Edition 5: Turning the Tide

The ANU Women’s Department Magazine

Edition 5 Semester 2, November 2019

Bossy

Turning the Tide

Bossy would not exist without the generous support of the ANU Women’s Department and Woroni. We thank them for their support, and for the amazing work they do for members of our community.

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We acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, who are the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Bossy is sourced, edited, printed and distributed.

We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

We also acknowledge that this land – which we benefit from occupying – was stolen, and that sovereignty was never ceded.

Within this ongoing echo of colonialism, we commit, going forward, to do better in amplifying the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within our community.

We also commit to ensure the incoming team for 2020 honours the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories and stand by their right to recognition.

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Nupur Apte and Siang Jin Law 2019 ANUSA Women’s Officers A short reflection such as this could never do justice to all the hard work that has been put into this year by us both, the Women’s Department committee and any volunteers that have helped us over the course of the year. It’s definitely been an eventful year, from us stepping into the role in August, the Open Day protest, our Body Positivity campaign and much more. This year has brought some of the biggest collective meetings we’ve ever seen, with old and new students coming in to join us and our work. We’re so incredibly proud that we have created such an active, welcoming and engaged group on campus, and to continue to represent those people in the work that we do.

This year one of the things we are most proud of us is the EmBody Power Campaign ran in Semester One. It brought a lot of issues that surrounded a lot of us but was never talked about in the open so candidly and through the events that we ran as well. The Body Positivity movement is often something that is shrouded in false messages of self love when what should really be focused on is fat liberation along with the inclusion of bodies with disabilities. We believe that, to the best of our ability, we tried to reflect this message in all the events we ran as part of the campaign; from burlesque dance classes to life drawing events and even in our zine. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their engagement with the EmBody Power Campaign.

The success and visibility associated with this campaign, however, was not something that was directly translated into our advocacy as Co-Women’s Officers. Work surrounding Respectful Relationships policy creation and reform is as difficult as it is invisible. That being said, we would also like to thank ANUSA, PARSA and the Respectful Relationships Unit for all of their help and support this year - it’s been a tough year but seeing the passion, the hard work and the outcomes of that work has made it all worth it. We would also like to thank all the student advocates who came before us, Pri, Laura, Holly and many more; it is on your shoulders that we stand on, and we are so proud to have continued your work.

Bossy will always hold a special place within the Women’s Department - it is a brilliant, independent medium for all members of our collective to voice their opinions and thoughts, and for them to be unapologetically bossy. It is always so exciting to see a fresh issue waiting to be picked up, read and loved, and we cannot wait to see what this year’s team has worked so hard to create.

Next year, the Department will be lead by Jin. In my (Nupur’s) experience working with her as Deputy Officer and then as Co-Officer, I can say with full confidence that there is not a single other person that I know that is as hardworking and driven as her. Not a day goes by without her expressing interest and concern about the many happenings within the Women’s Department. Not a day goes by without her showing her genuine care and concern for this collective. I could not be prouder of Jin and I could not be more optimistic for the future of this department under her leadership. I might be going away to the other side of the world, but that won’t stop me from looking with eagerness to what she will accomplish next year because I know that whatever it is, it will be incredible.

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Letter from the Editors This year has been challenging for Bossy. At many points, it has felt as though we have been fighting against opposing currents: increases in printing costs, uncertainty of funding, changes in the editorial team throughout the year to name just a few.

That only makes us more proud of being able to produce Edition 5 and platform the opinions and stories of the incredible women and non-binary students and alumni of ANU. Despite this uncertainty, we managed to organise three successful workshops: two collaging workshops and one workshop in collaboration with the Women’s Departments on writing about bodies. We are grateful for the patience of the Women’s Officers (Pri, Jin, Nupur) who have supported Bossy throughout the year. We also are particularly grateful for the sub-editors who stayed on for the entire year, despite all of the uncertainty.

One big change we made to Bossy this year was to launch an annual print magazine, a change from the bi-annual magazines for the last two years. This was a difficult but necessary decision to ensure that we could pull together a quality magazine that includes as many different voices as possible. It also meant that we were able to pay artists who performed at the launch, something that was very important to us.

The turning of the tide brings a future of many possibilities. We hope our print magazine will feature more art and academic pieces by ANU students, staff, and alumni. We are also re-committing to audience engagement online which has been lost throughout the year. Content will be fresh, have attitude and expertise!

We are so proud of all the authors, artists, sub-editors, and editors who have created this edition of Bossy Magazine. It is a testament to the creativity and passion of our community, the power of collective action, and the importance of a space dedicated to the diverse experiences of women, female-aligned, and non-binary people.

Sayler Allen, Juliette Baxter, and Imogen McKay Editorial Team (Content Editor, Design Editor, and Managing Editor)

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Contents 1 Acknowledgement of Country 2 Forewords from your Women’s Officers Nupur Apte and Siang Jin Law 3 Letter from the Editors Sayler Allen, Juliette Baxter and Imogen McKay

21 The Comprehensive and Complete Guide to Women Meghan Malone 23 Non-Mimetic Self Portrait Emily O’Neill 24 Lady Garden Kate Matthews

7 Letter to Susan Tay Vakeeswaran

25 How to Bloom Aryanne Caminschi

8 The Literary Mind of Kathryn Hind Interview by Eilis Fitt

28 Women’s Climbing Initiative Karolina Kocimska

10 Six Literary Women Who Should Be Your Heroes Jemma Sbeghen 12 Tension and Release Abbie Holbrook 13 Save Me the Waltz Cathy Egan 14 Maya Angelou Kate Brien 16 Gender Roles in Backcountry: How Inclusivity May Reduce Mortality Rates Lucy Skeldon 18 The Walk to Your Apartment is 7 Minutes Long Sayler Allen 19 In the Jeans Jasmine Lyons 20 Head in the Ground Olivia Gates

30 Walking Familiar Paths: How Many Marches Does it Take?

Sumithri Venketasubramanian 32 Plants are the New Children Juliette Baxter 34 Voyeur Linh Dan Ta 35 Feminist in Progress Elizabeth Crane 36 The Menstrual (Re)Cycle: Green Responses to the Red River Interview by Eilis Fitt 38 “Women Supporting Women”: The World of Competitive Female Sport Interview by Rachel McCrossin 40 Queer Fashion Photography by Imogen Clarke 45 How Much Good is there in the World?

Aveline Yang

47 My Gift to You Kate Booth 48 Grandma’s Warning Sydney Farey 50 A Childhood Memory Kate Booth 51 Chameleon Linh Dan Ta 52 Fourteen Years Anonymous 54 'Souvenirs’ Series Eleanor Neumann 56 Art by Katie Chauvel 57 Scars Kate Booth 58 Care Jessica Ramamurthy 59 Little Red Lunchbox Aveline Yang 61 Is there an End to Endometriosis?

Ailsa Schreurs 62 Sugar Faith Stellmaker 65 Oh Really? YES Really!

Bronte Charles 66 A Snap Is the Sound of a Feminist Killjoy Nicole Molyneux

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67 Untitled Eilis Fitt

91 The Day I Become a Woman Pat Bruce

108 Caught Between Cultures Asil Habara

68 To Be Well Clare Jessup

92 We Don’t All Start from the Same Place Vaishnavi Rathinam

110 Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale Sophie Tallis

70 Breathe Kate Booth 71 Waste of Space Leah Smith 72 A Letter to My Sexual Assaulter Maddie Chia 74 A Recipe for Anger Erin Kirsch 76 Balancing Debate Sophie Aboud 78 We Share DNA, Not a Body Anonymous 80 A View from the Mainland Halie 82 Halloween 2017 Abbie Holbrook 84 SCUM Manifesto: Valerie Solanas Eliza Gudgeon 86 Untitled Asil Habara 88 An Interview with DJ Gulia Jillard Interview by Rachel McCrossin 89 Indigenous and Black Feminists to Stand With and Get Behind Bossy Team

94 The Farewell Maddie Chia 96 Ask Chelsea Rock 97 The Pill: Friend or Foe? Reema Hindi, Ruby King, and Julia Benoit

112 Blue Champagne Lucy Bei 113 The Social Construction of Borderline Personality Disorder Linh Dan Ta, Art by Ailsa Schreurs 116 Review of The Favourite Lucinda Janson

98 Juice that Runs when Held Karolina Kocimska

118 Mother Nature is Bigger than We Are Rachel McCrossin

99 Community Guidelines Karolina Kocimska

120 Sex Work and Decriminalisation Imogen McKay

100 Floriade Maddie Chia

122 I’ve Decided to Revamp My Porn Sayler Allen

101 Co-Star: A Life Companion Clare Myers

124 Indulge Natasha Pidcock

102 The Many Layers of Earth that is You Samihah Fattah

125 EG:1 - 1990 Natasha Pidcock

104 The Broken Compass of Student Politics Madhumitha Janagaraja 106 I Just Want to Ride My Bike Lucy Vandergugten 107 1960’s Silence Annie van Limbeek

126 Party in Your Pants Ailsa Schreurs 127 Is this Modern Love?

Madeleine Castles

7. Letter to Susan 6 8. The Literary Mind of Kathryn Hind 10. Six Literary Women Who Should Be Your Heroes 12. Tension and Release 13. Save Me the Waltz 14. Maya Angelou 16. Gender Roles in Backcountry: How Inclusivity May Reduce Mortality Rates 18. The Walk to Your Apartment is 7 Minutes Long 19. In the Jeans 20. Head in the Ground 21. The Comprehensive and Complete Guide to Women

1. Glacier (a slow moving mass of ice formed by the accumulation and compaction of snow on mountains or near the poles) I’m aware that I’m formed. Moving through time and change. I’m drawn towards a magnetic force, knowing that sometimes the smallest inspirations become important markers in my navigation of the world.

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Letter To Susan Tay Vakeeswaran Dear Susan, There’s never a greater gift than a moment of tenderness in a calloused world, and that’s what you gave – a bleeding heart that refused to clot. As Art lay dying on the dissection table of the intellectual elite, you made the case for its soul. There was never a moment where you let your passion, nor your skill remain at a distance from your love for humanity. I’ve heard stories of your brutal sensitivity – of your candlelit production of Waiting for Godot in the midst of the Siege of Sarajevo, and your devotion to Rushdie when he was sentenced to death for his words. There is something so striking, so admirable in your consistency that I can’t help but adore you. In the face of pandemic indifference, you held the torch for the poets, the novelists, the lovers to be heard. I love how you love, and I love that I can see myself reflected in your softest moments. I love the attentive obsession you have with all feelings, and your need to protect them from the caustic force of impartial evaluation.

I love your fear – you fear for yourself; you fear for those you love, and you fear for all people and things. You make your fear a strength, and this delicate strength has inspired generations of women to own and weaponise our inescapable state of vulnerability.

When you were told to mould to the will of your admirers and critics alike, you followed your own compass and refused to be set on any one course as determined by their opinions. Ambitious, steadfast and earnest you showed me what it meant to create as a woman; as someone who wanted to lay themselves bare for a hostile audience. I hope sometimes you look fondly at the women exposing their souls to the unwelcoming world– being unabashedly and dangerously sincere.

Moreover, Susan, you let yourself be moved by what you saw and encouraged others to do the same. You were right, by the way – we are a voyeuristic race.

The photographs that you claimed were merely serving us empty reflections of our world, void of feeling, have become a media dictatorship that too often leaves us at a complete disconnect from one another. We are saturated every day with a beautiful emptiness that shows us pain but never wants us to feel it.

It shows us suffering but never wants us to experience its depth. You let yourself experience pain, you put yourself in the thicket of it, and it reminds me of what is real. You remind me that being a woman, being a feminist, and being an activist can’t be done from behind a screen. You remind me that in the right hands, Art is a revolutionary tool, and beauty - one of rebellion. You make me want to do more but not be more, and that is rarer now than ever. You taught me to find contentment in my deficiencies and urgency in my compassion.

For all this, I thank you Susan.

Sincerely, Tay

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The Literary Mind of Kathryn Hind Interview by Eilis Fitt

Kathryn Hind is a Canberra-born writer and winner of the inaugural Penguin Literary Prize for her first novel, Hitch (published June 2019). Hitch is the story of Amelia, a twenty-something woman hitchhiking across Australia with her dog Lucy. It explores themes of consent, agency and grief with empathy and raw emotion.

that job, or I could have a proper shot at what I was passionate about: reading and writing fiction. I was accepted onto a Master’s program in the UK and in the first weeks there, I began Hitch.

An excerpt from the beginning of Hitch was published in an earlier edition of Bossy and now that the book has been officially released, Bossy sat down with Kathryn to find out more about how and why she writes.

A scene appeared in my mind, a young woman, Amelia, by the side of the road with her dog, thumb out. I didn’t know what was going to happen - who might pull over, the challenges that lay ahead, where she would end up - and neither did she. The image was a strong set up for a story, for a physical and emotional journey. I wrote scene after scene, exploring Amelia’s character, seeing what I could learn about her through the interactions and conflicts she has with the drivers who help her progress along her way.

Tell us about the writing process.

What came first – the story or the intention to write one?

The intention was definitely there first.

I had been working a comfortable job in communications and reached a crossroads: I could continue working

How did you begin? Did you have a plan for the whole story before you started?

How much did the story change between when you began writing and its publication?

I spent six-and-a-half years working on Hitch. During that time, some parts of the story underwent huge changes while others are recognisable from the initial draft. I write in an intuitive way rather than to a plan so in the beginning stages, it’s a matter of writing and then looking over what’s there. In revisions, I try to understand what it all means; I work on bringing out the most important truths in ways that feel powerful and that drive the story forward. Through years of repeating this process, I slowly uncovered Amelia’s desires, her fears, her secrets; she is a well-defended woman who doesn’t divulge much of her inner world so hers was a difficult story to tell.

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looking more closely at these characters, a world of activity and feeling can be revealed despite the dominance of patriarchal systems and behaviours affecting their lives. I wrote Hitch before I began my PhD, but it speaks to this idea. Amelia might be seen as someone relinquishing control over her own life; she is driftwood, taken along by the currents of other people’s lives.

And yet, beneath this external story another breathes: Amelia’s story of courage, hope and recovery.

What was the publishing process like?

I signed with a literary agent when I’d completed the first draft and the manuscript was rejected multiple times by publishers in Australia and in the UK. The feedback I received was promising and useful (and I agreed with what editors were saying). I kept returning to Hitch with new ideas about how to improve it so it could reach somewhere in the realms of my aspirations for it.

Cut to the inaugural Penguin Literary Prize in 2018: I entered Hitch in the prize and to my absolute delight and surprise, it won.

The publishing process has been a steep learning curve but one that I have enjoyed immensely. Suddenly there’s a team of people championing Hitch and this is in absolute contrast to the solitary environment in which the work was created. That said, the manuscript remained in my control (with astute and much-appreciated input from my editor) until I’d finished the final edits.

It’s when the book is available to the public that it officially leaves my hands, and this is something I’m still grappling with. The one manuscript I worked on has multiplied, and readers have the characters I created living in their heads, now; it’s a surreal experience.

Hitch focuses on the story of Amelia, a young woman hitchhiking through the Australian outback by herself. What are your experiences with being a female traveler?

I did some hitchhiking a few years ago.

I sometimes did it with another person, sometimes by myself. I have travelled alone extensively. Whether hitchhiking or travelling in more socially acceptable ways, I felt the need to be hyper-vigilant: watching strangers closely, anticipating threat, changing a course of action as nighttime descends, saying no to proposals that may have been harmless and fun because of fear or an invisible pressure to be ‘on-guard’. We see these behaviours in Amelia, too; through her experiences I wanted to highlight the ways in which the world is extra threatening for her because of her aloneness and her past experiences. She is regularly chided for daring to move through the world in the manner of her choosing. Why are people so quick to blame Amelia for asking for trouble rather than focusing on the people perpetuating danger, or on the society that allows this behaviour?

Now that you’ve finished Hitch, you are undertaking a PhD in literature and creative writing.

What connections are there between these two projects?

As part of PhD I am examining the passive states of female characters in fiction with the theory that there is much more going on than meets the eye. By

What sorts of books do you enjoy reading?

