Erin Monahan's Feminist Response to the Outdoor Industry

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How are we going to be accountable to the positions of privilege and power that we have operating our businesses on stolen land and benefiting from racialized capitalism as myself as a white woman? Like, you know, I want to make sure that I'm being accountable to that in the businesses that I create inside of Tara and Cognita Media ORG, inside of Vesta Business School.So, yeah.

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That was the voice of Aaron Monaghan, the co-founder of Terra Incognita Media ORG. Terra Incognita Media was established in 2015 as a feminist response to the outdoor industry. The organization has gone through many changes since its inception, and Aaron is very open about the learning process that she has gone through. At its core, Aaron's work is about exposing and interruptingtoxic masculinity. In addition to her work with Terra Incognita ORG, Aaron is also the founder of Vesta Business School ORG, which helps anti-capitalist entrepreneurs heal their relationship with money. I first came across Terra Incognita media a few years ago when I was doing research on nationalparks and the influence of John Muir PERSON. I had recently interviewed Mark David Spence, the author of Dispossessing the Wilderness WORK_OF_ART, which exposes the deeply racist origins of the national park system, as well as the role played by John Muir in advocating for the forced removal of indigenous people from what would become Yosemite National Park FAC. Aaron's article about John Muir PERSON referred to him as, quote, a toxic, masculine, egocentric, eco-joc, end quote, and encouraged her readers to share posts tagged with hashtag,fuck you, John Muir PERSON. I was hooked. So I hope that you all enjoy this conversation about interrupting toxic masculinity, the importance of expanding the scope of what environmentalism means, and the racist legacy of John Muir PERSON. I'm Matt Podolsky, and you're listening to Earth to Humans WORK_OF_ART. Earth

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Two Humans Earth is human.

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Earth is human? Earth is human. Earth is a human.

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My biggest inspiration was and is always bitch magazine, bitch media, and they are a feminist response to pop culture. And they unfortunately closed in, I think it was last year or 2022. But they were around for over 25 years, and they were a completely independent magazine. And so Tara PERSON is so much inspired by that magazine and I always wanted it wanted it to be a

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completely independent media company. You started it as a feminist response to the outdoor industry. Like what were you seeing in the outdoor industry that you're like, we need this response and it's warranted? You know what I mean? Like was there was there like a particularly egregious thing? Or was it just like a mountain of things accumulated over a long period? It's so funny because like,

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yeah, that was like 10 years ago. So it's wild. I was such a different person back then. So it's like the things that I was concerned about then are definitely not the things that I'm concerned about now. Just because I mean, I am, but in a deeper way maybe, because as a white woman on my own journey of unlearning and learning, I entered into this work very, from a very white feminist perspective. And I hadn't done any real work on interrogating my whiteness, my commitment to the construct of whiteness. And thankfully, due to black feminists and Kenya Bud, who is an anti-racist educator and equity consultant in so-called Portland, Oregon GPE, I was able to really dive deep into interrogating my whiteness. And that really changed the content and the writing on Tara PERSON and my approach to the wholeplatform. But in the beginning, yeah, it was, I was pretty, it was all, you know, experiencing, mansplaining, being undermined for my skills in climbing or just being out, you know, camping or hiking. Yeah, pretty cliche white woman stuff like that. The ratios have always been off.I mean, the climbing gym and the outdoor industry, any outdoor activity is dominated by cis white men. So that was what, that was like a huge catalyst. The magazines that I was reading at the time that I found was like Rock and Ice ORG or climbing magazine or outside magazine. And they're all, all the covers were cis white men until like, I think I did, I like looked at all these covers of Outside Magazine and it was like 2015 before they had a woman on the cover and it was a whitewoman no less. And no real nuanced, complex conversations were being had, again, about race, class, or gender. If you read Alex Arnold's PERSON interviews, it's like he's chasing this filling of a void. Like he has, I mean, he literally admits to like feeling depressed. But he's not connecting that dot to the way that white supremacy and patriarchy strip our, strip us of a true relationship and connection to community, to the land. I think more of us, more white people, we need to dedicate our lives and our efforts and our resources towards talkingabout bigger things and more important things.

