On Dit 80.8 (Elle Dit) by On Dit

E L L E DIT

80.8

VOL. 80 ISSUE 8

E L L E DIT

CONTENTS

featured contributors

letters

comic

student representative column

vox pop

women’s room

women in student politics

open letter: re casual tutors

chick-lit & the stella prize

thinkin’ about drinkin’

depression

gendered language

male sports bias

artwork

toilet graffiti

women in modern music

artwork

columns

stuff you like

creative

retrospective

diversions

Editors: Galen Cuthbertson, Seb Tonkin & Emma Jones. Front, back and inside cover artwork by Madeleine Karutz. On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union. Published 30/7/2012.

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Let’s get one thing straight: this year’s Women’s Issue is not just for women. This is not a magazine entirely about women. This is a magazine entirely by women (with the exception of my well-dressed co-editors). We’re no longer in the dark ages. Us gals have been voting, studying, working and having our voices heard for a long time now. Society not only accepts but expects us to have successful and fulfilling careers. We’re not just wives and baby-makers anymore, although that’s still a huge aspect of portrayed femininity in the media (how many laundry powder or furniture or cereal or insurance advertisements show Martha Stewart lookalikes herding their impeccable Aryan children into a Tarago?). We’ve come a long way. But we’ve got a way to go.

This is why On Dit continues to publish an annual women’s issue. Elle Dit has traditionally been, and continues to be, a space in which women can safely and proudly express their opinions and showcase their creative talents. A magazine like Elle Dit may not be as necessary

now as it was in, say, the 1960s, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. It’s a place for reflection, to think about how far we’ve come. It’s also a place where we can talk about the problems that still face women today, in 2012. We can question each other through this medium: why is this discrimination still happening? Why does society continue to perpetuate sexist attitudes through things like sport, education, language, music, politics and literature? And most importantly, how can we shit all over said discrimination? But it’s not all feminist politics up in here. This year, Elle Dit is less a statement of affirmative action, and more a showcase of what the women of Adelaide University are capable of. I’m damn proud of them, of all of us. You should be, too. There’s more top-notch writing and original artwork in these pages than you can poke a stick at (not a euphemism). So I highly recommend you turn the page pretty much right now. Love, Emma (and Galen and S eb)

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS J-Lo McGoogle Smurf (cut the crap, p34)

J-Lo McGoogle-Smurf released her debut album Bringing Back the Printing Balance (1984), featuring a mix of folkXcoreXmetagypsy and sustainable pagan symbolism. She was inducted into the Exclusive Hall of Emotional Fame in 2004, the first year she was eligible to have emotions. The creators of The Biggest Voice have ranked J-Lo No. 27 on their list of the 100 Actual Footage Items of Utility. J-Lo’s music has been considering people’s interests equally across a range of genres, and was once featured on the hit show Being Lara’s Kitchen.

Georgie LawrenceDoyle

Madeleine Karutz

Georgie is a history honours student who used to have a life, but she now resides in Napier 524. She supplements her thesis-writing on sadomasochistic Italian war films with triple-butter explosion popcorn, cheap wine, and an embarrassing display of sequinned clothing.

Madeleine Karutz is in her third year of law and doing a bachelor of media arts concurrently. While planning her time travelling exploits (once the Large Hadron Collider peeps get it together that is), she is a freelance illustrator/ designer wondering how on earth anybody could retain their sanity doing such an occupation. In her spare time she draws comics and does animations with the hopes of one day living in a shoebox and working 80 hrs a week in an ‘animation factory’ as both SpongeBob’s lawyer and animator. Find her doodling her way into obscurity at artistictundra.wordpress.com.

(chick lit, p18)

(cover artwork; thinkin’ about drinkin’, p22; material girl, p36)

The On Dit editors would like to thank the following chums for their help with Issue 8... The ‘Dangerous Distro Dude(tte)s’: Sam, Angus, Stella and Max. Ben, for reminding us that ‘Hey Ya’ was about to be on, and for increasing the critical mass of the dancefloor. Insane Clown Posse. Max, who popped voxes on a Sunday. Sujini and Elizabeth for their midnight scrying. Angus, for successfully avoiding spillage while eating a burrito. Joel, for forgetting the toilet paper. A special shout-out to Burnett’s Whipped Cream Flavoured Vodka. And to the partygoer who spilled red wine on Emma’s jacket: you’d better watch your back.

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CORRESPONDENCE PAGE

Dear Editors, While I completely support the anger expressed in 80.7 at the Red Cross Blood Service for refusing blood from people who engage in certain sexual activities, I’m not okay with labelling all these people as ‘gay’. The questionnaire I fill out at every donation does not ask me if I am gay, or straight. It asks me if I’ve engaged in male to male sex, or if I’ve had sexual relations with a person who may have engaged in male to male sex. Not all men who have sex with men are gay. Some are bisexual. Some are pansexual. Some are simply sexual. Their blood is rejected, too. Please don’t forget they exist.

Dear Galen (and Emma and Seb), I read your letter and the article by Ben Nielsen. I believe that barring gay people from donating blood is a discriminatory and unfair policy, and it should be reconsidered. By the way, I am Gereon Ardivilla and a post-graduate international student from the Philippines enrolled in the Master of Arts (Applied Linguistics) program. I am a regular Red Cross blood donor in my country. I would like to ask where the Adelaide Red Cross is located for me to donate blood. Thank you and I hope to hear from you soon. Best regards, Gereon Ardivilla

Sincerely, Johanna Dear Johanna, Fair cop; you’re totally right. Regards, The Eds

CORRECTION

Dear Gereon, The closest donation centre (from the north terrace campus) is: Level 1, Regent Arcade, Grenfell Street. They’re open weekdays, Saturdays, and one Sunday a month. It’s also really close. Best, Galen

Issue 7’s editorial should have started with the following paragraph:

You know what bugs me? Mosquitos. And for some reason, they’re everywhere in this office. I’ve seen five. I think there’s a nest somewhere. Do mosquitos nest? Doesn’t matter. I want to catch one and take it in for questioning. For the record, I’d be a great ‘bad cop in a mid-nineties movie.’ Emma disagrees with me, but we all know she’s just jealous of my ability to look a perp in the eyes and say ‘Listen, son, ain’t no cameras in here. I got a badge ... what’ve you got? You’re just a damn mosquito. You ain’t nobody, son.’

E Y U G A N C I M N I A C E M U Y G M E I N Y U A G C U G N A C I Y M E Y A C M G E I N U A N Y U M C G E I I C E Y N G M U A G U M E I A N C Y

word: gynaecium

TARGEDOKU

(see diversions on pg. 48)

Bursting to opine on something that’s in the magazine (or should be)? On Dit accepts your emails at ondit@adelaide.edu.au. Or get all social-media on our facebook page: facebook.com/onditmagazine. Best letter next issue wins a mystery prize!

C M G I U Y E A N

See? I think we can all of us agree that the whole thing makes a lot more sense with that at the beginning.

ANSWERS

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CINDY a comic by MICHELLE BAGSTER

ADELAIDE UNI’S ONLY VAMPIRE

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STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COLUMN

women face at university as well as the systematic disadvantage that women face in their homes and post-university. People who argue against the Women’s Officer position on affirmative action reasons often argue that women make up the majority of university enrolments and there is no longer need for an allocated place on student councils. This argument ignores the fact that universities reproduce the power structures that disadvantage women outside university, and contribute to these power structures.

But women and men are equal now!

with CATHERINE STORY, women’s officer Hello, I’m Catherine, your campus Women’s Officer, and I’m filling the President’s column for Elle Dit. I’m going to address some of the regular arguments against Women’s Officers, and look at why the Women’s Officer position is still really important.

But women are no longer a minority! One of the most common arguments that I hear against the Women’s Officer position comes from people who see the position as merely an affirmative action spot for women. Many people who disagree with affirmative action either see the role as unfair or patronising. The real problem with this argument is that the Women’s Officer position is not just an affirmative action role. The role is there to address the issues

We see no evidence that suggests that the large enrolment of women in universities has resulted in workplace equality. Women still only earn 83% of the male dollar. Sectors that are women-dominated, such as teaching, nursing, community sector work, hospitality and retail are undervalued in comparison to male-dominated areas regardless of time spent in education. The fact that women do the majority of unpaid domestic labour, and the lack of childcare and support for women with families all affects women’s equality in the workforce. Women make up the majority of insecure casual labour, and this isn’t made any more equal by the fact that women are overrepresented in the casual sector. Women only make up 24.7% of positions in the House of Representatives and 38.2% of the Senate and make up 8.4% of seats on corporate boards1. Adelaide University in particular is lacking in female senior academic staff. Recognising that these structures are reinforced in educational institutions is another reason that we need Women’s Officers to challenge these structures that disadvantage women. I’ll try not to bore you with heaps of statistics, but I think they are necessary to show why we need an office bearer that makes it her job to focus solely on the barriers women face at university. Major issues that disproportionately affect women at university are sexual harassment, sexual assault, and domestic violence. One in five women will be affected by rape and sexual assault. The National Union of Students (NUS) ‘Talk about it!’ survey statistics look particularly at university campuses, and those statistics tell us that 67% of women students had 1 All statistics quoted are from the Australian Bureau of Statistics unless stated otherwise.

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experienced an unwanted sexual experience, and 89% reported having been harassed by men on campus. These issues affect women at a much greater rate and impact on the welfare of women students on campus. This year I have had several telephone calls and emails from women, asking for advice on where to go for help when they have experienced sexual assault. Women are often blamed or not believed when they speak out about assault or rape. Women’s Officers are often the first point of trusted referral to services and overall support.

other office bearer portfolios to focus more broadly on the issues men face at university. With women’s health covered by the Women’s Officer, all other officer bearers helping with health events ensure a good focus on men’s health and general student health.

We should be campaigning for gender equality. Isn’t a Women’s Officer just creating separation?