Anne Enright is one of my favourite authors, particularly her novel The Green Road. I adore All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. I prefer my fiction to be hard-hitting, and these are, but both have a dark comic edge. Next on my reading list: Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko and Where Reasons End

by Yiyun Li.

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Six Literary Women Who Should Be Your Heroes Jemma Sbeghen

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Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda Fitzgerald, the beautiful wife and word mistress of F. Scott Fitzgerald was an icon in her own right.

Together they were considered the untamed Prince and Princess of their generation. However, beneath the superficiality and danger of this iconic charade, which defined a new era of liberation, was a toxic relationship that, inevitably, shaped Zelda into the original manic pixie dream girl: a woman who exists merely to promote male self-discovery and success. The darling of early 1900’s Alabama, Zelda was notorious for her outrageous and nomadic lifestyle, electric wit and charm.

Scott took inspiration and, at times, knowingly plagiarised Zelda’s many journals whilst simultaneously suppressing her own publishing efforts; stealing her drafts and sending them onto publishers under his own name. Additionally, his character of Gloria in ‘The Beautiful and The Damned’ is almost identical to Zelda in demeanor and antics. Perhaps he misunderstood the concept of a muse to mean absolute, biographical replication? Who can tell? Beyond the pages, genius and writing that Scott claimed as his own, Zelda was a trained ballerina, painted biblically infused scenes from Alice and Wonderland, published a critically acclaimed novel and has a

video game named after her. In one letter to Scott she writes, “excuse me for being so intellectual. I know you would prefer something nice and feminine and affectionate”. Please Zelda, will you be my literary, surrogate mother?

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Collette

“Behind every great man is an even greater woman.”

Whoever first uttered this idiom must have done so in reference to the great and scandalous French writer and actress Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Entering into a strained and exploitative marriage at the young age of 20, her husband quickly discovered her raw talent for writing, locking away his young wife and forcing her to write countless chapters of a book series he would inevitably claim to be his own. Under her husband’s ‘guidance’, Colette created one of the most addictive female characters of the century, Claudine, whose adventures mimic many of Colette’s from her early years. The entirety of Europe was smitten. After rioting against her husband’s controlling demeanour, Colette began a six-year affair with the gender-defying aristocrat, Missy. Colette then became a performer for the Moulin Rogue and went on to champion literature that was eons ahead of her time, specialising in the creation of engaging female heroines who revolted against chaste innocence in favour of self-expression and freedom.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie If you require any introduction to Adichie, you need only read her short story “The Headstrong

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Historian” to appreciate her unique ability to deliver a highly personal narrative on the effects of colonialism, familial obligation and remaining true to your cultural roots and ancestry in an increasingly homogenised society.

Her book-length essay “We Should All Be Feminists” captures the feminine spirit and anger introduced by this collection just as eloquently and sets an important precedent for the kind of equality in the 21st century.

The Nigerian writer has produced some of the most viewed TedTalks in the initiative’s history, including ‘The Danger of A Single Story’. Fueled by a magnificent rage about gender injustice and the suppression of a ‘different’ kind of female narrative - particularly the ‘non-white’ breed - her provocative storytelling and literary talent has brought widespread attention and popularity to African literature. “Beware of feminism lite” she warns in one novel, “and do not forget to be angry.”

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Sylvia Plath

When we think of Sylvia Plath, knowledge of her suicide often precedes an appreciation for her poetry and writing. She is too often regarded as a ‘cliched’ inspiration for many female poets and writers. Something silly and shallow who has become romanticised by the “college girl mentality” as Woody Allen so gingerly informed us in his movie ‘Annie Hall’. But do not bypass her unmistakable literary prowess - the kind which radiates throughout her astounding verse, stanza and line - because of the prominence of her death. In “Mad Girl’s Love Song” she reveals an obsessive captivation with a lover she partially created in her mind. Plath depicts their romance as a fluctuation between death and life, fantasy and reality: “The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead…

I lift my lids and all is born again.”

She was “the girl things happen to” and before her death she wrote compulsively, producing some of the most brilliant and profound poems to her name which have, posthumously, reconfigured her legacy. Do not regard Plath merely in the light of her suicide.

Doing so would be a literary tragedy.

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Elena Ferrante

In 2011, a strange illness or delirium struck the literary inclined masses known only as ‘Ferrante fever’. Every street-corner you turned there would be another person, captivated by the phenomenal story of Lila and Lenu/ Elena. ‘My Brilliant Friend’, her breakthrough novel, provides a delicate and highly personal portrait of the deeply impassioned and intimate female friendship. The relationship between Lila, a fiery, feral and sensational child, and Lenu, a quiet, cherubic girl who is captivated by the “confusing attraction” of her “dangerous” but fierce friend not only reveals the beauty and brutality of female intimacy but the ways in which this closeness can oscillate between the terrain of magical and perilous in an instant. Alongside this magnetic depiction of the energy that consumes these relationships, the story invites a discussion into subjects of violence, poverty, fancy shoes, guilt and class-jumping against a backdrop of childhood adventure and discovery. To heighten the irresistibility of this book series, the name Elena Ferrante is actually a pseudonym. The true author has never revealed herself despite the success of her writing.

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Fanny Fern

What a LADY! This woman was a fantastic storyteller who could command a brilliant blend of humour, w i s dom, intuition and

unique captivating narrative voice into her wildly popular stories and New York Ledger column (the most popular of its time). She was also a phenomenal activist for the rights of groups and people who needed a strong(wo) man on their side. Women, children, and criminals alike found an ally in this incredible New Yorker who was demanding prison reform and labour rights for children long before the issues entered the public radar. Historically, you can often judge the talent of a woman by the degree of upset, anger and excitement she aroused in the men of her era. According to this rule, Fern must have been the greatest woman of her time. After upsetting Charles Dickens at a New York Press Club dinner in his honour, after which he prevented the entrance of women, she retaliated by creating her own female-only writer’s club, ‘Sorosis’.

From wearing male clothes in protest of ‘cross-dressing’ laws and authoring the renowned essay “Male Criticism on Ladies’ Books” which addresses the dismal amount of female writers within the literary community at the time, she was a columnist and author who truly exemplifies the quick-wit and sly joy of satire writing.

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Tension and Release Abbie Holbrook I, like the majority of Australia and the world, spent the entire university winter break of 2018 coming to terms with Hannah Gadsby’s comedy special Nanette. I was left speechless after an hour long special where, with raw vigour, Gadsby comments on the LGBTQI+ community, gender, sexuality, sexism and misogyny, and, her tiredness of self-deprecating humour which leaves minorities as “the butt of the joke”. I was shocked, saddened yet inspired by the content of the comedy special and by Gadsby’s profound presence on stage. I decided that as a form of retrospection I would transform my reaction into an artistic interpretation of Gadsby and the words of which she spoke.

Her vulnerability on stage made silk organza the appropriate choice for the base of the piece. Its transparency is intrinsically connected with the comedian’s transparency on stage. She appears in a raw but fiercely sharp state. Each piercing of the needle through the silk organza is representative of every single audience member’s gaze upon Gadsby both on stage, and, after the performance, off stage. After digesting the comedy special I was left with a phrase that, as a young woman who has both come to terms with my sexuality and battled with mental health, resonated with me. Towards the end she powerfully delivers the line: “There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.” A line that left both the audience and myself silent, yet also left me extremely empowered. Blue thread was the obvious colour choice for the phrase, of which references Gadsby’s spiel on the colour blue as she declares that “there is room for every kind of human in blue.” I came to the decision of Tension and Release as the title for my piece as Gadsby says there are two parts to comedy, creating tension and releasing that tension, a concept of which is interrelated with embroidery as I two have to control the tension and release of the thread. In order to fully understand my piece and to form your own self-assessment of how you treat yourself and one another, I urge you to please watch Hannah Gadsby’s comedy special Nanette.

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Save me the Waltz Cathy Egan To be romanticised is to be exalted Through time and space and the artistic powers that be.

If you are in a Picasso, you are beautiful but powerless.

Immortally so.

I want to be beautiful.

I want each curve to be captured, each thought preserved.

But I want it to be on my own terms.

My own song.

My own canvas.

My own novel.

Without feeling like I am stealing from a brooding man’s journal.

I am my own muse.

The active and the passive.

The give and the take.

I get to choose what parts of me inspire.

Do I have to be moulded by a man to become beautiful?

Am I destined to lie passively while he refines my soul with pink and red paint?

How can he capture my deepest feelings,with words from his own head, when he has not lived what he writes?

I’m not the girl of these random bystander’s dreams.

I won’t gift them that kind of control.

And when I decide to write my own story I won’t let some mid-century lover steal that away.

I am my own masterpiece.

I made me.

I will celebrate me.

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Maya Angelou Kate Brien

Throughout my life and journey with literature in my school years, there had been few encounters with texts that have struck me as sharply as Maya Angelou’s. For anyone enduring the throes of womanhood, Angelou’s poetry speaks and communicates with you in a way that is both soothing and empowering.

It was in my formative years that I first read Phenomenal Woman and taken aback by the simple and unashamed way she depicts female beauty; a Godsend through rocky pubescent years and a Godsend to me now. Still I Rise aroused similar reminders of my strength, feelings of pride and fearlessness as a young girl but importantly, it enraptured this and more for women of colour around the world. Angelou’s work as both an advocate for women and civil rights demonstrates her power as one of history’s most iconic intersectional feminists.

In 1983, she published her wellknown memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Those lucky enough to study this book should recognise their privilege. Many schools in the United States have chosen to ban the book on the grounds of its “profanity” or promotion of “bitterness and hatred towards whites”.

The abuse and racism she confronted throughout her childhood were deemed unsuitable for young readers. Her truth hurt and went against what was assumed to be an appro-

priate education for America’s youth.

This has continued to raise alarm regarding the activation elimination and concealment of the experiences of people of colour, particularly women, whose voices have been repeatedly silenced. Angelou’s first autobiography has made a significant contribution to her legacy as one of the first women of colour who was given a platform to have her story heard across the country and world.

In addition to her writing, she was an incredibly talented playwright as well as directing film and television; acting, singing, dance and journalism.

Her self-expression through these art-forms also fuelled her civil rights activism. Notable examples include her appearance in the television miniseries Roots and the film Down in the Delta directed by Angelou. Both made significant contributions to the visibility of people in colour in the media whilst offering a valuable insight into the history and heritage of African Americans. Down the Delta follows the story of a mother, inflicted by drugs and alcohol, who moves to her extended family’s home in the deep south with her children. There she is educated both in arithmetic and in spirit as she undergoes a kind of rehabilitation, alongside a notable symbol of oppression in the form of a candelabra that was traded for her ancestor to become a slave. Angelou’s creations of different forms of media helped pave a legacy for sto-

rytelling amongst those who have been continually silenced, both in a contemporary and historic setting.

She received high acclaim for her works and her social activism and creative projects attracted the attention of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Assuming her place alongside both extraordinary contributors to the arts and key civil activist leaders, she became a voice for both African and African American women. Throughout her life she joined marches for causes both in America and parts of Africa for the rights of the oppressed, including anti-Apartheid movements in South Africa alongside none other than Nelson Mandela. As a journalist during her time abroad, she documented the anti-colonial struggle in Africa as the only female editor of the Arab Observer. Marching arm in arm with renowned feminist, Gloria Steinem; speaking up for Queer*

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rights and marriage equality - Angelou’s list of civil rights action and achievement does not lend itself to the length of this article.

Although her tireless campaigning had predominantly been aligned with the championing of the rights for people of colour, this is inherently tied to her position as a key feminist icon in history.

“Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women.”

Maya retained an intersectional view of feminism and acknowledged her position on the ladder of privilege that exists within America and the world. It was this understanding and vocalisation of her experiences that made her a beacon for those who could relate to the events and memories which shaped her voice like they had similarly shaped theirs. Oprah Winfrey has spoken extensively about how her experience with Angelou’s poetry in particular. She describes that it had been “like meeting herself in full” and that “for the first time, as a young black girl, [her] experience was validated”. This kind of representation in literature, activism and the media amongst other areas has made Angleou a master. Her spirit and inspiration continues to be vital in guiding and shaping feminism.

The position of Angelou as a pinnacle “You may not control all the events of resilience, strength, visibility and that happen to you, but you can deof leadership in addressing so many cide not to be reduced by them.” facets of American society cannot be underestimated. She continues to influence a vast number of people from every walk of life and I am incredibly privileged to have been exposed to her work from a young age.

A leader, multitalented artist and a champion for human rights - she is not defined by her adversity, but by her monumental influence and impact on others.

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Gender Roles In Backcountry: How Inclusivity May Reduce Mortality Rates Lucy Skeldon

Like many skiers or snowboarders, I have been lured into the b ackc o un t r y.

The sheer landscape of snow c a p p e d peaks, the peaceful silence, the isolation and most imp or t antly the fresh

snow a r e all

part of the backcountry’s allure.

As you’re trudging up the hill, the only goal is to steady your breath to match the gentle swoosh of your ski pants as one legs passes another.

When you’re riding down, it's about picking the best line, chasing the sensation that you’re floating, a tiny speck in a white abyss. The ultimate experience of backcountry riding is one of awe; awe at the vastness of the earth. You’re critically aware of your own inconsequentiality and, ironically, it’s a reassurance beyond any other feeling.

Yet so much of backcountry skiing is about fear. Managing, controlling and mastering it.

When you enter the backcountry you are technically leaving resort boundaries - going ‘off-piste’. If you ever try to get travel insurance for a ski trip that covers off-piste riding, your jaw may drop at the price. Insurance companies capitalise on the fact that backcountry skiing or snowboarding is inherently risky. Unlike runs within resort bounds, the snow in the backcountry is un-groomed, un- patrolled and untouched.

Most importantly there is no avalanche control. Annually almost 150 people die from avalanches, a vast majority of them caused by human contact. Avalanches are the product of temperature cycles. As the sun beats down on the snow during the day, it melts. However, during the night or when temperatures drop as a storm passes through the snow refreezes into a lethal slick layer.

When a new snow falls on this slippery base, it can look deceptively inviting. In reality this fresh snow can easily slide off under the mere weight of a single skier or snowboarder.

The result is an avalanche, a mass of snow which in full form can weigh over a million tonnes and travels at speeds of over 300 kilometres an hour. When in motion, an avalanche compresses the air below it to produce a howling winds that can easily tear a house apart. As the human body is three times denser than avalanche debris, people sink and quick. Once the avalanche has finished, you essentially have 15 minutes to find the person buried by its devastation. The outcome if this isn’t achieved is evident.

Given the considerable risks in backcountry skiing and snowboarding, most of us only leave the resort boundaries with the support of a mate or team. Group dynamics are innately complex, so when you’re riding back-

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country, communication is your teams lifeline. Often you’re travelling at speeds that mean you can’t see each other after three turns, the snow is unpredictable and the group needs to adapt to hazards quickly. A backcountry group that includes women, who are generally more critical of their skills and less likely to take higher risks, adds a vital element of safety to the crew.

Roughly 90% of avalanches are triggered by humans. Thus, avalanches are innately a product of people and their evaluation of risk. The White Heat project, a cross-disciplinary research group which collaborates with the Centre for Avalanche Research and Education in the Artic University of Norway and the Snow and Avalanche Lab at Montana State University sampled around 500 back- country skiers and snowboarders. Overall, men in the sample had more backcountry experience. Yet, when the number of days skiing the backcountry was placed at the same level and men and women from both samples reported an equal amount of experience, men perceived their skills higher than women did. This coincided with men, on average, claiming they were willing to take risks to a higher degree than women in the sample.

This study reflects an unfortunate reality - backcountry snow-sports are dominated by men. With only 1/4 of backcountry riders being women, it’s no surprise that more men die in avalanches. However, having more women in groups could make the group safer as a whole.

Some women can be discouraged from taking part backcountry riding and avalanche education because it is a ‘boys club’. Some studies suggest that going out in groups with more than one female rider is likely to increase the groups safety as a collective compared to a group with only one female or none at all. Unfortunately, due to the many extraneous variables its difficult to define exactly why this is. However many professional female athletes in the snow-sport industry and experienced backcountry riders agree that having

more women in groups provides an atmosphere where women feel more comfortable speaking up and asking questions.

