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Contemporary struggles against patriarchy, heteronormativity, white supremacy, and ecological extraction are, more often than not, narrated as a cultural awakening or moral progression. Yet emerging research in social neuroscience, <a data-mce-href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/health/envepi" href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/health/envepi">environmental epigenetics</a>, and <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11463847/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11463847/">holobiont theory </a>suggests a more complex transformation: these struggles are entangled with shifts in neural architecture, affective regulation, and multispecies co‑evolution that reconfigure what counts as adaptive life. Drawing on feminist and decolonial science studies, this article theorizes an emergent biocentric orientation, organized around symbiosis, interdependence, and planetary embeddedness, in tension with an extractive orientation that remains invested in cis-heteropatriarchy, dominance, and anthropocentric control. Rather than positing biological essentialism or literal speciation, I argue that these orientations can be understood as divergent, plastic assemblages of neural, hormonal, epigenetic, and sociopolitical patterns that differentially shape fitness in an era of climate catastrophe and systemic crisis.<h3>Neural architectures of hierarchy and plasticity</h3>Social neuroscience has begun to map how adherence to hierarchy, system‑justifying ideologies, and authoritarian worldviews correlates with specific structural and functional properties of the brain.<a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11519434/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11519434/"> A large preregistered voxel‑based morphometry study</a> found that endorsement of conservative, system‑justifying ideologies is positively associated with amygdala gray matter volume, whereas more progressive orientations correlate with reduced amygdala volume, replicating and extending earlier work on political attitudes and brain structure. The amygdala is centrally implicated in processing threat, salience, and affective responses to social out‑groups, and convergent evidence suggests that greater amygdalar volume and activity support the learning, maintenance, and acceptance of hierarchical social systems and dominance relations. These findings resonate with political psychology research on <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5381105/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5381105/">social dominance orientation (SDO</a>), which conceptualizes a preference for group‑based hierarchy and inequality as a stable attitudinal dimension that predicts support for patriarchal, racist, and heteronormative policies.By contrast,<a data-mce-href="https://www.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.23.2.jnp121" href="https://www.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.23.2.jnp121"> the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC),</a> and in particular the <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4885021/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4885021/">anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg)</a>, functions as an integrative hub for social cognition, error monitoring, and flexible updating in response to social feedback. <a data-mce-href="https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30077-0#:~:text=Highlights,and%20errors%20during%20social%20interactions." href="https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30077-0#:~:text=Highlights,and%20errors%20during%20social%20interactions.">Reviews </a>of human and non‑human primate data indicate that the ACCg is specialized for processing other‑oriented information, encoding vicarious motivation, and tracking prediction errors about others’ intentions, which underpins capacities such as empathy, perspective‑taking, and context‑sensitive cooperation. Variability in ACC structure and connectivity has been linked to individual differences in socio‑cognitive abilities and to disorders characterized by callousness and diminished concern for others. This suggests that political and ethical projects oriented toward unlearning hierarchy, such as queer, feminist, and decolonial movements are supported by, and may further cultivate, neural architectures that prioritize social monitoring, relational accountability, and the decentering of the self as the primary locus of value.Crucially, these neural profiles are not fixed types but dynamic products of developmental histories, socialization, and ongoing experience. <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2823480/#:~:text=Gene%E2%80%93environment%20interaction%20is%20defined,this%20strictly%20statistical%20definition%2C%20the" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2823480/#:~:text=Gene%E2%80%93environment%20interaction%20is%20defined,this%20strictly%20statistical%20definition%2C%20the">Gene-environment interaction </a>work on SDO and related ideological constructs <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6731660/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6731660/">indicates</a> that both heritable factors and shared cultural–political environments shape the propensity to endorse hierarchy‑enhancing beliefs. From a queer ecofeminist perspective, we can thus conceptualize reactionary and integrative orientations as historically situated neuro‑political assemblages rather than hardwired essences. This leaves open the possibility of neuroplastic unlearning of dominance and the cultivation of biocentric dispositions across the lifespan.<h3>Holobionts, epigenetics, and biocentric fitness</h3><a data-mce-href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.662878/full" href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.662878/full">Recent developments in microbiome research</a> and evolutionary theory challenge the notion of the human as a bounded, autonomous individual, instead framing humans as holobionts, multi‑species collectives composed of host and symbiotic microbial communities whose genomes, metabolisms, and signaling systems co‑produce phenotype and adaptive capacity. <a data-mce-href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1279938/full" href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1279938/full">Holobiont frameworks argue</a> that host–microbiome interactions generate substantial phenotypic variation, modulate gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms, and can influence rapid evolutionary trajectories and transgenerational inheritance. Microorganisms have been shown to alter host gene expression via DNA methylation and other epigenetic pathways, thereby affecting development, immunity, and behavior in ways that are heritable across generations.This reconceptualization of the human as a composite organism destabilizes patriarchal imaginaries of man over nature, revealing instead a condition of structural dependency on microbial, vegetal, animal, and abiotic relations for basic survival. Environmental epigenetics demonstrates that exposures such as pollution, dietary changes, and psychosocial stress can induce epigenetic modifications associated with chronic inflammation, metabolic disorders, and mental health conditions, some of which exhibit intergenerational persistence. In contexts of racialized and gendered environmental violence, these findings show how systems of extraction and domination are inscribed not only in landscapes but also in bodies and genomes, and therefore function as <a data-mce-href="https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/slow-and-fast-violence-a-feminist-critique-of-binaries/" href="https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/slow-and-fast-violence-a-feminist-critique-of-binaries/">what feminist scholars have called slow violence that accumulates over time.