminism will, of necessity, be a society that values sexual diversity and the erotic. SEXUALIZING NATURE, NATURALIZING SEXUALITY The first argument linking ecofeminism and queer theory is based on the observation that dominant Western culture's devaluation of the erotic parallels its devaluations of women and of nature; in effect, these devaluations are mutually reinforcing. This observation can be drawn from ecofeminist critiques that describe the normative dualisms, value hierarchical thinking, and logic of domination that together characterize the ideological framework of Western culture. As Karen Warren explains, value dualisms are ways of conceptually organizing the world in binary, disjunctive terms, wherein each side of the dualism is "seen as exclusive (rather than inclusive) and oppositional (rather than complementary), and where higher value or superiority is attributed to one disjunct (or, side of the dualism) than the other" (1987, 6). Val Plumwood's 1993 critique of Western philosophy pulls together the most salient features of these and other ecofeminist critiques in what she calls the "master model," the identity that is at the core of Western culture and that has initiated, perpetuated, and benefitted from Western culture's alienation from and domination of nature. The master identity, according to Plumwood, creates and depends on a "dualized structure of otherness and negation" (1993, 42). Key elements in that structure are the following sets of dualized pairs: culture/nature reason/nature male/female mind/body (nature) master/slave reason/matter (physicality) rationality/animality (nature) reason/emotion (nature) mind, spirit/nature freedom/necessity (nature) universal/particular human/nature (nonhuman) civilized/primitive (nature) production/reproduction (nature) public/private subject/object self/other ( Plumwood 1993 , 43) Plumwood does not claim completeness for the list. In the argument that follows, I will offer a number of reasons that ecofeminists must specify the linked dualisms of white/nonwhite, financially empowered/impoverished, heterosexual/queer, and reason/the erotic.3 Ecofeminists have uncovered a number of characteristics about the interlocking structure of dualism. First, ecofeminist philosophers have shown that the claim for the superiority of the self is based on the difference between self and other, as manifested in the full humanity and reason that the self "against nature" ( Katz 1983 , 43). "After the American Revolution," however, "the phrase 'crimes against nature' increasingly appeared in the statutes, implying that acts of sodomy offended a natural order rather than the will of God" (D'Emitio and Freedman 1988 ,122). The natural/unnatural distinction had to do with procreation, but even "natural" acts leading to procreation could be tainted by lust and thus not free from sin. Procreative lust was preferable to "unnatural" lust, however ( Katz 1983 , 43). Finally, a third shift in the definition of homosexuality occurred toward the end of the nineteenth century. Through the work of sexologists such as Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the sexual invert became a recognizable identity, and the origins of sexual inversion were believed to lie in an individual's psychology. The word heterosexual first appeared in American medical texts in the early 1890s, but not in the popular press until 1926 ( Katz 1983 , 16).5 Today, nearly thirty years after the Stonewall rebellion, which launched the movement for gay liberation, the definition of queer identities is still evolving. "Homosexual" has changed to "gay," and "gay" to "gay and lesbian"; bisexuals have become more vocal; and most recently, transgender liberation has also reshaped queer community, changes that have prompted many organizations to replace "gay and lesbian" with "gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered" or simply "queer" in their self- definitions. The recognition of varying sexual identities and practices has inspired a rereading of not only straight history or queer history but the history of sexuality itself. Based on these historical developments, queer theorists have determined that queer sexualities (both practices and identities) have been seen as transgressive in at least three categories: as acts against biblical morality, against nature, or against psychology. Thus, queer sexualities have been seen as a moral problem, a physiological problem, or a psychological problem ( Pronk 1993). Though all three arguments are used against all varieties of queer sexuality today, the "crime against nature" argument stands out as having the greatest immediate interest for ecofeminists. Queer theorists who explore the natural/unnatural dichotomy find that "natural" is invariably associated with "procreative." The equation of "natural" with "procreative" should be familiar to all feminists, for it is just this claim that has been used in a variety of attempts to manipulate women back into compulsory motherhood and so-called women's sphere. From a historical perspective, the equation of woman's "true nature" with motherhood has been used to oppress women, just as the equation of sexuality with procreation has been used to oppress both women and queers. The charge that queer sexualities are "against