Gender roles hurt both men and women. That is why Women’s Officers all over Australia are Domestic or relationship violence is also a huge working to deconstruct gender roles that result in problem disproportionally affecting women, including creating cultures that hold the male ideal to be stoic, women at universities. Having a Women’s Officer controlling and emotionally distant. All of these position makes sure that it is someone’s job to provide idealised traits tie into problems such as violence, service information and a culture of support for depression and suicide that affect men. Women’s women trying to escape abusive situations, as well Officers work in the context that women are still as focus on campaigns to attempt to reduce violent disadvantaged in behaviours today’s society. that cause both To create real equality we don’t need to argue away To create real domestic violence equality we don’t and sexual essential services or representatives, we need to need to argue away violence in our understand that until there is really no need for a essential services communities. or representatives, Women’s Officer, we must recognise that there is we need to Men have gender inequality. The role of the Women’s Officer understand that until there is issues too is to address this at university. really no need – why isn’t for a Women’s there a Officer, and I hope someday this is the case, that we understand men’s officer? that there is gender inequality and the role of the Why is it that I always hear this argument in an Women’s Officer is to address this at university. As attempt to discredit the Women’s Officer role? I student representatives we have to represent the issues believe this is a separate argument and an argument that face students at university and in wider society. for a men’s officer is not necessarily relevant to Recognising that there is still far to go to achieve the removal of the Women’s Officer. It’s not all or equality between men and women is crucial. nothing, so to speak. The truth is that the problems that are often brought up to support the men’s officer role really are covered by the position descriptions in Catherine Story the other office bearers. Men are harmed by gender Women’s Officer roles but are not systematically disadvantaged in the same way as women. At Adelaide University we have Student Representative Council a Social Justice Officer, a Welfare Officer, a Queer Email: srcwomens@auu.org.au Officer, and an Education Officer. Having a Women’s Officer makes sure that issues such as safety on campus, sexual assault, domestic violence and women’s health are covered. This clears a lot of space in the

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VOX POP

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Sami, Computer Sciences, 2nd year 1.

It was at the Rhino Room: ‘I hope heaven is like Square One’. 2. The Matrix Reloaded carries on the story really well... but the third one ruins it all. 3. If you look at the wage rates, it’s not minimum wage as such. I think most of them are happy with what they’re doing, if that makes sense. 4. Toast with minimum butter, pretty much just dry toast. And orange juice, if you can stomach it. 5. Part of me says yes because we still don’t get the rights that we should. Part of me thinks we should have a Men’s Officer too. 6. Ice cold!

Aishah, Accounting, 3rd year

Rachel, Year 12

1. 2.

I don’t remember any! I like the Shrek series, so Shrek 2. It’s an original idea, it isn’t just the same as the first one. 3. There should be a fixed wage for tutors, and they should be paid for the hours of the classes they teach. 4. Not drinking. 5. Yes. 6. Being yourself.

I can’t remember any. Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I liked the superpowers. 3. It’s unfair. They should be paid more. I think pay should reflect work. 4. Don’t drink. 5. Yes, definitely. 6. Being awesome!

In which On Dit asks six Adelaide Uni gals the following questions... 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

What’s the best toilet graffiti you’ve ever seen? What’s your favourite movie sequel, and why? Most of your tutors are casually employed, some on minimum wage. What do you think about that? What’s your best hangover cure? (Eds: please oh god please) Do you think we need a Women’s Officer at Adelaide University? What’s cooler than being cool?

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Deanna, Arts/Law, 2nd year 1.

The ‘creative drawing’ at the Exeter. 2. X-Men 2. Hugh Jackman. 3. Minimum wage is important, but tutors deserve substantially more because their work is very important. 4. Vomiting and sleep. 5. Yes! 6. The opposite to ‘hipster’.

Manogna, Mechanical and Sustainable Engineering, 4th year 1.

It was in the Scott Theatre building. I can’t remember what it said, but it was hilarious. 2. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I love the characters, and Gollum got some character development. 3. It’s okay. I hear they get paid more as casuals. 4. Yeah. 5. Being a pirate.

Johanna, Economics, Masters (exchange) 1.

I’m from Germany. There are too many to choose from! 2. Sissi 2: The Young Empress. 3. Minimum wage is usually not good, but uiversities do not have a lot of money, so they need to budget. 4. Run outside in the fresh air. 5. At the moment I think there is just the need in case of discrimination, but you don’t need one for employment stuff; the best candidate should get the job. 6. Being a woman!

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A ROOM OF OUR OWN words: deanna taylor The first week of the first semester of my first year of uni was a terrifying and exciting time. I’d attended the same school from Reception through to Year 12 – so the prospect of familiarising myself with a new learning environment, one in which I would be spending the next three years of my life was pretty daunting . My fear of getting lost on campus and making an ass of myself led me to spend a two-hour break between classes on my second day poring over a campus map, attempting to memorise as much as possible. Among the many things I noticed was the campus’ Women’s Room. The Anna Menz Lounge: a room

just for chicks, no penises allowed. Unless the person to which the penis is attached identifies as a woman. I was super eager to give it a look-see, so I took the next available moment I had to venture down to the Lady Symon building. These were my first impressions of the Women’s Room: 1. 2. 3.

It felt like a hospital waiting room It smelled funny The books in the room’s bookcase were ancient (I suspect that may have been the source of the room’s funny smell)

But even though the room lacked some homely touches, I felt at home. I realise this sounds disgustingly cheesy, and as I write it I’m cringing, so I can only imagine that you, the reader, must at least be rolling your eyes. But the feminist posters, women’s sex education material, and women’s texts in the bookcase (despite their datedness) struck a chord with my inner feminist. The Baptist school I attended for 13 years in the Bible Belt of Adelaide had not given me an outlet for my feminist activist tendencies. I knew this would. My most prominent thought, as I looked around the room, was: fuck yeah.

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Photos: Emma Jones

The existence of a women’s room on the University of Adelaide campus is often seen as an inequality. ‘Men don’t have their own room, why do women get one?’ is a question I was asked recently. Well, I’ll tell you! In the patriarchal society in which we live, EVERY SPACE is a men’s space . Women face inequalities in virtually every aspect of their lives. Men earn on average 17% more than women, are perpetrators of the overwhelming majority of domestic violence, do far less of the housework than women and if they are raped, would never dream of being accused of ‘asking for it’ because they were wearing a provocative tie. Be it work, home, social environments – men are in the dominant position. To frame my argument from a university-specific perspective, the results from the National Union of Students’ (NUS) Talk About It survey showed that 86% of female students who responded

had ‘experienced someone making sexual comments or noises’ and 67% had had an ‘unwanted sexual experience’. Women do not feel safe on campus, particularly at night, with only 24% reporting they felt safe. While women are encouraged to carry around rape whistles on campus, men could never imagine walking over the university footbridge with their finger ready to hit dial on the 000 they’ve just keyed in, in case someone tries to attack them. The fight for equality has not been won. I recognise that not all women feel the need to use the Women’s Room. But providing a space solely for women that is safe, and in which they can group together to discuss political ideas, plan campaigns and events, and organise women’s role in the Revolution is one way that we try to address the inequality. Complaining that it’s ‘not fair’ that we women have our own room, and men don’t, is laughable.

To be crass, it’s bullshit. Women were not just handed ‘privileges’ like women’s-only spaces. We had to fight for every legislative win or social change over the centuries. We had to fight fucking hard. It’s taken three waves of feminism for us to get to where we are now, and we’ve still got a long way to go. And now, it seems, we have to fight to protect what we have. Whether it be protecting the Women’s Room from people deriding it as archaic and a tool of ‘segregation’, or protecting our right to exercise autonomy over our reproductive choices, we have to fight. Fight to get this stuff, and fight to keep it. ◊

WHAT WOMEN (DON’T) WANT

words: charlotte thomas

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Despite ongoing signs to the contrary, there still exists the perception at university that women require special attention and care. We see this in the position of Women’s Officer, one of diminishing importance. We see it in the provision of a Women’s Room at some universities in Australia. We see it in student media. What no one ever asks is: why? The debate about affirmative action is widespread and controversial and I intend to limit this article mostly to university life, as this has been where my experiences have taken place. Interestingly, women are no longer a minority on campus. Studies show that women actually make up over 55% of student populations across Australia. The trend of women ‘overtaking’ men is not just being observed at university. A recent article in The Australian claimed that women throughout the developed world are beginning to score higher in IQ tests. It offered the explanation that women may have a higher potential IQ than men, or that the result could be connected with the increasing pressure on women to manage both a job and a family. Either way, there is no doubt women can and will rival men in just about every field. The fact that there being more female university graduates than male, the increased involvement of women in the workforce, and their forecasted capacity to outearn men in the near future, calls into question the role of university ‘affirmative action’ policies over the next few years.

As such, universities and their students ought to recognise that women are no longer a minority needing special treatment. The presence of a Women’s Officer on most university campuses is one such example that should be reviewed. Not only because women are not a statistical minority, but because the position doesn’t really have a job description. I recently read an article by a Women’s Officer at an Australian university who shall remain nameless. She suggested the role of Women’s Officer is to promote a culture amongst females at university. I’d be interested to see how successful she thinks she has been. But, more importantly, why do women need their own individual culture? They don’t. And how outrageous it would be to suggest that we should probably have a Men’s Officer, given that males are the real minority. Or that just as there is feminine ‘Elle’ Dit, perhaps we should also have the masculine ‘Il’ Dit. But no, that would be ridiculous, because university students still like to think of women as an oppressed minority who are unable to stand up for themselves, and who, without the help of males, will not have their voices heard. I am a member of many student organisations at university, and I know firsthand there is no shortage of women on club executives. And often it is these women who are actually leading the organisation, bringing ideas to the forefront, and getting things done.