​</a>Within this holobiont paradigm, biocentric orientations, those that treat ecosystems as co‑constitutive rather than external resources, can be understood as adaptive strategies for maintaining the homeostasis of the wider life‑support assemblage on which human bodies depend. <blockquote>When political–economic orders organize around aggressive extraction, they are basically operating analogously to virulent pathogens that damage or destabilize their host, eventually undermining their own conditions of existence. </blockquote><a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4547252/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4547252/">Evolutionary work on cooperation </a>emphasizes that major transitions in biological organization, from single cells to multicellular organisms and complex societies, depend on mechanisms that stabilize cooperation and suppress unmitigated competition. Interpreted through a feminist, decolonial lens, the current ecological crisis thus exposes extractivist, patriarchal infrastructures as biologically self‑terminating, while elevating symbiotic, care‑centered practices as central to long‑term holobiont fitness.<h3>Rethinking selection: From competition to cooperation</h3><a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8288455/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8288455/">Classic r/K‑selection theory</a> distinguished organisms that maximize reproduction under high mortality (r‑strategists) from those that invest in fewer, higher‑quality offspring near carrying capacity (K‑strategists), but this framework has been <a data-mce-href="https://www.albert.io/blog/k-selected-and-r-selected-species-ap-environmental-science-review/" href="https://www.albert.io/blog/k-selected-and-r-selected-species-ap-environmental-science-review/">heavily critiqued </a>for oversimplifying life‑history variation and neglecting causal mechanisms. <a data-mce-href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17158317/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17158317/">Contemporary evolutionary biology</a> instead foregrounds multiple, interacting mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation, kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection, each with simple rules under which cooperative behavior can invade and stabilize within populations. These mechanisms demonstrate that, under many conditions, cooperative strategies can outcompete purely selfish or exploitative strategies, particularly in structured populations and repeated interactions where reputation, relational memory, and network topology matter.Rather than mapping human political orientations onto a discredited r/K binary, it is more precise to conceptualize extractive and integrative trajectories as distinct bundles of behavioral, cognitive, and hormonal patterns that occupy different regions of the cooperative, competitive landscape. <a data-mce-href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612472682?utm_source=researchgate.net&amp;utm_medium=article" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612472682?utm_source=researchgate.net&amp;utm_medium=article">Social endocrinology research</a> shows that hormones such as oxytocin and cortisol participate in feedback loops that shape social bonding, trust, and responses to conflict: oxytocin can facilitate empathy and attachment and dampen amygdala reactivity to social threat while reducing cortisol, but chronic stress and persistently elevated cortisol can blunt these effects and entrench defensive, vigilance‑oriented states. <blockquote>In hierarchical, patriarchal contexts that normalize violence and precarity, endocrine systems may be continually driven toward high‑stress, dominance‑oriented profiles, whereas relational cultures of mutual care and equity are more likely to support hormonal patterns conducive to cooperation and repair.</blockquote>From a queer ecofeminist standpoint, these data invite us to theorize sexual selection and social organization not as biologically fixed outcomes but as contested terrains where cultural norms, institutions, and ecological conditions co‑produce what appears natural. For example, <a data-mce-href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J056v18n02_05?utm_medium=article&amp;utm_source=researchgate.net" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J056v18n02_05?utm_medium=article&amp;utm_source=researchgate.net">patriarchal mating scripts that valorize dominance, rigid gender roles, and fertility signaling</a> can be read as one local attractor within a broader space of possibilities, in which more egalitarian, fluid, and care‑centered sexual cultures represent alternative adaptive peaks. In this sense, movements that redistribute care labor, challenge binary gender, and cultivate multispecies kinship are not merely ideological projects; they are experiments in reorganizing the selection pressures that shape which relational styles and embodiments are sustainable.<h3>Survival, speciation, and the ethics of symbiosis</h3>Framing the present conjuncture as a divergence between an “Integrated (Symbiotic) Species” and a “Toxic (Extractive) Branch” is analytically provocative but biologically imprecise if construed as literal speciation, which requires reproductive isolation and genetic divergence that are not currently evident in humans. It is more accurate to speak of incipient biocultural lineages: clusters of practices, institutions, and embodied dispositions that differentially align with cooperative or exploitative evolutionary dynamics and that may, over long timescales, contribute to patterned genetic and epigenetic differentiation. Under conditions of accelerating climate change, resource instability, and cascading health crises, extractivist infrastructures are generating the very stressors, chronic psychosocial stress, polluted environments, disrupted microbiomes, that erode the resilience of those who remain tethered to dominance as a primary mode of relating.Conversely, biocentric, integrative lineages can be understood as investing in the maintenance of the planetary commons, soil, water, air, microbial diversity, social trust, without which human and more‑than‑human life becomes untenable. Evolutionary work on major transitions emphasizes that new levels of organization emerge when entities relinquish some autonomy to participate in collective regulation and benefit from shared robustness. This resonates with Indigenous and feminist cosmologies that foreground reciprocity, relational accountability, and the personhood of land and non‑human beings, offering frameworks in which “adaptation” is not a competitive race but a deepening of mutual responsiveness across species and generations.​<h3>Final thoughts...</h3>The ethical stakes of this divergence are worth noting here. If adaptation in the Anthropocene hinges on the capacity to inhabit holobiont interdependence and to reconfigure neural, hormonal, and institutional architectures away from punitive hierarchy and toward symbiotic care, then refusing to unlearn patriarchy and ecological dominance becomes not only a political choice but a commitment to a mode of life with diminishing viability. Yet because neurobiological and epigenetic systems remain plastic, the future is not a simple winnowing of two fixed branches but an ongoing struggle over which lineages of relation we cultivate, protect, and pass on.