nature" and thus morally, physiologically, or psychologically depraved and devalued would seem to imply that nature is valued -- but as ecofeminists have shown, this is not the case. In Western culture, just the contrary is true: nature is devalued just as queers are devalued. Here again is one of the many contradictions characterizing the dominant ideology. On the one hand, from a queer perspective, we learn that the dominant culture charges queers with transgressing the natural order, which in turn implies that nature is valued and must be obeyed. On the other hand, from an ecofeminist perspective, we learn that Western culture has constructed nature as a force that must be dominated if culture is to prevail. Bringing these perspectives together indicates that, in effect, the "nature" queers are urged to comply with is none other than the dominant paradigm of heterosexuality -- an identity and practice that is itself a cultural construction, as both feminists and queer theorists have shown (Chodorow 1978; Foucault 1980; Rich 1986). There are many flaws in the assertion that queer sexualities are "unnatural." First among them is that such an assertion does not accurately reflect the variety of sexual practices found in other species. For example, female homosexual behavior has been found in chickens, turkeys, chameleons, and cows, while male homosexual behavior has been observed in fruit flies, lizards, bulls, dolphins, porpoises, and apes ( Denniston 1965; Pattatucci and Hamer 1995). An examination of insect sexual behavior reveals that the female scorpion kills the male after mating, the black widow spider eats the male after mating, and the praying mantis may eat the male while mating. Some animals are hermaphrodites (snails, earthworms), while other species are entirely female (toothcarp). Mating behavior also varies across mammal species. Some pairs mate for life (jackals), some are promiscuous (zebras, most whales, chimpanzees). In some species, males and females travel together in herds, packs, or prides (musk ox, wolves, lions); in others, family groups are the basic unit (coyotes, gibbons); in others, males and females spend most of their time in same-sex groups and get together only for mating (hippopotamuses); in still others, all are loners who seek out members of their species only for the purpose of procreation (pandas). ( Curry 1990 , 151) The equation of "natural" sexual behavior with procreative purposes alone is conclusively disproven by both the evidence of same-sex behaviors and the observations of sexual activity during pregnancy, which have been reported for chimpanzees, gorillas, rhesus macaques, stumptailed macaques, Japanese monkeys, and golden lion tamarins ( Pavelka 1995). In his study of the bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), a species that, together with the chimpanzee, is the nearest relative to homo sapiens, Frans de Waal ( 1995 ) found that sexual behavior served a variety of reproductive and nonreproductive functions. In effect, research on nonhuman primate sexual behavior indicates that nonhuman primates "engage in sexual activity far more than they need to from a reproductive point of view and thus much of their sexuality is nonreproductive" ( Pavelka 1995 , 22). As Jane Curry concludes, "If we look to nature for models of human behavior, we are bound, are we not, to value tolerance and pluralism" (1990, 154). This, however, is the second flaw in the assertion that queer sexualities are "unnatural": norms for one species cannot be derived from the behaviors and seeming norms of other species. By attempting to "naturalize" sexuality, the dominant discourse of Western culture constructs queer sexualities as "unnatural" and hence subordinate. As Jeffrey Weeks writes in Against Nature, "appeals to nature, to the claims of the natural, are among the most potent we can make. They place us in a world of apparent fixity and truth. They appear to tell us what and who we are, and where we are going. They seem to tell us the truth" (1991, 87). Arguments from "nature," as feminist philosophers of science have repeatedly argued, are frequently used to justify social norms rather than to find out anything new about nature ( Bleier 1984; Fausto-Sterling 1985; Hubbard, Henifin, and Fried 1982; Keller 1985; Lowe and Hubbard 1983). Attempts to naturalize one form of sexuality function as attempts to foreclose investigation of sexual diversity and sexual practices and to gain control of the discourse on sexuality. Such attempts are a manifestation of Western culture's homophobia and erotophobia. Returning to the list of dualisms that ecofeminists have shown to characterize Western culture, and examining how qualities are distributed across each side of the disjuncts to enhance that disjunct's superiority (that is, the association of culture, men, and reason) or subordination (the association of nature, women, and the erotic), we can see that the eroticization of nature emphasizes its subordination. From a queer ecofeminist perspective, then, it becomes clear that liberating women requires liberating nature, the erotic, and queers. The conceptual connections among the oppressions of women, nature, and queers make this need particularly clear. EROTOPHOBIA AND THE COLONIZATION OF QUEER(S)/NATURE