Creative Director of Loam
“A world with climate and gender justice, to me, looks like a world that has diversity of thought, of expression, diversity of ecosystems, diversity of relationships, and of communities.”
Kate (she/her) is the creative director of Loam. As the publishing branch of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, Loam tells stories at the confluence of environmental, social and personal systems change. Kate talks to us about her approach to climate justice; how matriarchy can cultivate reciprocity and deconstruct binary thinking; and the role of care workers, healers, seed savers, and doulas in climate justice.
The Loam Community
I’m the creative director of Loam. As the publishing branch of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, Loam tells stories at the confluence of environmental, social and personal systems change
Since our inception, our team has been passionate about exploring the relationship between climate and gender justice. Every year, we publish a magazine that hones in on a theme and in 2021, our team was particularly interested in exploring and expanding our understanding of matriarchy through the lens of the Indigenous concept of rematriation. Together with Loam editor, Kailea Loften , we worked with a beautiful community of writers and artists to put together Waking the Ground. As a publication, Waking the Ground was an in-depth exploration of what matriarchy means, and the possibilities it holds for guiding us in this moment. Loam co-conspirator Amirio Freeman also worked on a special listening series that existed in conversation with our 2021 issue.
My vision for this new world is deeply inspired by, and indebted to, the team at Loam. Loam editor, Kailea Loften, who I’ve been lucky to be in creative collaboration with for more than 6 years, is truly such a compass for our communities right now. In terms of how she shows up for the world, she speaks so powerfully to civic engagement, to community care, to parenthood, in ways that are profoundly needed. I’m also thankful to Loam co-conspirator Amirio Freeman whose nuance, kindness, effervescence, and thoughtfulness has created the space for all of these really beautiful conversations to merge with some of the most exciting thinkers in the climate movement right now. And I’m deeply grateful for our designer, Erica Ekrem, whose work is a reminder that “femme” aesthetics are just as valid, legitimate, conversation sparking, and world changing as any other.
Early Experiences with Patriarchy
Meg: How did you get started with feminist environmental activism?
Kate: There are so many stories that I could share in terms of my personal experience with gender and climate change. But lately I have found myself reflecting on a memory from when I was a teenager. When I was 15 or 16, I was interested in architecture. I had taken a class where we got to design and build a cardboard model of our dream home. I loved the experience of not only thinking about how the structure would relate to the space, but also sitting at a table with my X-acto knife and graph paper, and putting together this world—it was so rich and beautiful and inspiring of a process to me. I decided I wanted to take a course one summer at a nearby college to learn more about architecture. During one of our lunches, our instructor invited us to go outside to Union Square Park, which is a really big, beautiful, and popular park in downtown Manhattan, New York, and find a place to ourselves and sketch what it was we saw. It was really an invitation to sit in this place that so many of us passed through, and take the time to notice how the buildings related to the land, and how people related to the buildings. It was definitely an experiment that I was really excited for. But as soon as I sat down to sketch, it just felt like guy after guy after guy came up. “What are you doing? Can I see your sketch? Can I talk to you? Can I sit next to you?” I was reminded again of how hard it is to be a public body. At a certain point, after this one dude literally ducked his head across my shoulder to see what I was sketching, I just snapped my sketchbook shut, like “I’m done,” and went back into the studio room where we had class. As soon as I got there, I saw that the few other women in the class had already returned to the room, too. None of us could sit outside without feeling unsafe. I think the reason I’ve been thinking a lot about that moment recently, even though it happened over 10 years ago, and being an architect is no longer particularly a dream I cherish, is that that experience really did remind me of how important it is to strive to create spaces where people from across and beyond the gender spectrum can feel safe and supported in attuning to and attending to our surroundings.
Climate Crisis as a Crisis of Connection
Meg: What do you see as the relationship between climate justice and gender justice?
Kate: Climate justice means gender justice’ is an understanding that our liberation is intertwined and interdependent. It’s also an understanding that the thinking that has fueled the crisis we are in, which includes profoundly limiting and violent ideas around identity, ownership, and accountability, is the same thinking that has created inequitable and unjust conditions for so many people. When I think of that expression ‘climate justice means gender justice,’ I think a lot about how the climate crisis is truly a crisis of connection. One way that our culture is continuing to disrupt our capacity to connect is through gendering care, even though care is an elemental energy that everyone can access regardless of our gender expression.
So what does it mean when we have not only created a gender hierarchy, but we’ve also then chosen to gender care? It’s that we’ve created a culture where caring is seen as for one type of person and not for others, where caring isn’t rational or logical, or important. Where our capacity to care can have the ability to undermine the validity of what it is we’re sharing.
One thing that I wish people in the climate movement knew in relation to gender is that our experiences can coexist, rather than cancel each other out.
Matriarchy and Multiplicities
There is so much wisdom that women, trans, non-binary, and other gender expansive people bring to the fight for climate justice that we need to truly listen to in this moment of deep reckoning, unraveling, and uncertainty. One is the value of centering power with, versus power over, dynamics. That is a frame that Kailea has spoken to so powerfully in relation to matriarchy, and one that I think we continue to need to orient ourselves to. There are many women, trans, non-binary, and gender expansive people in the fight for climate justice who have an incredible capacity to hold nuance, which is something we really need to listen to right now.
I recognize that matriarchy can fall short for some and I think that is okay and understandable. Something I love that Kailea brought up in the letter to the editor for our 2021 magazine is this understanding that this is a frame that we’re using right now to orient ourselves, and we hold space that it might not feel like the right frame for others for many different reasons. It’s been a few years since we published that magazine, and although my thinking has blossomed, I continue to be inspired by the more nuanced ideas of matriarchy that our contributors brought forward.
One of the reasons that that framework feels so important is there’s an ancestral inheritance to it that is personally resonant. I don’t see matriarchy and patriarchy as existing in duality, I think patriarchy invites binary thinking. I think the matriarchy has the capacity to invite nonbinary thinking, thinking that holds space for nuance, compassion, and multiplicity. I have found that there is immense strength in that frame, and it’s also so important right now in this time when we need to be looking to do whatever we can to support the LandBack Movement. How do we support the matriarchal communities that have been so instrumental to this push to return land to its original stewards? Matriarchy as a concept is exceptionally instructive and inspiring that shift in a way that is rooted in reciprocity and relationship.
Practices of Care and Liminality
Meg: What is your vision for a climate justice future?
Kate: A world with climate and gender justice, to me, looks like a world that has diversity of thought, of expression, diversity of ecosystems, diversity of relationships, and of communities. So much of actualizing that vision for the future lives in looking to people that have held the roles of seed savers, healers, care workers, and those who sustain our society in ways that are nurturing, expansive, and attentive to relationships.
There’s tremendous value in looking to people who are in the practice of connection, whether it’s individuals who have skills surrounding how we connect to the earth, how we connect to the soil, and to the plants that sustain us; or care workers, and doulas. Birth doulas provide support to people during pregnancy and birth, and death doulas provide comfort to patients near the end of their life. There are so many different ways to be a guide between two worlds, and people who are doing that work have so much to offer around how we connect between different times and places. Learning to navigate the liminal moments is going to be so essential right now, in this time where we are living in an era of compounding crises, where every moment feels like a liminal moment where we’re walking between worlds.
So what would it mean to turn to the world walkers, to the people who have ancestral, intersectional experience in navigating those spaces, and using that as a way to deepen our connection to self, to each other, and to Earth? That to me just feels so deeply needed right now. Those are roles that have traditionally been held by women, trans, non-binary, and gender expansive people, and it feels like that is the truest way forward.
Interview conducted by Meg Perret. This interview was produced as part of a project of Our Climate Voices, and led by Project Director Meg Perret.
Queer Climate Futures 