The biocentric divergence: A neurobiological and evolutionary argument for the unlearning of cisheteropatriarchy

Françoise D'Eaubonne, an activist with the Women's Liberation Movement (MLF), is credited with being the first to extend the feminist debate to environmental issues. In her book, Le Féminisme ou la mort, in English: Feminism or Death, (1974), she elaborates on what she defines as a “new form of humanism”. This perspective is based on the idea that ecology and feminism cannot be thought of separately: they constitute two inseparable dimensions of the same systemic critique (D'Eaubonne; 1974). At its core, ecofeminism examines the connections between the oppression of women and environmental degradation, but queer ecofeminism goes further by incorporating the diversity of gender identities and sexualities<a data-mce-href="https://rgsa.openaccesspublications.org/rgsa/article/view/4944/1841" href="https://rgsa.openaccesspublications.org/rgsa/article/view/4944/1841"> (Muthukrishnan &amp; Venugopal; 2024</a>).Moving past mere definitions, illustrating the impact of queer ecofeminism in 2026 is an invitation to resist thinking from a crisis place. It suggests that even in the face of a climate and social emergency, we must not let urgency blind us to the work of dismantling and reimagining unequal social structures. The emergency situation tends to shift the focus from the cause of the problem to the immediate solution. From this perspective, responsibility for many of these crises should be acknowledged more explicitly. Until now, the issue of pollution and crossing of <a data-mce-href="https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d7f70388-0888-11f1-8870-01aa75ed71a1/language-en" href="https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d7f70388-0888-11f1-8870-01aa75ed71a1/language-en">at least six planetary boundaries</a> has been addressed primarily in terms of relations between states: for example, when one country commits to transferring or offsetting carbon quotas in favour of another.In these cases, it is implicitly recognised that some countries have contributed more than others to global emissions, instability, and environmental damage. This logic echoes the principle of <a data-mce-href="https://www.idos-research.de/uploads/media/DP_6.2014..pdf" href="https://www.idos-research.de/uploads/media/DP_6.2014..pdf">Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR),</a> which asserts that while the climate crisis is a global burden, responsibility is not split equally. Instead, it is distributed based on each nation's historical carbon footprint and its current capacity to respond to the emergency.In the 1990s, many ecofeminist theorists shifted their focus to fundamental criticism of essentialism, criticising books such as Caroline Merchant's <a data-mce-href="https://www.scribd.com/document/463039853/The-death-of-the-nature-Carolyn-Merchant-pdf" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/463039853/The-death-of-the-nature-Carolyn-Merchant-pdf">The Death of Nature (1980)</a>, and arguing that certain branches of the movement had inadvertently reinforced the idea of a special, inherent bond between women and nature, a concept critics felt limited women to biological or traditional roles rather than liberating them. This tendency forces ecofeminists into a false dilemma. Compelling the movement to operate within such binaries is risky, as it suggests ecofeminism is trapped in an "either/or" framework. In reality, the primary goal of contemporary ecofeminist methodology is to challenge and deconstruct the very Western dualisms that create hierarchical divides such as culture vs. nature, man vs. woman, human vs. non-human, reason vs. emotion, and theory vs. practice<a data-mce-href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00497878.2018.1425509#d1e132" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00497878.2018.1425509#d1e132">(Estévez-Saá, 2018)</a>.In academic spaces, queer ecofeminism has offered powerful conceptual tools: relational ontology, intersectionality, the rejection of binaries, situated knowledge, and transformative praxis. These models, which emerged during the third wave of feminism (dating back to around the 1990s), that Evans defines as characterised by “overlapping and contradictory ways of being interpreted” <a data-mce-href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/files/51109562/What_makes_a_3rd_wave_IFJP.pdf" href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/files/51109562/What_makes_a_3rd_wave_IFJP.pdf">(Evans, 2015) </a>express the complexity, criticality and multiplicity of the current of thought from which they originated, and that framework helps us understand that the context in which the climate polycrisis has arisen is not just an environmental issue, but a crisis of relationships between humans and ecosystems, (who, after all, are part of those ecosystems themselves), between physical bodies and built infrastructures, and between knowledge and power. Yet, while the theory is metamorphic, its circulation is not; these radical insights remain, most of the time, trapped within academic jargon, institutional spaces, and paywalled journals.A gap persists between academic work and everyday practice. Queer care, I argue, is not only an ethical orientation toward bodies and ecologies, but in fact, &nbsp;an epistemological intervention into how knowledge itself is produced, shared, and legitimised.<h3>A relational epistemology</h3>In the queer ecofeminist conception, the relational ontology’ perspective challenges the idea of isolated subjects, and, instead, places beings within networks of interdependence. It is from this basis that the question of access to knowledge emerges, which is unquestionably never neutral.If knowledge is situated, then producing it requires accountability, in the sense that requires transparency, equal access to knowledge and influence in the creation of that knowledge. Queer care unsettles the image of the detached researcher observing from a distance. It asks us to recognise positionality, to refuse extractive methodologies, and to co-create knowledge with those whose lives are implicated in the research. It destabilises the hierarchy between expert and subject, between theory and lived experience. Therefore, is not only a methodological adjustment, but a political stance.In queer ecofeminist thought, care is not reduced to a private or moral duty, but redefined as a political and relational practice. Drawing on <a data-mce-href="https://www.scribd.com/document/330973025/Fisher-Tronto-Toward-a-Feminist-Theory-of-Caring-1" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/330973025/Fisher-Tronto-Toward-a-Feminist-Theory-of-Caring-1">J.Tronto’s