Whats Love Got to do with It

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Lecture 18

• Whats Love Got to do with It?
• Can Romance Help the Natural World?
• Can the Natural World help Romance?

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Norman Hadley Dr. Norman Hadley,
PhD Serendipity
Welcome
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Faculty of Education, Memorial University, NL25
years The Sunflower Adad

• Humanistic psychology
• person-centered psychotherapy
• art therapy phototherapy
• bullying behavior
• nonverbal communication
• touch
• motorcycling
• selective mutism
• Sutties tenderness taboo

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• Love - What is it? That is, what are some ideals
  about it throughout society?
• What are some materials
• - in the love environment?
• - in the dating environment?
• What are some of the practices of love?
• What does your ideal mate
• think like? (IDEAL)
• look like? (MATERIAL)
• act like? (PRACTICAL)
• (though, we know there is much more to it
  that these three thingsbut its a good way to
  begin to understand)
• How did or how do you find the ideal mate?

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One way -

• Through dating environment practices LINK
• How does the natural landscape figure into dating
  and romance practices?
• Examples? ---- Like this?

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• Or like this?

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Reading

• University College of London Department of
  Geography

• Little, J. and Panelli, R. (2007). Outback
  romance? A reading of nature and heterosexuality
  in rural Australia. Sociologia Ruralis, 47 (3),
  173-188.

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The Study

• Thesis Questions
• General How does heterosexuality play out in
  rural space?
• Specific Can our understandings of nature
  reflect our sexuality?

• Setting TV Bachelor-Type of Show in which bush
  bachelors seek sheilas (kangaroos) - -
  conceptions of outback masculinity are used to
  dominate/influence the women and the relationship
  

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First

• North American The Bachelor
• (link)
• Check for links between heterosexual machismo,
  romance, and nature

• Is Andy macho against the backdrop of nature?
  Consider how the natural environment is used to
  act out masculinity, gender, and sexualityon
  parts of both Andy and Tessa in the video clip

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Authors

• Nature is not only a space or set of spaces as an
  end in itself (teleological), but an arena for
  sexuality and nature to interact

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Setting in Australia

• Desperately Seeking Sheila
• - a 3 week date in a rural setting in hopes to
  pair up to potentially produce a family rural
  Australia is like a ghost town in many areas
• (link)

• Contrast the use of nature to display sexuality
  between the Aussies and the Americans

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The authors found a gap in the literatures

• The TV show opens with Vast, desolate and
  sheepy. Welcome to outback Australia. Its harsh
  way of life and dusty plains have little to offer
  lonesome cowboys. Out in the bush, convention
  dictates that sons stay at home and inherit the
  land. While boys are trained in the great
  outdoors, daughters are sent away to school and
  once they escape they rarely return (p. 179).
• Consider Foucaults episteme -
• Would you say that Americanized dating shows pay
  more or less attention to the natural world as it
  relates to romance?

• That feminist research had categorized sexuality
  and its rituals square into the social category
  exclusively, paying little to no attention to
  natural environments as the social.
• This parallels the experience of sociology at
  large until only recently as it scurries to
  incorporate the influences of/on nature/social.

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Findings

• The Australian outback is viewed as exotic, full
  of excitement and possibilities for adventure (is
  Halifax exotic? Describe the dating scene in
  Halifax according to our nature-episteme)
• Nature can be used to restore a romantic feeling
  between couples, even though they are only moving
  between natural spaces (think about the 2nd
  Honeymoon phenomenon - what makes a natural
  space romantic?)

• The UK sheilas find much emphasis on sunsets
  LINK Do your parents linger in the sunset? If
  not, is the natural landscape only related
  (mainly) to mate-seeking behavior, and then it,
  itself, disappears? Why/Not?
• Despite much excitement and promise at first for
  most couples, most of the TV shows relationships
  dissolved within days (are you surprised?)
• .

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The Bush Bachelors

• The word, bachelor, connotes heterosexuality in
  mainstream television (how would a Gay Bachelor
  show go over in Canada?)
• The bush bachelors are depicted as strong and
  able, using guns, driving tractors (how/do guys
  in Halifax use nature to portray themselves as
  masculine? Heterosexual? Homosexual?)

• The bachelors presented both a hostility and an
  empathy toward their environments largely, the
  bachelors tended to portray themselves as
  dominating/ conquering nature out of necessity
  for survival otherwise, their love of place was
  evident, along with a clear appreciation for
  farm/ranch life

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The Sheilas

• The TV producers played on the sort of country
  mouse/city mouse theme the bachelorettes are
  wearing the wrong clothing to feed the hogs
  finding the farmhand work disgusting and
  difficult one woman overcomes her distaste for
  the farm work, proving herself as a worthy
  participant in the outback of Australia (how/do
  women in Halifax use nature to portray themselves
  as feminine?)

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Authors Conclusion

• The way people understand nature and their place
  in it shapes the way they understand their own
  sexuality and their romantic relationships and
  it can even determine whether or not the
  relationships survive.

• We need to be more inclusive of natural
  environments in our studies of sexuality in
  general.

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• Another example of televisions portrayal of
  sexuality and romance against the backdrop of
  nature? LINK Does this video clip evoke the same
  feelings of romance and nature? Whats the
  difference?
• this is a good lead in for next class as we
  discuss animals in our social environmental
  consciousness

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Wrap up

• As Michael Bell (2004) claims, nature is, perhaps
  among other things, a social construction. What
  does this really mean? What is NOT a social
  construction in the Sheila video clip?
• Sexuality and nature intersect through the ways
  we understand nature

Sexuality
Nature
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Things

• Papers!
• READINGS for next class
• (1) CP Curry, P. (2006). Ecological ethics An
  introduction (pp. 71-89, 95-99). Malden, MA
  Polity Press. (deep ecologyecofeminism)
• (2) NET Gender and the Animal Rights Movement.
• http//www.utanimalrights.com/gender.htm
• (3) NET People for the Ethical Treatment of
  Animals. Draggin' Ladies Prove That There's
  Nothing Glamorous About Fur.
• Coffeehaus sign-up sheet for Monday
• Artifact Presentations
• Please pick up artifacts today if youve not yet
  presented