The rhetoric and institution of Christianity, coupled with the imperialist drives of militarist nation-states, have been used for nearly two thousand years to portray heterosexuality, sexism, racism, classism, and the oppression of the natural world as divinely ordained. Today, although twentieth-century Western industrialized nations purport to be largely secular, those countries with Christian and colonial origins retain the ideology of divinely inspired domination nonetheless. This section will first examine how Christianity has been used to authorize the exploitation of women, indigenous cultures, animals, the natural world, and queers. It will conclude by examining twentieth- century colonial practices. Many feminists and ecofeminists who have examined Western culture's hierarchical and oppressive relationship with nature date the problem of human separation from nature (the necessary precedent to hierarchy and oppression) back to 4000 B.C.E., the Neolithic era, and the conquering of matrifocal, agricultural, goddess-worshiping cultures by militaristic, nomadic cultures that worshiped a male god ( Eisler 1987; Spretnak 1982; Starhawk 1979). The agriculturalists' view -- that spirit was immanent in all of nature, that sexuality and reproduction were like the earth's fertility, and that both were sacred -- was replaced by a worldview that conceived of divinity as transcendent, separate from nature, with humans and nature as God's creation rather than as equal parts of God. The female, bisexual, or hermaphroditic Goddess was replaced by the male, heterosexual God the Father, and the matrifocal trinity of Maiden, Mother, and Crone became the patriarchal trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ( Evans 1978; Sjoo and Mor 1987). Thus, in searching for origins of the conceptual linkages among women, nature, persons of color, and queers, along with their collective oppression, many feminists and ecofeminists would argue that it is more relevant to look at the shift in social organization from matrifocal to patriarchal structures and values than to explore how a particular form of patriarchal religion (historically antecedent to that shift by centuries or even millennia) has authorized the subordination of women, nature, and their associates. For other ecofeminists, however, the theories of a matrifocal past remain just that -- anthropological theories rather than historical facts. So much of anthropology is based on a few pieces of broken pottery, scattered bones, and the remnants of buildings that some ecofeminists are reluctant to develop additional ecofeminist theory based too heavily on these interpretations alone. All ecofeminists who have addressed the topic of spirituality, however, have observed that Christianity has been used as both an authorization and a mandate for the subordination of women, nature, persons of color, animals, and queers -- and it is this agreement that I will take as my point of departure.6 Christianity originated as a small, ascetic cult, one among many such cults in the Roman Empire. It was, from the start, an urban religion, shaped in the context of urban, secular philosophies rather than in the context of earthbased, rural agriculturalism. The beliefs of the early Christians included the conception of Adam as both male and female, and of Christ as the restored androgynous Adam ( Ruether 1983 , 100); and the critical opposition between reason and passion ( Greenberg 1988 , 225), with the power of reason (logos) as the unique characteristic distinguishing humans from animals ( Evans 1978 , 86). Comparing some of those beliefs with the context in which they originated, one can surmise that the proponents of Christianity were influenced both by the beliefs of earlier, earth-based cultures and by the popular philosophies of their time, such as Stoicism and Gnosticism. Moreover, their ability to incorporate aspects of these other popular beliefs into Christianity may have enhanced its appeal and ensured its survival. The early Christian perspective on sex and the erotic also suited the temper of the time. Christianity appeared during a time of increasing militarization in the Roman state. It was preceded by a "wave of grim asceticism" ( Evans 1978 , 41). For Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of the period, sex and other erotic pleasures were seen as distractions from the contemplative life. Stoic morality held out chastity as an ideal, with heterosexual intercourse allowed only for procreation within marriage; other Greek and Roman writers also held that procreation was the only legitimate reason for intercourse (Greenberg 1988 , 219). According to David Greenberg, "To be like the angels was to be spiritual; to be carnal, unspiritual. Sex was the essence of carnality, hence the antithesis of spirituality" (1988, 224). During the first two centuries of Christianity, leading bishops and theologians required celibacy of all Christians, but later recanted (possibly from fear of alienating potential converts) and allowed limited sexual behavior within marriage for the sole purpose of procreation (1 Corinthians 7: 1-2, 9; Greenberg 1988, 216, 228; Ranke-Heinemann 1990). From the second through the fourth centuries C.E., church leaders gave the topic of sex more attention and