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I'm not a climber but I'm a long-distance hiker. I had this long obsession with the Appalachian Trail and finally completed a through hike in 2022. And I mean there's you know, you start exploring the world of like, books and stories written about these long distance hiking adventures. And it's, I mean, it falls squarely in this category of what you're talking about,of just like glorifying this endeavor. And it's like, dude, you just went for a hike. Like, like, that's like you had the privilege to go for a hike, like to take six months off and go for, you know what I mean? And like I all, I mean, that's something that, that I, I guess I think to an extent, like still struggle with, you know, a couple of years after finishing that, that hike. Because a lot of people when I when people ask me about it and andfind out that I did this through hike the Appalachian Trail they're like oh my God that's so amazing like congratulations it's so special and I'm like I feel like I was on vacation for six months like I feel guilt over doing it you know what I mean like because I know how privileged I was to have the opportunity to do that. Obviously, long-distance hiking faces, like, all the same issues with white supremacy that the climbing world does, right? However, like, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of through hiking narratives written by women. And there's, I mean, there's several that have come out recently written by folks of color.So when the boundaries are expanded and it's like people other than cis white men feel comfortable telling their stories from their perspective, then it expands the scope of what those stories are about and they become more complex, right?

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I mean, yeah, I think when I met Jolie Varela of Indigenous Women Hike ORG in, I think it was 2017, and we became friends, and I started learning from her, and she's greatly influenced terror and cognitive media, and I would know nothing about, I she's greatly influenced terror and cognitive media, and I would know nothing about, I mean, so much of what I know about ongoing colonization is from her, and Larissa Nez. Larissa Ness was one of our original contributors to Tara in the early days, too. And Jolie PERSON taught me so much about the ways that mainstream outdoor media and white people glorify these pursuitswithout acknowledging the land they're on, without acknowledging the privilege and the price, the cost inherent in taking a trip or going on a hike or going out to climb, not acknowledging the cost of being on that stolen land. So yeah, I just want to also just give credit and shout out Jolie Varela PERSON of Indigenous Women Hike because without, I mean, she's the one who really put forward and put to the forefront deflating John Muir's PERSON legacy and addressing his racist legacy and bringing that into the mainstream conversationof the outdoor industry. And she doesn't get enough credit for that.

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I first came across Tara Incognita's PERSON website through an article you wrote on that topic, right, about John Muir PERSON.

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It was like the original cis white dude outdoor eco jock. Right. I know. And I mean, totally. Who's like the original cis white dude, outdoor eco jock.

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Right, I know. And I mean, I totally. And I guess the thing that struck me about the way you were writing about it was that you were incorporating humor into it. Right. And like encouraging other people to, you know, like captioned photos and like tag them as fuck John Muir PERSON, you know, which like was so like, because I had been reading about this and like interviewing Mark David Spence PERSON and thinking about it like through an academic lens, right? And then to like read about your perspectiveon it and like see that sort of like immediate like activism side of it was like really refreshing. And and I really appreciated that.

