Lynda Johnston

Queering tourism : paradoxical performances at gay pride parades

List of Figures. Acknowledgements 1. Proud Beginnings 2. Queer(y)ing Tourism Knowledges 3. Bodies: Camped up Performances 4. Street Scenes: Tourism with(out) Borders 5. Sex in the Suburbs or the CBD? 6. Cities as Sexualised Sites of Queer Consumption 7. Paradoxical Endings

Flexing Femininity: Female body-builders refiguring 'the body'

This paper considers the built bodies of female body-builders and their training environments. Empirical findings suggest that place of training provides a material and discursive environment that reworks bodies in the feminine/masculine binary. However, the female body-builder works her body within this binary as well as beyond the acceptable feminine/masculine dualism. Three possible, non-exclusive, readings of female body-builders are offered. I argue that the specific materiality of female muscled (built) bodies provides the ground for contestation of the feminine/masculine binary as well as other binaries such as nature/culture, body/mind and sex/gender, thereby opening up new spaces to reconceptualise sexed bodies in geography. The ontological and socio-political status of female body-builders demands a refiguring of sexual difference.

Mobilizing pride/shame: lesbians, tourism and parades

In this paper I focus on Pride Scotland in order to examine the construction and performance of lesbian tourism geographies. Queer theories are used to argue that tourism spaces of Pride Scotland provide important sites for the examination of the co-construction of pride and shame for lesbian parade participants. Within these sites celebrations of pride are underscored by notions of shame. Pride/shame politics may be productive and are lived through gendered and sexualized bodies. I rely on three sets of qualitative data for this research: (1) individual and focus group interviews with lesbian and queer parade participants; (2) participant observations and autobiography; and (3) media reports. The paper describes a particular Edinburgh group—a womens drumming band—that performs for Pride. These participants actively choose to perform their subjectivities in ways they understand challenge heteronormalcy. Discursive constructions of Edinburgh as a gendered and sexualized city are discussed in relation to Pride Scotland. I argue that Pride in Edinburgh is predicated on notions of sexualized shame. I examine how queer women negotiate hostile and/or indifferent reactions to their bodily performances. In this way I aim to explore the relationships between pride/shame, performativity, gender, sexuality and politics of resistance.

Critical geographies of love as spatial, relational and political

Geographers to date have resisted writing about feelings, affects, places and spaces of love. It is timely to put love on the geographical agenda. We begin by addressing the question ‘what does love do?’, and we review the work of geographers who have been thinking about love via a number of different theoretical lenses. We then argue for a consideration of love as spatial, relational and political. We prompt geographers to think critically about love in its entire multisensory, lived, embodied, felt and contradictory guises. Finally, the work of Ahmed, Sedgwick and Berlant is useful for furthering geographers’ insights on love.

Bodies, gender, place and culture: 21 years on

This article examines research on embodiment published in Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) over the past two decades. We searched using the keywords ‘body’, ‘bodies’, ‘embodiment’, ‘embody’, ‘flesh’, ‘fleshy’, ‘corporeality’ and ‘corporeal’, the titles and abstracts of all the articles that have appeared in GPC since it first began publication in 1994. Articles containing these keywords were listed in a searchable bibliography. What we found was a growing volume of research inspired by ‘body politics’ produced over a 21-year period that compares favourably to cognate geography journals. We also found that various themes have emerged including maternal and geopolitical bodies. In other areas, we identified gaps. Throughout the article, we engage with the question: has the upsurge of interest in embodiment, as expressed in the pages of GPC since 1994, led to an upheaval of masculinist ways of thinking in the discipline? We conclude by expressing our feelings of ambivalence.

(Troubling) spaces of mountains and men: New Zealand's Mount Cook and Hermitage Lodge

In this paper we trace one pervasive expression of hegemonic New Zealand national identity that developed around the sport of mountaineering from the 1880s, culminating in Sir Edmund Hillarys historic first climb of Mount Everest in 1953. The image of the masculine mountaineering hero, developed on and around New Zealands highest peak, Mount Cook, is, however, inherently unstable, and we focus on two sites of potential disruption. First, we examine the experiences of white mountaineering women on Mount Cook. These women both embraced the masculinist identity of hero and destabilized it. Womens mountaineering points to the active and complex construction (rather than simple reproduction) of imperialisms, nationalisms and masculinities. Second, we examine the role played by the Hermitage Lodge situated at the base of Mount Cook. Narratives about mountaineering too often ignore the huts, lodges, the places of staying behind. The roles performed by women (and some men) who never had the opportunity and/or ...

Sexuality and Space

Sexuality and space are mutually constituted – space makes sexuality and sexuality makes space. Sexuality – as with other identity categories like gender and race – is not fixed or static, but shifts and changes depending upon politics, place, and space. Sexuality and space scholarship can be found in social, cultural, feminist, and queer geographical subdisciplines. This scholarship questions the ways in which sexual identities conform to, and/or resist, certain societal norms. Attention to the intersections of sexual identities with other identities – such as gender, race/ethnicity, age, and (dis)ability – highlights current and ongoing debates in studies of sexuality and space.

Sexy beasts and devoted mums: narrating nature through dolphin tourism

This paper focuses upon a growing activity within New Zealands ecotourism market: viewing and swimming with dolphins. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory we examine some of the ways in which New Zealand dolphin tour operators and others represent dolphins in relation to sex and gender. Three sets of data inform this research: (1) promotional materials, such as postcards, brochures, Internet websites, and advertising; (2) participant-observation on dolphin swim tours; and (3) interviews with tour operators. We argue that dolphins are constructed paradoxically as sexually polyamorous and promiscuous—sexy beasts—and as loving and maternal—devoted mums. These seemingly contradictory narratives about dolphins and nature perform different functions. The discourse of dolphins as sexy beasts can be read as an attempt by tour operators to use sex to enhance the quality of a product. Tourists are offered an opportunity to experience ‘wild nature’ as sexualized ‘other’. The discourse of dolphins as devoted mums can be read as an attempt by tour operators to anthropomorphize dolphins and offers tourists an opportunity to experience ‘domestic nature’. Fostering a connection between humans and dolphins helps to highlight the need for environmental protection to ensure the continuation of the species and ‘tourist dollars’.

Queer(ing) Geographies ‘Down Under’: some notes on sexuality and space in Australasia

Abstract Over the past 15 years geographers in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere have been increasingly concerned with issues of sexuality and space and have produced an array of work under the heading ‘queer geographies’. This paper considers the importance of place in the production of queer geographies. Material representing queer geographies is drawn from Web pages, conversations and e-mail exchanges (a questionnaire survey) with key individuals in geography (or related spatial disciplines) departments in New Zealand and Australia. Complex politics of place mean that queer geographies in Australasia are both similar to and different from queer geographies produced elsewhere.

Gender and sexuality I: Genderqueer geographies?

This report considers gender diversity across a range of spaces and places. I note that while the notion of gender has been troubled, there exist opportunities to trouble it further. I highlight the scholarship that has sought to deconstruct genders, and the binary framing of man/woman and male/female roles and relationships. The queering of sexuality has meant that geographers are now tracing the ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer (LGBTIQ) bodies experience and live their gender beyond normative binaries. Research concerned with relational gendered subjectivities within LGBTIQ communities is discussed, and I flag the trend that this research may conflate gendered experiences while privileging sexual subjectivities. Finally, I turn to the recent interest by geographers who – drawing on queer and trans* theories – argue for new and innovative understandings of gender diversity.