The Topp Twins: Untouchable girls: The movie

The recently released documentary The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls: The Movie (2009) has quickly become an important cultural text in Aotearoa New Zealand. It opened on April 9, 2009 and immediately broke records for best opening day and weekend in New Zealand’s movie history. For readers to get some sense of this documentary, it is worth watching the trailer (http://topptwins.com/tv-and-film/untouchable-girls) which provides a tantalising peak into the life story, so far, of the Topp Twins – much loved New Zealand entertainers. But the documentary does more than chart life stories, it highlights major social and political movements that helped shape national discourses of what it feels like to be a ‘Kiwi’ (the term ‘Kiwi’ is used by people – of all ethnicities and social classes - who feel they have a New Zealand national identity). I have chosen this documentary for this scholar’s choice essay because it links with a number of discourses that inspire my work on how emotions such as ‘pride’ shape people and place. Untouchable Girls illustrates the fluidity and partiality of subjectivities (both individually and collectively) and the ways in which subjectivities can be challenged and contested without humiliation

Borderline bodies

This chapter is about borders that are made and broken at gay pride parades. Specifically, I examine the discursive and material borders maintained in tourism discourse. Binary oppositions such as self/other, straight/gay, and tourist/host provide a focus for this chapter. I am interested in where these borders wear thin and threaten to break and disrupt social order. I explore the bodies of gay pride parades because it is bodies such as these that threaten the borders of corporeal acceptability

Body Tourism in Queered Streets: Geographies of gay pride parades

This thesis begins with an examination of the construction of knowledge within tourism studies. I argue that tourism studies, like most social sciences, has been built on a mind/body dualism. The mind has been privileged and linked to rationality, heterosexuality and masculinity, while the body has been Othered and associated with irrationality, homosexuality and femininity. I critique tourism studies' literature, specifically hallmark tourism, postmodern tourism, ethnic tourism, sex tourism and gender and tourism, to argue that the body has been denied, desired and Othered by tourism studies' academics. Tourism studies, as academic discourse, tends to produce hegemonic, disembodied and masculinist knowledges. Against this theoretical backdrop, I examine an explicitly gendered/sexed and sexualised tourist event. I conduct a study of gay pride parades: Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand's HERO Parade and the Sydney, Australia Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. I use qualitative methods of data collection, specifically, participant observations, in-depth and semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, questionnaires and newspapers, photographs, video recordings, television and radio discourses. There are three points to my discussion. I argue first, that the place of the parade becomes a contested site. Debates over the parade site derive from constructions of 'queer' bodies as deviant, dangerous and abject. Hence, 'gay' bodies become inappropriate bodies to inhabit (public) central business districts. Parade sites in 'gay' (read private) neighbourhoods, however, are perceived as less 'threatening' by city council officials. Second, I argue that rigid borders are maintained at the parade site between the queer bodies on parade (the 'hosts') and the watching, 'heterosexual' tourists. These tourists Other the queer bodies on parade. Heterosexual tourists occupy a dominant, unmarked position which is maintained through discourses of liberalism. Parading bodies which are less visibly 'gay', however, disrupt this unmarked position and trouble the binary between Self /Other, tourist/host, and straight/ gay, and hence explicitly embody tourists. Third, I disrupt binary notions of masculine I feminine bodies in gay pride parades by focusing on the ways marching boys' bodies can be read as 'fluid': both hyper-masculine and feminine. This study offers an example of new possibilities for tourism studies. Explicit inclusion of gendered/ sexed and sexualised bodies in tourism research problematises the mind/body dualism, thereby subverting the masculinism of tourism discourse

Wondering about ... the intimate geographies of Married at First Sight New Zealand #MAFSNZ

Why should I, or any geographers, be wondering about Married at First Sight New Zealand (MAFSNZ, TV3 2019), the franchised reality television show where strangers meet each other at the alter? Pitched, as a ‘ground-breaking social experiment’ there is a lot we can learn from this show about people and places. The success of the show - with ratings of over one million viewers in Australia (Dawson 2019) and up to 170,000 in Aotearoa New Zealand (Grieves 2019) – rests on the adventures of couples as they ‘hothouse’ the highs and lows of marital life. The latest season aired 17 episodes over six weeks as ‘10 singles put it all on the line and embark on a new journey to find love’ (TV3 2019)

Intersectional feminist and queer geographies: a view from 'down-under'

Despite rapid growth of geographies of genders and sexualities over the past decade, there is still a great deal of homophobia, transphobia, and heterosexism within academic knowledges. A queer and feminist intersectional approach is one way to highlight gendered absences, institutionalized homophobia and transphobia. To understand the diversity of genders and sexualities, feminist and queer geographers must continue to talk about, for example, genders (beyond binaries), sex, sexualities, bodies, ethnicities, indigeneity, race, power, spaces and places. It is vitally important to understand the way that genders and sexualities intermingle incommunity group spaces, rural spaces, and within indigenous spaces in order to push the boundaries of what feminist and queer geographers understand to be relevant sites of queer intersectionality. Reflecting on the production of queer and feminist geographical knowledges ‘down-under’ may prompt others to consider the way place matters to intersectional feminist and queer geographies

Fruit Processing, Seed Viability And Dormancy Mechanisms Of Persoonia Sericea A. Cunn. ex R. Br. and P. Virgata R.Br. (Proteaceae)

The morphology of the fruit and difficulties with fruit processing impose major limitations to germination of Persoonia sericea and P. virgata. The mesocarp must be removed without harming the embryo. Fermentation of fruit or manual removal of the mesocarp was effective but digestion in 32% hydrochloric acid (HCl) completely inhibited germination. The endocarp is extremely hard and therefore very difficult and time consuming to remove without damaging the seeds. The most efficient method was cracking the endocarp with pliers, followed by manual removal of seeds. Germination was completely inhibited unless at least half of the endocarp was removed. Microbial contamination of the fruit and seeds was controlled by disinfestation and germination of the seed under aseptic conditions. The results suggest that dormancy in these species is primarily due to physical restriction of the embryo by the hard endocarp

Recollecting and reflecting on feminist geography in Aotearoa/New Zealand and beyond

Over the past three decades feminist geography and the concept of gender have been deployed unevenly by geographers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. A politics of knowledge production means that feminist geography occupies both the centre and the margins of academic knowledge. In order to highlight the diversity of feminist geographical knowledges we pay attention to local, regional, national and international contexts. First, we begin by positioning ourselves as working in the geography programme at the University of Waikato. Second, we review the directions taken at other universities in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Third, we examine a number of key international organisations that have been important in supporting geographers and others who share a focus on space and gender. In the fourth and final section we suggest strategies for strengthening feminist geography in the future

A Geografia Mais Íntima: O Corpo

El cuerpo como lugar, se centra en la geografía del cuerpo como un lugar colonizado, moldeado por el poder pero, que a su vez, ofrece resistencia. Es un espacio socialmente construido donde se toma al cuer-po como lugar, como primer territorio a ser defendido, sobre todo en el contexto brasileño, según Joseli Maria Silva, Marcio Jose Ornat y Alides Baptista Chimin Junior, en el cual se analizan las Expedições sobre corpos na geografia brasileira: trilhas equivocadas e rumos encontrados. También, seguido por el entramado de relaciones de poder que operan en diferentes escalas, ello es planteado por los autores Lynda Johnston y Robyn Longhurst, en su texto A Geografia mais íntima: o corpo. El cuerpo como lugar, focuses on the geography of the body as a colonised place, shaped by power, but which in turn offers resistance. It is a socially constructed space where the body is taken as a place, as the first territory to be defended, especially in the Brazilian context, according to Joseli Maria Silva, Marcio Jose Ornat and Alides Baptista Chimin Junior, in which the Expeditions on bodies in Brazilian geography are analysed: mistaken trails and directions found. Also, followed by the entanglement of power relations that operate at different scales, this is put forward by the authors Lynda Johnston and Robyn Longhurst, in their text The most intimate geography: the body - Translated with DeepL