The earth is a big badass butch dyke in menopause.

Abstract

In this article, ecosexual artists and activists Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle re-envision our planet as a butch dyke in menopause. This displacement of the "mother" earth trope re-orients the urgent questions of climate change and consent. Acknowledging the common pitfalls of anthropomorphism, they argue that imagining the Earth as a butch dyke lover enables a radically embodied and joyous mode of environmentalist politics. Stephens and Sprinkle situate their bodies in continuity with the earth in a relationship of queer interdependency as they invent new ways of being in the world that disengage from an abusive, extractive relation to the earth through the cultivation of a loving, playful relationship with our planet. They envision Butch Earth as a switch who invites us into a multitude of embodied, sensual, mindful responses beyond the limits of self-other paradigms. To counter the dominionistic practice of extraction and exploitation, the artists propose an ethical practice of co-sense, rather than consent, in which humans attune themselves to the earth via the senses, a process enabled by repeated, communal, non-monogamous marriages to the planet. Stephens & Sprinkle's curiosity and imagination invite the reader to play and perhaps think about the Earth reciprocally in a relationship grounded by love and sensuality.