Ecosex Manifesto – 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth

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This is the first post in the Succession IV: Queering the Environment – “Queer Joy” series. This series, edited by Jessica DeWitt, Tina Adcock, and Sarah York-Bertram, invites contributors to build off of scholarship and lived knowledge that envisions queer joy as a way of knowing and being in relation with the environment and more-than-human beings.

To begin our fourth biennial Succession: Queering the Environment series, we are lucky to be able to share Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s Ecosex Manifesto and “25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth.” Stephens and Sprinkle have created multi-media art projects about love, sex, and queer ecologies together since 2002. Annie was a sex worker from 1973 to 1995 and morphed into a feminist performance artist and sex educator. In 1994, Beth became a professor of sculpture and intermedia at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she still teaches and directs the E.A.R.T.H. Lab. These days the duo make environmental films with an ecosexual gaze; they also create theater, performance art, eco-activism, and produce symposiums and workshops. Their Wedding to the Earth and the Ecosex Manifesto launched the Ecosex Movement in 2008. Notably, they were official documenta 14 artists, received a 2019 Eureka Fellowship, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Their new book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position—the Earth as Lover, available at the University of Minnesota Press, chronicles their epic love story and art/life adventures. 

Ecosex Manifesto

(i) WE ARE THE ECOSEXUALS. The Earth is our lover. We are madly, passionately, and fiercely in love, and we are grateful for this relationship each and every day. In order to create a more mutual and sustainable relationship with the Earth, we collaborate with nature. We treat the Earth with kindness, respect and affection.

(ii) WE MAKE LOVE WITH THE EARTH. We are aquaphiles, teraphiles, pyrophiles and aerophiles. We shamelessly hug trees, massage the earth with our feet, and talk erotically to plants. We are skinny dippers, sun worshipers, and stargazers. We caress rocks, are pleasured by waterfalls, and admire the Earth’s curves often. We make love with the Earth through our senses. We celebrate our E-spots. We are very dirty.

(iii) WE ARE A RAPIDLY GROWING GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF ECOSEXUALS. This community includes artists, academics, sex workers, sexologists, healers, environmental activists, nature fetishists, gardeners, business people, therapists, lawyers, peace activists, eco-feminists, scientists, educators, (r)evolutionaries, critters and other entities from diverse walks of life. Some of us are SexEcologists, researching and exploring the places where sexology and ecology
intersect in our culture. As consumers we aim to buy less. When we must, we buy green, organic, and local. Whether on farms, at sea, in the woods, or in small towns or large cities, we connect and empathize with nature.

(iv) WE ARE ECOSEX ACTIVISTS. We will save the mountains, waters and skies by any means necessary,
especially through love, joy and our powers of seduction. We will stop the rape, abuse and the poisoning of the Earth. We do not condone the use of violence, although we recognize that some ecosexuals may choose to fight those most guilty for destroying the Earth with public disobedience, anarchist and radical environmental activist strategies. We embrace the revolutionary tactics of art, music, poetry, humor, and sex. We work and play tirelessly for Earth justice and global peace. Bombs hurt.

(v) ECOSEXUAL IS AN IDENTITY. For some of us being ecosexual is our primary (sexual) identity, whereas for others it is not. Ecosexuals can be GLBTQI, heterosexual, asexual, and/or Other. We invite and encourage ecosexuals to come out. We are everywhere. We are polymorphous and pollen-amorous. We educate people about ecosex culture, community and practices. We hold these truths to be self evident; that we are all part of, not separate from, nature. Thus all sex is ecosex.

(vi) THE ECOSEX PLEDGE. I promise to love, honor and cherish you Earth, until death brings us closer together forever.

VIVA LA ECOSEX REVOLUCION! JOIN US.

25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth

25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth
Feature Image: “Silver Wedding to the Rocks – Ecosex BCN – Performance” by mvaldor is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
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Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle have created multi-media art projects about love, sex, and queer ecologies together since 2002. Annie was a sex worker from 1973 to 1995 and morphed into a feminist performance artist and sex educator. In 1994, Beth became a professor of sculpture and intermedia at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she still teaches and directs the E.A.R.T.H. Lab. These days the duo make environmental films with an ecosexual gaze; they also create theater, performance art, eco-activism, and produce symposiums and workshops. Their Wedding to the Earth and the Ecosex Manifesto launched the Ecosex Movement in 2008. Notably, they were official documenta 14 artists, received a 2019 Eureka Fellowship, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Their new book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position—the Earth as Lover, available at the University of Minnesota Press, chronicles their epic love story and art/life adventures.

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