European sensibilities.9 Of the Iroquois, the Illinois, and other tribes in the Louisiana area, Jesuit explorer and historian Pierre Franæois Xavier de Charlevoix wrote in 1721, "these effeminate persons never marry, and abandon themselves to the most infamous passions" ( Katz 1976 , 290). When Jesuit Father Pedro Font found "some men dressed like women" among the California Yumas, he inquired about their clothing and learned that "they were sodomites, dedicated to nefarious practices." Font concluded, "there will be much to do when the Holy Faith and the Christian religion are established among them" ( Katz 1976 , 291). The Franciscan missionary Francisco Palou reported with shock that "almost every village" in what is now Southern California "has two or three" transgendered persons, but prayed "that these accursed people will disappear with the growth of the missions. The abominable vice will be eliminated to the extent that the Catholic faith and all the other virtues are firmly implanted there, for the glory of God and the benefit of those poor ignorants" ( Katz 1976 , 292). In the rhetoric of Christian colonialism, the Europeans filled the role of benevolent culture "civilizing" savage nature -- and this "civilizing" involved taking the natives' homelands, eliminating their cultural and spiritual practices, and raping and enslaving their people. A specific example of the role erotophobia played in authorizing colonization may be of use. In his book, The Elder Brothers, Alan Ereira reports on the Kogi, who live deep in Colombia's Sierra Nevada mountains, and who may be "the last surviving high civilisation of pre-conquest America" (1992, 1). In 1498, the land around what is now the Colombian city of Santa Marta was discovered by the Spanish in their search for gold, and on June 12, 1514, a Spanish galleon arrived and began the process of colonization. That process involved reading a decree declaring the natives' new servitude to King Ferdinand and the Christian God, in both Spanish and Carib languages, although the native people did not speak either one. The Spanish conquistador Pedrarias Davila concluded his proclamation with the warning that if the native people did not submit to this rule : I assure you that with the help of God I will enter powerfuly against you, and I will make war on you in every place and in every way that I can, and I will subject you to the yoke and obedience of the church and their highnesses, and I will take your persons and your women and your children, and I will make them slaves, and as such I will sell them, and dispose of them as their highnesses command: I will take your goods, and I will do you all the evils and harms which I can, just as to vassals who do not obey and do not want to receive their lord, resist him and contradict him. And I declare that the deaths and harms which arise from this will be your fault, and not that of their highnesses, nor mine, nor of the gentlemen who have come with me here ( Ereira 1992 , 74). The Spanish invasion proceeded accordingly. As Ereira observes, gender and sexuality played a prominent role in the rhetoric and the justification of colonial conquest. "The Spanish could not endure the Indians' relationship between the sexes," he writes. "It was so fundamentally different from their own as to be an outrage. The men did not dominate the women" ( Ereira 1992 , 136). The Spanish were horrified, moreover, by the acceptance of homosexual behaviors and transgendered identities: "it was an inner fear, a fear of their own nature. And so they set out to eliminate sodomy among the Indians" (137; emphasis added). After nearly a century of colonial enslavement and missionary zeal, the Spanish concluded their most vicious assault on the native population in 1599. The governor of Santa Marta called together all the native chiefs at the base of the Sierras and told them he would put an end to their " 'wicked sinfulness' " (138). The native population planned a revolt, but news of their plans was leaked to the Spanish through two missionaries, and the Spanish were prepared. For three months, the Spanish carried out their own plan of torture and genocide against the indigenous people. When it was over, the governor declared : And if any other Indian is found to have committed or to practice the wicked and unnatural sin of sodomy he is condemned so that in the part and place that I shall specify he shall be garrotted in the customary manner and next he shall be burned alive and utterly consumed to dust so that he shall have no memorial and it is to be understood by the Indians that this punishment shall be extended to all who commit this offense ( Ereira 1992 , 140). Those persons "who wish to live" were required to pay a fine of "pacification" amounting to fifteen hundred pounds of gold ( Ereira 1992 , 140). Gender-role deviance and the accepted presence of nonheterosexual erotic practices had become the rhetorical justification for genocide and colonialism. Not only did transgender practices and sodomy disturb the colonizers; even heterosexual practices devoid of the restrictions imposed by Christianity were objectionable. Among the Hopi of the Southwest, for example, those who had been successfully converted to Christianity were forbidden to attend the traditional