Tree Hugger With Benefits

                Tree huggers? We might need a new term for a more, uh, intense and intimate activity.

                University of Michigan English professor Sarah Ensor has suggested, via an academic journal article recently, that everybody should embark on erotic relationships with plants. Embracing (!) and expounding upon University of California at Santa Cruz professor Elizabeth Stephens’ “Ecosex Manifesto,” Ensor claims that environmentalism can’t reach its full and true fruition without these amorous flora fantasies.

                Ecosexuals believe that not only does the Earth need to be treated with love, but that humans need to physically make love to our terrestrial mother. Professor Stephens, in her “Manifesto,” extolled the virtues of literally hugging trees, massaging the earth with our feet, rolling around in the mud, licking tree bark, and talking erotically to plants.

                Professor Ensor argues that environmental spaces must welcome queer and “polymorphous” sexual identities, according to breitbart.com. Whatever that means.

                For her part, queer “ecocritic” (?) Catriona Sandilands (!) asserts that, in order for “environmentalism…to go beyond ‘just saying no,’…spaces for exploration must be allowed to flourish and proliferate” and, also, that “polymorphous sexualities and multiple natures are…at the heart of green resistances.”  I’m guessing the nutty professors are averring that, if, instead of just saying you shouldn’t drive a car, eat meat, or use fossil fuels, the environmental movement added the enticement of: “Come with us and you can do anything you want-- or can think of-- outdoors with any other living thing,” it would be immensely more popular. No more “barking up the wrong tree!”

                Ensor’s article is titled “The Ecopoetics of Contact: Touching, Cruising, Gleaning,” and was published in April 2018, by the Oxford University Press. “Ecocritic” and “Ecopoetics?” How about “Ecopathology?”

 It appears the ecosexuality movement is growing in America. I guess that’ll give a new twist to the phrase “planting one’s seed.” Well, to paraphrase a song by Squeeze, who among us hasn’t been “Tempted by the fruit of our Earth mother?”

 I don’t know about you, but I’ve been pining for this cute little fir tree out back for far too long now. A little sweet talk might just do the trick.

As long as I don’t get too sappy.

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(Also see my post: http://www.thewritingisoffthewall.com/2016/11/ecosexual-movement-gaining-ground.html)