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Antropologi Indonesia

Abstract

Feminists and environmental scholars draw connections between gender inequality, heterosexism, and the devastating impact of environmental catastrophes on the livelihoods of women and gender minorities, exacerbating their precarity. This body of scholarship has begun to imagine alternatives to patriarchal gender and heterosexual norms for reconciling the relationship between humans and nature by calling for "queer(ing) ecology." I investigate the possibility of queering ecology by posing three theoretical concerns in opposition to anthropocentric and gendered preconceptions about nature: its idleness, naturality, and rightfulness. Respectively, I will dissect such presumptions by questioning nature as metaphors, investigating "the natural" attribute in nature, and rejecting nature as the most just system through the case and experience of Indigenous Batak Toba women in North Sumatra. This essay serves as an invitation to reimagine queer ecology as a relationship between humans and nature that transcends beyond nature-human dualism, anthropocentric utilitarianism, and nature deification.

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