snake dance because there, "male cross-dressing, adultery, and bestiality could be observed publicly" ( D'Emilio and Freedman 1988 , 93). Missionaries objected to the heterosexual practices of the Pueblo Indians, calling them "bestial" because " 'like animals, the female plac[ed] herself publicly on all fours' " ( Gutiérrez 1991 , 72-73). What became known as the "missionary position" was advocated by the seventeenth-century Spanish theologian Tomás Sánchez, in his De sancto matrimond sacramento, as the "natural manner of intercourse. . . . The man must lie on top and the woman on her back beneath. Because this manner is more appropriate for the effusion of male seed, for its reception into the female vessel" ( Gutiérrez 1991 , 212). Sánchez likened the phallus to a plow and the woman to the earth; the missionary position would be the one most conducive to procreation and hence the most "natural." In contrast, the mulier supra virum (woman above man) position was "absolutely contrary to the order of nature" ( Gutiérrez 1991 , 212). Appeals to nature have often been used to justify social norms, to the detriment of women, nature, queers, and persons of color. The range of colonial assaults on sexuality -- from gender roles to same-sex behaviors to heterosexual practices -- is the reason I name the colonizers' perspective erotophobic rather than simply homophobic. This colonial erotophobia remained intact through the arrival of the Pilgrims, the establishment of the United States, and the waves of westward expansion that followed. In the twentieth century, narratives of colonialism and exploration continue to bear the stamp of erotophobia, as feminist critiques reveal. In her study of race and gender in international politics, Cynthia Enloe finds important connections between the conceptions of nationalism and of masculinity. In colonialist discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the subordinated countries are feminized, the subordinated men are emasculated, and the colonized women are often depicted as sex objects by foreign men. One male writer described colonialism as the condition wherein a man's women are "turned into fodder for imperialist postcards. Becoming a nationalist requires a man to resist the foreigner's use and abuse of his women" ( Enloe 1989 , 44) in her study of U.S. polar expeditions, Lisa Bloom finds that "the explorations symbolically enacted the men's own battle to become men," and the recorded narratives left by the explorers present "U.S. national identity as essentially a white masculine one" ( Bloom 1993 , 6, 11). Both Enloe's and Bloom's texts reprint popular colonial postcard images of naked or partially clothed native women reclining on the ground in what Bloom calls the "odalisque pose" ( Bloom 1993 , 104). Like the colonizers of three and four centuries past, the explorers and imperialists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have used the perceived eroticism of native peoples as a justification for their colonization. Serving as a foundation for all imperialist exploits, colonial nationalism offers a definition of identity that is structurally similar to the master identity. Enloe defines a nation as "a collection of people who have come to believe that they have been shaped by a common past and are destined to share a common future. That belief is usually nurtured by a common language and a sense of otherness from groups around them" ( Enloe 1989 , 45; emphasis added). Nationalism, then, is "a set of ideas that sharpens distinctions between 'us' and 'them'. It is, moreover, a tool for explaining how inequities have been created between 'us' and 'them' " ( Enloe 1989 , 61). Similarly, the editors of Nationalisms and Sexualities explain that "national identity is determined not on the basis of its own intrinsic properties but as a function of what it (presumably) is not" ( Parker et al. 1992 , 5). Inevitably "shaped by what it opposes," a national identity that depends on such differences is "forever haunted by [its] various definitional others" ( Parker et al. 1992 , 5). Looking at these definitions of nationalism from an ecofeminist perspective, it becomes apparent that national identity bears a structural similarity to the master model as defined by Plumwood. National identity participates in two of the five operations characteristic of the master identity – radical exclusion and incorporation. Colonialist nationalism, however, depends on all five operations of the master model, including the linking postulates of backgrounding, instrumentalism, and homogenization. Throughout the documents of explorers and colonists, native peoples are constructed as animal-like: they are perceived as overly sexual, and their sexual behaviors are described as sinful and animalistic. The indigenous women are eroticized, while the men are feminized -- and all these associations are used to authorize colonization. The feature of masculine identity that Enloe and Bloom seem to overlook and that Plumwood does not explicitly address is sexuality. Here again, feminist and ecofeminist theories fall short without a queer perspective. As Gayle Rubin has noted, "Feminism is the theory of gender oppression. To automatically assume that this makes it the theory of sexual oppression is to fail to