Sexecology

Sexecology (also ecosexuality) is a term coined by performance artist, activist and professor Elizabeth Stephens and sex-educator and performance artist Annie Sprinkle. It is a combination between art, activism, theory and practice. Sexecology seeks to make environment activism "more sexy, fun and diverse" and to involve the LGBTQ community in environmental activism. Apart from environmental activism, sexecology employs absurdist humor, performance art and sex-positivity as aesthetic and theoretical strategies. Stephens underlines that it "may produce new forms of knowledge that hold potential to alter the future by privileging our desire for the Earth to function with as many diverse, intact and flourishing ecological systems as possible."

Difference with ecofeminism

Sexecology conceives of the earth not as a mother, but as a lover. This conceptual shift invites people to engage their bodies and senses in acts of environmental preservation. It also invites people to treat the earth with love rather than see it as an infinite ressource to exploit.

Unlike ecofeminism however, sexecology does not see an intrinsic link between women and nature; some of the limitations of ecofeminism which sex ecology indirectly addresses are "the reliance on women's biological functions to establish a connection between women and nature, the uncritical over-privileging of women's experiences, the inappropriateness of designating ideal female characteristics, and the regressive political implications of associating women with nature"

Ecosexuals

Proponents of this mouvement are called "ecosexuals"; they are unafraid to engage in and embrace their erotic experience with the earth, such as bathing naked, having sex with vegetables or having an orgasm in a waterfall. "Ecosexuals are related to cyborgs and are not afraid of engaging in intercourse with nature and/or with technology for that matter. We make love with the Earth through our senses."

Human/nonhuman relationships

Sexecology was influenced by contemporary theories around posthumanism and the relationships between humans and nonhumans.

"Haraway’s work has guided my understanding of the material consequences and the theoretical underpinnings embedded in human/nonhuman relationships that matrix our world. This has helped me understand how human exceptionalism has been constructed and privileged throughout the history of religion and science as well as in other secular practices in western culture. Human exceptionalism, in collaboration with global capitalism, has created the isolated space necessary for the ongoing practices that have produced the dangerously degraded environmental conditions in which we now live. The belief systems and ideologies that allow some people to think that they have the Darwinian survival skill and the rights that accompany those skills to use or destroy other human and non humans is now causing the kind of environmental degradation that affects the whole system sooner or later."

Performances, workshops and activism

The aesthetic strategies of sexecology are influenced by Joseph Beuys' concept of social sculpture which sees art as having the potential to transform society.

"... the production of visible art may effect the production of invisible ideological and class relations. For Joseph Beuys, sculpture and artistic creativity hold the potential to reshape the educational and governmental institutions that produce ideological subjects, as well as social, political, and economic systems. Art, Beuys argues, is the necessary condition for the production of a revolutionary society because it can both unravel the old order and engage everyone in the production of a new social order."

Examples of performances

• Weddings with nonhuman natural elements
• Sexecological Walking Tours
• 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth (Theatre Piece)

Ecosexuals also hold a number of educational workshops and engage in on-site environmental activism, such as "Occupy Bernal" and protests against mountaintop removal, as shown in the film "Goodbye Gauley Moutain: An Ecosexual Love Story."

Goodbye Gauley Moutain: An Ecosexual Love Story (film)

Goodbye Gauley Moutain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2013) is a autoethnographic documentary film by Stephens with Sprinkle about the environmental issue of Mountaintop removal in West Virginia, United States, where Stephens comes from. It is an illustration of the kind of tactics and performances that are put forward by the sex ecology movement. “Ecosexuality inserts an ‘erotic’ humor that plays against the horrific subject matter. So far the feedback that I’ve received at film previews makes me realize that these are effective strategies for creating space to briefly cut the feeling of despair that MTR evokes.”

See also

• Ecosex manifesto
• Fuck for Forest
• Alter-globalization
• A Cyborg Manifesto