[3] Specifically, queer ecology challenges traditional ideas regarding which organisms, individuals, memories, species, visions, objects, etc.
[2] Queer ecologies can be associated with what Tara Tabassi, queer and feminist activist, calls "dirty resilience,"[5] or "the dismantling of structures of violence that target particular racialized and gendered bodies as disposable... [dirty resilience] is thus also the contextually specific creation of spaces and structures supporting self-determination and collective liberation, such as: land sovereignty; prison and apartheid regime abolition; new food systems; community accountability in place of policing and criminalization; non-proliferation and demilitarization; healthcare accessibility; free housing; collective decision-making; trauma transformation...
Sandilands suggests Foucault "lays the groundwork for much contemporary queer ecological scholarship" by examining the conception of sex as "a specific object of scientific knowledge, organized through, on the one hand, a 'biology of reproduction' that considered human sexual behavior in relation to the physiologies of plant and animal reproduction, and on the other, a 'medicine of sex' that conceived of human sexuality in terms of desire and identity.
Although queer ecology rejects traits of essentialism found in early ecofeminism, ecofeminist texts such as Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology (1978) laid the foundation for understanding intersections between wom_n and the environment.
Queer ecology develops these intersectional understandings that began in the field of ecofeminism about the ways sex and nature have historically been depicted.
"[14] In the Orion Magazine article, "How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time," Alex Carr Johnson calls for a stop to the dualistic and generalizing categorization of nature and its possibilities.
Two opposing interpretations are found by comparing David Quammen’s essay “The Miracle of Geese” and Bruce Bagemihl’s book, Biological Exuberance.
[18] Specifically, he proposes that life exists as a "mesh of interrelations" that blurs traditional scientific boundaries, like species, living and nonliving, human and nonhuman, and even between an organism and its environment.
[22] Because the "crazy cat lady" often defies societal heterosexist expectations for the home, as she, instead of having a romantic, cis-male, human partner, treats animals as legitimate companions.
[22] Queer ecology is also connected to feminist economics, concerned with topics such as social reproduction, extractivism, and feminized forms of labour, largely unrecognized and unremunerated by dominant Capitalist, Neo-Colonial and Neo-Imperialist systems.
[23] A significant shift towards an ecological aesthetic in New York can be traced back to an interdisciplinary festival in 1990 called the Sex Salon which took place at the art space Epoché in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Celebrating both nonbinary forms of sexuality and the rooting of culture within a neighborhood ecosystem, the three day salon was the first large gathering of artists, writers and musicians outside the Borough of Manhattan.
The ecologically engaged movement, eventually referred to as the Brooklyn Immersionists, included the ecofeminist periodical, The Curse and the night space, El Sensorium which promoted a form of identity-free abandon called the "omnisensorial sweepout.
The event blurred the boundaries between humans and their environment and featured numerous overlapping cultural and natural systems cultivated by 120 members of Williamsburg's creative community.
The all night event was attended by over 2000 guests and has been cited by Newsweek, the Performing Arts Journal (PAJ), Die Zeit and the New York Times.
Organism's program notes invited the audience into an implicitly queer merging of the human body with its ecosystem:[citation needed] "Wiffle your fingers through the mush.
[27] In 2015, Undercurrents proceeded to release an update to their original issue and a podcast[28] to celebrate 20 years of continued studies in queer ecology.
[26] Theater is a significant setting for exploring ideas of queer ecology, because the theater-space can provide an alternative environment, from which to consider a reality independent from the socially constructed and enforced, binaries and heteronormativity of the outside world.
[31] Robert Azzarello, has also identified common themes of queerness and environmental studies in American Romantic and post-Romantic literature that challenge conventional ideas of the "natural".