distinguish between gender, on the one hand, and erotic desire, on the other" (1989, 307). Queer theorist Eve Sedgwick argues that gender and sexuality are "inextricable . . . in that each can be expressed only in terms of the other . . . in twentieth-century Western culture gender and sexuality represent two analytic axes that may productively be imagined as being as distinct from one another as, say, gender and class, or class and race" (1990, 30). From a queer ecofeminist perspective, then, it is clear that notions of sexuality are implicit within the category of gender. Simply stated, the masculinity of the colonizer and of Plumwood's master identity is neither homosexual, bisexual, nor transgendered. Heterosexuality -- and a particular kind of heterosexuality as well, a heterosexuality contained within certain parameters -- is implicit in conceptions of both dominant masculinity and Plumwood's master model. In the preceding examples, the discourse of nationalist colonialism contains specific conceptions not only of race and gender but also of sexuality. The native feminized other of nature is not simply eroticized but also queered and animalized, in that any sexual behavior outside the rigid confines of compulsory heterosexuality becomes queer and subhuman. Colonization becomes an act of the nationalist self asserting identity and definition over and against the other -- culture over and against nature, masculine over and against feminine, reason over and against the erotic. The metaphoric "thrust" of colonialism has been described as the rape of indigenous people and of nature because there is a structural – not experiential -- similarity between the two operations, though colonization regularly includes rape. Western ecofeminists have repeatedly argued against the feminization of nature in metaphors such as "mother nature" because of the subordination implicit in these gendered constructions, given the context of Western patriarchal culture. Elizabeth Dodson Gray may be the first ecofeminist writer to challenge the "tyranny of the straight white male norm," in her book Green Paradise Lost, when she shows how the "mother nature" metaphor leads to subordination. In patriarchal Western culture, Gray explains, masculinity is defined not only as independence but as "not-dependent." The process of socializing boys into men involves denying dependence on the mother; that dependence is then transferred to the wife. Male superiority is preserved by the social construction of a "wife" as "submissive . . . economically impotent, and in many other ways . . . inferior and nonthreatening to her man. In short, a wife is to be below her man, not above" (1979, 41; emphasis added). According to Gray, the same transference is at work in Western culture's relationship with nature. Men have done with Mother Nature this same dominance/submission flipflop. They have by their technologies worked steadily and for generations to transform a psychologically intolerable dependence upon a seemingly powerful and capricious "Mother Nature" into a soothing and of this particular gender role. Male and female transgenders have been found in more than 130 North American tribes ( Roscoe 1991 , 5), and have been named accordingly in each culture. I prefer the Navajo term nadleeh both for its indigenous rather than colonial origins and because the Navajo used the same term for both men and women transgenders (Gay American Indians 1988). 10. This excerpt should not be read to imply that all men are heterosexual and have wives; rather, as Gray's context makes clear, she is referring to the construction of masculine identity as a category, and as I argue here, the normative definition of masculine gender includes the presumption of heterosexuality. 11. Suzanne Zantop has arrived at a similar conclusion in her study of a German debate regarding the colonization of the Americas. The debate took place in the years following 1768 between the Dutch canon Cornelius de Pauw and the Prussian royal librarian Antoine Pernety. Zantop finds that "by imposing a gender framework on the encounter between colonizer and colonized, and by grounding this gender structure in a particular biology, de Pauw render[ed] the violent appropriation of the New World natural and inevitable, even desirable" and that "the power relationship of colonizer to colonized [became] the model for a successful matrimony" (1993, 312-13). REFERENCES Abramson, Paul R., and Steven D. Pinkerton, eds. 1995 . Sexual nature/sexual culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Adams, Carol. 1990 . The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory. New York: Continuum. -----. 1993 . The feminist traffic in animals. In Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature. See Gaard 1993. Bleier, Ruth. 1984 . Science and gender: A critique of biology and its theories on women. New York: Pergamon Press. Bloom, Lisa. 1993 . Gender on ice: American ideologies of polar expeditions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chodorow, Nancy. 1978 . The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clark, J. Michael. 1994 . "Sex, earth and death in gay theology". UnderCurrents (May): 34-39. Curry, Jane. 1990 . On looking to nature for women's sphere. In And a deer's ear, eagle's song and bear's grace: Animals and women, eds. Theresa Corrigan and Stephanie Hoppe . San Francisco: Cleis Press. D' John Emilio, and Estelle B. Freedman. 