This is the ninth 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.
When I contributed to NiCHE’s blog in 2020 with “Queering Ecofeminism: Towards an Anti-Far-Right Environmentalism,” my objective was to address how ecological destruction operates alongside colonial extraction and the hierarchical systems that discipline and categorize human bodies and sexualities. Six years later, here we are… As the broader socio-political atmosphere grows a documented hostility toward queer and trans* lives despite a parallel expansion in queer ecological scholarship, I am humbly hoping to shift the focus to how queer environmental identity survives. Because how can queer joy be attained to its fullest when we are constantly under attack?
“Our survival depends not on the conservation of pristine wilderness or other greenwashing or pinkwashing exercises by corporations (universities, you too!), but on the maintenance of interpersonal habitats.”
Our survival depends not on the conservation of pristine wilderness or other greenwashing or pinkwashing exercises by corporations (universities, you too!), but on the maintenance of interpersonal habitats. These are the relational microclimates where safety and vulnerability allow us, queer people, to experience queer joy wholeheartedly, and to let it function as an active methodology for being in community. I am writing this blog to draw attention to something I deem important: the necessity to prevent our queer microclimates from being degraded into extractive testing grounds for heteronormative tourism through an act of collective self-preservation.
Firstly, let’s briefly cover environmental identity as a concept. In environmental psychology, environmental identity is defined as the dimension of the self-concept that structures a person’s connection to, and belief systems regarding, the spatial and non-human world (Clayton, 2003). Yet, conventional ecological paradigms routinely assume this identity is forged through unmediated exposure to pristine, pastoral wilderness: a framework that ignores how physical spaces are policed and stratified along lines of racialisation, gender, and sexuality (Gieseking, 2020). For queer people, environmental identity is not shaped in a vacuum of neutral nature, but is actively forged within an atmosphere conditioned by the immediate social climates of safety, authenticity, and vulnerability.
“Joy, in this configuration, serves as the primary material that thickens the protective infrastructure and turns these communal habitats into an anchor where existence is experienced not as a policed object, but as a wild, unfolding relation.”
When the broader socio-political climate grows toxic, minority stress models demonstrate that the psychological capacity to form a secure, restorative connection to space is compromised (Meyer, 2003). Survival therefore depends on the cultivation of specialized habitats: in this case, queer-exclusive spaces operating as protective infrastructures of relation where queer joy functions as an active methodology for being-in-community. In practice, this methodology of joy operates as a deliberate epistemological and somatic restructuring of space. Within our queer habitats, joy is enacted -through the collective- as an unsurveilled, untamed relationality; think of it as a shared bodily autonomy that rejects and resists the mandate of external legibility, surveillance, or commodification. It’s an unchoreographed play, an untamed experience of non-conformity, a mutual presence away from the panoptic gaze of the dominant cisheteronormative culture, where we get to generate our own self-sustaining affective ecosystems. Joy, in this configuration, serves as the primary material that thickens the protective infrastructure and turns these communal habitats into an anchor where existence is experienced not as a policed object, but as a wild, unfolding relation. However, our queer microclimates are becoming more and more subjected to what I will call here an environmental degradation: heteronormative infiltration. This phenomenon stems from a crisis within cisheteronormative culture itself, which functions much like an institutionalized cult by demanding the systematic suppression of the authentic self in exchange for the structural privileges of the traditional family layout (Ingraham, 1999; Jackson, 2006). Starved of genuine self-actualization within their own carefully curated heteronormative domestic habitats, heterosexual tourists (I am not referring to questioning folks or allies1) frequently treat our queer spaces as aesthetic playgrounds, only stepping in during moments of convenience to glimpse a freedom they lack the social courage to cultivate at home.
When I refer to queer habitats, I am referring to physical and digital ones. For instance, these can be queer bars, cafes, clubs, social media group chats, or online forums, but also the kitchen at the work office, the living room of the lesbian couple who love to host, the brunch on Sunday with queer colleagues, or the hair salon that doesn’t charge more or less based on perceived gender. Our spaces have been facing degradation (alongside the continuous shutting down of queer venues due to bankruptcy) through heteronormative infiltration, a process driven by an unspoken tension within cisheteronormative culture itself.
“Psychological research into heterosexual dynamics shows a structural framework that operates much like a secular cult, because it demands an adherence to prescribed gender roles and institutional milestones in exchange for societal safety.”
Psychological research into heterosexual dynamics shows a structural framework that operates much like a secular cult, because it demands an adherence to prescribed gender roles and institutional milestones in exchange for societal safety. I get it. I was socialised too, in a strict Muslim society, to perfect this adherence. Studies on heterosexual relationship longevity and gender compliance, on the other hand, show a compromise among cisgender heterosexual women who remain anchored to the promise of the nuclear family layout, choosing to absorb systemic devaluation or interpersonal degradation by their cisgender male partners to preserve their proximity to structural privilege. This transaction of compliance for safety is also policed by the threat of physical and structural elimination. In contemporary landscapes marked by a global surge in femicide, the coercive impacts of the heteronormative contract is laid bare: violence, and the ambient threat of it, functions as a definitive enforcement mechanism.
Let me be clearer: your allyship cannot stop at your bedroom door. If your partner is homophobic or transphobic, you are not an ally. Full stop. Sharing your life and your intimacy with patriarchal bigotry is the literal definition of sleeping with the enemy. Do not perform belonging (let alone allyship) or pretend to care about our wellbeing when you are comfortable building a home with someone who would actively vote against our right to exist.