With the rise in popularity of backcountry riding, no doubt due to its glamorisation in social media, safety in the backcountry is becoming even more vital. Commercial resorts send out daily avalanche warnings, written voluntarily by skilled individuals, concerning areas that are unsafe as a result of recent weather patterns. Most days avalanches are improbable and ‘snowpack stability’ remains relatively consistent.

The few days of high avalanche risk can quickly become fatal if people aren’t well informed, prepared and educated.

Whenever you leave resort boundaries you’re putting your safety into the hands of those you ride with. To maximise the chances of finding a buried person in the unlikely event of an avalanche everyone should carry three items: a beacon, probe and shovel.

The beacon is an emergency transceiver specialised for the purpose of finding people buried under snow, making it the fastest way to locate someone. The probe is essentially an extendible rod thats used to poke through the snow in order to find the buried person. Finally the shovel is used to remove the debris and begin the physical rescue.

However, an understanding of the impact of gender is a crucial, yet often overlooked area of backcountry safety. Having both men and women in a backcountry groups allows for a diverse engagement with the environment. The current gender roles in the backcountry are potentially

impacting the mortality rates of snow-sport enthusiasts.

Having more women could help make the backcountry more inclusive and safe, without compromising the thrill and beauty of backcountry riding.

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The Walk To Your Apartment Is 7 Minutes Long Sayler Allen

Want to come over?

My headphones spill energy into my ears and the cold is kept away with hope and thermals. I wait downstairs, excited despite exhaustion from the long hours of anxiety and academia.

I walk in, make tea. You love how I make as if I belong. I think I need something to do with my hands.

We sit down for a movie. You orbit each other, movement comfortable in its established space and rotation. I’m on the outside, but I don’t mind. It’s early days and we’re tending to these small saplings.

Your happiness warms me. Compersion, they call it. I feel happy for you.

Eventually your yawns become more apparent and I take my leave. It’s still cold outside, but I wrap my jacket firmly around myself and turn up the volume.

Want to come over?

The winter chill starts to seep through despite my best efforts at layering. I stare at the crack in the wall while I wait for you to venture downstairs and let me in.

I walk in, make tea. We sit down for a movie.

I’m still hopeful that the three of us will work. This is so new and surely with such open communication we can work it out. We might have some different needs, but we can work it out.

But there’s an invisible barrier on this couch and I feel out of place, despite your invitation.

Want to come over?

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve walked this familiar path. I know when to message you so I’m not waiting in the cold for long. It’s more efficient that way.

I walk in, make tea. We sit down for a movie.

The barrier feels impossible to cross now. I’m scared of your jealousies, and desperate for your comfort. You cuddle while I stare vaguely in the direction of the screen, limbs stiffly separate so as not to cross a line.

I wonder why I’m here and why I try at all, when it seems so clear that there is no space for me.

We’ve tried every flavour of tea.

Want to come over?

No.

You used me. I let myself be used.

Because that’s what happened here, and you should have known.

A person is not an answer to your needs, the solution to your relationship unfulfilled without the presence of another woman. You needed a fuck.

A person is not an answer to your needs, the solution to her staying with you. You needed her to stay.

And I offered a future I didn’t want for a present I didn’t understand but so desperately clung to the idea of. Perhaps I deceived too.

I think I would have been okay, if you both saw me individually, as someone to learn about and share things with. But instead I came over, always that lonely walk to your apartment, to sit beside the two of you.

But it’s freezing outside, and those 7 minutes are an eternity towards a place I’m not wanted.

You never broke up with me. I suppose you didn’t think you needed to. I never broke up with you, because I didn’t think you cared anyway. I left you to your apartment and your distance and your tea.

Soon it will be spring.

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In the Jeans Jasmine Lyons In the Jeans was designed to commemorate my grandmother, Jean, and pay tribute to the role she played in my creative development. She was passionate about sewing and knitting and was forever creating new and beautiful pieces that she could wear, display or donate. Her sewing pins act as the primary medium of this work and I used a hot glue gun to stick them to the canvas. The floral design references the gentle maternalistic figure that she was; reminiscent of the regal femininity she carried with her always.

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Head in the Ground Olivia Gates Cautiously navigating a foreign landscape, questioning existence, presence, and purpose.

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The Comprehensive and Complete Guide to Women Meghan Malone

615 281 Men spend most of their lives thinking about women and food. While the latter is relatively straightforward, it seems that men lack the ability to understand the first. So, I’ve taken the time to put together a simple guide for men which explains all the weird and wonderful things that women get up to.

1. Going to the bathroom together - a well-researched conspiracy theory All men have had this experience. You’re out with your female friends and one of them proudly announces that she needs to use the bathroom. Suddenly, all the other women vacate the room and you’re left alone wondering what you did wrong. Thirty minutes later, they’re all back with at least ten new friends and beaming from ear-to-ear thinking about all the compliments they just received from random women. This can be frustrating, but don’t be alarmed, the truth is: women simply lack the independence that men do and bathrooms are scary places to be alone. For a woman, the thought of an isolated pee is simply too frightening. They need the emotional support and physical protection of other women in order to face the dark abyss that is a public bathroom. They also need reassurance that their lipstick matches their outfit, and their hair isn’t a matted mess. The best way to manage your frustration is to empathise with their concerns and assure them that you respect their fears.

You must also understand bathroom selfies are a quintessential part of being a woman. There is unquantifiable pain when, returning from a night out, there is no bathroom selfie with a minimum of fifteen people (at least four of them unknown) to be found. Undeniably, there is an addictive joy that comes from these meaningless pieces of memorabilia.

This kind of underground feminist communication is certainly something that all men should be aware of. Decoding women’s message should in fact be their number one priority. I would strongly recommend they take the time to decipher these comments and uncover their true meaning, it would absolutely be a good use of time.

2. Instagram Comments - what do they really mean?

3. The art of the screenshot - how do girls know everything?

Have you ever wondered why women tend to get far more comments on social media posts which all appear to be different versions of the same compliment? Things like, ‘OMG you’re such a babe’ and ‘Absolutely gorgeous’ seem to make regular appearances alongside the ‘heart-eye emojis’ and coloured love hearts (bonus points if there is more than one). While the unknowing male may think this is just a way for women to support and uplift one another, they would be strongly misled.

It often seems that women know more about you than you do. How were they aware that Sue liked John between January 2, 2011 and May 19, 2012? Where did they find out what Jenny wore to her best friend’s birthday party in Grade 2?

The answer is screenshots.

These seemingly innocent comments are in fact coded messages containing key information regarding upcoming, drastic feminist actions. We are, afterall, always plotting the demise of the patriachy. A naïve man does not realise that a woman commenting on a friend’s new profile picture, ‘You’re so beautiful’ in fact means, ‘Let’s meet at dawn to discuss our feminist plans to take down the male species.’ Or that ‘damnnnnnn’ is in fact ‘don’t forget out blood sacrifice tonight.’

Women have mastered the art of spying through the capturing and mass distribution of screenshots. While the unknowing man spends his time worrying about putting tape over his webcam to avoid the FBI, he should really be concerned about women. They have the ability to find out anything you have said or done in at least the past 30 years throughout an underground network of screenshots which they barter for online.

Do not fear, I have the solution! Men must cease use of the internet, speak or even hear anything all together. That way they can be protected. Those of us who are well informed know that the real threats are women.

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23. Non-Mimetic Self Portrait 24. Lady Garden 25. How to Bloom 28. Women’s Climbing Initiative 30. Walking Familiar Paths: How Many Marches Does it Take?

32. Plants are the New Children 34. Voyeur 35. Feminist in Progress 36. The Menstrual (Re)Cycle: Green Responses to the Red River 38. “Women Supporting Women”: The World of Competitive Female Sport 40. Queer Fashion 45. How Much Good is there in the World?

2. Stream (a small narrow body of running water, flowing on the earth) Ideas can begin as trickles of water, gentle and meandering in the sun. Ripples of thought and the beginnings of movement are given direction among the roots.

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Emily O’Neill non- mimetic self-portrait Ink on paper

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Lady Garden Kate Matthews

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How to Bloom Aryanne Caminschi allow your feet to dance mandalas in sand as they relearn what your heartbeat’s rhythm is when you aren’t slowing it for someone else and wave your arms high to the sun remember how you are enough and run, and run with the reckless abandon you had taught yourself to hate remember how it feels to have the wind kiss your eyelashes as the world rewards you for your joy let your fingertips trace the lips of lovers as you relearn your beauty, your worth, your desirability and while that doesn’t ever depend on others its still nice to hear your mind is a firework! your tongue, a coursing river! your eyes, rippling water, opals, glass! you are wild as the amazon with the strength of an amazon! a jungle, a warrior, a force of nature! a child of the universe! an explosion of light! relearn your laugh when it is too loud! relearn your opinions, the ones that were too loud relearn your sexiness, that look in your eyes relearn your charisma, you star in the sky! relearn your confidence that warmth in your chest and relearn your heart, reclaim your heart, reclaim your heart, reclaim your heart! my darling, you are blooming, now bloom

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Women’s Climbing Initiative Interview by Karolina Kocimska

The Women’s Climbing Initiative was started this year by a few passionate women who had noticed that there were a lot more men than women in the climbing sector of ANU Mountaineering Club. Anna and Elena wanted to make the sport more inviting and accessible to girls and to do that, decided to form a women’s only group. Starting with an FB page, and then an Afternoon Tea in O-Week, the group has progressed to running technique workshops, where women are taught by other women, allowing them to learn to climb in a way suited to their body type, and frequent weekend outdoor climbing trips. The group is very much community based, focused on development and skill building for women at any level. I met up with Elena, Anna and some of the other women involved right before they headed off to an outdoor climb at Snake Rock, in the Corin Valley.

What made you take part in the Women’s Climbing Initiative (WCI)? Would you have tried it out if not for the initiative?

Claire: I probably wouldn’t have. I’ve always loved climbing, but I would’ve been way too intimated to get started.

Kaitlin: I think particularly with the outdoor climbing, it’s a bit hard to get out there, get the gear and know what you’re doing, so I think that having

this opportunity, with a beginner atmosphere, like “these are all the steps let’s start from the beginning” has really made me feel more comfortable. I don’t think I would have gone on any trips without this.

Taylor: I would never have started climbing, or felt empowered enough to continue if it were not for the WCI. What is the best part of being involved?

Georgia: I think one of the good things is getting to meet some really lovely people, as well as the climbing of course.

Marissa: It’s wildly supportive.

Anna: Yeah, it’s like a cult [all laugh] Elena: I also think it’s really nice to go and be able to climb with other women. We now have a lot more women taking part, which is really great and encouraging to see.

What skills have you gained through climbing?

Elena: I’ve become a heap more confident in the skills I have, and think I’ve become better at teaching them! A year ago I was new to outdoor climbing and had never thought I’d be capable

of leading a trip so soon! So I’ve learnt to trust myself in what I know. It has also massively reinforced my knowledge of climbing! We’ve taught basic technique in indoor climbing workshops – i.e. learning correct foot placement, body positioning, and stretches.

Likewise, in our outdoor trips, Anna and I have been teaching how to set up, belay, tie in and climb safely. Some of the participants have learnt how to lead climbs, lead belay and clean giving them the skills to become an independent climber.

What types of trips does the WCI run?

Elena: At the start of the year Anna began running indoor climbing workshops for the WCI to teach basic techniques to new climbers in a social setting, without the pressure of a busy gym. We then started running outdoor workshops, starting with easier climbs in Queanbeyan to teach outdoor climbing basics. We then moved onto harder climbs, before teaching lead climbing out at Nowra. We’ve run around seven outdoor workshops so far. The best was a three-day trip to Nowra with eleven of us, where we rented an airbnb and climbed non-stop. The trips are super fun; it’s great climbing in such a supportive atmosphere. The trips make me feel super proud; it’s awesome to see girls who started as newbies this year absolutely take off at climbing and smash these climbs perfectly. Additional-

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ly, it’s nice to see other people pick up a love of climbing like I have.

What does climbing mean to you?

What does it give you?

Anna: I think for me it’s just that sense of achievement that you get out of it, that I haven’t had in any other kind of sport.

And I think the climbing community is a really wonderful community, it’s sharing and supportive, and it’s like no matter what city you’re in or where you are, you can always connect with other climbers.

Kaitlin: Personally, I’ve gone through a lot with my mental health this past year.

Climbing has helped me on the path to feeling stronger than I have in a long time. Every time I climb, I feel like I’m gaining control over my body again.

Same question, but adding the context; what does climbing with a group of like-minded women give you?

Elena: It’s really good to see people with similar bodies types and similar abilities all working towards the same goal. Opposed to climbing with men, who have different abilities, you can get caught in the “oh no I can’t do that, I’m bad” mindset. But in reality, we have all these other skills and when we work together, we can see that it’s something achievable.

Claire: We have these awesome female climbers that we can always see, and when they get it, we are empowered and know that we can also do it. If Elena can reach the hole, I probably can too [laughs.

Has climbing, and being part of the Women’s Climbing Initiative taught you anything?

Elena: It’s made me a lot stronger I think, and it’s cool to see strength in terms of something that’s pretty functional as well. It teaches you a lot of outdoor skills, and you can learn to really trust yourself, like really trust yourself.

Anna: For me, it’s just given me a lot of confidence, to know that there is a group of supportive people out there, and that just really gives me the confidence to do things, that I probably wouldn’t try otherwise.

Georgia: Also being crap at things [laughs] I wouldn’t have really picked up any new sports at a Uni level, because I would feel bad being an absolute beginner and entering groups with people that have been doing it for years. But everyone here is so supportive it’s been really nice to remember that its okay to start at the very bottom and work your way up.

Kaitlin: And with climbing I think it’s really easy to see your progress, and that’s really exciting to be able to experience and share with other people.

What goals do you have for yourself in climbing?

Elena: My personal climbing goals are becoming a more confident climber and starting some longer multi-pitch climbs this summer!

Do you see yourselves continuing your involvement in the future?

All: Yes! Anna: I’ve just been watching a lot of climbing videos this week, and every time I’m like “Oh man why am I not climbing right now?” [all laugh] Anything you guys want to add?

All: Come climbing! [Laughter] For those interested to join the Women’s Climbing Initiative; - Become a member of the ANU Mountaineering Club (can be done online through the ANUMC website) - Join the ANU Women’s Climbing Initiative FB group - Get your belay pass (courses run by the club throughout the year) The Mountaineering Club climbs indoors at ANU Sports every evening except Tuesdays and Sundays.

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Walking Familiar Paths: How Many Marches Does It Take?

Sumithri Venketasubramanian

In September, around 350,000 people took to the streets in Australia. As part of the School Strike 4 Climate movement, students and young people demanded strong action from governments, in light of an uncertain future with climate change. Attending the Canberra strike, amidst my recent anxiety and despair about the earth burning and everything dying, I was reminded that a whole of bunch of people care and are in this together. We feel that we are in a turning point in history, and that if we don’t do something now, our future will be unthinkable. In some ways, that is true.

But environmental protests have also taken place for decades – and every one of those movements has been just as important as the next.

logging companies ruin this beautiful rainforest. But the government said they were going ahead, and the trucks and loggers turned up.”

A call-to-action was made nation-wide, people travelled from all over and made camps at the base of the range.

But back then, of course, there was no internet. All the organising happened by word of mouth, pamphlets, and street art (“you know, Banksy-style stuff”). “That’s the good side of social media. Like with the Arab Spring and Hong Kong, people can rally quickly – and anonymously.”

It’s said to be the first recorded time blockading was used to protect an environmental resource. “There were some people chaining themselves to bulldozers and trees, or climbing up trees and refusing to come down.” We see this in today’s movements too, with Extinction Rebellion demonstrators staging “die-ins” in the middle of major roads, the kind of activism that hopes to cause enough disruption for change to happen.

Protesters Falls in Nightcap National Park, about an hour’s drive west from Byron Bay, didn’t get its name by coincidence. In the mid-late ‘70s, proposed logging in the Border Ranges saw protesters come to the Northern Rivers from all over. “People were against it because it would open the door for a return of the cutting of the ‘big scrub’.