1988 . Intimate matters: A history of sexuality in America. New York: Harper and Row. Denniston, R. H. 1965 . Ambisexuality in animals. In Sexual inversion: The multiple roots of homosexuality, ed. Judd Marmor. New York: Basic Books. De Frans B. M. Waal 1995 . Sex as an alternative to aggression in the Bonobo. In Sexual nature/sexual culture. See Abramson and Pinkerton 1995. Eisler, Riane. 1987 . The chalice and the blade. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Enloe, Cynthia. 1989 . Bananas, beaches and bases: Making feminist sense of international politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ereira, Alan. 1992 . The elder brothers: A lost South American people and their wisdom. New York: Random House. Evans, Arthur. 1978 . Witchcraft and the gay counterculture. Boston: Fag Rag Books. Faderman, Lillian. 1981 . Surpassing the love of men: Romantic friendship and love between women from the Renaissance to the present. New York: William Morrow. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1985 . Myths of gender: Biological theories about women and men. New York: Basic Books. Foucault, Michel. 1980 . The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: An introduction. New York: Vintage Books. Frye, Marilyn. 1983 . Oppression. In The politics of reality. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press. Gaard, Greta. 1994 a. "Domestic partnership benefits at the University of Minnesota". Concerns 24(3): 25-30. -----. 1994 b. Misunderstanding ecofeminism. Z papers 3(1): 20-24. -----, ed. 1993 . Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gay American Indians. 1988 . Living the spirit: A gay American Indian anthology. New York: St. Martin's Press. Grahn, Judy. 1984 . Another mother tongue: Gay words, gay worlds. Boston: Beacon Press. Gray, Elizabeth Dodson. 1979 . Green paradise lost. Wellesley, MA: Roundtable Press. Greenberg, David E 1988 . The construction of homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Griffin, Susan. 1978 . Woman and nature: The roaring inside her. New York: Harper and Row. Gruen, Lori. 1993 . Dismantling oppression: An analysis of the connection between women and animals. In Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature. See Gaard 1993. Gutiérrez, Ramón A. 1989 . "Must we deracinate Indians to find gay roots?" Out/Look 1(4):61-67. -----. 1991 . When Jesus came, the corn mothers went away: Marriage, sexuality, and power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Heller, Chaia. 1993 . For the love of nature: Ecology and the cult of the romantic. In Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature. See Gaard 1993. Hollibaugh, Amber. 1983 . "The erotophobic voice of women". New York Native 7(September 26- October 9): 33. -----. 1989 . Desire for the future: Radical hope in passion and pleasure. In Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance. London: Pandora Press. Hubbard, Ruth, Mary Sue Henifin, and Barbara Fried, eds. 1982 . Biological woman: The convenient myth. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co. Ingram, Gordon Brent. 1994 . "Lost landscapes and the spatial contextualization of queerness". UnderCurrents (May): 4-9. Jennings, Francis. 1975 . The invasion of America: Indians, colonialism, and the cant of conquest. New York: W. W. Norton. Katz, Jonathan Ned. 1976 . Gay American history: Lesbians and gay men in the U.S.A. New York: Penguin. -----. 1983 . Gay/Lesbian almanac: A new documentary. New York: Harper and Row. -----. 1990 . "The invention of heterosexuality". Socialist Review 20(1): 7-34. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985 . Reflections on gender and science. New Haven: Yale University Press. King, Ynestra. 1989 . The ecology of feminism and the feminism of ecology. In Healing the wounds: The promise of ecofeminism, ed. Judith Plant. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Lorde, Audre. 1984 . Uses of the erotic: The erotic as power. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Trumansburg, NY. Crossing Press. Lowe, Marion, and Ruth Hubbard, eds. 1983 . Woman's nature: Rationalizations of inequality. New York: Pergamon Press. Merchant, Carolyn. 1980 . The death of nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. New York: Harper and Row. Mohr, Richard D. 1988 . Gays/justice: A study of ethics, society, and law. New York: Columbia University Press. O'Loughlin, Ellen. 1993 . Questioning sour grapes: Ecofeminism and the United Farm Workers grape boycott. In Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature. See Gaard 1993. Parker, Andrew, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds. 1992 . Nationalisms and sexualities. New York: Routledge. Pattatucci, Angela M. L., and Dean H. Hamer. 1995 . The genetics of sexual orientation: From fruit flies to humans. In Sexual nature/sexual culture. See Abramson and Pinkerton 1995. Pavelka, Mary S. McDonald. 1995 . Sexual nature: What can we learn from a cross-species perspective? In Sexual nature/sexual culture. See Abramson and Pinkerton 1995. Plumwood, Val. 1993 . Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York: Routledge.