Because this conditioning requires the systematic suppression of the authentic self, people ensnared by it end up viewing queer spaces with a complicated mixture of resentment and covert envy. They seek out our spaces during moments of personal convenience and curiosity (which I believe is healthy, to an extent. I am all for breaking out of the cisheteronormative cult!) to glimpse the raw self-exploration they lack the social courage to pursue themselves. This energy of consumerist tourism and psychological buffering has materialized intimately in my own life. For instance, a little over a year ago, a woman I know was pursuing me under the guise of queer attraction, culminating in me finally bringing her to a lesbian party. Despite being tethered to a heavily homo- and transphobic boyfriend, she spent the majority of the night using me as a therapeutic foil, obsessively comparing him to me in a desperate, vocal bid to convince herself that her compliance with her heterosexual relationship was the right choice. The illusion of her curiosity shattered the moment I grew exhausted of her repetitiveness and turned my attention toward the dance floor to engage with others. Faced with being decentered in a room where she held no currency, her need to be centered instantly mutated into what I will call here defensive arrogance; she suddenly claimed she was too attractive to even be in that space and called me out for even looking at someone else. We were not dating or involved in any romantic dynamic. At that moment, I realised that the exact second the queer habitat refused to serve as a passive backdrop for her heteronormative validation, she didn’t hesitate to weaponize the patriarchal standards of beauty to protect herself from her own inability to step outside the enclosure.
In such ways, our spaces become temporary laboratories for experiments, where heterosexual people can experience what it feels like to exist without having their partners having a say in everything they do, to say the least. This experimentation, in my opinion and from experience, is erotic, and driven by a desire to extract and consume a raw, queer, and non-patriarchal intimacy that is almost impossible to access under the constant surveillance of the patriarchal gaze. Within the safety of our queer enclaves, such people use queer bodies and energy to taste a different type of somatic pleasure, but they also treat our queer desires as a transient and disposable tonic to jumpstart their own repressed needs and wants.
“When cis/heterosexual people cross into our microclimates, that we and our ancestors fought hard for and are still fighting for … under the banner of inclusion or progress, they bring the weight of their compliance with them.”
When cis/heterosexual people cross into our microclimates, that we and our ancestors fought hard for and are still fighting for (to keep us from being chained to underground spaces designed to protect us but that end up keeping us invisible to the public eye), under the banner of inclusion or progress, they bring the weight of their compliance with them. This transforms a site of refuge into an exhibit where voyeurism is mislabeled as tolerance.
Queer joy, which thrives in an atmosphere free from the surveillance of the dominant cisheteronormative culture, becomes stifled when forced to act as a therapeutic mirror for those who wish to taste liberation without paying its societal and systemic prices. This intrusion disrupts the ecology of the space. It turns a collective practice of queer care into a consumable product and places an unfair cultural burden on queer people to manage the emotional awakening of such guests.
Yes, they’re guests. Uninvited ones, but still guests.
When the socio-political weather turns hostile, those who can easily slip back into heteroconforming safety leave the most vulnerable among us, those whose very bodies, genders, and lives cannot be camouflaged, to bear the unbuffered brunt of right-wing populism’ storms alone. This is where collective self-preservation has to step in, fiercely and without guilt. We must remind ourselves that our spaces have historically always been under attack. They were never built for casual leisure; they were blood-bought, carved out of necessity from a legacy of raids, criminalization, and a desperate need to survive. When we open our doors under the guise of broad inclusion, we risk flattening these sanctuaries of ours. Remember, there is a life-altering difference between a space that is merely queer-friendly (a notion that in my opinion should not exist in the first place. What about “human-friendly”?), which just means a cishetero environment that kindly tolerates our presence to tick an inclusion box, and a space that is at its core queer-dedicated, designed entirely to center, protect, and sustain us.
Protecting our queer habitats isn’t about mimicking the exclusionary borders of the political right. Think of it as an act of community care and ecological defense. It is about safeguarding the delicate microclimates where we can finally lower our guards, heal, and experience true vulnerability together. Think of this as a dynamic similar to the blood-brain barrier, which creates a protected, immune-privileged sanctuary for the body’s most delicate neural networks. Rather than acting as a hostile wall, it actually filters out toxins and aggressive immune storms of the bloodstream to preserve a stable microclimate. This essential boundary allows vulnerable cells to lower their guards, communicate, and heal without being overwhelmed by the outside world.
“When we are freed from the weight of constant hypervigilance, our relationship to space undergoes a metamorphosis.”
So, when does a resilient queer environmental identity become possible? The answer is simple: when we are freed from the weight of constant hypervigilance, our relationship to space undergoes a metamorphosis. We stop merely navigating a hostile terrain in survival mode; instead, through the uninhibited, collective practice of safe queer joy, we learn what it means to actually inhabit an environment, to anchor ourselves within it, and to belong to it.
Feature Image: “queer space performance by John Foster” by JoshuaHoshua is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
References
Clayton, S. (2003). Environmental identity: A conceptual and operational definition. In S. Clayton & S. Opotow (Eds.), Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature (pp. 45–65). MIT Press.
Gieseking, J. J. (2020). A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers, 1983–2008. NYU Press.
Ingraham, C. (1999). White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. Routledge.
Jackson, S. (2006). Interchanges: Gender, sexuality and heterosexuality: The complexity (and limits) of heteronormativity. Feminist Theory, 7(1), 105–121.
Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 674–697.
- It is important to recognize that relationship presentation does not define individual identity. A straight-passing couple may include people who are transgender, pansexual, or otherwise queer; therefore, we should avoid making assumptions based solely on appearance. ↩︎
ASMAE OURKIYA
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