It would be like back in the early settlement times when heaps of trees were Just like protests today, Terania Creek cut down for farming and pastoralism.” saw many young people at the fore – many teenagers were there of their “The Terania Creek protests were in- own volition. “Young people can see tended to be peaceful, and everyone clearly what’s going on, and are able was united and protective of one an- to say, ‘That’s wrong.’ You’ll be told other,” said Samia Goudie, a friend of you’re not informed, but in fact you’re mine who was in her mid-teens when not swayed by things around you and she attended the protests. Today, she’s you’re not so jaded. You see things for an Associate Professor in Indigenous what they are.”

Studies at the University of Canberra.

“We’d said, no way we’re going to let I was lucky that my workplace were

supportive of the Global Climate Strike, so I didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble for taking a couple hours off to attend. (And, on the university side, Echo360’s lecture recordings had my back.) The Terania Creek protests went on for months – and with all the travel from wherever you lived to the Northern Rivers … Your boss would have to have been really tolerant for that! “There’s less to lose as a young person – you don’t usually have a job, and you’re not as likely to be thrown in prison if you’re under 21. I guess there’s a sense of rebellion, by coming together as a collective to demonstrate like this. There’s a sense that I’m not alone.”

“Young people aren’t represented on the ballot box; many of us would have been too young to vote. This was our way of getting into the public eye and influencing people who could vote.

It was a way to get the media’s attention, and it was how younger people showed what mattered to us.”

“As an Aboriginal person, we’ve been fighting this stuff since settlement. We tell our children, you’re inheriting from your ancestors, who had it a lot harder than you. And you owe it to them to keep fighting, because they fought for your rights. We were very aware that if we didn’t win this – for protecting rainforests and trees – it would set a precedent for logging to happen everywhere else in Australia.”

The loggers came every day, but couldn’t do anything while the protesters were there, tied to trees or camping

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around, singing songs accompanied by guitars. “Over time, some of them even saw the beauty in the landscape and thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore.’”

In the end, the protests were successful.

Nightcap National Park is now World Heritage listed. “It felt really urgent and immediate. We used to say, ‘It’s five minutes to midnight,’ in terms of what needed to happen to really change the course of events. Now, we’re on midnight.”

“There’s things we can still do. You should never not act because you think it won’t make a difference. Doing nothing is worse. It mightn’t make a difference in your lifetime, but it will in the future.”

Source: Terania Creek protests, David Kemp (1979) (from https:// www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-17/terania-creek-anti-logging-protest40-years-on/11406660)

“I call it broke-back activism,” she laughs, referring to some troubles she’s been having with her back lately. “Put that in, I think it would make a funny title.”

Source: Canberra Climate Strike, Sumithri Venketasubramanian (20 September 2019)

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Plants are the New Children Juliette Baxter

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Artist Statement Inspired partly by the drawings of David Hockney, as well as by those by my own sister, illustrator Sam Kenneally, this work attempt to investigate interactions and relationships between human and plant life. The artwork explores ideas about youth and parenthood, through a satirical lens. Today’s young adults, rather than having children, are focusing their nurturing energies on raising plants, specifically indoor plants. Previously, young people have treated their pets as children, however a new trend of referring to themselves as ‘plant parents’ is emerging. Plant parenting is not mere gardening, as there is an added social media element to the practice. My artwork pokes fun this concept, imagining plants in the role of children, specifically babies, both inside and outside the home.

In these scenes, five plants are placed in an array of everyday situations, being pushed around in a pram, fed in a highchair, read to in a rocking chair, sat next to on a couch, and finally floating around in an inflatable ring in a pool. These scenes are rendered digitally to convey a sense of youthfulness, while also alluding to the tendency for young people to share images of their plants online, whether on Instagram, Facebook or even their Tinder bio. Thus, the works raise the question of why young people are motivated to raise plants, whether this is to seek self-fulfillment or to boast about it on social media. In Byron Bay, I came across a book entitled The New Plant Parent, which inspired the name for this artwork, and prompted my thinking about connections between the social media and gardening.

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Voyeur Linh Dan Ta CW: Stalking

Being stalked, surveyed, Becoming the object To the subject Forms a wry corollary In an act of reversed voyeurism You scan every space Every figure, every voice For the same person that found you

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Feminist in Progress Elizabeth Crane

For me, becoming a feminist wasn’t the result of a single moment, but rather a slow journey. I attribute the start of my feminist journey to an essay I wrote in Year 9 on the gender pay gap. Looking back, beyond some mild outrage, I didn’t think at the time that it had major effect on me. However, the next year, I wrote an essay about same-sex marriage, and I slowly began to find myself on the road to feminism. After that, I don’t know what exactly it was that pushed me over the edge from “huh, it’s weird that men and women aren’t treated the same way” to “there is oppression everywhere and I’m ANGRY.” Until writing the aforementioned essays, I was fairly unopinionated on the topic. However, I came to discover that there were lots of things to be angry about! 14-year-old me was pretty astonished at all the bigotry she discovered, which I can acknowledge as being indicative of my various types of privilege.

I think it’s safe to say my feminism has evolved since then. The internet and social media have played a huge role in this. Social media in particular is full of people sharing their stories and addressing problematic language and behaviour. With my initial interest in feminism sparked, the access to experiences beyond my own shaped my values and played a pivotal role in my feminist journey. However, five years later, I find myself in what seems like a permanent state of anger; there is so much injustice in the world and it feels like every day brings more. I find that

it can be difficult to work out how to be a ‘good’ feminist under these conditions. Part of the learning process is being honest with myself about this world around me, and recognising unconscious biases (especially my own) which make up its system. There are so many different points of view, from whether wearing makeup is feminist to how best to empower others. With so many conflicting messages, it can be difficult to determine the ‘right’ or ‘feminist’ solution.

One thing I feel like doesn’t get spoken about much is how being aware of gender inequality can be heartbreaking on a day-to-day basis. While I often feel anger about what I see around me, other times I just want to cry, buried under a doona, away from the seemingly endless reports of sexual assault, domestic violence, and hate crimes. It seems unfair and unreasonable that people can’t see they should care about others, irrespective of their difference. Why don’t they understand? What could be more important than being respectful – and beyond respectful, compassionate – to each other? For me, the answer lies in education. Education plays an important role in encouraging the respect and compassion that makes a ‘good’ feminist. However, one of the hardest things can be even talking about feminism. Sometimes I am too frustrated or upset to communicate effectively, and I find myself unable to produce convincing arguments, whereas other times I feel confident and can draw on a wealth of examples. While it can be

easier talking to like-minded individuals, these sorts of conversations can be especially draining if you’re talking to someone who doesn’t seem to understand or care about the effects of their words and behaviour. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had a few friends approach me as their ‘feminist friend’, just wanting to talk about feminism. I will never claim to be the absolute authority on feminism, or to be the best person to speak about engaging with people trying to understand and learn.

That said, I think that the best we can do with people who are trying to learn is answer their questions. Everyone has to learn somehow, even if that means just pointing them in the direction of some resources. I know that there’s a huge conversation about emotional labour to be had here, which I’m not going to go into, although it’s an important topic. I know that there are people who disagree with this, but I believe that if we as feminists have a responsibility to help make the world a better place, then that includes helping those who want to learn.

I know that I’m still learning about how to be a ‘good’ feminist. From tackling my own unconscious biases to how I educate other on gender inequality, I know I have a long way to go. I don’t know if there is such thing as an end point to my feminist journey, or anyone else’s for that matter. That said, I think it’s okay for us all to be learning. If learning means we are listening to others with open minds and hearts, that can only be a good thing.

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The Menstrual (Re)Cycle: Green Responses to the Red River Interview by Eilis Fitt People with periods know that menstruation isn’t always a breeze. Your hormones are swinging, there’s stress about blood leaking through your jeans, and now, we’re told that the methods we rely on to get by during those bloody times are contributing to the destruction of the planet.

According to the BBC, the average menstruator will use up to 10,000 pads and tampons in their lifetime. That’s a heck of a lot of single-use materials ending up in the landfill, with pads containing up to four bags worth of plastic. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and let down; for many of us, the practices we’ve been taught to cope with our periods are in direct opposition with other messages we receive about the importance of recycling and caring for the environment.

Luckily, there is now a range of reusable period products on the market and many bleeders have already switched to more sustainable period practices. However, for others, the transition isn’t as straightforward. These products can seem expensive if you don’t know what you’re signing up for and it can be daunting to use them for the first time. To guide you through it, we have asked Bossy readers to review their eco-friendly menstrual products for us. This is what they had to say: Abby: Menstrual cup

How long have you been using a menstrual cup? What prompted you to try it?

I’ve been using my menstrual cup for about a year and a half. I decided to try it because I was concerned with the waste that is created by pads and tampons and I was sick of having to pay each month for them. It was an obvious choice.

Tell us about the first time you used the cup. Were there any problems?

The first time was a bit logistically tricky, and it did take time to get used to, more mentally than physically. It is fiddlier (than non-reusable products), and sometimes removal is harder than insertion; but it’s not hard once you get used to it. It comes with helpful instructions on how to use it, so I just followed those, and I was fine using it after the first period.

What’s your period routine like now?

mental and physical benefits of using it!

On top of that, the biggest benefit to me is that I don’t feel it when I have my period. Tampons and pads always felt uncomfortable, and I was always worried about leaking or leaving it in too long.

You won’t leak with cups, and you can leave them in for up to 12 hours. For me, I can forget I’m on my period when I use a menstrual cup, which is an amazing feeling.

Ultimately, the menstrual cup helped me appreciate my period again. I always hated it as a teenager because of all the uncomfortable feelings caused by pads and tampons. As a result, I always skipped my period using the pill.

The cup helped me to stop doing that and to start regulating my cycle again by allowing it to happen each month and not hating it. It’s by no means a pleasant experience, but it has helped me a lot.

Aurora: Reusable pads

Now I only ever use a menstrual cup; I don’t use any other products. For me, there is no point in using anything else because the main reason I use it is for financial and environmental purposes.

There is also no need to, it’s fine to use the cup, even when it is a light bleed or spotting. You can’t feel it once it is inside you.

What would you say to other people who are considering a menstrual cup?

I would recommend it to EVERYONE who bleeds! I understand not everyone can use one (if you struggle with using tampons, the cup probably won’t work either). But if you’re worried that it will be uncomfortable or too messy, please consider the massive financial, environ-

How long have you been using reusable pads for and why did you decide to try them?

I’ve been using Hannahpads reusable pads for about a year and a half.

The idea of disposable pads had crossed my mind, but I hadn’t looked into it much until I was at a vegan festival,

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where Hannahpad had a stall. After a conversation with the Australian company director and his wife, I was convinced mainly by the sustainability factor. The pads are biodegradable and the plastic snap fasteners are recyclable; while disposable pads can take hundreds of years to break down. I also liked the fact that the pads were organic, vegan, free from toxins and harmful chemicals and were made from super soft cotton compared to the contents of regular pads, which are not regulated and don’t even need to be disclosed by manufacturers. Also, the pads I was buying were only $10 $20 and last for years, as opposed to needing to spend money periodically on disposable products, probably costing hundreds for the same amount of time.

I opted for reusable pads rather than a menstrual cup just because it seemed easier and less of a change compared to my regular period routine at the time. It just made a lot of sense.

usable products because they are super unnecessary for me. I do still use tampons when I’m doing sport or dance, but I have ordered a menstrual cup online and can’t wait to try it out.

at all. After my first period using them, I was converted! I wanted to replace all my underwear with them and never think about planning for a period again (but I haven’t done that because I am cheap). It’s pretty much immediate to Would you recommend this type adjust to period underwear, you just put of period product to others? them on and go about your day.

Yes, especially for overnight use because they are much more comfortable than sticky, plastic disposable pads. There might be a bit of a stigma and some misconceptions surrounding reusable pads, but honestly, they are healthier, more comfortable, better for the environment and equate to being cheaper than disposable pads.

Caitlin: Period underwear

Did the pads meet your expectations?

The pads were absorbent enough for me to wear the whole day and smelt a lot less than the disposable pads I had been using. According to the Hannahpads website, the typical smell occurs because of a reaction between chemicals, menstrual flow and sweat creating bacterial growth which makes a smell when exposed to oxygen. So, because Hannahpads are free from these chemicals, I didn’t notice a smell at all, and this exceeded my expectations.

How long did it take for you to adjust?

The hardest part is getting in the habit of washing the pads and, at first, this was kind of weird. You have to rinse in cold water, lather with detergent, soak for a few hours then wash and let dry.

I’m pretty lazy so I don’t soak them for as long as recommended, but this hasn’t been a problem. Now I’m comfortable with handwashing them – I think we just need to get over thinking that periods are gross.

Are reusable pads part of your regular period routine?

Yes! I usually use a tampon or the small pad for the first day, then medium overnight while the small pad dries, and alternate these for the next two days. My period is short and light (yes, I know, I’m sorry!), so I feel bad using non-re-

What’s your current period routine?

At the moment, I use the period underwear, plus a menstrual cup on heavy days. I like that I can wear the underwear a couple of days ahead and not worry about a surprise period and that you can just keep wearing them until you’re sure it’s over. It’s easy and I don’t have to think about it. I still love my menstrual cup and I use it on heavy days, but I’m finding I’m ok with just the underwear mostly; and the convenience and ease of use are high so I’m mainly just doing that. I’m trying to stick to reusable products so that’s about it for me right now.

Would you recommend this type of period product to others?

When did you first try period undies and why?

I started using period underwear two years ago because I was having problems with pads leaking overnight. I also hated how pads and liners wriggled around when I was going about my day, but I wanted something easy and just-incase for days when I had light spotting.

Also, my mum saw an ad for them and got excited and offered to buy me two pairs. Thanks, Mum!

Yes, I think they’re great and I do recommend them frequently! I love how little I have to think about my period when I use period underwear. I feel like it does free up a lot of mental energy about logistics that I used to have to constantly run through and manage. However, if you have a heavy flow, period underwear alone might not work for you for a full day. It’s never been a problem for me yet, and if you’re using them as a backup for tampons/cups (which is great for ease of mind), then you should be fine. They do take a while to air dry because of the absorbable fabrics (and I don’t think you can put them in a dryer), so it’s worth having at least three pairs to give time for them to wash and dry.

You can get them in a surprisingly large Tell us about the first time you range of styles and colours (including used them. ones with lace!), and most brands have a decent sizing range (I use Modibodi and It was exciting! They come in a card- they go up to a size 26). You can look board box, so it felt super fancy and pretty and feel comfortable in them, special to open them for the first time. which I think is important. They make When I put them on, I was concerned me feel like a happy woman in a tamabout leaking, either around the sides pon commercial who is eating yogurt or bleeding through. That’s never hap- and horse riding on the beach! pened. I can’t say that it won’t, but it’s never been a problem for me. Straight away, the period undies surpassed my expectations. Like, I was worried it would feel icky and wet or that I would bleed through, but that didn’t happen

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“Women Supporting Women” The World of Competitive Female Sport Interview by Rachel McCrossin

I sat down with Zanna at Coffee Grounds on Campus, to discuss her experience competing as a woman in skiing, travelling the world to do so. Initially from Sydney and in her second year here at ANU, she shed light on the importance for support between women in what can be an extremely gruelling and male-dominated sport.

When did you start skiing?

I started skiing when I was two, my dad has said ‘if you can walk you can ski’ and that was just how it was. It’s definitely been a family thing, with my godparents and extended family living in Canada, so it’s been something I’ve consistently been involved with growing up.

When did you start competing?

I started racing when I was 12 - my parents put me into a racing program and told me I never had to race, but they thought that this would help me ski the best possible in general. Naturally, I wanted to compete, as it was crazy to do so much without actually competing.

I did most of my training in Canada, living in Whistler when I was young and staying in Sun Peaks with my godparents on and off throughout my childhood.

They have Children Series, where I started in U12’s but didn’t really do anything until U14’s. I started with Zone Races in Canada and got selected for Whistler Cup 4 years in a

row, one the biggest international children’s ski race. I’d go compete in whistler, travelling from Australia, and did most of my training out of Thredbo.

What obstacles you have faced as a female skier?

One of the main obstacles I faced was a pretty big injury I had, and the repercussions of that.

Can you tell me more about this injury?

The biggest injury to date has been when I tore my ACL, which I did the day before Christmas in Australia last year. I was staying with the British ‘Ambition’ team racing around Europe and was staying in Austria at the time. I was warming up for a race when I fell and tore my ACL. Did you know immediately how bad the injury was?

I must have hit my head, so I was unconscious, but when I woke up I knew straight away. It’s a very common ski injury. It was facing the wrong way – it was pretty disgusting. My coach didn’t think anything serious was wrong, but a nice Swedish man pulled me off the side and they took me in an ambulance to a hospital. They did a bunch of scans and it was a ‘here’s the sitch’ kind of thing: they told me I wouldn’t ski for a long time, and one doctor told me that I should quit racing for good.

How did it feel, hearing that?

It was very blunt, and it was pretty tough to hear. I flew to France the next day to meet my family, as I had booked a flight for Christmas. It was a pretty grim Christmas, and then we flew back to Australia about a week after. I had the surgery around 4 weeks later.

I didn’t realise how much sport meant to me until it was gone. Now I can walk down the stairs to breakfast and feel lucky for that. In the first week of term I went to 20 touch games – it’s really hard being on the sidelines having never not played sport in my life.

How is the recovery going?

It’s actually going really well. I’m hoping to be back on skis at the end of August with really preliminary stuff. We have UNIGames so it would be a lot easier to help out and do my role within that being able to go up the mountain! I wasn’t supposed to ski until January, but I’ve been doing a lot of rehabilitation and I saw my surgeon recently who said this would be a possibility.

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How has it been being a competitive female skier, and any obstacles you’ve faced under that?

The biggest thing in ski racing, in terms of being a woman, is that the living situation is very intense. In Austria, there were 11 of us, and you’d be getting up extremely early, training all day on the hill, going to the gym, eating, studying, everything together, and then you compete against each other. You just switch and you’re pitted against each other, so it’s a super interesting dynamic. To get to the bottom and to be so close in results to one another but to support each other and still be able to stay good friends takes a certain kind of mentality and is so special.

Do you think this makes for a tighter network?

Skiing is intense, isolating, and you’re often on the other side of the world in remote places – so far away from home, your family. Not only that, you come home and you’re with the same people, you are exhausted, freezing. I’ve never been as frail as coming off the back of competing.

It’s a house of 10 girls on their period, always. People miss they’re family, they’re dog, they’re tired, and people have different things that run them down. It’s hard to be rational. It puts a huge strain on relationships – making them that much more important and valuable when they work. It’s taught me a lot about acceptance.

There’re literally some days that you have period cramps, you’re exhausted, you get to the top of the mountain and you’re like ‘fuck I don’t want to be here’, so it’s so important to have people around that understand that and can support you. Its so important to here advice and support from people that are right in the thick of it too.

I think that has a huge impact on your training, having a group of supportive women. The bar is always being raised, chasing each other and supporting each other through that, and this is something that we severely lack in Australia. We lack not only fierce strong athletes in skiing, but fierce strong female athletes.

In the bracket of results, I was in I was the only one in Thredbo for a while. It’s really hard to do ski racing in Australia, mostly because we don’t have the resources overseas.

In 2016/2017 I was the only

girl on the Australian team who still lived in Sydney, and pretty much all of them had moved to the US, which makes it so much easier to get your training done.

We’d be finishing school, driving to Thredbo, training all weekend, and then be getting back Sunday night for school on Monday. I had the best parents ever for helping me through this.

You compete as a female, but train with males within the teams. I found this really important, as living in a house full of girls is intense, so it’s nice to break it up.

Everyone ends up becoming super close.

How important was the female support network in skiing?

“Women supporting women” in ski racing becomes huge, because it’s just as much, if not more, mental than physical.

You train so much, its freezing, its super intense, and then you have 30 seconds on one day to give it all you have – one mistake and you’re disqualified. It’s a huge mental game. Having a strong team is super important. There are a lot of girls on my British Team that had done my injury thrice over and having them there was really important. We don’t have an Australian base overseas, everyone splits up, which is sad, and there’s a lot of work to be done in the racing community to have that set up. it’s difficult to be comparable on an international scale, and Australia and New Zealand are only really just getting there.

You have said you also coach skiing, for both genders. Do you find there is anything that holds you back?

I’ve coached mostly children, and I think the most important thing, which I was lucky enough to have in Canada, was the mentality to just go out there and do it. Having lived in a bunch of different teams, its often considered that the boys go off and ski, and the girls come in early and don’t ski as hard. It’s really nice when coaching children, because they’re all super unaware of that boundary. The boys do ski differently, they are physically stronger, but children just go for it.

There’s nothing dif ferent in

terms of gender, and I think that’s really cool.

You’re also on the executive for the UNIGAMES SKIING team. How have you found that?

I’m treasurer for ANU Snow sports, so we’re in the crux for organising UNIGAMES and UNISPORTS. I love it. It’s such a good club, everyone is super motivated and there are such great ideas.

There are a few other girls on the team.

Keeping the relationship between th girls and guys respectful and safe is super important, and it’s such a supportive team.

Especially when we have these trips to the mountain, all living together. You have people from Uni’s all-around Australia all together in one place for these UNIGAMES TRIPS, which can fuel inappropriate behaviour. Our focus is to make sure there are people that individuals coming on these trips have people to come to, to act as a spokesperson and upholding a safe environment. When it comes to it, every one of us will listen to what people have to say and be there, which I think is the most important thing.

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Queer Fashion Photography by Imogen Clarke Yasmine: The way I like to dress helped me understand my queer identity better. My style is centrally important to me in terms of my self expression and helps me feel most like ‘myself.’ I don’t really think about it much, I just see outfits in my head and clothes I like, and I wear them. To me, being queer to me is about rejecting conventional things, which I try to embody in my dress. I like to wear patterns and clothes that are noticeable and incongruent, to make a statement.

41 Alani: Honestly this isn’t something I’ve given much thought to before. I know that my queerness is expressed through fashion but it’s hard to put into words. I see my queerness as a rejection of rigid binaries. It’s ever-evolving - I’m still figuring myself out, and I think this is reflected in my personal style. I like wearing collared shirts, all kinds of pants, and of course a bit of good old layering has never done me wrong. When looking for clothes I don’t think my queerness overtly impacts what I wear, but I do feel that it’s an important tool to help you feel at home in your body and the world. I want what I wear to be fun, practical, and ideally, a lil queer!

The best part - I get to wear my girlfriend’s clothes! Pretty gay huh.

42 Clare: Clothes don’t have a gender. Despite this, they are very often used to mark ones gender as normative. Part of being queer is subverting norms and I think many queer people subvert their norms through their fashion and the way they embody their personal style, through both clothes and personality. For me when I was a teenager I always struggled with trying to conform to feminine stereotypes that were never comfortable for me. Realising I am queer allowed me to embody my gender non conformance and wear typically masculine clothes in a community where that was not only acceptable but encouraged.

43 Anonymous: I have felt the pressures of performing feminity at a young age, at stages of my life I have either denounced feminity or become hyper-feminine. After accepting my multi-faceted outlook of clothing and using it as a means of creative expression, I frequently receive “not gay enough� as though sexuality is heavily linked with clothing for everyone. Although my sexuality and fashion are not greatly connected, I would be lying if queer fashion has not influenced me.

44 Aryanne: I think my bisexuality and fashion intersect in a really interesting way. I like to mix elements of clothing that are both classically ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine,’ and present the energies both at the same time. While my sexuality does influence in part some of the more classically queer elements of my style - the ‘bisexual bob,’ the nose ring, and my love for doc martens- this doesn’t tell the full story. I like to be as ethical as possible in my fashion, so second hand and making it myself is cornerstone. The denim jacket I bought for $10 at an Op-shop and painted myself. It’s probably one of my favourite things that I own, because It’s very unique to me. My Eastern European heritage also influences my style - my gold jewellery I’m always draped in, and my love for headscarves. I love fashion because it’s such an important form of self-expression and self-becoming for me. I definitely think my headspace is affected by how accurately I feel my physical self represents my interests, history and personal likes.

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How Much Good is there in the World?

Aveline Yang

‘Much’ meaning Quantifiable – As if good can be quantified.

Do we count every piece of shrapnel that Did not enter flesh And count that as good?

Or do we count every piece of shrapnel That enters a Nazi And count that as good?

How much good is there in the world?

In a time of The Good Place and China’s Social Credit System, It seems that good can be counted.

For each person, In each situation, In every second, Of every day.

What kind of time do we live in?

And how much good is there in the world?

Numbers don’t lie.

But numbers mean Being watched, and judged, and accounted for, Always.

Does net good tick up Or down?

Put down your calculators Put down your models, and theories, and debates And you can feel how much good there is.

In your thoughts In your strength In your actions In your soul.

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47. My Gift to You 48. Grandma’s Warning 50. A Childhood Memory 51. Chameleon 52. Fourteen Years 54. ‘Souvenirs’ Series 56. Art by Katie Chauvel 57. Scars 58. Care 59.Little Red Lunchbox 61. Is there an End to Endometriosis?

62. Sugar

3. Lake (a pool of liquid surrounded by land) Collected memories are held here, protected in deep waters. Their reflections glisten in the light.

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My Gift to You Kate Booth

This gorgeous guy, With big blue eyes And a heart of gold, Walked into my life And I gave him My heart.

I let him have it.

He’s kept it well, Well enough to Mould it, To shape it, Into whatever he wants.

And somehow, I’m okay with that Because I’d rather He break it, Than break me.

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Grandma’s Warning Sydney Farey

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Artist Statement I’ve Made My Bed (2019) by Farey is a response to the bedroom as an intimate, cherished space. It is a space when under investigation, reveals much about the occupant’s life, reflecting who they are. Conceived following the 100th birthday of Farey’s great-grandmother, this work represents her process of remembering and connecting with the remaining women of my maternal lineage - her, her mother, her grandmother, and her great grandmother. Each of the four women were raised differently, live in different countries, speak different languages, communicate in different ways, and hold different values.

Through depictions of their uniquely different bedrooms and studying what is within them, information about each of their diverse and culturally different lives is revealed, and the relationship between the four of them can be better understood.

“The process of creating this body of work was therapeutic, a way of organizing and processing my own memories and emotions dealing with my family. I find myself hoarding objects. I feel a deep sentimental attachment to everything I own.

Each object has a memory, a story, and a unique purpose in my room and my life,” says Farey. “I was very lucky to be given the opportunity to move from China to Australia with my mother and start a new life here. I hope my work will allow others to gain a better understanding of the reality of Chinese and Australian history – it’s not all linear, and there is a long history of persecution and persistence. I want to try to reveal the blind spots in this history.”

The book is imbued with Western and Chinese symbols and metaphors which are reflections of the relationships between the four women. The pear, in Chinese ideology, must be eaten whole and never cut in half, as it will represent separation and divorce. The Chinese character 家 translates to house or home, as well as family. The character is also most well known in China as the title of the famous novel by Ba Jin, chronicling inter-generational conflict between old ways and progressive aspirations.

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A Childhood Memory Kate Booth

Sunday afternoons were fishing times with Dad. Most days, my sister and I would squeeze next to each other in the ute with Dad and we would drive down to the river. The whirring of the truck against the gravel road and Dad’s deaf left ear meant we were constantly repeating whatever we were trying to tell him, but we didn’t mind. Getting down to the river always made me nervous because Dad had to drive along the bank. I always used to think that one day, when he wasn’t being so careful, we might end up over the side and down in the water. He was always very careful though. I could always trust Dad. Often, before we got into the boat, we had to search for worms, or yabbies, or both. The worms were pretty easy to find, just a bit messy in all the mud. Being girls, the mud didn’t bother us too much. It was a nice break from having to be clean all the time. The yabbies were a bit tricky. I remember never wanting to grab at them in fear of the claws clamping down somewhere on my hand. It doesn’t bother me anymore, I guess because they seem so small, now that I’m grown.

Out on the water, everything else always seemed so far away. No responsibilities and nowhere to be. Just one responsibility: to catch a fish for dinner.

More often than not, we fulfilled that singular objective, which always made Dad pretty proud. But my sister and I

could never take credit. Dad always caught something. Georgia did catch one every now and then. But me, no dice! I was just there for the fun. To this day, I have not been blessed with the patience or technique for fishing, but I’ll still show up. I think what I loved and still love most about going fishing, is being with my Dad. Whilst growing up, we didn’t get to spend too much time together because he was always busy working hard on the farm and getting to go fishing would be the highlight of the week. Just us, together, in the boat, floating in the ripples of the water, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I know it is his highlight too. Any excuse to take the boat out and he was there.

I have never really been able to decipher when being a kid changed or morphed into something more complex.

Somewhere around that early teen age, when you think you have some idea of what’s going on but really, you haven’t got a clue. I think that’s when the fishing trips for me became fewer and fewer. I went away to boarding school and didn’t get to come home that much, apart from the school holidays. And maybe I thought I needed to grow up a little, and that I was never good at fishing anyway so why bother showing up. I look back on that now and think, what a fool. I should have relished in that young, ignorant bliss, when the only responsibility was ensuring that

there were lots of laughs on the boat, and that Dad was paying attention to the bites, careful not to lose his bait (or his beer) in the river.

As a kid, I remember thinking, man, I can’t wait to get older so I can do all this cool stuff. You looked at the people who were older than you, even if it was only by a few years and you just thought they were the coolest people.

Like the way they spoke, or smiled, to the way they did their hair, or wore their clothes. And whilst wanting to get older, I remember never wanting to forget particular moments. Those moments, like being in the playground at school, when I would say to myself, “I never want to forget this.” I wanted to get older, but I also wanted things to stay the same, just being a kid and getting to run around like a headless chook, without any responsibilities or having to cook dinner or pay rent.

Even though the fishing trips with Dad are much less than they used to be, I embrace every moment on the river with him and remember why I still show up: to never give up trying to catch something for dinner and to spend time with my Dad.

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Chameleon Linh Dan Ta

Familiarity absent of comfort, Rife with pain A constant revision, Of your traumas Your sense of self Am I worthy for you?

Am I enough?

A constant revision, Of those men: But not me, I understand Camouflaged under the stealth Of sweet nothings, And head nodding, And thoughtful frowns, And eyes that want to sympathize But they just Look Right Through You

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Fourteen Years Anonymous

CW: Child sexual abuse, incest I am seven.

My favourite cousin often babysits my sister and me when my parents go out. He is fourteen. We like to play Tarzan games together on the computer before bed. Something weird happens multiple times while I sleep, my younger sister by my side.

I protect her with latex pillows. He is allergic to latex. He doesn’t touch her. Only me. I don’t understand what has happened, but deep down feel as though something is wrong.

I tell my parents. They thank me for telling them and urge me not to tell anyone about it. It’s private. Family business.

We move away. I never see my cousin or my aunt again.

I am eight.

I am quite the sticky beak and read my mother’s emails, finding one addressed to my aunt. Harsh words are exchanged. Their relationship is tense. I feel guilty. I have torn my family apart.

I am ten.

I tell my best friend about my experience. She doesn’t really understand but listens intently, asking specific questions.

I am eleven.

I am at a sleepover, lying on a mattress on the floor, crying as I think about the rift in my family. It’s all my fault. I should have stayed quiet. Then everything would be okay.

I am twelve.

My parents take me to see a psychologist. My head spins as she asks me to recall my experiences. It spins faster as the psychologist proposed that perhaps my cousin had been ‘experimenting with his sexuality.’

I think to myself that my body is not mine. It is an object.

The visit ends with the psychologist reading me a picture book about worries. After one appointment, my parents decide they have dealt with the issue. I am fixed.

I am thirteen.

I tell my new best friend about the incident. I ask her if it was rape. She tells me no.

I am fifteen.

I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, unaware of the book’s contents. I finish the book crying, on my sister’s trundle bed. In the dark, I google child sexual abuse and conclude that the definition applies to me. I tell a friend about it a few days later. She asks if I see my cousin anymore; I inform her that, no, I do not. She is relieved.

I am still fifteen.

I visit my grandparents back home.

My eldest cousin comes round to go shopping with my sister and me. It goes well until she and my mum start arguing in the living room. Listening in, I realize that she is unaware what happened, what her brother did to me. Tears drip down my face.

I am seventeen.

I move back to my hometown. As I explore the city each week, I fear encountering my cousin on the street.

I sit in a computer lab at school and see an article sitting on a desk, about a woman pursuing legal action against her abuser. I briefly consider it for myself. But it’s too late. It would hurt too much.