and B Fisher definition, in the article Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring (1990)</a>, care encompasses everything we do to maintain, repair, and sustain our world including bodies, communities, and ecosystems. It highlights interdependence as a structural condition of life rather than a weakness. Queer ecofeminism reclaims care from its historical confinement to feminised, racialised, and underpaid/unpaid labour. Instead of rejecting care because it has been exploited under patriarchal and capitalist systems, it seeks to politicise and transform it. Care becomes a site of resistance: a conscious, collective commitment to sustaining life beyond profit-driven logics. <blockquote>If we shift our focus from humans to living beings, the spectrum of possibilities that open up to us is infinite. Just think of natural ecosystems, where if one species becomes extinct, the consequences affect not only that species, but also all other animal and plant species. The entire ecosystem loses its balance and demands a new equilibrium. It is in this sense that care must be deconstructed from the concept of caring for, and recognised for what it is: the dimension and condition of existence.</blockquote><a data-mce-href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii100/articles/nancy-fraser-contradictions-of-capital-and-care" href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii100/articles/nancy-fraser-contradictions-of-capital-and-care">Nancy Fraser’s critique of capitalism in Contradictions of Capital and Care (2016) </a>explores how care and social reproduction are systematically invisibilised despite being foundational to economic systems. Similarly, ecological economics exposes how ecosystem services are only recognised when translated into monetary value. Both cases demonstrate how capitalism marginalises what sustains life. <blockquote>Reclaiming care, therefore, means shifting societal values from productivity and extraction toward vulnerability, reciprocity, and justice. </blockquote>In this sense, queer ecofeminism proposes a reorganisation of political and economic systems around interdependence and collective responsibility, offering an alternative ethical foundation for navigating ecological and social crises.<h3>Activism as knowledge practice</h3>Activism can be dismissed as reactive or anti-intellectual. Yet queer ecofeminist perspectives challenge this divide by recognising activism as a site of knowledge production in its own right.&nbsp;Drawing on <a data-mce-href="https://jasbirkpuar.com/terrorist-assemblages/" href="https://jasbirkpuar.com/terrorist-assemblages/">Jasbir Puar’s understanding of assemblages</a>, knowledge does not emerge from isolated subjects, but from shifting constellations of bodies, institutions, infrastructures, and power relations. Therefore, what counts as legitimate knowledge is shaped within these geopolitical configurations, where visibility, authority, and credibility are unevenly distributed.Another perspective worth considering is that of Patricia Hill Collins, articulated in her book <a data-mce-href="https://negrasoulblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/patricia-hill-collins-black-feminist-thought.pdf" href="https://negrasoulblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/patricia-hill-collins-black-feminist-thought.pdf">Black Feminist Thought (2000)</a>. In this work, Collins reminds us that knowledge has historically been produced and sustained through collective practices. Black feminist epistemology highlights that theory does not emerge in abstraction, but rather through dialogue, lived experience, and, above all, shared struggles.&nbsp;“Reading Black women’s intellectual work, I have come to see how it is possible to be both centered in one’s own experiences and engaged in coalitions with others. In this sense, Black feminist thought works on behalf of Black women, but does so in conjunction with other similar social justice projects." (Collins, 2000)These perspectives disrupt the vision of legitimate and recognised knowledge as an external actor to events, and bring the relevance of knowledge as situated and experienced to the forefront. It is in this light that practising queer care in the context of activism means resisting capitalist and exclusionary logics, including the appropriation of histories, labour and suffering for institutional purposes. This affirms that those who organise on the margins are not merely applying theory, but are an essential part of the process of constructing it. If academic theory is to remain politically meaningful, activism cannot be treated as an add-on. It must be recognised as epistemic labour.&nbsp;<h3>Queering knowledge: Who gets to know? </h3>To queer knowledge is to interrogate not only its content but its authority: who is recognised as a knower, and under what conditions. Academic institutions continue to privilege Western, institutional, and economically secure voices, while access to education, funding, and publication remains uneven. Even critical traditions can reproduce exclusion through citation practices and gatekeeping structures. Queering knowledge entails disrupting hierarchies of expertise, valuing embodied and experiential forms of insight, challenging paywalled economies of research, and refusing the reduction of marginalised communities to objects of study. Thus, making it clear that they are producers of theory, not simply its subjects.Climate justice is inseparable from knowledge justice. Ecological transition requires transforming not only energy systems but epistemic infrastructures. Queer care, in this sense, becomes a practice of redistribution: fostering collaborative pedagogies, expanding spaces of dialogue beyond institutional boundaries, and designing modes of learning grounded in reciprocity rather than hierarchy. In the face of the climate polycrisis, neither technocratic solutions nor isolated critique are sufficient. What we need is an approach that brings together theory, activism, accessibility and shared contextual responsibility, but also historical responsibility. Queer ecofeminism aims at this integration. The goal, therefore, is to translate conceptual insight into structural change. Addressing the climate polycrisis requires collective intelligibility and shared action, conditions that emerge when knowledge is co-produced, accessible, and accountable. Bridging the gap between theory and practice is not simply a communicative challenge, but a matter of epistemic justice. Transformative action begins when the infrastructures of knowledge itself are reshaped to support interdependence rather than hierarchy.