Society, and university in particular, will only be patriarchal as long as there are women who continue to identify themselves as a hard-done-by, victimised and underrepresented minority and patronising males who perpetuate this stereotype. Affirmative action policies at university only seek to offend women like myself, who believe that true equality is letting men and women compete on merit. I was once a member of an audience of female school students who were encouraged by a guest speaker to band together to fight as one: to use our skills and talents to fight men, whilst remaining loyal to our fellow females. I was only very young at the time, but I remember being instantly outraged at her suggestion that my only competition in life would come from males. It is these kinds of suggestions that only seek to entrench gender division. Let statistics speak for themselves. And who knows, maybe in the next couple of decades we might actually see the establishment of a Men’s Officer as women overtake men in education, jobs, and income. ◊

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AN OPEN LETTER RE: CASUAL TUTORS

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Dear fellow University of Adelaide students,

Do you know that some casual tutors at The University of Adelaide earn below minimum wage? Do you know that almost directly after a hard-won battle to get payment for non-contemporaneous marking time The University of Adelaide proposed to cut tutorials in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences? Do you know that this was greatly opposed by the students of the Humanities and Social Sciences and resulted in the formation of the Humanities and Social Sciences Students Society? Do you know that The University of Adelaide is not considered an equal opportunity employer for women by the Equal Opportunity Commission? Did you know that the overwhelming majority of casual work positions in Australia are occupied by women? Do you know that the average woman has to work an extra two months per year in order to make the same amount as the average man in a single financial year? (NTEU, 2010) Do you know that this not only represents a wage gap but that this

wage gap leads to differences in superannuation payments which affect women after their working life? Do you know that to teach a class and mark the coursework, casual tutors only get paid for 3 hours of work a week? Don’t you think, particularly in the Humanities and Social Sciences where Gender Studies is taught, where we talk about women’s rights, that we should practice what we preach? How can we take seriously conversations about women’s rights when, in our own community, it is acceptable to underpay and undervalue the work of women? Do you know that The University of Adelaide continues to employ people under Australian Workplace Agreements which, as far as I remember, were very much frowned upon by the Labor party and Unions everywhere during the Workchoices debacle of 2006-2007? Do you know that the ViceChancellor is one of the only people exempt from having employment details drawn up under The University of Adelaide’s Enterprise Agreement? What is it that The University of Adelaide considers to be okay about the current situation with regards to

casual work in Universities? Universities are reporting surpluses. We’ve just made an enormous investment in The Hub, a cool 36 million dollars, and yet we can’t afford to pay tutors for their work? The Hub has been framed as an investment for students; how about we invest in students by providing them with quality time with people who are experts in their field? And why don’t we pay these fabulous people adequately for teaching our precious students? We’ve got to batter them into accepting bad conditions, into doing work for which they are highly qualified for free? What is it about this that is okay? Aren’t you disappointed in The University of Adelaide? I am.

Sincerely, Anonymous Got an open letter you need to send? It could be printed right here on this page. Send your open letter to to us: ondit@ adelaide.edu.au. You vent that spleen. Vent it REAL GOOD.

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CHICK LIT ‘I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think it is unequal to me.’

This was a recent statement by V.S. Naipul, a man often referred to as one of the greatest living writers of English prose. Naipul scoffed that the primary flaw of women’s literature is their ‘sentimentality, their narrow view of the world’. Naipul admits that while his female publisher was excellent as a ‘taster and editor’, in the advent of her becoming a writer, her work was nothing but ‘feminine tosh’. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature evidently doesn’t prevent one from being a prize wanker, and unfortunately this kind of arrogant sexism is still incredibly pervasive in the literary industry. Naipul is right about something though: the industry itself is, in many ways, run by women— and they excel at it. The whole shebang: books, reading, writing and publishing, is dominated by women. Women write about half the books published. 62% of publishers are women (although the majority of senior positions are held by men). 80% of fiction readers are women. British research even shows that they buy almost twice as many books as men do.

words: georgie lawrence-doyle art: alex stjepovic

Despite this, women simply aren’t raking in the awards, reviews or recognition the way that men are. Last year, an American women’s literary organisation (VIDA) did a survey of some of the most important and influential British and American literary and cultural journals and their responses to books and authors. The numbers of book reviews written by men and by women were measured as well as the number of books written by men and women that were reviewed. Suffice to say: the majority failed dismally at any pretence of gender equality. Disappointingly, the New York Times Book Review reviewed nearly two books by men to every woman. In 2011, The New Yorker reviewed 33 by men and only 9 by women, and similar figures prevailed for Granta, The Paris Review and Poetry. On our own shores, we have a host of many incredible women writers—Helen Garner, Lily Brett, Kate Grenville and Geraldine Brooks (who nabbed a Pulitzer) to name a few. Achieving formal recognition within Australia, however, has often passed them by. Since 1957, 27 men have won the prestigious Miles Franklin literary award and only nine have been granted to women. In the past 10 years, only two women have

won: Alexis Wright (Carpentaria, 2007) and Shirley Hazzard (The Great Fire, 2004). This is all rather ironic considering Australia’s most respected literary prize is the namesake of an Australian female author: Stella Maria Miles Franklin. Most people are blithely unaware of this fact (including myself, until quite recently) and either a) had to pick their jaws off the ground when they discovered she was a woman, or b) have been sceptical, sheepishly asking if I’m ‘quite sure about that? Where did you hear it?’—reminiscent of a frustrating argument I once had with a fellow year-five student who insisted that J.K. Rowling was definitely a ‘dude’. Although the assumption— that if an award is prestigious and Literary (with a pompous capital ‘L’), then it must be named after a man—is undoubtedly bound up in textbook literary sexism, there is a lot to be said for specific Australian nuances of our literary history. Our literary culture has, since its inception, been dominated by men. The romantic notion of the roving bush poet and the pastoral musings of men such as Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson form as significant a part of our cultural consciousness (or ‘Aussie-ness’) as Vegemite or Waltzing Matilda. This is perhaps why Australian women writers

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have been consistently pushed out of the picture. It was only the work of feminist historians such as Anne Summers during the 1970s that enlightened us to a whole world of Australian literary women throughout our history, informing us that even Henry Lawson eventually admitted to pinching the majority of his ideas from his wife.

having read the bloody Man from Snowy River every year of our schooling, it is not enough for Australian girls to have to resort to the stiff-upper-lipped world of Austen and Victorian Britain in order to find some kind of literary female role model. Don’t get me wrong—I swoon over Heathcliff as much as the next

passionate, headstrong, teenage feminist growing up in rural New South Wales. Franklin’s female protagonist, Sybylla Melvyn, is considered one of the most engaging characters in Australian literature and undoubtedly resonates with Franklin’s own life; she wrote the novel while she was a teenage girl. Honestly, I think a bolshy, feminist woman We need author from I swoon over Heathcliff as much as the next girl—but to notice and the nineteenth celebrate the perhaps our new literary heroines need plots which century would be heroines of extremely peeved don’t (always) revolve around completely bonkers, Australian following last literature— mentally-unstable men on horseback. year’s all-male our women Miles Franklin writers, as well girl—but perhaps our new literary shortlist. as our female characters, which heroines need plots which don’t have often been cast into the Enter the Stella Prize, an award (always) revolve around completely background while the grand feats for Australian women authors bonkers, mentally-unstable men on of the rugged ‘Australian man’ have founded by author and critic horseback. occupied the centre stage of our Kirsten Tranter and a critical national literary identity. Franklin’s most renowned step for the future of Australian novel, My Brilliant Career (1901), women in the literary industry. It’s This will only happen, however, gives us this heroine. The novel modelled on the British Orange if we challenge the trope of our details the experiences of a Prize, except that the Stella Prize literary past and present. After

will include non-fiction as well as fiction. The Stella Prize strives to ‘raise the profile of women’s writing, and will reward one writer with a $50,000 prize. The shortlisted and winning books will be widely publicised and marketed in order to bring readers PAGE to the work of Australian women 20 writers’. The Prize is a celebration (off-campus) of Australian women’s writing and encourages a future generation of women writers, reminding our literary culture that this is not only a question of talent, but one of equity. While there is always going to be some drunken literary buffoon at a party waxing lyrical about the condescending nature of affirmative action and tokenism (which was undoubtedly a frequent occurrence after the awarding of the Orange Prize in 1996) this kind of attitude is the reason that these women-based literary initiatives are so essential in the first place. Australia’s own Kate Grenville has claimed that winning the Orange Prize for her novel The Idea of Perfection (1999)—a novel which hadn’t been shortlisted for any prominent Australian awards— ‘transformed’ her life. A year later, following her win, she claimed that ‘suddenly everyone was reading it and assuring each other that they’d always known what a great book it was’. Surprisingly, Jennifer Byrne, host of ABC-TV’s First Tuesday Book Club, recently criticised the Stella Prize on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show. She stated: ‘I don’t think women need to be condescended to in that way.’ Regarding the maleoriented nature of the Miles Franklin, she argued that she didn’t know ‘what the point is people are trying to make. Is it an accusation of bias against the judges? Are you saying women are constantly being overlooked? Maybe that was just the opinion on the night.’ For someone who seemingly appreciates the integral part women play in the Australian literary industry, her comments

appear incredibly naïve and defensive. Admittedly, the fact that we need an entirely different prize in this country for women authors to achieve formal recognition of their work is not ideal—but we do, and it is pretty rich to be accused of patronising women by the very industry which is doing the patronising of women in the first place. Paradoxically, Grenville has remarked that instead of isolating her work, ‘a prize for women has freed my books from the ghetto of “women’s writing”’. Ultimately, initiatives such as the Stella Prize are essential because they instigate

discussion of these biases, provide new opportunities and challenge the way that we view literature— what is considered ‘important’ literature and who is writing and reviewing it. Wendy Harmer, who is heavily involved in the work of the Stella Prize, insists that the award ‘recognises that women writers and readers are the pillar of the Australian publishing industry. We buy the books; we teach the young ones to read; and we want to reward the women writers who enrich our lives by telling our stories’. And tell our stories, we will. ‘Feminine tosh’? I don’t think so. ◊

art: jessiczka Ĺ&#x201A;owczak

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THINKING DRINKING about

I didn’t stop drinking because I dislike alcohol. Alcohol and I were tight. I turned to him when I was bored or stressed. He turned to me when I wasn’t watching and had already had too much. It was a good relationship.

