My name is Esmeralda (they/them) and I’ve decided not to choose between green and rainbow-colored. For the past 15 years, I’ve been involved in everything from the local grocery store to the UN Climate Conference, and since coming out, I’ve been trying to create more space for queer people in the environmental movement.

Closed-circuit environmentalism

When I used to be part of the environmental movement in the Belgian countryside, there were a number of things that bothered me. I’m not talking about the number of cloth diapers my neighbor hung in our garden, or the food moths coming out of my zero-waste shopping. What I’m referring to is the homogeneity of the people involved in the environmental movement: white, middle-aged to senior citizens, heterosexual, cisgender and from privileged backgrounds… And these people often asked the question “But why aren’t [poor][immigrants][…] interested in ecological issues?” 

As a queer, neurodivergent person from a precarious family, despite my privileges, I felt like I didn’t belong. My mother felt guilty about not being able to buy all those unaffordable eco-friendly products, and yet, if all the studies on the subject are to be believed, my poor family had a much smaller ecological impact than any of those well-off families who claim to be eco-friendly. So, instead, I’d like to ask the question, “How do the environmentalist bohemian and bourgeois movements exclude ‘minorities’?” And in particular, how do they exclude queer people? 

Queerphobia in environmentalist communities

There is a form of homophobia and transphobia lurking in these circles, which nevertheless claim to be left-wing and humanist. One of the movement’s leading figures, Pierre Rhabi, declared on the radio at the time:  

“The bee needs… the queen needs a male, a goat needs a billy goat, a cow needs a bull. So that’s an invariable law to which even homosexuals owe their very existence.”

That’s the main argument. Being queer isn’t natural. Queers would therefore have no place in the back to nature proposed by the environmentalists. 

“In general, I avoid eco circles, because there’s always a lot of homophobia and transphobia,” Judith (not her real name) told me during a conference on queer ecology at an environmental festival, attended by someone in the audience who insisted on spreading homophobic ideas. 

Queer ecologies

Yet all it takes is a little knowledge of biology to realize that there’s nothing more queer than the non-human world. Let’s take a few examples. The famous clownfish is born male and can later become female. This is also true of certain plants, such as kiwi plants. Flamingos regularly form homosexual couples, and may adopt babies or look after abandoned eggs. Corn plants, like many others, are born with both male and female flowers. Humans, too, can be born with different chromosome combinations – around 1% of babies are born intersex (with a combination other than XX or XY). There are so many examples, it would take an encyclopedia to list them all! 

Breaking out of my bubble – discovering other forms of environmental activism

With my participation in the COP 25 (the UN climate conference) in 2019, and the advent of COVID, I was able to discover other currents in environmentalism. On the one hand, the pandemic enabled the emergence of content creators like “Intersectional environmentalist”, “queerbrownvegan”, “pattiegonia”, or “queers4climatejustice” on Instagram. On the other hand, since all my activities now took place online, I had no particular incentive to remain confined to groups geographically close to me. So I started to join informal groups and associations where I felt much more represented.

It was a real turnaround for me. I went from a hostile environment to groups where people from “minorities” were at the forefront of environmental struggles. It’s no coincidence that I suddenly found myself with so many queer people around me: several studies have shown that queer people are over-represented in environmental activism circles (The Trevor Project, Out for Sustainability…). There are also many queer leaders in the Fridays for Future movement (Youth for Climate). 

Queer people in environmental movements: a statistical fluke? 

Questioning one’s identity, sexual orientation and/or romantic orientation is already questioning the foundations of our society. It’s also the kind of questioning that’s essential if we want to rethink a world where everyone can enjoy a healthy environment in the long term. Being queer, like fighting for the environment, is also a daily struggle for human rights and social justice. For me, being non-binary and lesbian is deeply linked to my ecological thinking. I am and I think beyond societal codes, I make daily coming-outs as much about my identity or my orientation as about my environmental political ideas. I am queer, the Earth is queer, we are connected. 

Beyond these similarities in queer and radical ecological ways of thinking, it’s important to remember that environmental crises exacerbate inequalities, and so we’ll find it even harder to enforce our fundamental rights, such as the right to housing, a decent job, and the like. So it’s only natural that queer people have a place among the “Frontline defenders” – the people on the forefront, experiencing and fighting against social and environmental crises. 

So, the struggle for the environment and queer struggles are really one and the same. They share objectives, but they also share means, both symbolic and concrete. Queer people often create a chosen family, for a variety of reasons, while environmentalists will rethink our relations with non-humans and rethink ecosystems. Resistance to exploitation (of our bodies, of nature), community-building and caring are also common to both movements. 

An intersectional project

Perhaps you won’t recognize yourself in this article. This may be explained by the diversity that exists in both the environmental and queer movements. What I think is really important is to acknowledge that the ultimate aim of any project, be it queer, ecological, feminist or anti-racist, is to improve living conditions for everyone, especially those in precarious situations. So, if we share the same goals, why not create more convergent projects? 

And in Luxembourg? 

In Luxembourg, I’ve observed a few embryonic eco-queer projects (whatever you want to call them). I’m thinking in particular of the “Mégaphone” platform, which brings together queer collectives and organizations like Rise for Climate. I’m also thinking of the “Rainbowtrailslux” community, which aims to offer nature-based activities for queer people and their allies. However, from my point of view, Luxembourg still has a lot of potential for truly intersectional organizations that take the environment into account. 

There’s still a long way to go, and it’s vital to converge our struggles and support each other in order to move ever closer to the world we want to live in.