Queer care and epistemic justice: From theory to collective agency

We have always told ourselves stories of security. They are grand narratives of walls, armies, and treaties, of sovereign lines drawn firmly on maps, defending "us" from "them." These tales can be comfortin to some, suggesting that safety was a matter of containment and control. But today, a different, more chilling story is unfolding, one written in drought-scorched earth and tempest-tossed seas. This new narrative reveals that the walls we built to protect ourselves are tragically useless against a threat that respects no border: a dying natural world.<a data-mce-href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/10/climate-change-national-security-defence/" href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/10/climate-change-national-security-defence/">As Andrew Zolli wisely observes</a>, national security and natural security are quite enmeshed. We are finally realizing, with a collective, sickening lurch, that our entire human society, our ability to feed ourselves, to keep our people housed, to maintain a semblance of peace, is merely a subset of the larger planet. When nature falters, everything falters.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>The Cracks in the Global Order: A Security Built on Domination &nbsp;</h3>For centuries, our dominant global culture, driven by patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism, has operated on a deadly premise: that nature is an object to be conquered, exploited, and controlled, and that certain people are more disposable than others, while a very small percentage (yes, I am talking about billionnaires) is worthy of everything. This same rigid, hierarchical mindset that justifies extractivism is the one that enforces narrow, oppressive social binaries: man over woman, straight over queer, cis over transgender, and human over nature.This is where the wisdom of Queer Ecofeminism breaks through the noise. It doesn't just see the environmental crisis; it sees the root sickness: the logic of domination. It tells us that the systems that allow a corporation to poison a river for profit are the very same systems that deny a transgender refugee safety or sideline a woman in local governance. The domination of Earth and the oppression of marginalized people are two sides of the same tarnished coin.When a massive climate shock hits, like the devastating floods and heatwaves of South Asia in 2023 and 2024 that displaced millions, who pays the highest price? It's not the corporate entities who contributed most to the emissions. It's the rice farmer whose land is now salty and barren, the impoverished coastal family whose home vanished, and crucially, the queer or trans person who is most likely excluded from traditional, heteronormative support networks and faces heightened violence in the chaos of a refugee camp. Their vulnerability is not a geographic accident; it is a political wound inflicted by a world that values power over care.<h3>The Domino Effect: Connected Shocks and Geopolitical Strain &nbsp;</h3>The illusion of contained disaster has shattered. Zolli captured this dynamic perfectly: a crisis in the food system quickly begets a "crisis" of migration, which then explodes into a security crisis. It's a chain reaction of human misery that directly strains geopolitical stability.Think of the devastating <a data-mce-href="https://www.undrr.org/resource/horn-africa-floods-and-drought-2020-2023-forensic-analysis" href="https://www.undrr.org/resource/horn-africa-floods-and-drought-2020-2023-forensic-analysis">multi-year drought across the Horn of Africa</a>. The failure of the rains, a direct consequence of a warming planet, didn't only kill livestock but also dried up the very possibility of peace. It intensified long-standing, low-level conflicts between farming and nomadic communities forced to compete fiercely over the last, shrinking pools of water. These resource conflicts are the new front lines of insecurity, showing us that when people are hungry and desperate, they become "restless" and "disgruntled," destabilizing entire regions and providing fertile ground for armed groups and radicalization.The security threat isn't just "over there," either. The record-shattering wildfires and heat domes across North America and Europe in 2023 and 2024 weren't just spectacular disasters; they were attacks on domestic resilience. They shut down critical infrastructure, crippled supply chains, and forced governments to divert military and civilian resources away from traditional defense to continuous, exhausting domestic disaster response. A solvable problem yesterday becomes a major global crisis tomorrow because our vast, growing populations amplify every single shock. The economic losses, running into the hundreds of billions, destabilize financial markets and threaten political cohesion within the most powerful nations.&nbsp;<h3>Security through solidarity and ecological policy &nbsp;</h3>To escape this "filmstrip of doom," we need more than better technology; we need a radical, emotional shift in how we define security. You can't shoot a missile at climate change, and you can't invade a storm, but you can nourish the bonds that hold humanity and nature together.The tools of transparency, like the satellites monitoring every act of deforestation and every shift in crop growth, are essential. They allow the world to watch, and when people know they are being watched, their behavior changes. But this accountability must go deeper, used not just to track carbon, but to track and protect the most vulnerable in the wake of disaster, to ensure aid reaches the marginalized and to prevent the systemic abuses that thrive in chaos.The final, essential step is to embrace the ecological interdependence that is our true security. Queer ecofeminism shows us the way forward: to build solidarity between people and the ecosystems they tend. Our goal is not just to survive shocks, but to prosper by prioritizing the health of the entire web of life. When we invest in ecosystem restoration, we are investing in peace. When we craft climate policies that center the needs of those historically marginalized, the Indigenous, the poor, the queer and trans people, we are building a system that is fundamentally more just, resilient, and safe for everyone.This is the challenging, hopeful story we must tell now: true, lasting global security is not achieved through isolation and domination, but through collective care and shared flourishing. It is a security found in the radical act of believing that our fates, and the fate of the planet, are one.

The Climate Geopolitics: Why ecological collapse is the ultimate threat to global security