Even better were the mornings when I woke up fully dressed and mysteriously damp with no recollection of the night before. Sometimes I woke with lumps of vomit in my mouth and stories about me threatening to kill security guards or clinging to deserted roadsides insisting I’d be fine if ‘everyone’ just left me alone. One night (apparently) I was kicked out of a pub, vomited all over the pavement, and somehow made it into a taxi. I made the driver stop after five minutes then threw myself out the door and clung to the ground like a psychopathic child for forty minutes. In my head, there were people everywhere. Kind people who would help me when I woke up. I was confused when my boyfriend let the taxi drive off without getting in it. His sister picked us up. The shame lives on. When I decided to stop drinking for six months, some friends said things like ‘why?’ as if I were going to pierce my fingertips with wooden skewers. 100% of these friends had known

me for less than 8 months and most of those months I’d been overseas, in America, the land of the comparatively far more sober. The land where I drunkenly tore the ligaments in my foot when I decided to go for a run after half a bottle of whiskey. Friends who knew me better just smiled.

For the first three months I really, really enjoyed alcohol-free life. When I drink I’m normally in bed by 12. Without alcohol I can stay out later and have decent conversations. I stopped singing Nick Cave songs to myself and started listening to other people. It might be hard to tell from this selfobsessed article, but apparently I really enjoy hearing other people talk. People began to confide in me, mistaking my sobriety for a more general wisdom. I gave awkward advice and made a lot of ‘mm’ noises. Then at some point I decided my no-alcohol commitment had made me a hyper-stressed crazy person and that maybe I should drink something. For at least a fortnight, I considered abandoning the challenge and having a beer – just one beer, to calm me down. I went so far as to openly sniff the empty Coopers bottle of a friend’s friend. Hi

there stranger, care to share your beer (with my nostrils)? It was unsatisfactory but I kept at it. During the same period, I found myself becoming a person of extremely boring stories. ‘When Ben and I were in California we bought two longnecks. Then Ben fell asleep and I drank them both.’ Blank stares. Awkward realisation that I’d just told a story about a time when I’d drunk four beers to a group of people each casually drinking their fourth beer. ‘And that’s a time when I drunk alcohol…’ Somehow I survived this period and came through the other side. The longing passed and I stopped mindlessly feeling up gin bottles. I’m glad I didn’t have a drink during that fortnight. I was stressed and I wanted a beer and having a beer would probably have made me feel temporarily less stressed. But I think that having one would have felt crap. Part of the reason for giving up alcohol is that I am actually just a hyper-stressed crazy person. And I should probably learn to deal with that in a way that doesn’t require things referred to as ‘substances’ in Government policy papers. Right now I’m about three weeks away from the end of

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words: sam prendergast art: madeleine karutz my alcohol-free time and not drinking has become surprisingly normal. Sometimes people ask if I’ve noticed changes and my first response is always no, not really. But that’s not because nothing’s changed. It’s just because six months is long enough to forget how things were. That makes the prospect of having another drink kind of scary. I’d like a beer but I’m also really enjoying never being ridiculously drunk (or ridiculously hungover). My hope is that 6 months of sobriety will have turned me into someone who drinks occasionally and always in moderation, though that seems unrealistic. What these six months have given me is a break. And I needed a break before I could even try to become someone who drinks a glass and not a bottle. The actual challenge will come when I have another drink. But how that’ll work out I can’t yet say. To anyone who has shitty drinking habits and was thinking of committing to a no-alcohol period, my advice would be to just do it. It’s easier than it seems, you’ll save a heap of money, and, kind of surprisingly, drunk friends can be entertaining even when you’re sober. ◊

When I decided to stop drinking for six months, some friends said things like ‘why?’ as if I were going to pierce my fingertips with wooden skewers. Friends who knew me better just smiled.

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SHADOWBO words: emma gray-starcevic art: daisy freeburn

‘So how long have you been experiencing these feelings for?’ It’s 10:43am and about 10 degrees outside. There’s a stale taste in my mouth from the alcohol I drank the night before. The rhythmic throbbing in my head would be relaxing if it wasn’t so fucking painful. The Doctor looks pointedly at me over the top of her glasses. Her forehead has a slight sheen either from sweat or oil; I can’t tell. She has some deep pockmarks on her nose from blackheads. She’s waiting for me. She’s impatient. There’s a whole room of sick people just outside that require her attention. Real people with real sicknesses, proper things like chest infections and diabetes. ‘I don’t know…since I was born?’ Ha ha ha… a joke to relieve the tension. One eyebrow goes up. Long manicured fingers tap the desk. ‘No, um, I dunno…a few months I suppose.’ The long fingers tap away at the keyboard. I don’t get to look at what she writes, non-doctor people aren’t allowed. ‘It sounds like you’ve got a bit of anxiety and depression. It’s very common, especially in people your age.’ The Doctor gives me some names of psychologists in my area and tells me to call her in six weeks. Yeah right. I don’t need to call her because there’s no way in hell I have ‘anxiety’ or ‘depression’. Anxiety and depression are for

neurotic middle-aged alcoholic housewives or poverty-stricken alcoholic writers. I am 18, and almost definitely sure that I’m not an alcoholic. At that point I believed I couldn’t have had depression because that would mean I had ‘mental health issues’ which is a thing that is always said in whispered tones. No one can ever say ‘mental health issues’ in a normal voice – it must be whispered. It’s the law. Well, I refused to be whispered about, and I refused to have depression. I marched out of there determined to Just Be Happy God Damn It, and went home content in the knowledge that I’d just solved all my problems and possibly achieved enlightenment. The next day I slept until 3:30pm and over the subsequent few weeks developed a delightful little anxious habit of sporadically burning myself on purpose. I can’t pin down the exact point when I started to feel depressed; it crept up on me slowly and silently over a number of years. It’s not that I’d never been happy. In fact, the majority of my life had been spent as a happy, well-adjusted child and a happy, well-adjusted (if perhaps slightly moody and angst-y) teenager. But it came – a shadow that sapped

my energy and strength, filled my mind with doubt and a whispering voice that told me I was no good. I was ugly; I was a fake. Nothing was worth doing and there was no point trying because the world was an

OXING

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smaller part of the time, I felt absolutely, crushingly sad.

unhappy, unwelcoming, pointless blue dot in an ambivalent void. I was drained, drop by drop, until there was nothing left, not even sadness, just nothingness. That’s where I stayed for a number of months. It is extremely difficult to describe this feeling to people who haven’t experienced it, because it’s the lack of feeling that defines it. I would look at people that I loved, watch their eyes jump and dance as they spoke, watch the corners of their mouths twitch and move as they smiled and laughed, and I would feel nothing. I loved them, but at that moment I couldn’t feel any love for them. I didn’t care. To

this day I still feel guilty that I could ever look at my mother, my father, my sister, my best friend, and in that moment feel absolutely nothing for them. So that’s the nothingness. What happens next is the darkness. It trickles in, atom by miserable atom. Anger, hate, bitterness, paranoia, anguish, despair. The darkness is dangerous. It’s in these times that those false feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness can consume you if you don’t seek help. The darkness, at least for me, was an awful but very rare state that descended upon me only a few times over several years. Most of the time I felt tired. A lot of the time, I felt nothing. Sometimes I felt anxious. A small part of the time I felt happy, and, an even

These feelings of nothingness and a total lack of motivation or interest in life were unfortunately constantly doing battle with the dominant parts of my personality which refused to accept there was anything wrong with me and, further, saw admitting defeat or failure as a non-negotiable impossibility. This part of my personality – a cruel voice in the back of my head – took to scolding me every time I slept in. Every time I missed another class, every time I pinched myself or let my fingers linger too long on the edge of a hot pan, she would scream at me. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? You just had one tutorial today and you couldn’t even make that. Don’t you dare sleep in tomorrow. You are such a failure. No one can ever know how pathetic you are; can you imagine the embarrassment? Just get your fucking life together, you miserable, worthless idiot!’ All my energy (the little bit that I had) went towards keeping up a happy and normal façade. I became an excellent actress, and a talented liar. I hid my failing

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university grades from my parents (off-campus) and fabricated whole anecdotes of University life: tales of eccentric professors, library study sessions and art gallery coffee meet-ups with new friends. It terrified me how skilled I was – how easily the lies flowed – but simultaneously I truly believed I was doing the right thing.

notification letter from Adelaide University in the bin which made it suddenly clear that I was failing all my subjects, and second, when my mother walked into my room while I was asleep and laid eyes on my scratched-up wrist which I had carelessly allowed to fall out from under the covers.

The awful truth is that I spent months sleeping my life away. Every now and then I would venture into the city, ironically spending quite a lot of time holed up in a warm little corner of the Barr Smith library reading art history books for hours. When I wasn’t reading or sleeping, I was spending time with friends on one of the few occasions that I hadn’t texted them to cancel at the last minute. These occasions would often end with me consuming a substantial amount of alcohol and feeling fucking fantastic for a fleeting moment, before spending the entire next day in bed recovering and starting the whole pathetic cycle all over again.

There are few things worse in life than having your dad look at you with weary disappointment and sadness in his eyes, but one of them is having your mother burst into near-hysterical crying at the realisation that her eldest daughter had actually hurt herself on purpose. At first I was shocked, and confused at her reaction. Then the tears came and I sobbed, big fat droplets and heavy gulps into her warm white linen-smelling chest while she gripped me tightly and whispered ‘I love you, I love you’ over and over again into my hair.

