As a child, it wasn’t apparent to Chochotte—as he now calls himself—that he was different from the other boys. Growing up in France, his mother and sisters introduced him to gardening and forest walks. Over time, he says, his peers began to see him as queer because his interest in activities traditionally associated with girls led others to perceive him as effeminate: Chochotte wasn’t interested in tractors or controlling nature; he was drawn to watching it flourish.

“The more I showed interest in leisurely walks, the colors of spring, the planting of gladioli, the more I was exposed to judgment and the accusation of being a sissy,” he says.

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“Having an ecological sensibility led me to become a f**got,” he says. It wasn’t always this way, but at 30, he takes pride in reclaiming the word. His decision to live an unconventional life brought him to a place where he could reconnect with his childhood fascination with nature. Now living in a squat in Dijon, France, Chochotte marvels at nature’s ability to thrive in abandoned urban spaces.

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“My neighborhood was once an industrial wasteland, slowly reclaimed over the past 15 years. A grove of butterfly bushes has sprung up on the ruins of a parking lot and garage. The place is unrecognizable; mushrooms grow here alongside St. John’s wort, brambles, apple trees, knotweed, and trees of heaven,” he says. “It’s a space that bears witness to the transformation of human-made environments and its messy, disturbing character, makes me feel very close to it as a queer.”

When he’s not organizing queer apéros or film nights, Chochotte resists development projects and protects living soils and forests from contractors. His latest project is a zine critically examining the language used to describe “invasive plants,” highlighting parallels with the way society has labeled queer and marginalized people as “threats,” “pests,” “unruly,” and “disruptive.”

Searching for eco-queer history

Cy Lecerf vividly remembers embarking on what felt like an initiation journey in 2016, at age 26. The year before, his involvement in grassroots mobilization efforts aimed at influencing the United Nations Climate Change Conference had left a lasting mark on him. The conference led to the Paris Agreement, a treaty aimed at keeping the rise of global temperature below 3.6°F. Yet, for climate activists like Lecerf, world leaders were doing too little, too late. The fact that the pledged emissions cuts were non-binding did not bode well for the success of a treaty that had been negotiated only after decades of inaction, despite mounting scientific warnings.

Seeking new insights about ecology and a deeper understanding of how it could be related to queer lives, Lecerf left his homeland in France and traveled to California, where he met gay and lesbian elders who shared their knowledge of queer history. 

“I started conducting interviews … visiting communities, and suddenly found myself discovering historical figures who had been grappling with how to challenge capitalist ways of living and transform the world from their own perspective,” he said.

During this journey, he encountered the works of Edward Carpenter, Harry Hay, Arthur Evans and Carl Wittman—trailblazers at the intersection of queerness, socialism, and the back-to-the-land movement. 

“My work became more and more about the archives, about rediscovering forgotten eco-queer stories. I was searching for answers, and I found many,” he added. 

In those eco-queer stories, LGBTQ+ writers and activists used the combined lenses of ecology and queerness to critique mainstream society. Through their own experiences of marginalization, they came to see how nature, too, was being exploited for the benefit of a privileged few—at the expense of everyone’s future. They were among the first to draw a direct connection between ending inequality and halting the assault on the natural world.   

Lecerf’s exploration continued after his trip to California. He traveled to the U.K., following in the footsteps of figures like filmmaker and amateur ecologist Derek Jarman and author-gardener Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf’s lover. 

From these travels, readings, and interviews, Lecerf wrote Écologies déviantes, a book in which he gave voice to his evolving thoughts on the history and current challenges of queer ecology. Lecerf, however, prefers to use the term “deviant” to describe how nonconforming minorities understand and articulate ecology in a critical way.
Queer ecology challenges traditional notions of nature and the environment, freeing them from rigid binaries and heteronormativity. As anyone who has seen Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno—a series exploring the sexual lives of animals—quickly realizes, nature is a riot of genders and creative sexual combinations.

Another key aspect of queer ecology is its reclamation of LGBTQ+ people’s connection with nature. For centuries, the Church and societal norms condemned gay sex as unnatural. Queer ecology, by contrast, highlights a long history of queer lives and literature depicting a non-exploitative, intimate bond with the natural world. From the pastoral love poems of ancient Greek and Roman poets such as Theocritus and Virgil to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, E.M. Forster’s Maurice, and Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian-themed The Well of Loneliness, history offers a rich legacy of queer ecological writing.

Early traces of queer ecology in activism can be found in Trees for Queens, a group formed in 1969—shortly after Stonewall—to protest tree cutting in a popular cruising area in Queens. In the 1970s, the back-to-the-land movement led lesbians to create communal spaces like the Womanshare Collective, while gay men founded similar projects such as Wolf Creek, both in Oregon.