<h3>Introduction: The unsettled air of the in-between </h3>No, you are not the only one who is feeling this way. The contemporary global condition, marked by accelerating ecological collapse, despicable systemic inequality, and existential uncertainty, is not one of crisis, but one of <a data-mce-href="https://medium.com/@rossstringer/liminality-why-change-feels-so-uncomfortable-b7224abb23ea" href="https://medium.com/@rossstringer/liminality-why-change-feels-so-uncomfortable-b7224abb23ea">liminality.</a> Drawing from <a data-mce-href="https://monoskop.org/images/9/90/Turner_Victor_The_Ritual_Process_Structure_and_Anti-Structure.pdf" href="https://monoskop.org/images/9/90/Turner_Victor_The_Ritual_Process_Structure_and_Anti-Structure.pdf">Victor Turner’s (1969) anthropological tradition</a>, liminality describes the 'betwixt and between' phase of a rite of passage, a state characterized by the suspension of structured social order and an intense ambiguity. According to Truner, <blockquote>"Liminal entities are neither here nor there, they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial."</blockquote><a data-mce-href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/anthropocene/" href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/anthropocene/">The Anthropocene</a>&nbsp;constitutes an involuntary structural liminality. It is the prolonged, uncomfortable gap between a collapsing industrial paradigm and a necessary, yet unrealized, sustainable one.<a data-mce-href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/earths-systems/" href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/earths-systems/">The Earth Systems</a> are hemorrhaging;<a data-mce-href="https://www.thegef.org/news/goodbye-forever-friendly-holocene" href="https://www.thegef.org/news/goodbye-forever-friendly-holocene"> the stability of the Holocene is gone</a>. This is the Separation phase of the planetary rite, a violent detachment from the certainty of the<a data-mce-href="https://amstudugm.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/social-construction-of-reality.pdf" href="https://amstudugm.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/social-construction-of-reality.pdf"> "home-world" (Schutz, 1967)</a>. We are now in the Transition, where the logic that created the crisis has lost its epistemic authority, yet the successor logic remains fiercely contested.This is where the promise of <a data-mce-href="https://niche-canada.org/2020/06/23/queering-ecofeminism-towards-an-anti-far-right-environmentalism/" href="https://niche-canada.org/2020/06/23/queering-ecofeminism-towards-an-anti-far-right-environmentalism/">Queer Intersectional Ecofeminism</a> enters the frame. As a philosophy that posits several links between the domination of nature and the oppression of women*/marginalized peoples, Ecofeminism provides the essential critical lens for navigating this global threshold. It acts as the necessary anti-structure (Turner, 1969), capable of deconstructing the hierarchical logics that led us to this liminal state. The task of the academic and the activist is to recognize this liminality not as an end, but as a fertile void that is continuously demanding&nbsp;an ethical re-authoring of the human-Earth relationship.<h3>Historical liminality and the recurrent patterns of domination </h3>To understand our present liminal moment, we should probably track the historical pattern of human societies entering and exiting transitional phases. History is replete with moments of structural liminality: the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Black Death, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, you name it! Each moment suspended the prevailing order and opened a phase of anti-structure that ultimately led to a reaggregation, aka a new structure (Turner, 1969). Let's look back into human history, a while back...In 1517, the hammer that struck the <a data-mce-href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Ninety-five-Theses" href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Ninety-five-Theses">95 Theses in Wittenberg </a>signaled Western civilization’s abrupt entry into a global structural liminality. The Separation (pre-liminal) was immediate: the Roman Catholic Church’s unified spiritual and political monopoly, the bedrock of the medieval "home-world", <a data-mce-href="https://www.economist.com/essay/2017/11/04/the-stand" href="https://www.economist.com/essay/2017/11/04/the-stand">cracked,</a> and consequently forced millions into an ontological void where truth became uncertain.Europe then plunged into a century-long Transition (liminal phase) marked by anti-structure (Turner, 1969). Authority collapsed into endless theological disputes, which fueled peasant wars and the terrifying communitas of religious conflict. The collective uncertainty forced people to find solace not in external ritual, but in the internal conscience. This paved the way for the radical individualism that would later on define modernity.Yet, when the Reaggregation (post-liminal) arrived with <a data-mce-href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Peace-of-Westphalia" href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Peace-of-Westphalia">the Peace of Westphalia (1648),</a> the system simply traded one master for another. The spiritual hierarchy of the Church was replaced by the secular hierarchy of the nation-state and nascent capitalism (Weber, 1905). This new structure formalized the very logic of domination that Ecofeminism critiques: the individual (male, rational) was exalted, while the natural world and the "reproductive", relational work of life were externalized, devalued, and exploited as resources (Merchant, 1980).The Reformation's liminal moment was a betrayal of potential. It broke the old structure but failed to embrace an ethics of reciprocity. Today, as our own capitalist structure collapses, Ecofeminism warns us: the risk of a similar "premature reaggregation", like a green techno-fix that saves the hierarchy, is the central danger of our modern threshold.Another example would be <a data-mce-href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-scientific-revolution/" href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-scientific-revolution/">The Scientific Revolution</a> (16th–18th Centuries): This era was liminal for the European mind, transitioning from the teleological worldview to mechanical philosophy. The resultant reaggregation, however, formalized the subordination of nature. Francis Bacon famously argued that nature must be "hunted out of her wanderings" and "bound into service," a discourse laden with gendered, violent metaphors (Merchant, 1980). The male mind (Culture/Reason) was formally codified as separate from and superior to the female body (Nature/Emotion). We are now facing the liminal collapse of this very industrial-capitalist reaggregation. The danger is that, blinded by the crisis, humanity will once again opt for a swift, seemingly pragmatic "green" reaggregation (geoengineering, carbon markets) that leaves the conceptual framework of domination, the dualism of human/non-human and the devaluation of Care, utterly intact. This would be the ultimate failure of the liminal period.&nbsp;<h3>The controversy: Essentialism, care, and the necessity of the subordinate space </h3>The convergence of liminality and Ecofeminism is simultaneously potent and contentious. The persistent critique of Ecofeminism is its alleged reliance on essentialism: the idea that women are inherently, often biologically, closer to nature. This risks affirming the very binary that justifies oppression (Gaard, 2017).Contemporary material and socialist Ecofeminist thought, drawing on scholars like Karen Warren (1990) and Val Plumwood (1993), and <a data-mce-href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/queer-ecofeminism-9781793640222/" href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/queer-ecofeminism-9781793640222/">Ourkiya (2023)</a> bypasses this trap. It focuses not on essential ties, but on the material, subordinate, and political location that women, the poor, Indigenous communities, and nature have been forced to occupy within the patriarchal conceptual framework. This shared, subordinate space (this political liminality) provides a non-dominant vantage point from which to critique and dismantle the collapsing structure.The shared experience of planetary crisis creates a forced, destabilizing communitas (Turner, 1969). However, this communitas is false if it does not first acknowledge the radically unequal burdens of the transition (Wong, 2023). Ecofeminism forces us to ground the uncertainty of the global liminal phase in a rigorous intersectional analysis of power and material dispossession. It shifts the focus from the abstract universal human (which historically meant the propertied male) to the concrete, interconnected experiences of those historically excluded.The Invitation: The Ethics of Care on the Threshold: The essential anti-structure that must emerge from this liminality is the Ethics of Care. This philosophical shift from an ethics of domination and instrumental value to one prioritizing relationality and interdependence is the core antidote to the prevailing logic. It is a necessary balm, a soothing alternative to the panicked, purely technological fixes that threaten a disastrous premature reaggregation.<h3>Stepping into the new Earth </h3>The global liminality is a terrifying gift. It has de-familiarized our world, tearing away the illusion of stability and exposing the brittle foundation of patriarchal-capitalist systems. Ecofeminism is the map through the terra incognita. It is a radical call, yet simultaneously a soothing reassurance that the solution is not more control, but more connection, more humility, and more care.The current moment of uncertainty is not a flaw in the system; it is the system, suspended and laid bare. The responsibility of the present generation is to ensure that the eventual reaggregation, the structure that follows this threshold, does not once again subordinate the vital, life-sustaining work of the Earth and the bodies that sustain it.Now is the time not only to image but to co-create new planetary culture where the values of care, embodiment, and interspecies relationality form the bedrock of the post-liminal state.