A fixed rule of the universe is that there’s a certain point at which a massive, complicated lie can go no further and hurtles down towards earth with every intention to expose you in the most devastating and humiliating way, crush your soul, and rip the very fabric of your life to shreds in the process. My lie was exposed in two parts. First, when my mother and father found my first risk

That was about four years ago. I’ve since made my peace with both the terms ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’, learnt which doctors at my local practice are the nicest, and almost completely got my anxious and self-harming behaviours under control. It’s been a long journey, one that feels like forever, with pockets of time that seem as surreal to me now as dreams from years ago. There were several things that helped me to deal with my depression. I say ‘helped’, but what I really mean is they were absolutely vital,

and I have no idea what I would have done otherwise. The first was professional help. I finally sought professional help after experiencing depression for almost two years. After my first session with a counsellor I couldn’t believe I had waited so long. A wonderful woman and another wonderful man at Adelaide University were the hands that pulled me out of that dark and hopeless void. Meanwhile a loving set of arms wrapped themselves around me and held me up while the counsellors and I did battle with the cruel voices in my head. Those arms belonged to my mother. This journey has been difficult for me, but it’s been hell for my mum. The only thing that stopped me from telling her everything, from falling at her feet and spilling my guts and begging her to sweep me up and protect me and help me, from doing exactly what every instinct told me to do, was that I knew as soon as I did that, it would all be over. I knew that it would mean facing my problems, getting help, tacking my life back together bit by bit. And I just wasn’t ready. When it did all come tumbling down, she was there, and she was incredible. She held me; she cried; she yelled at me out of frustration and fear and guilt. We would scream at each other, me insisting that there was nothing wrong, that I was fine, the fear in her eyes just making

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me angrier and more determined ending curiosity and fascination exciting to realise that I am that 27 to lie better next time. I think I with life and the world. Even in person, or that maybe I always was. (off-campus) will always feel guilty about what some of my really dark moments, I still struggle sometimes. I put my mum through. It means I still found joy in reading about Occasionally I resent The that there’s a little more weight to science, art and history. I was still Depression. I blame it for the that every-day, mundane question fascinated by the universe, still fact that I’m 22 and yet to finish ‘How are you?’ when she asks it. It anxious to travel, to see things my undergraduate Arts degree. means that in a deep dark corner and have experiences. The fact That might not seem like a big of her mind, a terrible, horrible that I could make a joke about deal to some, but for a former thought lurks. It’s tiny, and most depression and imagine my life high-achiever it’s a difficult fact to of the time quiet. But a fear such beyond it meant that there was a accept. I’m still battling the cruel as that burrows deep down and small yet bright light at the top of voices every now and again, but plants itself in your mind, and it’s that void, and over time I became these days they’re over-powered impossible to remove. It causes her determined to reach it. by a new, yet familiar voice. She’s to search my eyes when I answer And reach it I did. Fast-forward hopeful and happy, excited about ‘good! Fine! I’m great!’ and it sends four years and I am a fairly and by life, humbled and grateful. an icy shiver down her spine when She wants to travel the phone rings the world, write late at night. A a book and fall in The fact that I could make a joke about depression small group of the She wants lines around my and imagine my life beyond it meant that there was love. to work in art mother’s beautiful a small yet bright light at the top of that void, and galleries because grey-blue eyes are to be surrounded there just for me, over time I became determined to reach it. all day by the because of me. manifestation of The other things that were no content, normal person finishing human creativity and artistic ideas less important to my healing were an Arts degree with plans to is the most exciting thing in the my dad and sister, who, simply by travel next year. I have somehow world to her. loving me and treating me as the managed to collect an incredible The Depression is not same person they believed me to group of friends, people that know something that I can cure, or get be (funny, smart, a bit mischievous me as a happy, sociable person rid of. It will always be there, like a and a bit strange), provided a (albeit one with a short-fuse and large hibernating animal that could constant reminder that I had been slightly cynical sense of humour), be stirred and woken up at any that person, and could be again. and hold on to a few old friends moment. But when she does I’ll Finally, thanks to either genetics, worth their weight in gold. It’s be ready. I’ll never hesitate to ask or my upbringing, I am blessed exciting to feel somewhat like my for help again, to tell the people with two things that became old self again. I’m gaining back I love that I’m not doing so well. invaluable in the process of dealing confidence in my self, my abilities Reaching out my hand, swallowing with inner demons and anxieties, and starting to believe that people the embarrassment and simply and those two things are a great might find me funny, or smart, asking, ‘help’ was the best decision sense of humour, and my neveror worth spending time with. It’s I ever made. ◊

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GENDERED LANGUAGE words: holly ritson art: daisy freeburn

How we use words to define ourselves is a hot topic in linguistic theory at the moment. That’s right, linguistic theory is ‘cool’ and ‘ happening’. I’ll be honest. I’ve been one of those students who diligently does the readings for a tute and speaks up in class about how effectively the author expresses his ideas, only to be corrected with a pointed ‘she’ from someone who cared to take the time to look up the fact that Gro Harlem1 is a ‘lady’ name. It’s easy enough to dismiss this mistaken pronoun usage as irrelevant, but when I started to think about why I’d made the assumption that the writer was some bearded academic in a tweed suit, I found myself a little ashamed. How we use words to define ourselves is a hot topic in linguistic theory at the moment. That’s right, linguistic theory is ‘cool’ and ‘happening’. But seriously, our word choices say more about us than perhaps we’d like them to. Our language communicates where we come from – only ‘heaps good’ South Australians use ‘heaps’ as an adverb. It shows what we’re interested in – be it the latest 12” indie release from an unsigned trip-hop producer or how far ahead of the peloton the yellow 1. Gro Harlem Brundtland is the Chairperson of The Brundtland Commission, whose mission is to unite countries to pursue sustainable development together. She was also the target of the Oslo shootings last July.

jersey’s breakaway is. Importantly today, our language choice portrays our gender identity. We’re often told that women speak more than men, that we speak more emotionally than men, that we speak more apprehensively and less directly. Tradition also dictates that, to be ‘proper ladies’, we should speak softly, gently, meekly and only of appropriate topics, like baking and crochet and how to remove lipstick stains from our doting husbands’ collars. In this way, while our language choice helps us identify our place in society, society, and its construction of our identity, defines what language is appropriate and acceptable. I recently attended a women’s political skills training session to learn how to deal with dominating men, improve public speaking skills and learn ‘how to win arguments with jerks who wont listen because you’re an irrational woman’. The experience of not being taken seriously in a debate for ‘taking things too personally’ or ‘getting too emotional’ is extraordinarily common among women: intelligent, bright women in positions of authority who are dismissed because of the ‘inappropriate’ way they use language. Here, we were advised to use less words, more simply in order to communicate in

a way that could be understood by our male counterparts. I couldn’t help but cringe at the idea that as a woman, I had to learn how to speak ‘like a man’ in order to get my point across. I’ll admit, I’ve been known to get carried away and speak incomprehensibly quickly in the heat of an argument, but the idea that this was a particularly ‘female’ problem that could be addressed by taking some tips from the boys irked me particularly. Ultimately, the workshop was intended to provide practical skills for using language in a way that is clearly and widely understood and, given the political nature of the session, convincing. This knowledge is worthwhile for all people, especially students, who are regularly examined on their communication skills, regardless of their gender. Being able to communicate confidently and effectively should not be seen as a men’s skill, nor should the ability to empathise and consider emotive responses to an issue be solely a woman’s talent. Language, when used correctly, is a powerful tool. While identifying through language use cannot and should not be prevented, using language to create and enforce gender stereotypes is unproductive and ridiculous. ◊

Bluestockings Week (6th10th August) celebrates women in academia; get in touch with Catherine Story, the SRC women’s officer at srcwomens@auu.org.au to find out more.

Pointers on how to avoid unnecessarily gendered language: 1.

Pronouns: use ‘their’ or ‘they’re’ (correctly!) when you can. Otherwise, long live the forward slash! His/her is quite acceptable in many situations where traditionally we’d just see ‘his’. And feel free to be that well-informed person in seminars who pulls everyone else up on their submission to the patriarchy. Including tutors; they love that. Gendered insults: bitch is a female dog, son of a bitch implies a bad mother, dick only refers to male genitalia and, as far as I’m concerned, the

c-word, when referring to your drunken mates at the pub, has not been reclaimed. Anyone can be an idiot, everyone has an asshole, and anyone can be a wanker, regardless of your gender. So if you have to be mean, at least avoid insulting an entire gender while you’re at it. Occupations: Policeperson, fireperson, chair, ombudsperson. Yes, that extra syllable might be a pain (legitimately an excuse I’ve heard used), but just think of the opportunities you invite for a more equal society where anyone can star in a calendar of scantily dressed firepeople posing with big hoses and poles…

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WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD MEN GONE? WHY THE FEEL-GOOD SPORTING CULTURE NEEDS TO DIE

Just over a year ago now, around seven-hundred-thousand people in seven-hundred-thousand houses stayed up pretty late. Together, we christened a new hero. Cadel Evans had been around a few years, and he’d come close to winning the Tour de France before. He had, in fact, come second twice. But like all good stories, this was his year. And like all good heroics, there was talent, preparation, and a pinch of luck. When the dust settled, and we all turned in for what remained of the night, Cadel was the one standing on the high bit of the podium. But it was more than that. The Prime Minister later phoned and interrupted his bath, and the people that call for things in newspapers called for a national holiday. He was a hero. Everybody loved him. What could be bad about something as cathartic as that?

Drugs: So fun, everyone’s doing them! Well, to start with, there’s the cheating. Hero worship can’t be separated from people cheating. To use cycling as an example: there’s barely a Tour de France in history that hasn’t been marred by drug controversies. In the last

ten years, winners such as Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, and (most recently) Alberto Contador have been accused of, or banned for, doping. This year, hopeful Frank Schleck tested positive for a banned diuretic and was kicked from the Tour. No matter what a sportsperson seems like, we don’t have a clue what’s going on in their heads. It’s not up to us to tell when a person is cheating at sport, when the only guides we have are a media we don’t trust and tests we don’t understand. At best, it’s kind of like sharp-shooting for rare ducks in the night-time. At best, we’re always guessing. I don’t want to make this personal. This isn’t about Evans being good and Wiggins being bad or the crazy stuff Froome can do. This is about us guessing. We guess wrong, bad stuff happens: a person who was labelled ‘good’ gets caught doing ‘bad’ things, and the sport falls apart;1 a person labelled ‘bad’ can’t get a job anymore, ‘sorry mate, there’s no place on the team right now’. And every time anyone succeeds, the story isn’t their success, it’s their drug accusation. There’s no little prize to be won at this fair, no teddy-bears of consolation. 1. If Evans was caught doping, the world would fall apart.

words: stella crawford art: sam decena

But this is what we do to our heroes. The rewards are so high, but we tear them to shreds for losing. We talk constantly of ‘bad form’; we say things like ‘maybe they’ll retire’ or ‘maybe they won’t make it’. We refuse to believe in them. Is it any wonder that they try to cheat us into it? So no, idolising one player above the rest doesn’t do the sport any good at all.

