Acknowledging the Intersection of Human-Driven Climate Change and Trans Violence – River Terrell: LiberationWeavers Collective, LLC.

I initially published this article on November 17, 2022. While I will likely come back to and expand on these concepts in future writings, I felt it’s important to present the original work below.

Introduction

Two key issues facing our modern world that are especially important to me are climate change and gender violence. In the past few years, the realities of worsening climate change have become more centralized in the media, showing the wide breadth of its consequences. From sporadic weather patterns and natural disasters to decreased access to food, water, housing, and healthcare, climate change is an issue which affects everyone. We’ve seen this more recently, when climate change has been discussed with an intersectional approach in mind, acknowledging the disparate impacts on communities of color, women and children, the disabled, those of lower socioeconomic status, etc. But there has been little discussion of how climate advocacy and environmental justice is linked with trans justice and gender equity.

Though climate change is now a household conversation, issues of trans violence have come very slowly to the attention of the public. More and more trans individuals are being murdered. Policies which allow them protections are outright discarded. Access to gender-affirming healthcare is threatened. Trans individuals are incarcerated in prisons that do not match their chosen gender identity, and laws continue to be solidified which prevent them from being legally recognized by their chosen name and gender identity.

To move forward in advocacy and advance both gender and environmental justice, there must first be an acknowledgement that they are not separate issues. Instead, they are deeply woven together and there cannot be justice in one area without the other. Incorporating this reality into our thinking, research, and advocacy will prove more effective, affirming, and healing.

Background

Colonization

Western society is built on control. It is set on absolutes: moral, economic, political, social. By making these absolute judgements, it divides– leaders from followers, saints from sinners, and right from wrong, endowing these divisions with “moral” or “scientific” judgements. These arguments of “divine-right” or “intellectual superiority” to create and enforce false binaries have been used in Western society for hundreds of years, a justification for colonization, slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Creating binaries allows Western culture to classify and categorize, making divisions rather than acknowledging the inherent complexity and fluidity of our world. These divisions are then used to consolidate power and control among those who hold privilege. And, by doing so, it solidifies a cycle that gives more and more privilege to those who have privilege. The privileged gain power and in power gain privilege – on and on until the gap between powerful and powerless is insurmountable, and the possibility of removing structural power is more difficult than ever.

When Western society began its efforts of colonization and imperialism centuries ago, they brought with them a desire for control–of the land, resources, and people they encountered. They had known control in their own nations, which they only settled through colonization efforts centuries or millennia previously. Slavery, misogyny, and inequality were constant, and colonizers brought those same ideas of wealthy, educated, white, patriarchal superiority to the areas on which they landed, leaving no room for something which countered white power structures.

When colonizers encountered indigenous ways of knowing and being, these alternatives were met with disgust and dismissed. Indigenous wisdom regarding land use that prioritized reciprocity and relationship with land and with non-human populations were disregarded. Indigenous understanding of gender identities and roles outside of the western gender binary were rejected. In their place, white colonizers installed “absolute” binaries with assigned morality, power structures, patriarchy, control, and abuses of power.

Consequences

Western society began its process of “othering,” classifying their “New World” and all its wonders as either “us” or “them.” Anything different, anything that would challenge white power was refused, labeled as inferior and unworthy of “civilized” society. This kind of othering acts as a vicious cycle that perpetuates harm in modern society – for human and non-human populations, worsening social divides and the consequences of climate damage as well.

This othering harmed innumerable individuals and populations – non-white populations, women and anyone who identified as other than cisgender-heteronormative, those who did not recognize the authority of Western royalty and religion, anyone who didn’t already fit the power structures of colonizing countries. The separation of populations into groups established a false hierarchy, preventing collaboration and cooperation and encouraging discord and competition in their place.