The threshold of crisis: Liminality as a lens for Ecofeminist praxis

Why a just energy transition demands Queer Intersectional Ecofeminism

We live in an era of cascading crises. From the scorching heat of unprecedented wildfires and the devastation of record floods to the quiet violence of ecological collapse and the relentless march of mass extinctions, the world as we know it is fundamentally destabilized. For researchers, these aren't just headlines; they're the raw data points of our work. For activists, they are the urgent, existential threats that define our struggle. And for both, there is a growing, unsettling question: are our dominant paradigms, the very frameworks we've been taught to rely on, equipped to meet this moment?The short, painful answer is no.Our established ways of knowing, usually rooted in a scientific method that seeks to dissect and compartmentalize, or an activism that fights single battles in isolation, are failing to grasp the interconnected nature of our predicament. We continue to see the climate crisis as a separate, environmental problem. We talk about social justice as distinct from ecological health. We draw lines between the "natural" world and the "human" world, as if we are not one. But the polycrisis—the convergence of climate, social, and economic collapse—has shown us that these divisions are false and dangerous. The same systems that perpetuate ecological violence are the ones that uphold gendered, racialized, and colonial hierarchies. To heal the Earth, we must heal our communities, and to heal our communities, we must dismantle the very idea that they can be separated.This is the central insight of Queer Ecofeminism, a discipline that refuses to compartmentalize. It's a radical lens for a radical moment. It's not just a new theory to be debated in academic journals; it's a call to action for anyone who feels that our current tools are insufficient. It is a new way of seeing, and more importantly, a new way of doing. This is why I have created the online course, "<a data-mce-href="https://theecofeministinstitute.com/enroll-now--online-course--queer-ecofeminism-and-the-pluriverse--critical-frameworks-for-an-age-of-climate-crisis" href="https://theecofeministinstitute.com/enroll-now--online-course--queer-ecofeminism-and-the-pluriverse--critical-frameworks-for-an-age-of-climate-crisis">Queer Ecofeminism and the Climate Polycrisis: Introduction and Critical Frameworks</a>," a space for researchers and activists to collectively explore these ideas and, together, build a more robust, compassionate, and effective way forward.&nbsp;<h3>The Cracks in Our Foundation: Why Our Current Thinking Isn't Enough &nbsp;</h3>For generations, both scientific inquiry and political action have been structured around a set of foundational binaries. We've been taught to see the world as a series of dualisms: human vs. non-human, male vs. female, natural vs. cultural, mind vs. body, subject vs. object. While these dichotomies have enabled certain forms of progress, they have also served as the bedrock of systems of domination. The very idea that "nature" is something separate from us allows us to treat it as a resource to be extracted, exploited, and discarded. The belief that some humans (think of cis-hetero, white, able bodied, males from wealthier nations) are a distinct and superior category has justified the oppression of women*, Indigenous communities, racialized people, and LGBTQIA2S+ people who are often dehumanized or cast as being "unnatural".The question is, who defines the "natural"?As researchers, we've seen how this plays out in our work. We may study the dynamics of a forest ecosystem, but feel disconnected from the activist fighting to protect it. We might analyze data on global temperature rise, but struggle to articulate how that data connects to the lived experiences of marginalized communities facing environmental racism. Our research, though vital, can become siloed and disembodied. We publish, we present, and we debate, but the frameworks we use often reinforce the very divisions that contribute to the problem.For activists, the challenge is similar. We may fight valiantly to protect a specific watershed, to protest a new pipeline, or to advocate for a specific climate policy. But what if the very language we use—the fight for "the environment"—reinforces the idea that it's a separate entity from the people who live in it? What if the struggle for gender and racial equality is not just a parallel fight, but fundamentally the same fight as the struggle for ecological survival? When we fail to see these connections, we allow the systems of power that exploit one to continue exploiting the other. We are left feeling overwhelmed and fragmented, fighting a thousand separate battles when what we truly need is a unified, holistic vision.This is not a criticism of the work we have done, but an invitation to push our thinking further. This course is built on the premise that to solve a problem as entangled as the polycrisis, we need a discipline that is just as entangled.<h3>A new map for a shifting landscape: What is Queer Ecofeminism? </h3>Queer Ecofeminism is not simply an "add-on" to ecofeminism; it is a radical, inclusive, intersectional reimagining. It takes the foundational critiques of patriarchy and environmental exploitation and amplifies them with the insights of queer theory, which challenges the very nature of norms, categories, essentialisms, and binaries. It argues that the oppression of racial, gender, and sexual minorities, the exploitation of women, the subjugation of Indigenous peoples, and the domination of the Earth are all manifestations of the same logic: a logic of power, control, and categorization.At its heart, this course will help you understand that a "queer" approach to the climate crisis is not just about including LGBTQIA2S+ voices (though that is essential!). It's about approaching the crisis itself in a way that is non-normative, fluid, and relational. We will ask:<ul><li>How can we see the Earth not as a machine to be managed, but as a dynamic, intimate network of kinship and care?