Yet, as Lecerf warns in his book, queer ecology is not without its dark side. In the Weimar Republic, certain gay writers and activists—such as Hans Blüher and Adolf Brand—blended homoeroticism with masculine supremacy, back-to-the-land esthetics, and a mix of nationalism and antisemitic ideology—a stark reminder that not all queer ecological thought has been rooted in inclusivity and liberation. This fusion of ecological rhetoric with racism would later feed into the Nazis’ blood-and-soil doctrine, which linked racial purity to the land and led to the extermination of those deemed “unnatural” or “degenerate,” including Jews, Romani people, disabled individuals, and queers.

Unlearning harmful norms and beliefs

For Will Collins, 39, growing up by an idyllic lake near Hudson, Wisconsin, provided countless opportunities to connect with nature. This experience proved invaluable when embracing their queer identity.

“I was born exactly as I am, and it has taken years of work to return to myself—to the special, curious, queer child I once was—while unlearning societal gender norms. I see a connection between that unlearning and the unlearning we need to achieve a better relationship with nature,” he said.

Collins met their partner, Ben, in college, and together they moved to London, one of the world’s LGBTQ+ capitals. After a decade in the city, they found themselves craving a change from the urban hustle. That desire led them to buy 22 acres of barren land south of Barcelona. Ironically, the presence of a nuclear power plant nine miles away made the land more affordable, allowing them to purchase it.

Leaving their urban lives and careers behind, the men’s project became a fusion of queer identity and ecological politics. While restoring the land through tree-planting and permaculture, they also sought to create a sanctuary not only for plants and animals but for LGBTQ+ people as well.

“We made it clear from the start that this is a queer project, and our priority is creating space for other queer, trans, and marginalized folks to have a safe and beautiful refuge in the countryside.”

Their efforts have paid off. They have become a magnet for queers seeking a deeper connection to nature. Thanks to word of mouth and volunteers from the organic farming network WWOOF, casually known as “woofers,” Collins and their partner have hosted a steady stream of queer volunteers over the years. They estimate that the total number is around 100. Visitors and volunteers typically help care for the land and animals, but many also come to disconnect from their busy city lives and simply immerse themselves in nature. 

Among those who came, a queer couple from Berlin were so inspired by the project that they bought a plot nearby and started their own homestead. Another queer friend from Italy, feeling that taking care of a piece of land alone would be too much for him, decided to buy a house in the nearby village to benefit from the proximity to Collins’s land. The energy and enthusiasm of all those who have passed through have left a lasting impact on the landscape. The once-barren hillside is now teeming with life. “It’s been a dramatic transformation,” Collins says, evoking the grassy fields now covered in spring flowers.

The queer ecology movement is also gaining momentum in the United States. Organizations such as Queer Nature and Queer Ecojustice Project are at the forefront of integrating ecological justice with queer liberation. These groups offer educational programs, community-building activities, and advocacy initiatives that challenge environmental injustices through a queer lens.

Additionally, nonprofits like the Venture Out Project are creating inclusive outdoor spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals, fostering connections with nature and each other. While queer ecology may not yet be a mainstream issue within the broader LGBTQ+ community, these diverse initiatives signal its growing importance, both in the U.S. and abroad. This shift is especially timely, as research continues to show that climate change and environmental degradation disproportionately impact already vulnerable and disenfranchised communities.

Queering ecology and greening queer politics

Chochotte, Lecerf, and Collins exemplify how the LGBTQ+ community is integrating queerness and ecology, concluding that they cannot be compartmentalized. This is particularly relevant and urgent, Lecerf argues, when environmental organizations and ecological theories are still grappling with their own heteronormative biases.

But queer ecology is not only a call for bringing more queer perspectives into environmental activism; it also advocates for greening queer politics beyond a narrow focus on identity discourses. The goal is to avoid a future in which, as Tony Kushner put it, “it’s entirely conceivable that we will one day live miserably in a thoroughly ravaged world in which lesbians and gay men can marry and serve openly in the army.”

Chochotte’s activism echoes Lecerf’s own. In 2016, Lecerf joined the pioneering “pink block” protest to disrupt operations at the Hambach coal mine in Germany. The action—popularized by the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, later adapted into a film—resulted in Lecerf being kettled by police for hours, leading to hospitalization for hypothermia. Undeterred, he continued engaging in activism, occupying one of Paris’s largest malls in 2017—an event that became a rare example of a progressive coalition uniting queer, environmental, labor and anti-racist activists.

With the Trump administration threatening havoc in the fight against climate change and the European Union seemingly prioritizing military readiness over greening its economy, it’s only natural to feel disheartened about the planet’s prospects. Adding to this, the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing politics sweeping across country after country gives further cause for concern. According to Lecerf, however, queer ecology might offer valuable insights on how to navigate these troubling times.

“Queer ecology is about resilience and how to inhabit a damaged world,” he says. LGBTQ+ people have long existed in adverse circumstances, carving out lives on the margins of society and building networks of mutual support. As the planet continues to change and become less hospitable, the ability to survive—and even thrive—amid challenges and uncertainty may be queer ecology’s most vital lesson, not just for LGBTQ+ people but for humanity as a whole.

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