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I think after meeting Jolie PERSON and hearing about her relationship with our homelands, her relationship with the outdoors and when I learned from her the truth about John Muir PERSON and and and just going back into the catalog of memories that I have of of myself included and the people around me all glorifying John Muir PERSON and thinking of him as the father right the father of environmentalism or grandfather of environmentalism and and it just it really angered me it enraged me itbuilt it built this I've always had this like fire in my belly in terms of, like, whenever I've learned about an injustice or whenever, like, a visceral feeling of, like, heat and fire inside, inside my belly, inside my chest when I learn about injustices. And when I was, when I was that age and really just being exposed to and really learning about and really coming to understand the impacts of ongoing colonization and my role in that and how I fit into all of that, I just, and thinking about, so thinking about John Muirand this history of white men who are platformed, who are put on pedestals, who are giving credit where they don't deserve any credit, and where they've actually, in fact, caused more harm than good, but they've, or not, I mean, really, I just want to say, like, no good. There's no good that came from this person's work, because ultimately it's, he was anti-indigenous. His writing was a catalyst for creating these national parks that pushed indigenous people onto reservations and contributed to their ongoing genocide and nothing good came from John Mears' PERSON work.You know, I really like the way that Mark David Spence PERSON zeroed it on the word national because it created it, I never thought of it that way, where it was like thinking of national parks as bolstering nationalism and perpetuating the sense of nationalism and creating this like national identity. And it's disgusting. It's just it really disgusts me to think of that because this national identity is baked in and rooted in the ongoing genocide. Going back to the reason why I said fuck John Muir PERSON is because I had had, I was so, I was so pissed. I was so pissed and I still am pissed about it and so enraged. And I think that rage and is such a powerful and necessary emotion, it's one of my favorite,one of my favorite emotions to feel because it tells me when something is wrong. It tells me, it gives me information and it helps me to create boundaries. It's a protective emotion and it's a productive emotion and not in a capitalist productive emotion, but in a way that you can, it creates energy. It helps you to create energy towards things that are important for you, hopefully. It can drive you to doing things that are generative and life-giving. But yeah, so fuck John Muir PERSON. I felt like I had always been told that my brashness or that my justified rage or anger, like wasn't attractive, wasn't pleasing, wasn't appropriate.Growing up as a woman in the world, you're supposed to be quiet, agreeable, always raise your hand. And so when I was trying to find my writing voice, or just my voice in general in the world, I want to kind of protest the pedestaling of cis white men and the glorifying of cis white men who don't deserve this credit. And I just want to do it in a very loud, outright way. And I don't want, I don't want there to be any confusion. I don't want there to be any side stepping or, like, that's just not my style and it never has been like I said before like I have this like difficult like love hate I guess I don't know like kind of relationship withacademia because I love studying and I love reading texts and I love researching and at the same time I think that academia is a scam it is like like, as I say, like the white ivory tower, and it can be very gatekeeping. And I don't think that you need to have a degree or write in some fancy MLA format to have extremely important ideas that need to be read and amplified. So in a way, it was kind of like a protest of that as well. Like kind of me trying to figure out my voice with terror was like I don't want to have to speakin a strictly academic way to be heard. And if people want to listen and they resonate with this, then those are my people. And anybody else who doesn't like it, they can go fuck themselves. They can go fuck themselves they can go fuck themselves I mean yes there are lots of people who have come across who are like oh my gosh yes like thank you for writing this and and I and are definitely ready to engage. And then also there are people who feel affirmed.Sorry, I'm getting emotional talking about these topics. Oh, my goodness. Like, as a white woman for, like, I definitely want to say, like, a lot of the, again, like, I just have to give so much credit to Joe Lee. but, and also Erica Hart PERSON, who is a racial justice educator. And, and, and, and all of, like, all the black feminists who I've read and who have informed my work, like Audrey Lord and Bell Hooks and Angela Davis, Asada Shakur, and so many countless others, Tony Morrison PERSON, because I wouldn't be able to write about these thingsor have the perspective I do without this chorus of black feminists and indigenous activists and educators and writers and speakers. And it's emotional to talk about because, yeah, the society will make you feel like you're crazy. The society will convince you that you're the crazy one for thinking these things. So it's like, I know that you're make you feel like you're crazy. The society will convince you that you're the crazy one for thinking these things. So it's like, I know thatall of us who are folks who can understand and see and are trying to, or, you know, striving to see all the connections in the world that are all the connections between white supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism and ongoing colonization, in all these different realms, there are people who want to tell us that those connections don't exist, that we're making it up or that it's not that big of a deal or it's not that serious. And that's just what I've been told my whole life,like whether it was like an emotion that I was feeling or just being gaslit, you know, my whole life for these experiences, the feelings and the experiences that I've had. And I just, my, one of my biggest goals in my work is to counter the mass gaslighting.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, fuck John Muir PERSON. So fuck John Muir.

