A hot topic these days is ecosexuality.
With growing conscientiousness for ecology and environmental issues, and renewed interests in pagan or earth-based belief systems, it makes sense that new (or old) ways of looking at our relationship with nature emerge.
Ecosexuality, sometimes called sexecology, redefines that relationship and reimagines our own bodies as ultimately belonging to nature. Let’s dive in.
What Is Ecosexuality?
Ecosexuality is a radical paradigm blending ecology and sexuality, and bringing environmental activism, art and performance, and sexuality together.
It centers on the idea that the earth is not our mother, departing from a longstanding view of ourselves in relation to our Earth Mother, but our lover.
Ecosexuality combines nature fetishism with environmental activism or advocacy. Instead of viewing nature as a resource to exploit, we should treat the earth as our lover.
This viewpoint of ourselves as lover of the earth is a conceptual change that gives us engagement, responsibility, and pleasure in our relationship to nature.
Ecosexuality was conceptualized and founded by artist and sex educator Annie Sprinkle and artist and filmmaker Elizabeth Stephens.
In Stephens’ words, ecosexuality or nature fetishism, viewing earth as lover, “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.”
While feminism has held many radical feminist ecology paradigms that have sometimes been similar to this paradigm of sexecology, such as ecofeminism, ecosexuality goes beyond by rejecting traditional gender norms and heteronormativity. It does not view ecosexuality as primarily feminist or feminine, but for all genders and orientations.
Read: 23 Types of Sexuality: Glossary of Terms
The emphasis on sexuality and its connection to nature is also stronger. Moving from the metaphorical to ecosex as a practice, ecosexuals make love to the earth, and view tree hugging, swimming, touching plants, walking barefoot, stargazing and more as erotic and sexual acts.
The Ecosexual Manifesto
Annie Sprinkles and Elizabeth Stephens created a simple and beautiful Ecosexual Manifesto to outline the basics of their ecosexuality paradigm. It includes “We are the Ecosexuals,” “We Make Love With the Earth,” “We Are a Rapidly Growing Global Community,” “We Are Ecosex Activists,” “Ecosexual Is an Identity,” and “The Ecosex Pledge.”
The Ecosexual Manifesto opens with “The Earth is our lover. We are madly, passionately, and fiercely in love…”
The Ecosex Pledge is brief and sums everything us. “I promise to love, honor, and cherish you, Earth, until death brings us closer together forever.”
Other important tenets of the Ecosexual Manifesto are about the sensual and erotic exchange we have with the earth, about preservation and stopping violence against the earth, consuming less and locally and green.
Read: What Are My Kinks? 13 Ways to Find Your Kink
Examples of EcoSexuality in Practice
There are more than 100,000 committed ecosexuals practicing ecosexuality, and likely many more who have not officially “signed up” but who believe and practice.
How IS Ecosexuality Practiced
Ecosexual as Sexual Identity
Many ecosexuals view ecosexuality as an identity. We are natural beings and the earth is our lover. Some view our interactions with the earth or nature as inherently sexual and erotic—looking at trees or stars is erotic, swimming in a stream is erotic, gardening is erotic.
Others literally engage in sex with the earth and are sometimes called nature fetishists. They roll in the dirt or hump against trees, or use the waves of the ocean to stimulate their bodies, let the wind play with their nipples, use plants such as carrots to penetrate their bodies.
Read: Best Places for Kinky Outdoor Sex
Ecosex Weddings
Ecosex weddings are part performance art and part real living commitments to the sun, the moon, to lakes, to the dirt, to trees, gardens, mountains and more.
Ecosexuals hold marriage ceremonies that proclaim their love and commitment to green practices and to a particular natural body. They can be a union between a single human and a lake, tree or mountain, or it can be a couple, throuple, or polycule also being in relationship with the earth.
Read: 4 Benefits of Being in a Polycule
Sexual and Artistic Eco Activism
The Sprinkle and Stephens ecosexuality paradigm includes their backgrounds as artists and activists, and using visual art, performance art, and other kinds of art to spread sex positivity and green activism.
Ecosexuals can raise awareness of environmental issues through music, plays, poetry or more. They can share their love of the earth in creative ways without limits.
Read: Sexual Roleplay: A Guide for Roleplay Beginners
How to Explore Ecosexuality
Have you experienced ecosex already? Most people, especially nature lovers, have probably experimented with ecosex. You may have gone swimming naked or made love in the woods or used vegetables as sex toys. Here are some ways to try ecosex!
6 Ideas for Eco Sex
1. Go Skinny Dipping
Skinny dipping in a lake or ocean is such a sensual and beautiful experience—so liberating to feel the water intimately against our bodies. Try skinny dipping to connect with a gorgeous body of water in a sensual way.
Read: Water Fetish: 10 Ideas for Aquaphilia Fun
2. Hug a Tree
Tree hugging can be friendly or brotherly, but it can also be erotic. Try embracing a tree and really communing with it, listening, feeling its energy and life force. Use your hands to explore the texture of the tree. Let the leaves sweep over your face and hair and body. Kiss the tree. Have an orgasm while embracing the tree.
Read: How Kinky Sex Can Bridge the Orgasm Gap
3. Have Sex in Nature
Making love outside, whether beside the beach at dawn or under the stars takes things to the next level and connects you with the earth in an erotic way.
4. Get Down and Dirty in the Dirt
There are all kinds of wet and messy fetishes. Why not use actual dirt or mud? Enjoy the garden soil in an intimate way, or sand on a beach. Get playful with mud wrestling!
Read: Salirophilia: Seriously Dirty Kinks and Fetishes
5. Use Eco-Friendly Sex Toys
You can use many kinds of vegetables as dildos and people have for millennia. You can also make sure your sex toys are eco-friendly and made with sustainability in mind. Recycle lube bottles and choose ecology products such as glass or bamboo over cheaply made plastics.
Read: Food Fetish: 13 Kinks Involving Food and Eating
6. Raise Awareness of Ecological Issues
You can advocate for your lover or perform for the earth as an artist, activist, friend and lover.
Do you identify as ecosexual? Do you want to explore ecosexuality?
Tell us what you think