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I am eighteen.

I come out to my mother. I worry she will think I am gay only because I was abused. She expresses with relief that she’s glad to hear I am capable of love. She wonders aloud why she doesn’t really know any gay people. I have no answer.

I am still eighteen.

My grandmother wants to hold a big 80th birthday party, with the entire family. I am terrified. She decides against it. I am relieved.

I am nineteen.

I watch Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, live. Here she is, standing on stage, telling the world about her experience with sexual assault. How brave.

I reveal to a new friend what happened to me. She listens.

I attend a workshop on sexual violence at a feminist conference and ask about child sexual abuse. The workshop leader brushes off the question, suggesting it is too taboo to even speak about. I learn about vicarious trauma – secondary trauma experienced when hearing about someone else’s trauma. I am scared to tell anyone else about what happened. I don’t want to burden them.

I am twenty.

I attend a protest against sexual assault on campus. Another student gives a speech, explaining how though they attend the protest this year as a survivor, last year they were not. I count the years. I have been a survivor for nearly thirteen years.

The campus is abuzz talking about sexual assault at universities. But child abuse is never mentioned. People continue to make jokes about pedophiles. Perverts. Incest. How funny. It’s not like it happened to you.

I am walking in a park with an old friend. We talk about how I recently had sex, but felt empty. She tells me that she too has intimacy issues.

She too had been sexually abused at the age of seven. Me too. We have suffered through this alone, but together.

I am twenty-one.

My mother tells me that my cousin thinks his family hates him because they think he’s a pedophile. We do.

He is. I don’t feel sorry for him. I talk to a therapist but it can’t erase the memories.

I count the years – I have been a survivor for fourteen, two-thirds of my life. Yet in these fourteen years, I have only understood what happened for about half of that time. Labeling my experience almost made it worse, as I now comprehended the gravity of the events. Since then, I have been haunted by my sexual assault, reminded of it most nights as I fall asleep. He may be gone from my life, but his actions will forever haunt me. Fourteen years have passed, but the memory lingers.

Author’s note: I have chosen to write this anonymously for a few reasons.

Firstly, to protect my privacy (as well as my family’s), but also to emphasise how this could have happened to anyone. Sexual abuse of children, particularly young girls, is common in Australia, but rarely talked about outside of sensationalised discussions of sexual abuse carried out by members of the Catholic Church. ******************* *****************

If this article has affected you in any way, do not hesitate to reach out to resources in the community: Canberra Rape Crisis Centre: (02) 6247 2525, 7am-11pm, 7 days a week. Also available for in-person appointments on ANU campus.

1800 Respect: 1800 7377328, 24/7.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service for people living in Australia.

Lifeline: 13 11 14, 24/7. Lifeline is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention services.

ANU Crisis Support Line 5pm-9am weekdays, 24/7 weekends and public holidays. Phone (voice calls only): 1300 050 327 SMS Text message service: 0488 884 170

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‘Souvenirs’ Series Eleanor Neumann

‘Folding fan in pink’ 2019 Coloured pencil on paper, 50cm x 65cm

‘Folding fan in green’ 2019 Coloured pencil on paper, 50cm x 65cm

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About the artist Eleanor Neumann (b. 1992) is an Australianartist andgraduate of the ANU, with a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a primary focus in the field of Painting. Her work is the result of a continuous contemplation of her surroundings, exploringthe infinite array of lines and patterns that are found in nature and reinterpreting them through the language of paint to create abstract spaces. Her work embodies themes of strength and fragility and growth and decay through frequent meditations into impermanence and memory. The intuitive nature of her work allows for various stages of fluidity and change throughout their creation, continually shifting and evolving. Each piece goes through this same cycle; the cycle of certainty and uncertainty, and finding beauty in the chaos of the process.

‘Crescent Meadow’ 2019 Oil on canvas, 100cm x 75cm

Artist statement Through my continuous reflections into ephemerality, my work seeks to give permanence to the impermanent. ‘Souvenirs’ is an exploration of colour, shape and form. It is a study into the trinkets we keep, and the reasons they become so important to us; as a way of remembering or connecting ourselves to a particular moment in time or place. Memories that are fragmented with the passing of time are forever held within these objects.The fan shape is something that has captivated me for as long as I can remember. It is the symbol of a past summer, a feeling of sticky sweat and sun-burned skin. There is something romantic about the geometry and the femininity of the shape; the way they open up like a flower in bloom and allow a woman to conceal or reveal herself.

‘Souvenirs’ 2019 Coloured pencil on paper, 50cm x 65cm

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Katie Chauvel, ink on watercolour paper Clockwise from top left: Red, Hoops and a Hat, Vacant, Snakcs, October

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Scars Kate Booth

Leave me With Scars on My heart.

I won’t care Because they Were from You. I’ll always love You.

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Care Jessica Ramamurthy

There’s a particular swell that accompanies the kiss of a forehead in the deepest night; a particular heartbreak in the memory of the lost, unforgotten moment that says (not whispers) you are everything right now.

I hide outside, embraced by the arms of the eucalyptus. The dual streetlights and scattering of stars illuminate fears in the midnight darkness, and the occasional burning of tobacco supresses the panic until, in multiples, the memory threatens tears to drip down a moisturised face demanding reapplication.

Followed by the churning of nausea, the tightening of a chest, the count to three.

One. In another lifetime, I left you.

You left me an abandoned headstone, waiting for loved ones to return just one more time. Flowers wilting, then dried, then dust at the altar, but you never even turned around to witness. So now I don’t either. I no longer turn with hopes of meeting your eyes but meeting only the upturned tag of the back of your black water-proof jacket instead.

You were disappointment. You were the weighing guilt of absolutely nothing shoved down my throat again and again, berating me only in my weakest of moments. Now, you are only the bittersweet feeling of waiting outside your house, for your housemate, not you; lying on your living room floor, metres apart, for the first time in years discussing deviating futures. With you, I was the loneliness of spending of time with the wrong person, even though it felt right. You were all I knew.

Two. In another lifetime, we had chemistry.

I trained myself in solitude, but I wasn’t prepared for the loneliness. So, in the most millennial of ways we met, and you were a full folder of memes I’d saved, waiting for the right time to send. You were a love I refused to acknowledge, held only in my memory, so I never turned around and I always walked away first. We were Schrödinger’s cat, and I feared crumbling at the thought of anything but the forced ignorance of whether you would turn around or not. My love for you was strange and apathetic, and I can’t remember how I cared for you, only that I’m sure I did. An eight-month sexless romance, so I moved on to someone new before either of us lost interest.

Three. In another lifetime, I told you the truth.

I traced your lips and sharp contours one day, and I remember never wanting to forget. I told myself don’t be silly, you still have a while, and then it was over and I hadn’t taken the time to remember. I kept my distance, I played the cool girl, then one day I felt you turn around and I almost caved, I almost looked back. I’m tired of not caring. Apathy is looking at yourself in the mirror during a two-hour panic attack in the driver’s seat at dusk, after a 20-minute cry in the cold work bathrooms, and telling yourself to suck it up. It’s finally telling people to stop asking if you’re okay because you’re sick of saying yes; you’re sick of saying no. You were pure potential, and as we

discussed black truths and white lies, I realised I had caved: I almost loved you.

My lungs finally give me space to breathe and I stop counting. The neighbour’s dog howls mutterings of chasing desires and the whispers in my mind echo the voices of my friends.

Repetitious. Telling me, over and over, you can care.

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Little Red Lunchbox Aveline Yang He takes to work His little, red lunchbox.

It is plastic and old, with chipped edges And rough on the inside, where years of scrubbing Have scraped away the smoothness.

He works 8-hour shifts, sometimes more And overtime on Saturdays with a second job on Tuesday Comes home 15 minutes before midnight, always Like Groundhog Day for Cinderella For the last 25 years.

His wife is unhappy she has sacrificed so much for seemingly so little and his labour is never enough To paint the future in the vivid colours she wants it to be In the way she wants her children’s to be.

But it is hard to see the future so vivid when the brightest thing in his life right now is His little, red lunchbox.

It used to be filled with food Spicy tofu and pork floss, oily, braised pork on rice and snowpeas, cabbage and steamed fish made Just the way he liked it.

Now it is filled with sustenance Rice, egg (that his wife hates; it reminds her too much of her father on Sunday mornings), Leftover beef from the night before and hastily stir-fried greens.

Every night, calloused, weary hands wash the container Scrubbing it so it’s a little rougher A little tougher

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And leaving it to dry, ready For tomorrow night.

Every day, calloused, weary hands drive to grocery stores and Asian markets For his sustenance And for food for his family.

He doesn’t talk much about himself Not about his life before, or his life now Not while he cooks, or while he drives Or while he watches the TV shows In his language that reminds him of home.

His journey from home to here is foggy And his children don’t care to ask much They only know snatches from their mother Who doesn’t often care to speak about it.

His story is buried.

His feelings Even further than that.

On Sundays, he rests; Wakes up late and does yard work, if it needs to be done Brings lunch home from the restaurants near the shops – Always crispy chicken for me with the extra soup I like, beef noodles that my siblings love – And at 6pm sharp, he starts cooking dinner.

Everyone is there on Sunday night for his family dinner And everyone brings leftovers home for lunch the next day.

Partially out of convenience and partially As an appreciation for his labour of love.

On Sundays, His little red lunchbox sits on the drying rack for an extra night and I think He is waiting for the day He can put the lunchbox away.

There is a lot that is unknown about him (A lot more to be desired, some would say) But he is easy to understand - he is steadfast, like clockwork And always, he brings home His little, red lunchbox.

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Is there an End to Endometriosis?

Ailsa Schreurs It’s Christmas morning, I am 16 years old, and instead of waking up to my brother shaking me in anticipation, I wake up crying and rolling around my bed in unbearable pain. I knew I was on my period, and they were always painful - but never like this. I am used to feeling immense pain around the first couple of days each time, and it is normal for me to need to take medication every single period to help with pain. I take tablets, lie in bed, and wait for the pain to subside, so I can join my family like normal.

Another year passes. I travel with my Mum to see a sonographer for a general ultrasound. Mum doesn’t want me experiencing this pain during my final school exams, and neither do I. Do they find anything? No. But I am told to start taking the contraceptive pill for my pain. And for a while, it works.

Another year passes. I’m in Year 12 and I leave my Society and Culture class to collect something from the school office for my teacher, on the other side of the school. Uphill travel.

Upon arriving back in class, I buckle over in pain. Simply walking up and down the steps, in a small rush, while on my period, had sent me bursting into tears when sitting back down in the classroom. My friends don’t understand why, and neither does my teacher.

Another year passes. I have moved to Canberra and am on a solitary bus trip to Woden, to see another sonographer for a new round of ultrasounds. I have two, an internal and an external, and they are very uncomfortable. The lady is lovely, but I feel alone. They find nothing wrong.

Another year passes. I am on an overseas field school for university, living in Nepal for 32 days. For some reason, I am waking up every day to find myself with unbearable cramps each morning, then having them disappear as soon as I get up. Every day. And I am not bleeding. In fact, I am still on the pill. I decide to take the sugar pills and have a period, hoping that my body finds its own rhythm and sorts itself out. It doesn’t, and I am still in pain. Every morning. I manage to find a small Nepali pharmacy in the alleyways of Patan, and they have Ponstan and Naprogesic. I buy a box of each.

They do nothing.

Another year passes. I am at work, and during my 5-hour shift I am standing upright, plastering a smile on my face, helping customers with medications, while I am burning inside. My lovely female colleagues suggest I am ‘on the first day’ of my period. I tell them no, and that this is normal now.

They are surprised, and ask no more questions. I serve another customer.

It is now March 2019. Endometriosis Awareness Month. I am referred to a new sonographer, a professional, highly regarded in his area. I don’t want another round of ultrasounds. I don’t want a man with a wand prodding me, telling me to ‘rate my pain out of ten’ every time he moves the camera inside me. And yet it happens. And the pain ranges from a 4 to an 8 every time. I cried. The nurse offers me water and tissues. We sit back in his consulting room and he tells me I have two suspected types of endometriosis, and they can only be confirmed through a laparoscopy - keyhole surgery. I am told the wait time for surgery is 12 months, in the public system. In the meantime, I am prescribed new medications, some which have to be made up for me and are only available at particular chemists. I take them. And I wait.

Another year passes.

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Sugar Faith Stellmaker Artist Statement Sugar by Faith Stellmaker critiques the experiences and social expectations of women in the contemporary moment and explores the ways in which girls present themselves. With feminism more recently coming to the foreground of political and cultural debates, these images capture the unapologetic comradery shared between females in both the public and private space. They aim to ‘turn the tide’ against labels, stereotypes and the negative connotations that come with ageing by celebrating women and highlighting the female form.

These images have recently been exhibited at the ANU school of art gallery foyer in the exhibition, Everyone Looking at Everyone.

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65. Oh Really? YES Really!

66. A Snap Is the Sound of a Feminist Killjoy 67. Untitled 68. To Be Well 70. Breathe 71. Waste of Space 72. A Letter to My Sexual Assaulter 74. A Recipe for Anger 76. Balancing Debate 78. We Share DNA, Not a Body 80. A View from the Mainland 82. Halloween 2017 84. SCUM Manifesto: Valerie Solanas 86. Untitled 88. An Interview with DJ Gulia Jillard 89. Indigenous and Black Feminists to Stand With and Get Behind

4. River (a large flow of water moving towards a sea, lake or another river) A burst of energy accompanies a voice that refuses to be silenced. I move forward with my anger, knowing I make history.

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Oh Really?

YES Really!

Bronte Charles

How many times have you been wandering around, kicking arse, accomplishing your goals and nailing life only to be met with the incredulous or patronising: “Oh

Really

You?”

Is there anything quite as infuriating as the sincere belief that men seem to have that you, the average amazing woman, is not capable of doing anything that you put your mind to? This question invalidates, confuses, causes doubt and compounds every girl’s best friend: good old IMPOSTER SYNDROME. But never fear ladies, because guess who else has been asked in that tone of doubt and disbelief how they, a lowly woman, could have achieved their lofty goals without the assistance of some nice burly man?

EVERY ICONIC WOMAN IN HISTORY! Sad, but true. Let’s hear from some guests at my dream dinner party. Absolute legend Nancy Wake was the kind of gal who liked her creature comforts, enjoyed spending time with friends, put on a mean party, and in her spare time parachuted into France to organise resistance against the occupying Nazis. At another time she cycled something close to 500km in 72 hours, dodging German patrols to get a replacement radio for her squad of fighting Frenchmen. A woman of uncommon bravery and skills, she helped to down allied pilots and captured servicemen attempting to escape over the Pyrenees, played a role in the D-Day operation and punched just like a bunch of Nazis. You would not even believe (actually you probably would) how

few people wanted to believe that this young Australian girl was the infamous White Mouse. Guess what she said to the crusty white man who didn’t want to vote for her because he didn’t believe she was a war hero? Yes. Really. I did do that. And I will do it again. So don’t test me, I can use a bazooka.

Who amongst you has been running a Bolshevik meeting and been told that when the revolution happens that women will have to get back in the kitchen?

Well, Comrade Alexandra Kollontai told off the not-revolutionary-enough revolutionaries, overthrew the government, created International Women’s Day and had enough time left in the day to destroy monogamy as a construct; so, way to go, Comrade! The Bolshi women were responsible for starting the February Revolution, which deposed the tsar.

Oh really? Are you sure it wasn’t some masculine clever chap with a beard? No. It was from Comrade Alexandra.

All right ladies, listen up, it’s important!

There will come a moment in time in which someone will tell you that you cannot possibly be the one to fix the world. It may happen repeatedly. It may have already happened. I know it sounds crazy but some people don’t seem to see your potential. They will say, what can a young lass such as yourself do to end climate change? How will you, a random person of no skills, nor expertise, end discrimination against trans people? You cannot possibly end an entrenched civil conflict, you’re only 21 and your life experience has been studying medicine.

