ABSTRACT
Bodies matter. Bodies shape how we experience the world, as do the ways bodies are privileged in different cultures and societies just by virtue of certain features of those bodies. One’s race, ableness, gender, sex, and sexuality all shape the ways in which one’s body develops and grows. We focus this chapter on gender, sex, and sexuality, not to the exclusion of other aspects of embodiment, but as one focusing lens through which to understand embodied relations to the rest of the natural world. Historically, systems that privilege maleness, whiteness, able-bodiedness,
and heteronormativity have been dubbed “patriarchal.” We start this chapter with a brief explanation of patriarchy. We then look at some of the feminist, ecofeminist, and queer critiques of the ways in which bodies have challenged patriarchal assumptions. Then, we move on to some ways that ideas of binary gender and heteronormativy have been challenged in religious traditions. Finally, we move on to some ways in which biology, evolution, and animal studies challenge the idea of “natural” genders and sexualities. The goal is to show that both religious traditions and the more-than-human natural world reveal a spectrum of experiences of sex, gender, and sexuality. Such an understanding helps us to critique the divide between humans and the rest of the natural world.
