"Sex in the City"? Well, that's why they're called departments of parks and recreation.

Professor Sandilands discovers queer activity going on near the central park boat house

I’m an outdoorsy sort of guy, backpacky but nice, avid hunter and fisherman, and all that stuff, yet somehow I wasn’t invited to this conference hosted by The Forest Stewards Guild, and wouldn’t even have known about it if it hadn’t been covered by Campus Reform. I’m a bit sorry that it did.

'Queer Ecologies Panel' calls parks 'gendered,' 'racialized,' 'capitalist'

A recent panel of undistinguished professors and a DEI officer discussed how to apply an LGBTQ-centered approach to ecology to “environmental and conservation work.”

Catriona Sandilands of York University (which is somewhere in Canada, apparently) said that urban parks, such as Central Park, can be “gendered, racialized, and organized [by] heterosexual, capitalist norms. She defined queer ecology, saying that it “disrupt[s] heterosexist and cisnormative understandings of sex and nature” and considers “environmental practices and politics from the perspective of LGBTQ2SLQIA individuals.” (No, I don’t know what anything past “LGB and Transvestites” is intended to “include”, either, but I’m sure someone on CNN or MNBC can enlighten you.)

Sandilands provided an example of queer ecology: the activities encouraged by the design of parks. She contrasted the “open, organized spaces” meant for dog walking, sports, and other activities with what she said were “more enclosed, more private spaces in which sexual and other, quote, ‘illicit’ activity might occur.” 

There’s (much) more at the link, but you probably have the general idea by now. If not, or if you’re lusting after more of the same but from a different perspective, there’s this: UC Boulder 'eco-feminism' program draws dozens of students]

Here’s Sandiland and her fellow scientists and witches: