Aspects of reproduction of the brown mussel Perna perna at the Iture rocky beach near Cape Coast,Ghana

Aspects of the reproductive biology of the brown mussel Perna perna at the Iture rocky beach near Cape Coast, Ghana, were studied from September 2014 to August 2015. The current study was aimed at providing information useful for managing the mussel fishery in this locality and also that would form the basis for designing appropriate culture methods for the species. Microscopic examination of fresh smears of gonadal material, as well as histological preparations of the gonad, were used to study the sexuality and breeding pattern of the species. Monthly gonadal and condition indices were also determined. Perna perna exhibited gonochoristic sexuality with a sex ratio of approximately 1:1 throughout the study period. Sexes were identifiable at shell lengths of 15.0–19.9 mm. Five stages of gonadal development were identified in both sexes. Gametogenic activity was continuous throughout the year, with two major spawning activities, from April to June and from August to December. These periods coincided with the major and minor rainy seasons, respectively, as well as the major upwelling period in August. Condition indices suggest that the mussels were in better condition for harvesting in March and August prior to the major spawning events.     

Relational Agriculture: Gender,Sexuality, and Sustainability in U.S. Farming

Although 97% of U.S. farms are “family-owned,” little research examines how gender and sexual relationships – inherent in familial dynamics – influence farmers’ practices and livelihoods. Gender and sexual dynamics – shaped by race and class – affect who is considered a farmer, land management decisions, and access to resources like land, subsidies, and knowledge. We use feminist and queer lenses to illuminate how today’s agricultural gender and sexual relations are not “natural,” but when left uninterrogated are constructed in ways that harm women and queer farmers while limiting potential to develop sustainable practices. Women and queer farmers also resist, “re-orienting” gender and sexual relations in ways that expand possibilities for achieving food justice and ecological sustainability. We offer “relational agriculture” as a tool for making visible and re-orienting gender and sexual relations on farms. Relational agriculture brings sexuality into food justice and demonstrates the centrality of gender and sexuality to agricultural sustainability.     

Undressing the researcher: feminism, embodiment and sexuality at a queer bathhouse event

In this paper we examine how the researcher's body can be used as a tool for data collection in the process of ethnographic fieldwork. We focus in particular on the tensions inherent in undertaking embodied ethnographic research in the sexualized setting of a queer women's bathhouse event in Toronto, Canada. Our discussion addresses three moments within the research process: preparing our bodies to attend the bathhouse; positioning our bodies within the spaces of the bathhouse; and interacting with our bodies during the event. Through this discussion we argue that the body of the researcher is a contested site of knowledge production.     

Maintaining family values? Cleansing the streets of sex advertising

The Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 makes it an offence to place an advertisement for sex work in public telephone boxes. In this paper, I discuss the background to this Act, exploring the reasons why the presence of sex advertising in a public space has provoked a classic piece of 'moral panic' legislation. Highlighting the role of this new legislation in policing the boundaries between public and private space, the paper thus engages with key debates in social and cultural geography concerning the maintenance of socio–spatial order.     

Contesting Domestic Ideals: queering the Australian home

The Australian home is a crucial site for both normalising and contesting acceptable modes of sexual identity, desire and behaviour. Social norms and government policies have imbricated the detached suburban dwelling with the heterosexual nuclear family form, consequently heterosexualising the ideal Australian home. But this discourse is simultaneously challenged by the domestic practices of gay men and lesbians, who use their homes to consolidate gay/lesbian identities, relationships and communities. As such, they unsettle the normative heterosexuality underpinning dominant, ideal conceptions of home. In this paper I present four vignettes which illustrate how some gay men and lesbians queer the ideal Australian home, generating domestic spaces which affirm sexual difference. In doing so, I highlight two key ways in which this process of ‘queering home’ works. First, through certain uses of home—activities taking place within domestic space. Second, through changes to the materiality of domestic space itself wrought by some homemaking practices, effectively embedding gay/lesbian identities and relationships within the physical environment of the home.     

I Do? On geography,marriage and love in Australia

Calls for law reform in Australia reveal marriage as central to the notions of family and citizenship. Attention here is drawn to the recent lack of willingness to debate marriage equality in Australia—from either its advocates or opponents—following a cross-party marriage equality private members bill. Federal Liberal/National Coalition politicians dismiss legislative frameworks that recognise marriage equality in Australia because it is thought to cause the demise of social mores, or is at best unimportant. Advocates for same-sex marriage present promises based on rights, justice and equality, yet fail to reflect on the social implications for those who arrange their sexual lives outside this institutionalised partnership. I argue that the lack of debate is operating to narrow rather than widen understandings about ‘love', drawing attention to geographical understanding of the links between sex, bodies, gender, families and belonging.     

Dykes on Bikes: mobility,belonging and the visceral

This article contributes to growing scholarship on fluidity, embodiment and the politics of festivals. Such scholarship is crucial to understanding belonging as an embodied, visceral experience. Extending on this work, this paper seeks to draw further attention to the fluidity of festival boundaries and experience, by exploring how belonging holds the potential to become detached from location, and be manifested forcefully through movement to and from events. I focus on a group of six Dykes on Bikes members, who rode motorbikes 1800 kilometres as part of a larger group from Brisbane to the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade. Through this exploration I illustrate how attention to the visceral experience of belonging on the move allows geographers to address what holds individuals ‘in place’ so to speak, when attachment takes place through movement. In doing so I argue that the visceral is crucial to understanding belonging as mobile because it provides a framework to stand against universalised discourses that locate belonging within the temporal and spatial confines of events.     

Discourses of regeneration in early twentieth-century Britain: from Bedlam to the Imperial War Museum

This article calls for greater attention to be paid to the way that sex and sexuality impact on geographical fieldwork. By concentrating in particular on cross–cultural fieldwork, the article focuses on the ways in which attention to these questions has the potential to bring about greater self–reflexivity and to expose the contingency of the researcher's sexuality.     

甲壳动物的环境型性决定和性比研究

本文评述了甲壳动物的性决定和性比与环境关系问题的研究结果,论述了枝角类、端足类和其他甲壳动物的性决定的内、外因子,评价了Berg的“压抑”假说,并对今后该方面的研究重点,提出了意见和建议。