Guess who said, “oh really?” and took

it as a personal challenge! It’s Alaa Murabit, a Canadian/Liberian doctor who advocates for the inclusion of women in the peace process. 90 per cent of peace negations fail within five years, but with the inclusion of women, they are 35 times more likely to last. Oh, really? How do you know? Well, Alaa Murabit wrote it and I implicitly believe everything she says (sure, be careful in the age of fake news, but Alaa Murabit wouldn’t lie to me). People (men) will try to put you in a box, in a corner, in a different room, in a locked building, in a separate country to where the good stuff is happening. We say no to that, and break down doors/ barriers/glass ceilings and then we brag about it. Oh, really? You did that. Yeah. I did. I’m awesome.

Fully commit to what you’re doing, if for no other reason than to strike a power pose, stare straight into the dead eyes of Neckbeard McFedora, who dares question your experience and skills, and reply: “Yes Really That was ME” It’s what Nancy, Alexandra, and Alaa, would do.

P.S. When you do achieve that brilliant thing, you can join my dinner party. Let’s get Sappho and Ida Wells-Barnett drunk and see what happens.

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A Snap is the Sound of a Feminist Killjoy Nicole Molyneux A killjoy is a feminist that sabotages a situation. She interrupts the proceedings. She ruins an otherwise pleasant moment. When she arrives, the atmosphere changes. Her eyes widen. She raises her voice. She refuses to laugh at bigoted jokes. She has a wilful tongue.

She bangs her cutlery at the dinner table.

She recognises what she is up against.

Other people perceive her snapping as dramatic or rash or even as an act of aggression. For them, it looks as though she’s “losing it” or “flying off the handle” (Ahmed 2017, 189 & 205). But actually, she is protesting.

The sound of a feminist killjoy is like the snap of a twig. You can hear it in her voice. It cuts the atmosphere like a knife.

It’s the sound of a feminist who just can’t “take it anymore; when she just can’t take it anymore” (Ahmed 2017, 190).

The moment she gives in to the pressure, when she can’t bear it anymore, is the moment she experiences the sensation of a feminist snap. The sensation of having to share a world with people who cause her to break.

The first time, you do not snap. But you want to.

Why didn’t you say something to his face? Why didn’t the people around you say something to his face? The feminist killjoy inside of you is screaming, but you didn’t let her out. Why didn’t you let her out?

It’s fine, you learn from this experience.

The next occasion soon arrives, and it is unexpected, as is the first instance.

You try to speak, but he keeps interrupting you.

This is normal for a feminist killjoy. As

soon as you sound like you’re complaining, men mysteriously do not hear you anymore. You are silenced for pointing out what he could not possibly be.

But you don’t give up without a fight.

You snap some more.

You’ve about had enough of ‘Mr Shitjoke’ and you can feel tears coming on.

The injustice of the situation is getting to you.

You haven’t done anything wrong. But he makes you feel like you are in the wrong, unable to accept that the problem was him. People like him might see you as an aggressive and outspoken bitch. But actually, you’re a brave and wilful feminist killjoy. You refuse to be a bystander. What makes you snappy is that you snap. You snap to right a wrong.

You are often told or are made to feel as though you are too emotional, irrational or hysterical. To snap is to resist against people who tell us not to feel or react on our emotions. If they tell you that you are too emotional, you will be emotional.

To this day, you do not forget these experiences. The body does not forget. After a while, being a killjoy becomes routine.

Challenging people becomes commonplace.

In the beginning, you fought your battles with tears. Now your resilience is growing. We can think about bodies like

they are twigs. The stronger the twig, the harder it is to snap. Some bodies are more resilient then others. Some bodies have been forced to become more resilient in order bear the brunt. Brown bodies, black bodies, queer bodies, gender non-conforming bodies and other traumatised bodies. They are forced to be stronger and more resilient to survive in the world. It takes a lot for them snap.

Even if they don’t give in to the pressure, the damage is still there.

White bodies are strong enough bear the brunt too. But they often don’t. They aren’t often forced to. But they need to.

White bodies need to take more of the brunt. These feminists need to become snappy. They need to bring out their inner feminist killjoys.

This means resisting the path expected of you and instead following the path less travelled by. The feminist path. It may be a hard road, but it can be the road to living your desired life. Walking this path can be lonely. You will find it hard to deal with people who aren’t empathetic to your values. You will feel like you are shutting yourself off from the rest of the world. But snapping can be a lifeline: it can mean escaping an existence that was even harder to survive and finding the freedom to lead a feminist life.

Say something. Say anything. Yell.

Scream. Make a scene. Or just give them a glaring look. Get up and leave. Make a statement. Or Just make a noise. How you do it is up to you. Let them know their behaviour is not okay.

If you’ve got the energy to be a killjoy, use it.

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Eilis Fitt, Untitled (2019), paper

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To Be Well Clare Jessup

CW: chronic illness, death, mental health What the hell does that even mean?

When someone asks you, “are you well?” they’re expecting you to say, “yes!” because they assume that wellness equates to health; but it doesn’t.

Whilst they impact each other, they are two completely separate states of being.

We are so obsessed with achieving and maintaining ‘perfect health’ to maximise the longevity of our existence that we often fall into living a superficial life.

We are obsessed with the notion of constantly moving, of being bigger and better than we were the day before. People pass comments of “I’m here for a good time, not a long time” as they down their umpteenth shot of god knows what at the bar on a Thursday night. But they still believe that the ‘best life’ is a ‘long life.’ This also means that when we are sick, we often view it as a negative.

Don’t get me wrong; being ill is inherently negative in its posed threat to the attainment of this aforementioned ‘best life.’ However, I want to talk about why we shouldn’t see sickness as a hindrance to the rest of our lives. Because you can most certainly be well whilst being sick.

I have Cystic Fibrosis, which is one of

the most common genetic conditions in Australia that primarily affects the lungs.

1 child is born with CF every 4 days with an average life expectancy of 38 and there is currently no cure.

But who gives a shit? Yeah, it kind of sucks not being able to run down the pitch as fast as I could last week, because my new medication (which I spent years campaigning for) is working the opposite of how it’s supposed to. And, yeah it sucks to have people dying around you at alarming frequency. But for the love of god, please do not feel sorry for me.

“Oh, honey I’m sorry!” has been expressed to me relentlessly, and as genuine and empathetic a place that it is coming from, I cannot stress enough how much I don’t not want to hear you say that. Sorry? Why? For what? I can tell you now that people who go through this kind of shit and live with uncertainty generally have a much greater and deeper appreciation for everything around them. Someone can live for 100 years and never gain the life knowledge that a chronically ill person can gain in 10. The premise of ‘sorry’ just further engrains the belief that a long life is the best life – that probably isn’t what we’re getting so quit raving about it. You and I both have the same chance of being hit by a bus tomorrow, and all either of us

would have experienced or be remembered for is what we have done up until this very moment.

See living with a chronic illness you can do one of two things, as cheesy as it sounds.

You can laugh, or you can cry.

Seriously, you can get really freaking bummed at your luck of the draw, or you can play the hell out of the cards you’ve been dealt.

That isn’t to say that I don’t experience depression, anxiety or have times when everything just feels so hard, nor is it to say that experiencing these somehow lessens your strength or validity. It is, however, about bringing yourself back to being ‘okay’, regardless of your level of mental or physical health at any given time. To learn and understand that you will always be ‘okay,’ as long as you let your measure of ‘okay’ change and grow alongside you no matter your state of health.

There have been times when I have completely broken down in front of my closest friends, and far out am I lucky that I have people who make me feel I can show that side of it all. Showing this kind of vulnerability doesn’t come easy

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to many people, myself included, especially those of us living with a chronic condition: the guilt. It’s the suffocating feeling that confiding in someone to talk about the raw and darker parts of your experiences is placing a burden on them.

They might love you beyond belief, but that’s just all the more reason you want to spare them. So, instead of splitting the pain into a few little needles, you walk around with one big sword in your chest. You cannot live your life with that sword in your chest. Because one day it’s going to go all the way through, and all the people that could have taken just a small needle are going to feel like that sword has stabbed them. Part of being ‘okay’ is talking to people, whether it be friends, family, psychologists, counsellors, your dog, psychiatrists, whomever about everything going on in your mind.

If anything can be taken from what I’ve written thus far, it should be that we all grow a little stronger from the small pricks of a needle knowing that we all feel the same, and we will all be ‘okay.’

That is what I think ‘wellness’ is: being in tune with your mind in a way that, regardless of your state of mental and physical health, you are focused on the one hundred million other parts of you that make you who you are. That you know you can and should feel every emotion, that each and every one of them is valid. You don’t need to be ‘saved’ by some pyramid scheme. You don’t need to buy 10 different commercial ‘cures’ to maximise your chances of catching up to the pack and return to flogging yourself in this cruel societal obsession

with constant self-development. That’s not to say that you should just give up on your studies forever or never work again and fuck the system - because realistically, you need to contribute to the society you’re part of if you want to benefit from it. But if you need a break or a change, don’t let the gruelling race for hyperbolised betterment persuade you to stay in something that’s not the best for you. Companies have tried to package ‘wellness’ as a foreign product that only they can provide, but you have to realise that it is something you actualise yourself. You need to allow yourself to practice whatever it is that makes your eyes sparkle and your cheeks dimple.

So paint your wall, pat your dog, make your own playlists – heck, make your own songs! You might be sick, but just listen to yourself sing! You might be dying, but god can you dance! You might be losing your sight, but never forget that everything you saw is something special, experienced only by you. You might hate your scars, but I’ll be damned if you don’t realise that each one of them has allowed you to be here today.

So, back to you and I sharing the same probability that we could be hit by a bus tomorrow or knocked unconscious by a $2 coin dropped from the balcony above us, we should all live like we have one year left to live. I don’t say like we have one day to live, because to be perfectly honest that final day is going to be filled in the most unexpected ways – so act like you have a year. A year to explore, to party, to learn, to love, to cry, to rest and

to give back. Don’t wait for exams to be over before you start enjoying life again, don’t make a list of things to do when you have the time; just bloody do them.

You literally have all of the time. I hope you fall in love with just being alive. As a recently passed idol of mine, Claire Wineland, said, ‘you shouldn’t wait to be healed to start serving humanity’ (and this humanity includes yourself!).

So, wellness will still grow and shrink constantly with successes and failures, hopes and crushed dreams. Just never let yourself forget how it feels to be ‘well’, and you will always be okay.

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Breathe Kate Booth

Have you ever Loved someone So much That Sometimes It felt like Your heart Was going To explode And its Beating so Fast that You almost Forget to breathe?

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Waste of Space Leah Smith When I worked at Maccas, I used to get really pissed because there was an excessive amount of waste and it really brought attention to just how much people were consuming because the amount of boxes that I used in this piece barely scrapes the surface of what we would grab in one day. and everything came in cardboard wrapped in plastic wrapped in plastic wrapped in plastic‌ All of this stuff was going to waste and I felt like I wanted to something with it. It was just sitting there and we didn’t even recycle soft plastics.There are so many solutions that could have been taken to reduce waste but none of them ever happened, no matter how much myself or other workers protested it. Despite most of my managers being female, I didn’t feel listened to; they felt as though they had authority over me. They viewed us all as children - infantilised us. Many of the male customers at McDonalds treated me poorly, constantly objectifying me, staring at me. Throughout my time working at Maccas, I felt as though customers viewed me and my co-workers as trash. This artwork protests the wastage of materials at Maccas, while also pushing against the way I was treated as an employee.

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A Letter to My Sexual Assaulter Maddie Chia CW: Intense, graphic description of sexual assault, internalised victim blaming, emotional navigation of trauma, self-harm

You really hurt me.

I guess I am partially to blame because I invited you over that night but I was drunk.

I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to consent and I felt so disgusting afterwards.

I’m sorry if I lead you on but I never really liked you in that way. I really loved J and I still do and I just wasn’t ready to open up to anyone else. Heck, I’m still not ready to. I hate the fact that I let you see me naked. I was so vulnerable in that moment.

No one had ever seen me naked before ever not even my exes. I wanted to save that for someone special not for it to be taken away by someone I hardly knew.

Sure, we went on one date the previous week but that still doesn’t give you a right to touch me. Just because we are in the same tutorials for our degree doesn’t give you a right to touch me. And neither does the fact that we are in the ANU boat club together give you the right to touch me.

stuff to me. I was drunk and I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. When you kissed me, you were so rough and it hurt. When you kissed my neck, and gave me that hickey I admit it felt nice objectively, but it hurt. Maybe I was being naive and stupid, thinking that I was okay with this in the moment. Maybe I was just trying to reassure myself that there are other boys in the world that would think I was pretty, smart, and funny but most of all someone that they saw as a potential girlfriend.

When you took off my bra and started sucking my breasts and nipples, it fucking hurt. How my body reacted doesn’t dismiss the fact that you were so rough, doesn’t mean I wanted it.

It hurt.

I had bruises.

Don’t you remember me pushing against your chest saying. “stop, it hurts”?

It may not seem like a big deal to you but it was a huge deal to me.

Don’t you remember when I said, “slow down”?

I don’t have a lot of experience and it hurt me; it really did. When you kept forcing your way closer to me and eventually into my bed and then with your tongue down my throat I knew it wasn’t okay. At that point, I had only ever kissed one boy and I was thinking about him the whole time because I was so scared.

Don’t you remember when I refused to kiss you in the beginning because I didn’t want to.

This isn’t what I wanted.

This wasn’t the vision I had for my first time being naked in front of a guy or the first time receiving oral or the first time being fingered or the first time having a hickey. You hurt me when you did that

And you kept begging and persisting until I eventually caved in.

That is not consent.

That is not okay.

You should have respected my decision but you didn’t. And that is so not okay.

Then, even after all that, you went down on me. That’s another first I’ll never be able to get back. My first memory and experience will always be you. Let us be

clear. My body’s reactions were not for you, and not in response to you. The entire time, it wasn’t you who I was imagining doing it to me. And then you started fingering me. That bloody hurt.

Don’t you remember how I started saying, “stop家it hurts”?

Don’t you remember me saying, “ouch, please stop”?

You know why I said that?

Because it fucking hurt.

I was a virgin and I still am. You were pushing my hymen and trying to stick your finger inside of me. I told you no but you still did it anyway and then you had the audacity to say it’ll hurt but not to worry, that soon I’ll feel “so good” when your finger hits my g-spot.

I felt so disgusted in that minute.

You started to take off your boxers and I said no I wasn’t ready. In that minute, I thought that this was how I was going to lose my virginity. This was going to be my first time. My first memory of what sex feels like. But thank god, in that moment, you listened to me when I said, “stop, I’m not ready”. Thank goodness you didn’t ignore me then, when I pushed against your chest. You proceeded to spoon me for 10 minutes and then put on your clothes.

And left me.

Alone.

Lying in my bed.

Maybe to you this was normal. I remem-

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bered you saying to me that you never sleep in your one night stand’s bed.

That made me feel so cheap.

So worthless.

Like I was nothing.

You said “we’ll do this again sometime”.

That the Fenner rooms were soundproof and that we could fuck there. Where there was a double bed. You said you’d make me feel good again. I know you have a reputation at Fenner for being quite a lady’s man. Maybe this seemed okay to you. Nothing special at all. After all, you did tell me you viewed sex as a recreational activity. But it isn’t like that for me.

It is something that happens between two people who are committed to one another and love each other unconditionally. It is something I want to do, only with the person I love but I barely knew you at all.

I felt so disgusted after you left.

I cried myself to sleep and in the morning, I stripped off all my sheets and pillowcases and ripped them in the process. It was fucking Mother’s Day and my parents were at college eating scones. For them, it was just an ordinary day, for everyone else, life was the same. And I had to go out there and pretend like nothing happened.

Like I wasn’t hurting.

Like I didn’t just get sexually assaulted.

Like I didn’t just have my consent breached. I was so ashamed. This wasn’t who I am.

My mother didn’t raise me like this.

I felt dirty.

So, fucking dirty.

And after a while, I had to put on a fucking smile and celebrate Mother’s Day. I took about 6 showers that day and had panic attacks every time I went in. I told my friend and he had to pick me up off the ground outside, when I collapsed crying. The Women’s Officer and my other friends had to hold my hand while I told the Vice Principal and my RA what had

happened.

I felt so helpless and little.

You took away a part of me that I’ll never be able to get back.

This was just the start of my downwards spiral last term. It really fucked with my mental health and just elevated my clinical depression and anxiety to another level. I took 2 weeks off Uni. I had appointments with doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, the dean of students, the vice principal of Burgmann and the fucking rape crisis centre.