Indigenous societies throughout history and geography have held expansive ideas of gender identity and sexuality. Numerous accounts of Indigenous culture worldwide show that two-spirit or third gender individuals were embraced and celebrated, often holding a special role in the society. Western society, threatened by the idea of newness and “other-ness,” rejects homosexuality, queerness, and genderfluidity. Even now, in 2022, our social and political systems are entrenched in the binary. If we cannot be classified, how can we be controlled? By separating us from our identities and denying even basic recognition of our experiences, we are again placed into a hierarchy. Energy must be expended to discover and put names to our lived experiences and find empathy from our communities. And by keeping us focused on chasing these basic necessities, white power structures are strengthened. No one can fight the larger systems when they must fight for basic human rights.

And often, by creating further divisions in society, those in power pit one marginalized group against the other, convincing us that nothing can be accomplished in cooperation. This has been seen throughout civil rights movements in this country, where issues of abortion or queer rights are left out of the conversation in order to attain smaller steps forward.

Othering separates people from other people, and it also separates people from the land. In Indigenous culture there is a consistent idea of relationship with the land, expressed throughout myths, religious tales, ceremonies, and even in their languages. Humans are a part of a complex natural and spiritual system. Non-human populations are just as important, and harmony between human and non-human peoples is prioritized. From use of resources to gardening and what plants can be used as medicine, Indigenous culture insists on interdependence, reciprocity, and relationship. Humans are not seen as separate from nature.

When Western thought took power, though, this idea was promptly rejected and, in its place, anthropocentrism took hold, the idea that humans are removed from and superior to the rest of nature. We consider ourselves above plants and other animals. We create our dwellings and societies apart from nature, landscaping our habitats to fit our needs rather than living in mindfulness of them. We consider what is natural as inferior. We invent new ways to ignore the presence of nature, developing pesticides, insect repellent, distancing ourselves from food production, pretending that our “clean” world of sterility free from germs is somehow more natural than engaging in relationship with the natural world. This relationship we have in Western society with the natural world, or lack thereof, divides us further, and leads to the atrocities of extractive capitalism. If the natural world is only a giant warehouse from which to take what we need, rather than a living entity we ought to respect and care for, we can extract all that we need, leaving deforestation, habitat damage, and species destruction in our wake.

Moving Forward

Left as is, our society is headed for breaking points in more areas than can be counted. Fossil fuel use will continue, carbon emissions will increase, landfills will overflow, seas will rise, food production will become even more unsustainable, more and more people will be displaced, and widespread mental and physical illness will continue. With this geographic turmoil will come exacerbated violence against minority populations: refugees, women, children, disabled, aging, queer, trans, anyone who doesn’t fit the typical power model of white society. The group that holds power now in white society will continue to distance themselves from the rest of the global population, gaining more wealth than the rest of the world combined and failing to address the issues to which they believe themselves immune.

Inaction is action. Choosing to do nothing in light of the current global situation is either a decision of denial or stupidity, failing to accept the urgency of the current moment. Even if in a position of privilege, these issues affect you. And the longer we wait, the worse it will get. We must incorporate intersectionality into our lives and our advocacy. We must advance DEI as more than just an acronym or a useful department in our institutions. We must encourage genuine diversity, equity, inclusion – and not only those but also belonging, access, and justice.

This requires centering voices and values other than those of white society. It requires taking responsibility and accountability for the failures we have already made, individually and socially. It means fighting against the systems that perpetuate divides in our society. Luckily, the paradigms we need to heal in our world and return to cooperative living with each other and with the planet already exist. We don’t have to invent healthy ways of being. Instead, by returning to indigenous ways of thinking and ways of being, we can heal our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the natural world.

Though there are countless action items moving forward, I think first and foremost, we must acknowledge and act on the interplay between these issues. We must accept that the binaries which dominate our thinking are false, products of a patriarchal, capitalistic society. Moving forward requires empathy and relationship. Without these there can be no justice. Justice includes us all. There is no climate justice without trans justice, and there is no trans justice without climate justice.