Nature Welcomes Queer People When Society Doesn鈥榯

For the city鈥檚 LGBTQ community, Toronto鈥檚 outdoor spaces have been sites of both liberation and violence.

Tucked in a hidden corner on Toronto鈥檚 south shore lies Cherry Beach. It鈥檚 known for its seclusion. To lay on its hot sands or test its warm waters, you have to escape down a long, bottlenecked street. Travelling there is a clarifying experience. At the outset, you鈥檙e trapped in the concrete labyrinth of the city, where construction sounds fill your ears and carbon fills your nose, becoming a part of you. Then the skyscrapers melt away and the horizon becomes visible. With a jolt, you find yourself truly outside.

Last summer, I wound my way to Cherry Beach not to tan, but to dance. The queer event organization was throwing a sunset rave on a Sunday afternoon. Speakers and a bar were erected on the beach, wires strewn everywhere. My community, the people I had grown accustomed to encountering in dark clubs downtown, looked different in the sun鈥檚 orange glow. The sweet smell of fresh water wafted through the air as the soft rush of waves mingled with the DJ鈥檚 prickly house beats. It felt as if the music had always been there, like the people and the water and the sand and the wires were equally natural.

Yohomo co-founder Philip Villeneuve makes a point of organizing daytime outdoor events. He wants to get his community out of the city limits and outside and help them access the liberation he experienced growing up by a national park along Georgian Bay. 鈥淒on鈥檛 come here and do your city things,鈥� Villeneuve says. 鈥淲rap yourself up in the forest and the grass and the beach.鈥�

Clubs and bars are fun, but dancing under an infinite summer sky expands you. Queer people often have to carve out our own spaces to enjoy a temporary version of the freedom we鈥檙e robbed of in our daily lives. Out there, on the beach, the Earth has carved space for us. As Villeneuve puts it, 鈥淣ature鈥檚 not judging us.鈥�

For a long time, queer people gathered outdoors out of necessity. Leaves and bushes and trees provided a shelter where queer people could come together and actualize their sexual desires, away from leering eyes and prejudices. There, in the green, were spaces just as vital as bars鈥攂uilt not from concrete but from the Earth. Cruising was born from persecution but became a powerful statement: If society wouldn鈥檛 have us, then nature would, because what we want and how we feel is as much a gift from her as the bushes.聽聽聽聽聽聽

But the same seclusion that makes outdoor spaces ideal for cruising can also offer cover for homophobic and transphobic violence. And that鈥檚 not the only threat to queer green space: Rising waters are swallowing another quintessential Toronto spot,听, while gentrification is driving us out of what鈥檚 left. Many of us have grown increasingly divorced from the wild world, perhaps聽having absorbed the untruth that we鈥檙e not 鈥渘atural鈥� despite the abundant evidence鈥攍ike聽,听,听,听and聽鈥攖o the contrary.聽

If queer people understood our strangeness as an intrinsic quality of nature and not a quirk in the order of things, then we might have a more complete understanding of our place in it鈥攁nd, hopefully, a more rigorous desire to defend it.

Historic Police Violence at Cherry Beach Said to Be Toronto鈥檚鈥淲orst-Kept Secret鈥�

鈥淲hen it comes to the queer community, there are very intense histories of collective trauma and violence,鈥� Loren March says. March is a postdoctoral fellow at the faculty of environmental and urban change at York University, whose holistic definition for 鈥渜ueer鈥� encompasses not just people who identify within the LGBTQ2SIA+ acronym, but anybody from a marginalized group.

鈥淭heir connection to natural spaces offers calm and a sense of well-being, which is really important when you鈥檙e wrestling with those kinds of realities.鈥�

March is studying the queer community鈥檚 relationship to urban outdoor spaces in Toronto, including Cherry Beach. It鈥檚 been an important place for decades; hidden away from the city, it鈥檚 the perfect place to express yourself in secret. But the bushes could not protect us. Known cruising spots have long been targeted by cops, and Cherry Beach was no exception.