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In conclusion. Fuck Edward Abbey. Fuck Alan Ginsberg PERSON.

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I mean, okay, so I think it's just as important to highlight stories about true environmental heroes as it is to like discredit those who aren't deserving of that title, right? And I mean, that's certainly been a goal in your writing as well. You wrote an awesome article about Bell Hooks ORG and you mentioned Bell Hooks, you know, in your previous response. Like maybe you could talk a little bit about why Bell Hooks ORG is an environmentalist that's like worth celebrating. Yeah, totally. So, yeah, Bell Hooks ORG is an environmentalist that's like worth celebrating? Yeah, totally.

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So, yeah, Bell Hooks ORG, very much well known for her feminist writing, hugely influential Black NORP feminist scholar, writer, activist, and professor. And I was enamored by her work since I first was exposed to it in college in my early 20s. And then when I was doing my work with Tara PERSON and just doing more research in the outdoor industry and things like that, I came across Bell Hooks' like a website with her writing on it and came across this essay connecting Appalachia GPE to the world beyond and like made me you know that was my first exposure and introduction to the fact that Bellhookswasn't just talking about racial justice and and and the intersections of black women and their experiences in the world. But she was also discussing and bringing light to environmental justice and the environmental degradation and injustice that was happening in Kentucky GPE, which is where she grew up. So I was astonished and taken aback at how I hadn't known that and that she wasn't given as much credit for her work in that way. Andshe talks about this. She talks about how as a black woman, she's not uplifted. Her voice isn't as honored or revered when it comes to environmental advocacy as much as what someone like Wendell Berry PERSON. Environmental justice work or environmentalism, it's really important to open up and expand our idea of that because for so long, because of these white men like John Muir PERSON, it's, and because the environmental canon, if you will, has just been full of cis white dudes speaking and centering their voices and their perspectives.We need to, like, shatter our ideas of what environmentalism looks like, because that's what I did, and I think that's what we all have to do. So someone like Dominique Drakeford PERSON, who is a sustainability advocate and has talked about land stewardship and has talked about being a black mother and how black motherhood is so inherently intrinsically interwoven into environmental sustainability. That is something that I've learned from Dominique Dragford. That is a really important concept for folks to learn about and to wrap our heads aroundand to expand, again, like expanding our ideas of what environmentalism looks like and focuses on. I think that environmental heroes are the folks who are at Standing Rock GPE, the water protectors at Standing Rock GPE, those are environmental, environmental, unsung heroes. I think that unsung environmental heroes are the people who are the forest defenders protesting the building of Cop City in Atlanta and Tortugita PERSON who was murdered by the Atlanta Police Department for defending the Wallani Forest FAC. Absolutely an unsung environmentalhero. I think that people like Mariam Caba and Angela Davis PERSON, who are advocates of abolition, are unsung environmental heroes too, because abolition is ultimately going to be freedom for all, freedom for sentient beings and abolishing these oppressive systems that are not serving any of us, that are killing ourselves and killing the earth. I think what I've realized more over time, which is like really important for all of us white people, and it took me way too long to get to this conclusion,because this is what black educators and anti-racist educators have been telling us forever, is just that it's like people. It's a people-powered movement. It's about building relationships, about building community, and taking people off their pedestals and, of course, giving people credit where they deserve credit for sure. But also realizing that, like, we are all leaders.Like, that is something that I really love to stress in my work because sometimes there's not going to be anybody else that's going to say the thing or do the thing and you have to do that. And I think it takes being realistic about the risk because sometimes we think there's a lot of risk involved in these situations, but particularly as white people, oftentimes there isn't really that much, really. There's really not a lot of risk to speaking out against racial injustice or environmental injustice or speaking out against racism or transphobia if you're a cis person.It's like you have to really take stock of the actual true risk.

