Queer and Trans Ecologies as Care Practice of Indispensability

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay calls for an agenda of queer and trans environmentalisms within environmental communication. I detail how queer and trans ecologies operate as frameworks for ecological care, drawing from unexpected sites of queer and trans environmentalisms. Queer and trans environmentalisms encompass the environmental dimensions of LGBTQ political movements and imaginaries, which include robust commitments to housing justice, sustainability, and caring for precarious kin. Together, queer and trans environmentalisms promise to expand attention to the nexus of gender, sexuality, disability, and race in Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) scholarship and practice, while mapping environmental tributaries of queer and trans life. Queer and trans social worlds provide the frameworks and practices for reimagining indispensability and networks of vital care beyond the enclosure of Anglo American bourgeoise reprosexual kinship. Although primarily addressing twentieth-century examples of queer environmental justice, queer and trans ecologies also highlight the complex interplay of settler colonialism, race, and debility. In all, queer and trans social worlds provide critical guides for navigating climate crisis and transforming hierarchies of care.