According to the queer news publication Xtra, in the 1980s and 鈥�90s, it was 鈥溾€� that horrific police violence often took place there鈥攗nlawful, vicious beatings carried out on people framed as criminals. Pukka Orchestra had a local radio hit in 1984 with the song 鈥溾€� which put to music what many already knew: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why I鈥檓 riding on the Cherry Beach Express / My ribs are broken and my face is in a mess / And a name on my statement鈥檚 under duress.鈥�

Toronto police were said to drive people to the beach to deliver vigilante justice. Xtra quoted a聽聽in which women named Peanut and Arlene said police queer women there. People without homes also reported being regular victims. In 2000,听聽died weeks after claiming cops had beat him at Cherry Beach.聽聽accused nine police officers of beating him with boots and fists there in 1996: The case was resolved out of court, with the Toronto Police Service not conceding responsibility but reportedly agreeing to pay Kerr聽聽before one of the accused cops could take the stand.聽聽

Even those who weren鈥檛 assaulted were often harmed. Men charged with public indecency often saw their reputations demolished and their lives ruined. It was understood that Cherry Beach held great risk, and going there meant you might leave with your life irrevocably changed for the worse. And still they went, because it was in their nature to seek satisfaction and community.

I鈥檝e made a pitfall here common to the narrative about queer people and the outdoors鈥攆raming these spaces as most precious to cis gay men who use them to cruise for sex. But Toronto鈥檚 queer parks and beaches are also vital to the rest of the community. And while our old adversaries, the bigots and cops, may , other thorny obstacles lie before us.

March has identified another major threat to queer people鈥檚 ability to access natural space: gentrification.

When COVID-19 restrictions meant gatherings could only be held outside, precious outdoor spaces with special significance for queer folks became overrun. The sudden increase in traffic made them less safe for queer people, and that safety quotient hasn鈥檛 recovered since, March鈥檚 ongoing research shows.聽

Trinity Bellwoods Park, a longtime cruising site, famously attracted thousands during quarantine. The park was notably used as a major encampment by unhoused people鈥攁n encampment viciously cleared by police in July 2021. Toronto聽聽to uproot people without homes that summer, and the message was clear: These parks aren鈥檛 for undesirables. All of this has left queer folks, who are also losing聽聽at an alarming rate, with even fewer places to go outside.聽

Binary Thought Hurts Nature: For Example, Bugs

The moment calls for queer people to take a more active approach to their relationship with nature. One avenue could be a field of study called聽, which considers the natural world through the prism of queerness and centers our special relationships with the outdoors. Emerging over the past half-century, it aims to abolish binary thought from our perspectives on nature.聽聽聽聽聽

Human beings are cultured to cast judgment about what is truly 鈥渘ormal鈥� or 鈥渘atural鈥� and what鈥檚 not. We want to put things in boxes and binaries; we want to understand by reducing living things to patterns and statistics. But time and again, nature urges us to use our minds expansively, to vibe with the Earth鈥檚 complex rhythm instead of trying to endlessly simplify it.

Think of our cultural stance on bugs; many imagine them as less than living, as pests to be killed without guilt, overlooking whole ecosystems that hinge on the prosperity of insects. Binary thought is a disease heterosexual thinking has wrought on us, and the climate is faltering as a result. The modern way of understanding our living planet has failed us. It鈥檚 time for something queerer.

That鈥檚 what So Sinopoulos-Lloyd was aiming at when they co-founded聽, a group in Washington state that teaches survival skills and how to study animal behavior in order to reframe the way queer folks imagine the natural world. 鈥淐uriosity and practicing awareness is something healing that we can give to other animals and to landscapes,鈥� Sinopoulos-Lloyd says. 鈥淏ut we might also be listened to and heard by other beings. We might get something back.鈥�

Sinopoulos-Lloyd became fascinated with the idea of queer ecology while working on a Vermont sheep farm. In Western culture, we often think of sheep as brainless, following the flock, lacking individual personality. That idea shifted for Sinopoulos-Lloyd when they met Sydney, a black sheep in more ways than one.

Most of the sheep avoided Sinopoulos-Lloyd, preferring to cavort with their flock. They seemed to ostracize Sydney, like there was something about her they couldn鈥檛 understand. 鈥淪ydney was weird鈥�: Like a dog, Sydney would approach Sinopoulos-Lloyd in search of affection.聽

One day, as Sinopoulos-Lloyd sat cross-legged in the green field, Sydney came up to them, circled around a few times, and plopped down in their lap. 鈥淚 was totally pinned down by this black-haired Icelandic ewe with these little horns,鈥� they say. 鈥淪he was curious about me in a way that she wasn鈥檛 able to express; that wasn鈥檛 super typical.鈥�

Sinopoulos-Lloyd developed a fondness for Sydney, seeing a lot of themself in the strange ewe. And they began to understand that the way they felt, that out-of-place feeling that comes along with being queer, was part of nature鈥檚 code.

This story originally appeared in , and is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license.