Goodbye Mother Earth, Hello World
Another look at pleasure and climate change
Since the 3rd millennium B.C. E., nature has been personified as a woman. More specifically, she is drawn as a mother. Mother Earth, Gaia, Pachamama, and Terra Mater were all goddesses recognized for their fertility and were worshipped by matrilinear, family-based communities. While there may be truth and beauty in the personification of our living environment as a mother, this metaphor and language might be hindering our responses to climate change today.
In a matrilineal culture, being a mother was a good thing. Women were the source of all life, and as such, they occupied decision making positions and were nourished by the community. In the modern world, not so much. Laws and customs written by and for men make women vulnerable, and especially vulnerable to the impact of climate change. According to the UNHC, women displaced by climate disruption are less likely to access legal protection, reproductive and other health services. However, the greatest threat for women refugees and otherwise, is the sexual and gender-based violence that is endemic to our patriarchal world culture. In contrast to the matriarchal cultures of long ago, mothers today are neither revered nor protected.
When we apply the construct of mother to Earth, nature gets saddled with all of our dysfunctional gender baggage. She is perceived as a single entity, either generous to a fault (as portrayed in Shell Silverstein’s book, The Giving Tree) or pissed off and vengeful (earthquakes, fire, hailstorms, pandemics). Nature is so powerful--we are so dependent on it--that we have created rigid, binary, yet reverential ways to relate. As a parent myself, I can relate to those two extremes, but humans’ tendency to anthropomorphize Earth as a mother both over-privileges the human experience and also positions us as powerless children. This may be apt as we are displaying all the attributes of badly behaved siblings — fighting over resources and taking our mother for granted—but it can have the effect of infantilizing us, excusing us for our lack of respect.
What if, rather than a parent/child relationship, we imagined a non-gendered, non-binary, human to non-human relationship, one that calls on our highest selves and leads with desire rather than fear? I am talking about love. And, to up the ante, erotic love. What if we engaged sensually with the earth, bringing delight and desire to our connection? What if walking on a beach were an orgasmic experience? What if looking up at the stars felt like falling in love? What if we brought our flirt to the dirt? What if we brought our erotic energy to our love for the planet? This paradigm highlights consent within human-earth interactions. With a lover, consent is not an afterthought, but it is baked into every interaction. A more consensual relationship will be integral to reviving balance in the natural world. Humans are, of course, a part of the natural world; but we are also the driving force of climate change. In order to maintain equilibrium—indeed to save ourselves—we will have to commit to a paradigm of consent within human relations to the non-human natural world.
Earth as lover is not a novel idea. Sappho, the great erotic poet of Lesbos wrote
“I love the sensual.
For me this
and love for the sun
has a share in brilliance and beauty.”
Performance artists and activists Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens have travelled the world promoting their manifesto of what they call “ecosexuality”, a new form of sexual identity that seeks to create a mutual, sustainable, collaborative and erotic relationship with Earth. They have performed weddings to the moon and sky and sea as a way to help people reconnect with nature, and with their own bodies.
There is an invitation here for people to bring one of our most powerful and renewable resources—erotic energy—to the greatest challenge of our lives. Our economy churns by appealing to sex and desire. Why not apply it to environmental activism as well? Every movement needs lightness and play. Eros can animate us and compel us to do the courageous work of protesting, changing legislation, inventing new solutions and putting our bodies on the line to protect our planet.
FROM THE INSTITUTE OF PLEASURE STUDIES
Read the ecosexual manifesto written by performance artists, sex educators and activists Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens and vows for marrying the Earth.
From skinny dippers to people who have actual intercourse with nature, ecosexuality is a growing movement taking a new approach to combatting climate change. Vice has this great article that explains this new movement.
Another take on how we perceive Earth is to investing Earth with legal rights. Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra is a Bolivian law, passed in 2010, that defines Earth as "a collective subject of public interest," and declares both Mother Earth and life-systems (which combine human communities and ecosystems) as titleholders of inherent rights specified in the law. To say that Mother Earth is of public interest represents a major shift from an anthropocentric perspective to a more Earth community based perspective
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