If you
were lucky enough to have found yourself in Sydney, Australia, a week or two ago, you
would’ve had the unique opportunity to have sex with the earth. If you missed
your chance, try not to kick yourself, there will be ample opportunities in the
near future.
According
to vice.com, the Sydney LiveWorks Festival of experimental art featured the
“eco-sexual bathhouse,” an interactive installation created by two artists who
described the work as a “no-holds-barred extravaganza meant to dissolve the
barriers between species as we descend into oblivion” as the result of our
global environmental crisis.
Well,
then.
The
artists see their piece as part of a growing eco-sexual movement, which, they
claim, is inexorably gaining momentum around the planet. According to the
piece, Jennifer Reed, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Nevada-
Las Vegas (UNLV) claims that the number of people who identify as eco-sexuals
has increased dramatically in the past two years. Google search data apparently
confirms that interest in the term has particularly spiked over the past year.
Amanda
Morgan, a faculty member at the UNLV School of Community Health Sciences, is
involved in the eco-sexual movement as well (what is it with UNLV types?). She
states that eco-sexuality pitches a big tent, encompassing those relative
conservatives who simply use sustainable sex products, and enjoy skinny-dipping
and naked hiking (who doesn’t?), all the way through to those “people who roll
around in the dirt having an orgasm covered in potting soil. There are people
who f**k trees, or masturbate under a waterfall.”
Thanks
for that report.
Annie
Sprinkle (!) and Elizabeth Stevens are a Bay Area couple, activists, and
performance artists, who have made the movement a personal crusade, going so
far as to publish an “ecosex manifesto,” constructing a website and producing
films such as the documentary, Goodbye
Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story. The film, which I believe was up
for several Oscars and best picture,
depicts the “pollen-amorous” (get it?) relationship between them and the Appalachian Mountains. Alrighty
then.
The
couple have also been involved with a theater piece touring the country: Dirty
Sexecology: 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth. (Wait ‘til you see #17!). They
have also officiated wedding ceremonies where fellow eco-sexuals marry the
earth, the moon, and various other natural entities. (I once got engaged to Halley’s Comet, but we didn’t see each other
often enough to make it work, and she was way too “fast” for my liking,
brazenly and indiscriminately exploring other heavenly bodies).
Sprinkle
and Stephens (sounds like a law firm) attended last year’s San Francisco Pride
Parade, leading a contingent of eco-sexuals in a “ribbon-cutting ceremony” to
“officially” add an E to the LGBTQI acronym. At this rate, the ever-expanding
kinky-sex acronym will soon have to
be recognized as the longest word in
the English language, overtaking antidisestablishmentarianism. Probably by
2025.
There
are those who think eco-sexuals will become mainstream in the very near future.
Stephens
says that their aim is to re-conceptualize the way we look at the earth, from
seeing it as a mother to viewing it as a lover, as this is the first step
towards taking the environmental crisis seriously. After all, some in the
movement say, “If you piss off your mother, she’s probably going to forgive
you. If you treat your lover badly, she’s going to break up with you.”
Moreover, adherents say, “If you’re running from floods, you won’t have any
time for sex.”
Stephens
believes there are now at least 100,000 people around the world who openly identify as eco-sexuals. Keep
“dissolving those barriers between the species,” noble civil rights warriors!
Want to bang a mountain lion- or a mountain? It’s all good! Want to marry a
river otter- or a river? That is your right
under marriage equality!
It will
be interesting to see what eco-sexuals demand in terms of bathroom and locker
room rights.
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