This is the Bit Where We Mess Them Up It also doesn’t do them any good. We enjoy the idea that we can watch young people grow up and into whomever they were always going to become. Yet, in the words of slightly misquoted quantum physicists everywhere, observing a system necessarily changes it. Hero worshipping changes people a lot. Watching Bernard Tomic succeed would be lovely if we could believe he did it in spite of his father’s crazy overbearing attitude. But crazy overbearing parental attitudes are child-star bread and butter. The story of Lleyton’s dad making him walk home from matches he lost as a kid was legend on the sweeping tennis courts of my childhood.2 Ian Thorpe was 2. Never did improve my tennis though. Nice try Coach.

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Thorpe could have kept swimming without me having to love him personally; he could have made it at 20 and had a childhood of his own. We had no rights to his life and his thoughts. breaking world records at 17, but then, he did drop out of school in year ten. These were their dreams, and I’ll pay fair dues to them for making it. Not having to sacrifice their childhood dreams to the altar of reality must be fun. But really, Thorpe could have kept swimming without me having to love him personally; he could have made it at 20 and had a childhood of his own. We had no rights to his life and his thoughts. It’s just sad when you’re faced with watching a life become bent out of shape because, purely and paradoxically, you insisted upon watching it. And watching it gets you so little that is real.

Men! And their Manly Manliness! And then there’s the sexism. Growing up, I watched a lot of sport. Then I grew up for real (unfortunately) and learnt, funnily enough, that heroes are all men. And despite having cultivated a healthy sense of irony, the funny fades out for me after a little while. It’s actually damn sad that after the winning the fight for equal prize money in women’s tennis, the argument we’re having now is that it’s actually unfair that women

get paid the same.3 And then you realise that the women on Channel 7’s tennis commentary team are still only commentating women’s matches while the men do both, or that there’s no female commentary at all for the soccer or cycling. And oh wait, we don’t even watch women’s soccer or cycling. Or cricket. Or footy. As far as I can see, the alternative to accepting this is to accept that the whole hero thing just won’t fly any longer. Even if we support riders in the Tour based on their propensity to honour ‘gentlemen’s agreements’4 and cricketers on not inappropriately texting women while being married, it still just doesn’t help the women who end up playing Lingerie Rugby because nobody wants to watch them rock at the sport they love fully clothed. When our collective adoration is bestowed according to criteria that excludes women, even the most worthy men simply prop up a faulty system. Maybe even Evans, the best of the heroes, has to go. 3. Because they play fewer sets – and yes, this is a stupid argument: because a women performing to her full capacity should be payed the same as a man playing to his. Whether two sets is a women’s maximum capacity is a different, more difficult question. 4. And to think I loved Rolland.

I Don’t Need a Hero I grew up with those people, those men. Their names and successes and histories are woven with mine, in just the way Olympics adverts always promise. But right now, I’m sick of watching women lose out to the elegance of the prevailing narrative. I’m also sad for the sportspeople that see media intrusion and harassment as something they have to ‘deal with’ just to do the thing they love. And I’m sad that some of them undermine their own talent and our faith in them. Frankly, not knowing their childhood stories and never seeing their family seems a small price to pay for the sport that we all love. It also seems less creepy, now that I think about it. ◊

If you’ve got something to say about hero culture in sports, join the conversation at facebook.com/ onditmagazine, or email us: ondit@adelaide.edu.au.

CUT THE CRAP words and photo: j-lo mcgoogle-smurf

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Everyone at university uses the university toilets. At least, everyone should. I guess there may be students who hold on till they get home, unleashing their gush in a wave of Yangtze-river-tsunami relief, but for the majority of users bouts of OCD are not enough to prohibit use. The toilets around the Adelaide Uni campus are many and varied. Some more than one architectural era, usually painted in one of the anti-fun pigments; some have showers that no-one uses; some have chalkboards, but no chalk; some of the toilet paper dispensers are locked so you can’t steal toilet paper to take home, and some aren’t. Each has its own character, and everyone must have their own favourite cubicle. The other constant is the graffiti, in which one often tries to outdo the last commenter in wit and sarcasm, and many like to ramble inconsequential nonsense — much like facespace or twitbler. The likelihood of someone taking the few moments out of their day to explore someone else’s written thoughts is possibly at its highest when the desire for distraction is paramount, as is such during toilet use. It is this desire for distraction that has lead me to read some of the most boring and irrelevant musings I’ve ever come across, not to mention the lack of thought that is apparently an issue with students of today. I mean, there are plenty of events and issues affecting us and those around us. Surely this is enough to prevent us from inflicting on the everyday person the mundane and superficial. And while I feel that the everyday can be of interest to anybody, there are levels … and sometimes the drivel and mind traps presented to an interested person

(or, basically, anybody who can speak English) are of genuine base disinterest, to me at least. At the end of the day, we all let ourselves down by not even bothering to discuss the lack of mindfulness in our society. One could argue that most societal ills are usually reducible to humans unthinkingly impacting on other humans (say environment change caused by industry, pyramid schemes, etc.). Anybody could trawl the ABC news top stories list and come up with enough examples to fill a discussion from here to the moon: Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, gun control, the death of Batman’s parents, carbon pricing, Lara Bingle’s feelings on cats, etc. Graffiti, as a form of communication and exchange of opinion, has probably been around since the beginning of comprehensible markings. Political graffiti has its roots in antiquity and examples can be found all over the ancient world. Archaeologists and anthropologists go wild over etchings on rocks and ruins, and what they find is obviously invaluable in understanding the people who generated them. Imagine an archaeologist digging up the toilet doors of the Barr Smith in thousands of years’ time. What on Earth would they make of the student population? ‘It seems that the students enjoyed bickering over side line issues and quoting mediocre musicians.’ One of the elements of New York graffiti is the battle style it employs. There are no turfs in Adelaide; all students are essentially the same. Where does the bickering and cynical mode come from? Are we all now enemies of each other based on the opinions we hold about bands?

Take the stickers on level three in the Barr Smith promoting MoonCups (a brand of menstrual cups). The wall is covered with an array of pro-MoonCup statements from The MoonCup User base, and anti-MoonCup sentiment from The MoonCup Resistance. The MoonCup Resistance (or MCR) find MoonCups disgusting, and are apparently offended by the ads that someone has pasted up. I’m sure the MCR recognise that MoonCups have their positive attributes; why else would they be growing in popularity? But let’s just think for a moment about real issue (the ethics behind our consumerism) rather than the side issue (whether or not you think they’re gross). I’m not some taken-Singer-too-far nut job who thinks affluence is a sin and we should all go live on self-sustaining farms (although that would be nice), but I do think that we all have a responsibility to make significant changes that don’t require a huge amount of effort. And getting used to a MoonCup doesn’t take a huge amount of effort. The most ethical tampons or disposable pads that you can buy are made from a certain amount of recycled cotton, a percentage in the high 90s, but they still come in plastic packets and aren’t recyclable or re-usable. It seems uncontroversial, but we nonetheless get bombarded with wistful souls afraid to envisage menstrual blood, even though their body produces it, like clockwork, every month (unless they have chemically changed their self and are now above bodily fluids and only use the toilets for purposes unrelated). In Napier building, on the second floor, someone has quoted a line from British TV series: ‘Cheese is

a kind of meat.’ Funny enough. But someone else has written: ‘Shut up hippie, no one cares.’ First of all, you seem to have completely missed the joke. I’m not really going to pick on that, maybe you were watching The Biggest Voice or Master Bondi Kitchen Vet instead when that episode went to air, that’s cool, do what you want with your TV. But this one reflects a bigger problem, because it cuts straight to the core of my gripe with our generation. ‘No one cares.’ Really? You might not care about the thousands of sentient creatures that die unnecessary deaths daily because humans want to eat them (and cheese uses those deaths; its rennet content and milk production relies on the death of lots of little baby cows). You might not care about global warming and the fact that animal husbandry is one of the main, if not the main, contributor to that global warming. You might not be interested in the moral arguments against stealing baby cows so we can take their Mums’ milk and killing baby roosters when they’re still fluffy because they won’t lay eggs. Maybe you just don’t have that kind of compassion. But you know what? If you consider yourself a human with a conscience — a free thinking agent capable of making moral decisions — then you should at least care about caring about it. You should care; people should care. One might argue that is the role of the youth — particularly the University Educated Youth who might frequent Napier (yes, I’m especially pointing my finger at you, Arts students) — to question, to challenge, and, hopefully, to change. ‘No one cares’ is not getting us any closer to that aim. And, if after you’ve thought about it, you still don’t care, then fine. I’m not saying you all have to become vegans, but not even considering the ethics behind what you put in your mouth on a daily basis seems wrong. Maybe you don’t want to hear the pompous views of some lefty-arts-student-vegan-femonazi-lesbo-bike-rider, but I sure as hell don’t want to hear about how last week your boyfriend dumped you and your assignment is due this

Friday. Everyone has assignments due, and everyone has bad stuff happen to them. I’m not saying you can’t feel bad, but is the public domain a good place to self indulge? In my time here, I have written some words on those walls, in the hope of stimulating some kind of intelligent discussion. No one responded. I wrote Arthur Schopenhauer, Michel De Montaigne, even Friedrich Nietzsche quotes. No one responded. I asked for an opinion on Julia Gillard taking over from Kevin Rudd. No one responded. In the Barr Smith level 3 toilets the lyrics to a Bright Eyes (yes, really – people listen to them still) song have been written out by more than a few different pens. In Lower Ground Napier some people have had an argument over Bliss N Eso lyrics. The students are more concerned with arguing over Bliss N Eso than they are over great philosophers? Contemporary politics? Let’s start discussing Foucault and Žižek on the toilet walls. Let’s start talking about whether Sharia law should or should not be made compatible with Australian Law, whether or not Israel is in the wrong, what we think of America pulling out of Iraq now the damage is done. Where the blame should lie regarding the Abu Graib situation. What you read lately that inspired, angered, enchanted you. A piece of profound advice. What do you make of the carbon tax? How do you feel about the commodification of education? The toilet doors can be covered with anonymous comments that will stimulate anonymous responses. Take advantage of that! I don’t want to hear about how yesterday he looked at you *sigh*, at whether or not you think badly of yourself for being a virgin, who does or doesn’t allegedly have STIs; and I should God-damned hope I’m not alone in that. ◊

MATERIAL GIRL words lauren varo art: madeleine karutz

Cyndi Lauper once said that girls just wanna have fun, but are girls in rock n’ roll a dying trend?