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I mean, we have this perception of like what a leader is, right? But that doesn't like, as you said, it's like you can lead in some areas of your life and not be a leader in other areas, right?

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Especially in our white families, we can all be leaders. If we, in our neighborhoods, in our friend circles, be the squeakie wheel or like be the one who is going to say the uncomfortable thing because I mean, I mean, as many, as many friendships as I have lost and as many fights and arguments as I've had with my family that have led in, like, resulted in some really emotional things. And, you know, ultimately, like, I'm safe. I'm still safe, I'm still resourced, I'm, I still have a lot of security.So I think that we have to take these risks, these perceived risks. When you're with someone and you're having a difficult conversation, you can work, you can kind of guide each other, facilitate each other through a difficult thing, and maybe they're getting dysregulated. But if you stay regulated, you can help them to come back into regulation. Because conflict isn't bad. Conflict can keep us, can deepen our relationships. I love conflict. It's, it's so important for learning and for deepening our relationships. You know,not abusive conflict at all. Not abusive conflict, but there is such a thing as healthy conflict, and it is very necessary for healing and for justice and for deepening our connections. So I think getting comfortable with conflict is a really important skill. And I also want to just say, too, to clarify that the advice that I'm giving is definitely from, as like a white person and the work that we should do is white people.But I want to always say that people should be mindful and take into consideration their levels of positionality, like their power in situations. And I'm never advising someone be in a discussion if they're unsafe or actively being dehumanized. Like, that's never a space where someone should feel obligated to stay in. There, you know, I mean, there's so many situations

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that occur in our society that fall into this, like, tricky space. You know what I mean? Of, like, do I say something or not? You know, like, I immediately, we start talking about that. I immediately think about, like, when I was on my Appalachian Trail through hike a couple of years ago that I was telling you about. You know, I walked into some convenience store to buy groceries for the next leg of my trip in some tiny little town in Virginia, and there's like a whole display of Confederate NORP flagsright there at the cash register. I didn't say anything. I just walked out. I just turned around and walked out. You know, I'm like, I can't engage with this person, you know? Like, what's the benefit? I'm not going to give them know, I'm like, I can't engage with this person, you know, like, what's the benefit?I'm not going to give them my money, but like, you know, I couldn't, yeah, I couldn't do it in that in that moment. And then I'm not sure there would have been any benefit to it, you know, other than just getting somebody real angry at me. So yeah, it's difficult, right? It's, I think it's very challenging to like, to navigate that. But it, you know, it's important to think about for sure. If we take a step back for a moment, you start this organization, Terra Incognita Media, you know, about 10 years ago.We've talked a lot about, like, the sort of learning journey that you've been on since then and how things have changed. But like, how does that change look from your perspective? change look from your perspective.

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So this is a quote by Malcolm X. So Malcolm X PERSON said, you don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress. No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards meas far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to every one of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me. So, yeah, again, the part, you don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress. So I think this quote has always stuck with me because I just don't think that there's this like linear a to be trajectory of progress not that you were implying that but that's just not whatit is that's not what it's been historically and that's not what it is going to be going forward especially I mean we can see so many examples of what's happening right now in the world and and in the outdoor industry where there isn't, quote unquote, progress. And, I mean, I hear from Jolie Varela PERSON firsthand all the time about how, like, white-led environmental organizations extract from her and exploit and tokenize her. And that's been her experience in a lot of the outdoor industry. And I know that that's true for so many people.And I mean, personally, in my experiences, in the climbing industry, in the climbing world, I've been working towards advocating for labor rights and trying to do these toxic masculinity workshops at climbing gyms and was trying to do that here in so-called St. Louis GPE. And I recently got banned from the climbing gym because both of them. I've been banned from both of the gyms.

