Engendering wilderness: body, belonging, and refuge

This study considers how some people with non-heteronormative genders and sexualities experience their bodies and their gender(s) in wilderness and what these stories might reveal about the broader implications of gender difference in U.S. society as well as the distinctiveness of wilderness settings. We use a post-structural feminist framework to understand the subjective experiences of gender; by deconstructing the category of 'woman', for example, we open a space for the telling of alternative wilderness narratives. Insights were gathered from twenty participants through a series of in-depth/semi-structured interviews and feminist-oriented grounded theory analysis. Their stories reveal how and why we can find ecological belonging and refuge in wild places. Ethical implications concerning human-wilderness and human-human relationships are suggested.