There’s no hidden secret in the fact that local pub and club gigs in the Adelaide music scene are largely male-dominated and have been for several years. However, watching the audience of a well-known band in a well-known venue late last week I was both mildly bemused and largely disturbed to see the audience stand like stunned mullets as the band’s female drummer walked on stage backed by catcalls along the lines of ‘a chick drummer?! Man, that’s so weird!’ Suddenly, the alarming realisation dawned on me – where are all the women of modern music, or are the days of women in rock done and dusted? This strange phenomenon was something I’d never fully acknowledged, so needless to say it hit me harder than the devastation of first hearing Johnny Ruffo’s heartbreakingly deplorable sexual conquest confession ‘On Top’, but delving deeper I realised maybe this newfound taboo wasn’t so unknown. Triple J acknowledged it, excluding any female-fronted bands from their Hottest 100 Of All Time countdown in 2009. Universal Music acknowledged it upon releasing a ‘tribute’ album featuring the greatest female-written ballads performed entirely by male musicians. Even the record industry itself acknowledges it, with male CEOs heading the big four labels and approximately 66%

of workers in the industry comprised by men. Ironically, women have often been the apples of men’s eyes, sparking inspiration for many of the world’s greatest hits: from Elvis Presley to The Rolling Stones to the scores of Beatles songs mentioning ‘lady’, ‘love’, and ‘Lucy’ more frequently than the number of Paul McCartney’s failed relationships. Even some of rock’s hardest musicians were stirred by sweet and gentle femineity, unless of course there was another reason Kings Of Leon’s sex was on fire. Nevertheless, there remains a significant absence of women in today’s music industry who act as role models for female empowerment and women in the music industry. When thinking classic girl power anthems, nothing springs faster to mine than Aretha Franklin’s soul hit ‘Respect’, which not only taught women all about dignity, esteem and honour, but taught them how to spell it too. Since 1965, the closest we’ve come to ‘Respect’ is Beyoncé Knowles’ hipdislocating ‘Single Ladies’ and The Pussycat Dolls’ sexually charged ‘I Don’t Need A Man’. The validity of such songs as today’s female power ballads remains questionable, however; we must ask ourselves whether such portrayal of women is necessary to strengthen

the music industry. Should we endorse young, budding female artists stripping down and dancing seductively in order to market the latest album at the male masses? Or should we suggest that the only route to international superstardom is to join an all-girl band, write a few high rotation hits and, with the assistance of People Magazine’s ‘Most Beautiful Woman’ crown, put a ring on a former dealer from the hood turned rap extraordinaire and name your first born child after coloured evergreen? Perhaps both of these alternatives, though, are negated by Britney Spears’ dramatic decline. She proved once and for all that – despite the winning combination of international chart success, beauty and marriage – after the inevitable rapid spiral into depression, alcoholism and public breakdown, X-Factor will always have the backs of America’s favourite washed-up former pop stars. With the exception of female artists who subject themselves to objectification for the sake of sales to such a point that has any feminist weeping into her beloved copies of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, who are the strong and independent female musical role models of today? If it’s femme-pop you’re looking for, look no further that a star so feminine they address her by Lady, hailed a modern day Madonna: Lady Gaga. Flaunting meat

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dresses, advocating gay rights and transforming to a latex clad HIV/ AIDS combatant, Gaga plays no poker face when it comes to political statements. Yet sadly her activism is generally lost; most think she’s just as deranged as her name suggests. Likewise, while Björk became an iconic figure for women in rock during an era in which bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam dominated the grunge scene, her crazy antics from swan dresses to paparazzi attacks overshadowed her skilful vocal gymnastics evident on tracks such as ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’. Thankfully, there are several exceptions, several women whose talents outshine their off-stage antics. Karen O, lead singer of New York indie-rock band The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, flaunts a style similar to that of punk rock icon Joan Jett. Her music prowess has seen her band generate a trilogy of three anthemic albums, compose the soundtrack to Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are and tour with some of the world’s most renowned music festivals including Glastonbury, Lollapalooza and the soon to be Big Day Out 2013. Similarly, Florence Welch, engineer of British indie band Florence + The Machine, has won scores of fans internationally, achieved both mainstream and alternative success and produced two number one records, the first of which went platinum in Australia,

UK and Ireland – and all this in a career span of merely five years. Among many others, these two artists prove that musical integrity is entirely obtainable without the need to sell one’s souls to objectification of female sexuality. But until such women can proudly pronounce the famous lyrics of Helen Reddy ‘I am woman, hear me roar’, maybe music really is a man’s world. ◊

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art: alex stjepovic

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ROTHMAN BITES BOOKS NAOMI TRAEGER prefers her books without batteries. Books are – among towels, bars of soap, and hairpins – the most useful of tools in our society. The benefits of owning a book vastly outweigh the costs, and alternatives to books such as E-readers fall short of the mark. Books do not require batteries. Unless you have not gotten past those novelty children’s books with a button that triggers a sound affect to go along with the added textile cues provided by bits of interesting materials pasted on the pages, you don’t need to worry about a book ‘working’. Everything you need is already there, on the pages. You can take a book on holiday, and although it might weigh down your luggage, you don’t have to worry about packing a charger. Fingerprints and stains are encouraged in a used book. Eating and drinking while you read can enhance the experience, and in some instances it is required. For example, it would be blasphemy to not eat little pieces of chocolate while you’re reading a tacky romance novel, or to not drink a cup of English Breakfast when indulging in some Austen. With your typical E-reader, you’ll have to worry about crumbs and spillage, whereas you can give no second thoughts to quaffing beer to the musings of Nick Hornby, or smoking Rothmans cigarettes and hating the world with Christopher Hitchens. A dog-eared, water-damaged, spine-broken copy of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-haunted World that was given to me by my father five years ago sits on my desk.

Coffee stains and what appear to be the remnants of a Skittle are evidence of my usage. An E-reader cannot withstand the treatment that a book can. Full bookcases are impressive. It is a subtle way to not only display your literary taste; shelf upon shelf of books will make you appear intelligent and tasteful. As the old joke goes, light travels faster than sound, which is why some people appear brighter before they speak. Filling up a bookcase or two with books that you at least have heard about and can make vague references to will make you seem, to your visitors, like a well-rounded, inquisitive and interesting human being. Make note that in order to effectively employ this method, you must choose the books you display carefully. An E-reader cannot be put on display, because that would just eat up the battery. Put all of your Stephanie Meyers and Dan Browns down on the bottom shelf or hide them under the sink, unless you happen to be entertaining an idiot; in which case, rethink some of your life choices. Books are great to have around in an emergency. Many books are quite sturdy, and can be used as a projectile, shield, or – in circumstances of extreme weather conditions and with no available alternative – a hat. A book, especially if it is a hardback, can be thrown at whoever may be posing a threat, or offending, or in any way annoying the potential book-lobber. A thin hardback, when placed in a jacket pocket, can serve as a bullet-proof shield which may indeed save your life. I know this happens because I’ve seen it in the films. A typical busload of strangers is full of potential awkwardness and unwanted interaction. This is where a book can be used as a different kind of shield. When one sees another reading a book, the former assumes that the latter is intelligent and therefore, in some way, more important; therefore, the former will not interrupt the latter’s reading. This application is also useful in airports, bars, restaurants and family gatherings. An E-reader, on the other hand, will only serve to mark you out as someone who has a good deal of money or at least one sellable item. A book is made primarily out of paper, and can be recycled. A book does not need a warranty. A book cannot shatter. A book can be handed down and treasured. You can browse a bookstore, and you can feel the pages and touch the words. ◊

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MIDNIGHT MUSINGS NEVER AFTER ride off into the sunset with OSHADHA ALUTHWALA. During exam-study procrastination, I found myself watching yet another Tyra Banks Show excerpt on YouTube. Still sniffling over the last one (in which a fifteen-year-old girl realised that her whorish tendencies were really a misplaced cry out for love because her recently-imprisoned father hated her and she had no friends), I found myself drawn to a video with the enthralling title ‘Mums Train Kids To Be Gold Diggers’. One mother, a charming Nicki Minaj wannabe, claimed that she had trained her eight-yearold daughter not to ‘conversate’ with boys in her class unless they offered her cookies. The mother sitting next to her responded that ‘a cookie can be here today and gone tomorrow’, eliciting a fist-pump on my behalf. My inner feminist was a little elated by this particular insight. Elated, that is, until I read the top comment of the video: ‘sure, this theory does work in terms of money. It works in terms of love too’. I realised for the umpteenth time that a) I was still dreadfully single and b) that ‘love’ is a very fickle thing indeed. I was raised in a single-mother household which had survived every kind of tumultuous hardship without the help of any man, but despite my frequent feminist outcries, I secretly still believed that I would one day fall in love and bring my family up from the dark depths of skepticism into the world

of Mr. Knightley (far superior to Mr. Darcy in many ways), and large wedding dresses, and ‘real’ happiness. However, after watching this video, it hit me how important a woman’s independence is to her. I realised I am independent: I have the ability to make my own fortune, to provide myself with the lifestyle I want, and the power to consume as many cookies as I’d like to without the aid of anyone. It was a liberating thought. What worries me is that a lot of women these days have not yet comprehended this and spend a lot of time thinking that despite whatever peril they may be in, they will hopefully meet their Prince Charming and be saved by a happily ever after. This notion has been made yet more prevalent after the recent Royal ‘Fairytale’ Wedding. Nonetheless, after stripping down any Disney movie to its core, what is made evident is that we never really know what happens after the prince and his bride drive/ ride/sail/fly off into the sunset. Who’s to say that Cinderella won’t discover that she’s married a very silly man, who could not have known the difference between a coach and a pumpkin? Who’s to say that Ariel won’t regret the decision to move so very far away from her family to be with a man she hardly even knows? Marrying rich, successful Princes is not the yellow-brick road it was once thought to be. What’s disturbing is that this delusion continues to prevail; I have met numerous Uni students who hope to find their future partner in a law/medical student ‘because any other kind of degree just isn’t financially secure in this day and age, Shadi, we can’t all afford to be hippies!’. However, the truth is that real freedom can only be attained from true self-sufficiency. Relationships should be about being in love, not being saved from financial or other ruin. One cannot really consider one’s partner their equal if one partner is always relieving the other of their burdens, financial or otherwise. My point comes down to three simple equations: love does not equal marriage, marriage does not equal security, and security does not equal love. Well, you may ask, what exactly is love? That is another question altogether... ◊

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Photo: Pelle Sten

STUFF YOU LIKE

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larkrise to candleford: emma forrest likes this.

roller derby: emily renner likes this.

This BBC series is an excellent means of procrastination and is responsible for the lack of uni work I’ve been doing lately. Set in Oxfordshire in the 19th century, Larkrise to Candleford follows sixteen-year-old Laura as she moves from her small country hamlet, Larkrise, to the ‘big’ town of Candleford (hence the title which, I admit, is not the most inventive). At a time when so much was changing in society, the show provides a glimpse of the vast differences between country and city life while exploring the relationships of the (numerous!) characters in the series. Think Jane Austen crossed with Downton Abbey. It’s drama-filled, often hilarious and, if you get bored (what’s wrong with you?!), you can play ‘spot-the-famousBritish-actor’ while sipping tea and eating scones. Spiffing!

Girls rolling around on skates, flaunting their femininity, unleashing their inner demon and falling over A LOT - probably the most entertaining sport ever. As a spectator, the fear of potentially having a large woman in skates coming flying at you from the rink is better than any thrill-seeking adventure that I know of. Check it out: adelaiderollerderby.com.au.

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julia wertz: gemma beale likes her.

lesbians: alison coppe likes them.

your submissions: on dit likes these.

I like Julia Wertz because Julia Wertz does not give a single fuck but still manages to be socially inept. She is best know for writing a comic called Fart Party that was more about the ups and downs of alcoholism than it was about farts. I like her because she is simultaneously immature, cantankerous and honest. I like her because I idolised her all through high school then actually got to meet her and she was kinda rude. Mostly though, you’ll like her because she’s self-deprecating and no-nonsense like all good people should be. Buy and read all of her books.

Lesbians are pretty fantastic. As a lesbian and a writer, I love nothing more than to be around and observe lesbians. From the checked-shirtand-Blundstone-wearing butches to the dressed-to-kill femmes, dings with tongue piercings, androgynous ladies with small breasts and no bras, women who wear singlet tops and don’t shave their under arms, dykes with tattooed names of lovers both past and present. These might seem like cartoon figures from some sort of lesbian Mills and Boon, but these women, in my experience, are real women. It doesn’t mean that they’ll always be butch, that they’ll always be femme, or that they will always have rainbow hair and nose piercings, but that these pictures represent very real figures from the pallet of lesbian life. From your k.d langs to your Melissa Etheridges to your Gertrude and Alice, to Ellen and Portia... or that lady that runs the travel agency near your house with the silver hair and the crisp white shirts. I love (not like) lesbians.

Sharing is caring. If you like something, tell us about it here. Review anything at all - books, movies, CDs, games, anything – whether it sucked or blew your mind. You’ve got 50-100 words and our email address is this: ondit@adelaide.edu.au.

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He’s there. Standing close enough to touch but we can’t touch. He smiles, just as he always does, his hair sprouting spikes in all directions. We don’t dare lose eye contact. He starts to fade into the white background… my face is suddenly wet… he flickers and is wrenched away from me. My small consolation is that at least this time I knew it would happen.

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building. My scepticism grew at the creaking screen door, but inside the space was pristine. Light blue surrounded me: carpet, walls, chairs. Even the agent who beckoned me over was dressed in blue. ‘I want to go to Heaven,’ I declared. I didn’t sit down. building in the city centre and I decided to catch a bus in the very next day. I once told my brother I’d die for him. He laughed it off.

No one would find it unless they specifically looked for it. It wasn’t that publicised. No air time during ad breaks, no snippets of speech in between songs on the radio, no announcement on the side of a bus or a pop-up window during an internet surfing session. It was not something you’d accidently stumble across. Even so, all I had to do was type ‘visiting loved ones in Heaven’ into Google and the official website appeared at the top of my computer screen. I clicked on it. As I skimmed the page for the first time, I was convinced it was a joke. But I needed it to be true, so I wrote down the name of the travel agent. They had a

I wasn’t there when it happened. He became a statistic on the evening news, a common story people had immunity against, yet were forced to be reminded of every now and then so complacency didn’t become a threat. My brother’s bus careered into a truck while I was at home baking chocolate chip biscuits because it was a chocolate chip biscuit kind of day. I’d told him that morning I’d have the biscuits waiting for him. He’d looked at me sternly and said, ‘you better.’ I got off the bus in the city and walked down the bustling shopping strip, dodging shoppers and avoiding buskers. I walked past Hungry Jack’s and wound my way through a maze of side streets. Number eighteen was a dilapidated

‘Certainly. I can book you in for two-thirty next Thursday, or Friday at eight, and there may be an opening on Tuesday; the poor lady’s fallen ill.’ The agent’s white hair fell across his small round glasses. I asked how, exactly, it worked. Basically, the doctors and nurses on duty would put me under anaesthesia and deliberately kill me. While they were reviving me, I’d have my holiday in Heaven. ‘Visits are six minutes at the most,’ the agent said. ‘How many people come through here in a day?’ ‘About sixteen; give or take a few. Usually 115 a week.’ ‘And how many survive?’ ‘Most,’ the agent said. ‘Three or four deaths a week. But I’ll be straight with you: the majority return and say they never made it to Heaven.’ He pushed a sheaf of papers towards me. ‘There’s a risk with any holiday you take.’

I skimmed the papers, but I’d already made my decision. I booked the two-thirty slot for the following Thursday. If my parents knew what I was planning they’d admit me to the nearest mental institution. They hardly noticed I got home late that afternoon, and didn’t question where I’d been. Supposedly, they couldn’t remember they had another, living, teenager. I trudged up to my bedroom and placed the papers on my desk. I filled out all the information and, without hesitation, signed my name beneath the terms and conditions. The night before my procedure, I couldn’t sleep, like the time Mum and Dad took my brother and I to New Zealand. It was my first time on a plane and I spent the night before worrying that the plane would take a dive and plunge deep into the ocean. Tonight, I tried to decide what I’d say to my brother in the few minutes we’d have. I wished I spoke some other language. Something expressive like French, or one with multiple words for love.

‘That’s okay.’ Dad nodded. ‘See you tonight.’ ‘Tonight,’ I echoed. Mum kissed me on the forehead. ‘Put your stockings on. You’ll freeze today.’ ‘I will,’ I said. Mum left. She hadn’t noticed I was already wearing my stockings. I reached into my pocket and placed an envelope on the kitchen table. It didn’t say much; just reassured my parents I loved them. Should anything happen, they’d at least have the words my brother didn’t get to say.

the excitement building inside me. It was two years since I’d seen my brother. I wanted to see him. I needed to see him. I was going to see him. I lay on the bed in the operating theatre, blinded by the bright lights hovering over me. A gloved hand secured a mask over my nose and mouth. As the anaesthesia took hold, I knew what I’d say to my brother. Nothing. If I died, we’d have forever to exchange words. If I survived, just a glimpse would tell him I’d died for him, as I said I would. ◊

I remained calm on the bus into the city. The world whizzed past for maybe the last time. I imagined a car colliding with my bus. I almost wished one would. But I got off the bus unscathed and trekked through the city. I wasn’t scared. I probably should have been. I mean, I was about to die. Still, I couldn’t stop

On Thursday morning, I got up and dressed in my school uniform. I sat at the kitchen table with cornflakes. ‘It’s cold today,’ Dad said. ‘Do you want a ride to school?’

HOLIDAY words: raelke grimmer

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From Volum2 12, Issue 6, 1944; and Volume 46, Issue 9, 1978

RETROSPECTIVE

Look at this guy from April 1944.

The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Room was officially opened in 1978. Elle Dit reflects on the continued importance and relevance of a Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Room in 2012 on Page 10.

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DIVERSIONS

(answers on page 4)

CRYSTAL BOLLOCKS with psychic psusan Aries: Now is a good time to reach for the stars, literally. Seek them out at movie openings, on the street, and inside their houses. Taurus: This month you will alternate between smelling like roses and smelling like the compost that they grow from. As a result, any romantic getaways you are considering should probably involve snorkelling. Gemini: Water, fire, air and dirt. Fuckin’ magnets. How do they work? Cancer: You’ll be weirdly loved by animals this week. Take advantage of it by visiting zoos, and you’ll be able to fashion yourself into an ad hoc Beastmaster/Ruler of the Seven Seas. Leo: Happy birthday, you peeps. Virgo: Guilty pleasures will bring you good fortune. Quiz night victories and Wanting to Be a Millionaire are within your grasp. Also free Mars Bars.

Libra: Mercury is positioned such that someone might actually notice your passive aggressiveness this month, but just in case they don’t, learn to be aggressive without being passive. Scorpio: I know it looks tasty, but don’t eat the vegan LSD cupcake. Trust me. Sagittarius: Adjusting to life without Master Chef for another year will lead to a string of poor decisions. At least they’ll supply some good stories for the months you have to interact with humans outside of cooking shows. Capricorn: Your fear of clowns will suddenly dissipate this week as you become engulfed by the realisation that you will die alone. Aquarius: Google Gemini’s horoscope word-for-word for some serious spiritual enlightenment. You’ll thank me later. Pisces: You’re never gonna dance again; your guilty feet have got no rhythm.

TARGEDOKU Find as many words as you can using the letters on the Sudoku grid (including a 9 letter word). Words must be four letters or more and include the highlighted letter. Use the letters to solve the Sudoku (normal sudoku rules apply). Hint: historical hangout location for the ladies.

I I N

G C

U A

U C

M C

I A

U Y

M C