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There's two, yeah, there's two climbing gym chains here.

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And, like, I've had so many conversations with them since I, because I used to live in so-called Portland, and then I moved back here where I was raised and grew up in so-called St. Louis GPE, a suburb of St. Louis GPE. And I moved back here at the end of 2019. And then up until last fall, 2023, when I was officially banned from this one gym, I was having so many conversationswith the manager who supposedly, I mean, we had a good rapport. I would do astrology readings for him. I would do a tarot card pull every once a while. Like, and I would talk to him a lot about the, the, how cis white male dominated these spaces are and how here's some things that we could do to change that. Or like, here, like, how could we make this space safer for marginalized people, for, for queer people, for trans people.I mean, these spaces are just so unsafe for people with marginalized identities. And, and yeah, and so just after all these conversations nothing has changed nothing has gone anywhere there's been no substantial changes at all and the staff and the the clients the clientele or like the members are all still for the majority cis white dudes and And I know that that's not true across the country, but I do know that toxic masculinity is still,like these gyms and the outdoor industry is still a cesspool of toxic masculinity. I know that that is still true. And I think that what we're seeing in our society at large takes, you know, definitely impacts what's happening on this more niche level of like the outdoor industry, right? And I think that we are becoming more entrenched in a lot of ways in, in a white supremacist belief systems and institutions, more entrenched in white supremacy and patriarchy and imperialism. And that is radicalizing people and it's a necessary thing.I think that we do need to be more radicalized. You can find us at Terra Incognitimedia.com and then also on Instagram at Terra Incognita Media ORG. And then we have a pretty inactive TikTok PRODUCT at the same name. And then we have a free toxic masculinity in the outdoor industry cheat sheet. It's a downloadable PDF. So if you go to our website and sign up for our website, sign up for our newsletter, you get the free cheat sheet. And we also have the recording of our signature toxic masculinity in the outdoor industry workshopon our website, same name, like to keep things simple. And then, yeah, at the end of May, what I'm really excited about is that we have this big event coming up, May 22nd to June 21st. We have an event called Five Weeks of Feminist Killjoy Propaganda, where we are inviting quote-unquote non-traditional educators and speakers and activists and storytellers and general shit disturbers to come andput on workshops. So I'm really excited for that and we'd love to have anybody who's interested join. That was our conversation with Aaron Monaghan, co-founder of Terra Incognita Media ORG.

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If you'd like to learn more about Aaron's work, we'll have links to a variety of resources on our show notes page for this episode, which you can find at earth to humanspod.com. Also, Terra Incognita Media ORG has been kind enough to offer listeners of Earth to Humans WORK_OF_ART a discount on registration for their virtual summit that Aaron mentioned, which is taking place from May 22nd to June 21st and is entitled Five Weeks of Feminist Killjoy Propaganda.Earth to Humans listeners can get 15% off the registration cost with promo code ETH15. We'll share that link and information on our show notes page as well at earth to humanspod.com. We'll be back in two weeks with more from Earth to Humans WORK_OF_ART. Here's producer Hannah Mulvaney PERSON sharing a bit about our guest for this next episode.

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He is a Nepalese guy who went to COP ORG and represented Nepal at COP. He is an indigenous, young person living with a disability, so he has lots of intersections as an environmentalist and he is just a really impressive activist and he's just doing so much and he cares so deeply about his community and I read an interview with him and I just really wanted to talk to him. So he's my next guest so I'm really looking forward to sharing the episode and yeah it just really really opened my eyes to how glaringly absent people with disabilities are fromany climate discussions and climate considerations. And, yeah, I just really wanted to speak about that and to, yeah, get that story kind of out there as much as possible.

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Earth to Humans is produced by Serena Simons, Hannah Mulvaney, and me, your host for this episode, Matt Podolsky PERSON. Music in this episode comes from blue dot sessions. Visit our website to see a full list of credits. Earthto Humanspod.com.