</li><li>What happens when we think of human and non-human beings not as separate categories, but as participants in a shared, fluid ecology?</li><li>How do non-normative identities and relationalities offer us new tools to think through climate disasters, displacement, and ecosystem collapse? The course will guide you through this process with foundational concepts and cutting-edge scholarship. We will explore how non-normative ways of being, from queer social structures to trans-ecological relations, provide radical alternatives to the dominating frameworks of colonial-capitalist ecologies. This isn't about replacing one set of dogmas with another; it's about developing a practice of constant inquiry and compassionate imagination. It's about moving from a mindset of domination and destruction to one of kinship and care.</li></ul><h3>From theory to praxis: The power of collaborative action </h3>This course is designed for people who don't just want to think differently, but want to do differently. It is built around the idea that knowledge is not something to be passively received, but something to be collaboratively created. We'll blend theoretical readings with hands-on, practice-based methodologies that are designed to help you transform your work.You'll participate in creative exercises, mapping, and speculative writing that will challenge you to "queer" your own research or activism. What would your research on hydrology look like if you centered the voices and knowledge of local, Indigenous communities? What would your climate campaign look like if it was guided by a principle of relational care rather than just political leverage? We'll provide a supportive space for peer-to-peer feedback, allowing you to prototype new ideas and receive constructive criticism from a close-knit community of like-minded people.By the end of the course, you will not just have a new set of theories; you will have tangible, practical outcomes to carry forward. You will draft a project brief, create a short presentation, and write a critical reflection essay that integrates your work with feminist, queer, and ecological literature (with the option to publish it as part of a special blog series of The Ecofeminist Institute. <h3>Why This Course, and Why Now? &nbsp;</h3><figure id="figure-8dwhufs307me7akto7"><img id="8dwhufs307me7akto7" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/26I3PWQsVr7KKEL5iEFNaY61susnuLlw2rBWSJXqbbjSqmtI0mg6vNnflQHOKeZW.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-lg md:rounded-xl lg:rounded-2xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined% 5%;" data-corners="medium" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined%" data-positionY="5%" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>The moment of crisis is also the moment of possibility. The old ways are failing, and the urgency of our predicament demands a new kind of thinking and a new kind of action. This course, led by Dr. Asmae Ourkiya, is an answer to that call. It's a chance to step back from the daily grind and re-center your work within a holistic, compassionate, and powerful framework.With a limit of just 15 participants, this course offers an intimate and collaborative environment that is rare in today’s fragmented world. It’s an invitation to connect with fellow researchers, academics, and activists who are all grappling with the same questions, and to forge the kinds of relationships that can sustain us through the difficult work ahead.The climate crisis is a polycrisis, and to solve it, we need a pluriversal approach. This course is your first step toward that future.&nbsp; Enrollment Details:Course Fee: €300 Dates: Sundays, January 11, 18, and 25, 2026 from 14:00 to 17:00 CET Format: Live on Zoom (recordings provided) Application Deadline: October 31, 2025, or as soon as all spots are filled. To reserve your spot and become part of this vital community, please complete the enrollment <a data-mce-href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScVtGbTePYSXHtUury1o-LdR-Elj8tsS2aNTOPRHZfKo5oqbg/viewform" href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScVtGbTePYSXHtUury1o-LdR-Elj8tsS2aNTOPRHZfKo5oqbg/viewform">form</a>. We look forward to welcoming you to the course.

Beyond the Binary: Why Queer Ecofeminism is the Lens We Need for the Climate Polycrisis

The Ecofeminist Institute

About us
The Ecofeminist Institute is consultancy and research business based in Ireland.

The institute is at the forefront of Intersectional Ecofeminism Research, Reporting, and Consultancy, a dynamic partnership for a more equitable and sustainable world.

Our Vision:
The Ecofeminist Institute's vision is to help shape a world where climate justice, gender equality, minority rights, and environmental sustainability are not just lofty ideals but central tenets of policy-making and business strategies.

Blog

The biocentric divergence: A neurobiological and evolutio...

Queer care and epistemic justice: From theory to collecti...

The Climate Geopolitics: Why ecological collapse is the u...

The threshold of crisis: Liminality as a lens for Ecofemi...

Why a just energy transition demands Queer Intersectional...

Beyond the Binary: Why Queer Ecofeminism is the Lens We N...