I was fucking broken.

And all the while I thought it was my fault.

Me.

Scrubbing my skin until it was bleeding; red and raw. Cutting my arms with scissors because I hated myself that much.

Cutting them until they bled so much that they bruised purple and soaked through a bandage. I still have scars on my arm.

Red lines that will never fade because I hated myself so much. I hated the person I had become, the one you left behind in my bed.

But you know what, in the end, I’m thanking myself. The only thing you did to me was break me. But I worked so fucking hard to heal. I worked so hard to be happy again. I worked on my inner strength.

I am the most amazing fucking person I’ll ever meet.

Not you.

I was the one who caused this.

I am stronger.

I was the one who was acting provocatively.

I am loved.

I was the only one to blame.

Not you.

Me. I didn’t even tell my mum about what happened until less than a month ago.

And she cried. So, did I. I haven’t told anyone else in my family. I haven’t told many of my friends. Heck, I haven’t even fully admitted it to myself. And you know it really damaged me. I walked around like a shell of myself last term while you were living it up. Don’t think I didn’t see you. I saw you walking around and laughing and talking and smiling like you never sexually assaulted me. How ironic right?

Instead, here I was crying and isolating myself.

I didn’t smile. I didn’t eat. I didn’t talk to anyone.

I couldn’t even fucking look at myself fully naked in the floor length mirror because I was so disgusted. Getting prescriptions for antidepressants. Taking antidepressants.

Hating myself.

I am cared for.

Thanks to me I know that I am strong beyond a measure of doubt. That if I can survive what you have done to me, I can survive anything.

Thank you.

If this article has affected you in any way, do not hesitate to reach out to resources in the community: Canberra Rape Crisis Centre: (02) 6247 2525, 7am-11pm, 7 days a week. Also available for in-person appointments on ANU campus.

1800 Respect: 1800 7377328, 24/7.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service for people living in Australia.

Lifeline: 13 11 14, 24/7. Lifeline is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention services.

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A Recipe for Anger Erin Kirsch

One activist recounts her experiences with an insatiable anger against the world, the burnout that followed and why she finally decided to give up.

CW: talking about mental health, injustice I get angry a lot. I’m a stereotype within myself; a red-haired, angry feminist, who cares about the environment.

I planted the seeds for anger during high school, and I’ve gotten to a stage in my life where I’m not afraid to speak out about issues I care about. I’ve been known to vocally express my opinions in our college dining room, accompanied by appropriate slamming of the cutlery, ensuring everyone at the table next to me hears my loudly voiced opinions.

Unfortunately, at this stage in our increasingly endangered and globalised world, there are plenty of things to get angry about. I have to also acknowledge that I am privileged enough to have space, time and energy to be this angry.

It’s exhausting to acknowledge and recognise basic human rights violations, deficits in women’s rights, queer rights, climate change, animal abuses, environmental damage, ableist people, the far right, the far left.

Having grown up without a TV, starring at the news for a while is a struggle, and often completely demoralising and heartbreaking. I was told in an international relations course last year that we had to be checking the news every day, and like any good student, I went away, downloaded the ABC News app, and was soon hit with a crippling wave of existentialism.

This app chose to give me push notifications, accompanied with a lovely ‘ding’, so if I had the misfortune of forgetting to check the app the moment I got up, I received the notifications in the car, in the shower, during study sessions and when I was eating lunch. Whilst this may have been a complete oversight and lack of technological prowess on my part (I could have just turned notifications off), I felt in touch with the world and secure in knowing if (or more to the point, when) the next great disaster hit, I would know straight away.

In some ways, however, knowing every time the latest cyclone hit or someone

else got convicted of a horrific crime, was just another hole in the naive armour of my person, the same person that once refused to keep track of the outside world.

The other chinks came in the form of being involved with an environmental group on campus. Learning every week about the decisions our politicians were making, or in many cases refusing to make, and how that directly impacted my future was incredibly disheartening.

Activist spaces and the feelings and reactions they incite can often feel like banging your head against a brick wall; a brick wall that is conscious of the damage it’s doing to your head and refuses to give way. However, you just keep banging away, hoping that somehow you can change its mind. I channeled this frustration and injustice into passionate discussions with friends, which I will admit could be better classified as ranting.

My anger often stretches to bewilderment, particularly at the fact that public figures with larger platforms than I, are

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portant to recognise that it’s valid even when you are not on the front line. I felt guilty for feeling disheartened, especially as I’m yet to run any big campaigns or dedicate immeasurable hours to one specific cause. How do people who dedicate their lives to activism cope with this pressure?

Apparently, I’m not alone in feeling this way. In October the ABC released an article about climate change and existentialism prompted a letter from a 27 year old. Following is an excerpt:

not speaking up about issues, instead choosing to promote products for consumerist purposes or to increase women’s insecurities (I’m looking at you Kardashians). I came up with a list at one point of all the things wrong with our world: single-use plastics, anyone who still thinks shopping at H&M is an ethical way to spend their money. The list felt infinite. All of this boiled away in the back of my empath skull and slowly but surely, this anger ate away at me.

That’s why this year, I’ve decided to give up. I stopped going to meetings, putting up posters, talking about events and calling people up trying to get them to join in the fight against climate change. To put this into greater context, I study environment and sustainability - climate justice is one of the biggest issues that I’m passionate about. Stepping away from these issues is near impossible. I’d arrived at the point where it felt like nothing was being accomplished. I went to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change event, where someone from the government actively chose to stand up and ask people to not be political when asking questions concerning their future. However, as someone in the audience soon pointed out, we are completely running out of time. Of course, we’re going to get political, when no action is being taken and politicians are running their own agendas whilst ignoring the looming climate crises. I came away from that event feeling completely disheartened.

Activist burnout is real, and it is im-

day night only numbs my panic for about 12 hours in a week, and my budget, nor my liver, will stretch to drinking every night of the week.

So what can you do?

The list of usual coping mechanisms for something like this is meditation, focusing on the now and being grateful for your current situation. Talking to people who are likeminded can also sometimes help, but it is equally important to make sure you step back and practice selfcare, and don’t focus on activist work all the time. Doing things that you enjoy, to distract you from the imminent doom is also recommended. Playing music is my pick usually.

“I’ve been having several panic attacks a day, can’t concentrate and just have a constant overwhelming feeling of impending doom…

When I’ve been out and about I’ve been looking around at people and thinking, Anger is incredibly valuable if it gives why are we just going about our normal you the passion to be the change that lives?” you want to see, but it is equally important to make sure it doesn’t come at a I went to a counsellor last year to deal cost to your health and wellbeing. And if with anxiety and the strategy she gave it is, take a step back, potentially away, me was to look at what you think is ac- and go and talk to someone about it, tually happening, compared to what is ideally a professional, but if not, a friend. actually happening and then come to a And given the declining state of humaninice, neat point in the middle where you ty, make sure to enjoy and treasure every recognise the reality of the situation but moment while it lasts! also make sure you honour the way you are feeling.

It sounds corny, but your memories and experiences will one day be all you have.

But what happens when the reality and what is actually happening are one and the same and there is no control over what is happening? This was one of the most demoralising, heartbreaking moments ever. These feelings are perfectly captured by the meme of the dog sitting in the burning room saying ‘everything is fine’. Except I am the dog and the burning room is the whole world.

Unfortunately, I have no real words of wisdom. I’m seeing someone about it, but my cynical and pessimistic side that is very strong within me says that the reality is just too grim. Alcohol on a Thurs-

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Balancing Debate Sophie Aboud

If there’s anything three years of politics tutorials have taught me, it’s that being able to confidently and articulately argue is an incredibly valuable skill for young women. You need to speak clearly and calmly, lest you misspeak or stray too far from your original point. Watch the language you use – if it’s too relaxed, you’ll sound like an idiot, but if it’s too formal you’ll sound like a wanker. You want to appear confidently calm and collected, as someone who knows what she’s talking about but isn’t stubborn or standoffish. If you can

do all this while dodging the torrent of hypothetical scenarios from the self-titled ‘devil’s advocate’ lounging at the back of the room, cloaked in laid-back arrogance and a Ralph Lauren sweater, you know you’ve earned the approval of your peers (and hopefully a good tutorial participation grade).

In my mind, the opportunity to participate in intellectual discourse is one of the most valuable aspects of university culture. Debate is vital and should be encouraged, especial-

ly when it relates to the issues which affect as all as young people. Climate change, Australian politics, global power– we live and study as intelligent and educated young women at one of Australia’s best universities, and intellectual discourse on these topics is important and essential.

When these kinds of topics come up in my tutorials and seminars, I pride myself on my ability to argue them well. I still tend to speak a little fast when I’m nervous, but for the most part I’ve honed my ability to express a well-formed view without getting

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too flustered or frustrated when a deep voice from the back of the room pipes up to ‘expand on’ the point I just made.

But when a cis-male friend recently told me that if I choose to get wasted on a Thursday night then I should expect to be sexually assaulted, I lost my well-developed ability to argue. I became emotional, angry and ‘inarticulate’. It was for him an entertaining debate, but for me, a topic of survival. I’ve angrily reflected on that conversation a lot in the past few weeks. I’m still incensed by the views my friend presented, but also disappointed that I was expected to engage in such a discussion in the first place, let alone with a level head. I couldn’t even begin to articulate my intrinsic disagreement with the arguments he presented to me, as much as I wanted to engage with him on the topic.

I struggle to walk the line between participating in discussions like this while refusing to entertain a debate that, to me, doesn’t exist. There is no debate to be had about whether a woman has the same right to bodily autonomy as men, or whether the ultimate responsibiltiy for avoiding sexual assault falls solely on young women. When men bring these conversations up, they’re not just playing the devil’s advocate for fun. They’re reinforcing views already intrinsic within our society – views that are actively harming women.

As women, we find ourselves in this predicament all too often. The tragic addition of Courtney Herron to the list of young women murdered at the hands of men in Australia serves as a visceral reminder that now is a better time than ever to discuss male violence towards women. So then why does it so often feel as if I’m screaming into a void when dinner conversation turns to these topics? And why is my display of emotion interpreted as ‘feminine irrationality’, not seen as something valid to express?

While the men I engage with in these conversations might never experience the same quickening heartbeat when a car slows down beside you, or when a man takes the same right turn walking behind you, my experiences are immediately discounted by virtue of my evident frustration.

My arguments don’t have merit on

their own but are valued solely on the way they are presented.

I used to be embarrassed by the fact that I got so upset during the conversation with my friend. While he expressed concern for upsetting me, like some men do, the conversation just served to confirm suspicions that women ultimately can’t engage in ‘hard conversations’ without getting emotional. I felt that in expressing my emotions, I lost a degree of credibility as his intellectual equal. While he was able to calmly explain why women should come to terms with the fact that assault is inevitable, I was reduced to a tearful mess. I felt as if he was merely ‘indulging’ me, asking for my opinion because he knew I’d leap at the chance to give it.

The angrier I got, the easier it was for him to dismiss the points I was trying to make. My friend was listening to me, but not engaging with what I was trying to say. I was just entertainment for him.

Looking back at it now, I’m more frustrated than ever – but no longer at myself. I’m angry that he saw my right to safety as something ‘debatable’.

I’m sick of the responsibility placed on women to constantly engage in confrontations about our rights and freedoms with our cis-male classmates. I’m angry at the expectation that women need to remain measured in order to be taken seriously, an expectation that has never been (and will never be) placed on men to the same extent. I understand that cultural change starts with conversation, but I’m exhausted.

I am forever grateful for the people in my life that I’m able to express these thoughts with, many being some of the most intelligent and insightful women I’ve ever met. For every asshole wanting to argue with me over the dinner table, I have the support of all the strong women in our community engaging clearly and articulately with others like him.

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We Share DNA, Not a Body Anonymous

CW: Body image “Make sure you wear makeup.”

“You won’t be able to get in a relationship if you look like that.”

“Have you waxed your eyebrows?”

“How much have you been eating?”

“Have you gone up any dress sizes?”

“You’re too curvy to wear that.”

These are words forced onto me by my mother, my aunties and my grandmother.

Not just by TV, advertising or social media, but by the people who believe they are entitled to an opinion on my body because they share a percentage of my DNA. Comments from women who believe I should fit the same mould as them since we share ancestry.

My life has been shaped and moulded by these comments. I hated my

body because I was slightly taller and curvier than the other women in my family. I began comparing myself to them more and more, questioning why I had to be bigger, wishing every day that I could change the structure of my bones. What do I have to do to look like them? What do I have to do the be accepted as her daughter, her niece, her granddaughter? I know being curvier made me different in their eyes. I needed to lose weight, exercise more or eat less to be a member of this family. These words spread through me like a poison dripping through my veins and tearing apart the foundation of who I am. With every word that was said, I grew harder trying to hold together the shell that was left. Trying to breathe in a world that was against everything I embodied, felt like I was constantly drowning, being pulled under water by an invisible rope. I believed every word.

“Your hair is too dark”, my mother once told me, her expression blank, filled only with a fiery spark in her eyes, as if waiting for a fight to begin. It is the same shade as her hair:

a deep brown. After hearing this remark about my appearance, I got angry, frustrated, upset and tired, my breathing got faster as I attempted to stay calm, the world seemed to slow as I felt my mind curl in on itself. If every part of me that doesn’t fit my mother’s ideal is wrong, then how is my hair, the one thing we have in common, also not right? If the one thing we share is wrong, how can I ever be good enough? How can I be accepted as her daughter if she seemingly detests every aspect of my being? Stemming from a cyclical structure that has been forced through generations, her words were more than distaste, but an inner hatred that she pushed onto me. I had experienced these comments - and comments like them nearly every day for years – from the people who are meant to love me for who I am. Perhaps they didn’t want me to hurt the way they were. But it became clear to me that there was a generational cycle that needed to be broken. These comments were said behind closed doors, hidden behind pained smiles, and my friends and I shared the same exhaustion of not

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being accepted for who we were.

I looked in the mirror and stared into my eyes, a brown so dark it appeared black. Boring. Plain. Where is that fair complexion? Why can’t I have my cousins’ bright blue eyes?

Why can’t I have the lighter brown/ hazel eyes of my brother and dad? I saw myself in a distorted view, shifting from what I knew of myself, to a figure that was losing its sense of self.

But now I’m standing in the mirror, twenty years of not enough, and look at who I have become. Strong, passionate and brave. My eyes are beautiful, and they are my own.

If the eyes are the window to the soul, then my eyes show not only the pain of twenty years’ worth of ridicule, but also the strength that I have accumulated. The strength to endure the harsh reality of my childhood, the strength to keep moving forward, the strength to look into a mirror and find the things that I think are beautiful, the strength to get up every day. The strength to see the scars no-one else can see and know they have shaped who I am.

I have learnt that it is okay to have a little acne, to not wear makeup every day, to show off my body and to appear how I want to. I have learnt

to love myself and to love my body.

My appearance is not a construct that needs to be manufactured and moulded. Because no one, no matter how much DNA we share, can convince me that I am not enough.

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A View From the Mainland Halie

12 years ago, as I walked the path home from school, I observed a large crowd of demonstrators protesting in front of a government building in my Chinese hometown.

They were peaceful and orderly, although some of them held banners and intermittently shouted slogans.

I did not understand at the time, but they were protesting a proposed chemical plant that was set to produce paraxylene – a mildly toxic chemical feedstock – located only 1.5 kilometers from a residential area.

As I later found out, the location did not meet safety regulations due to risks of leakage and explosion, which could have negatively impacted both marine biota and residents living nearby. Shockingly, this project was supported by the local government (due to its huge economic benefits) and the news was suppressed for a long time to conceal the information from the public. What I also did not understand back then was that those demonstrators were risking their safety and careers to take part in this

alleged “unlawful assembly”, as the government called it.

This is not a new story: this protest is representative of a broader issue in China in which the government does not tolerate controversy or difference of opinion and silences the voices of anyone who dares to speak out against the government. At the time, I was too young to understand why my parents banned me from making negative comments about the proposed chemical plant in online forums. Anything controversial or oppositional to their governance will be suppressed by the totalitarian regime. The stability of the country is the governments number one priority and they aim to maintain that stability at any cost.

After the protests in my hometown subsided, it was decided by the local government that the chemical plant would be relocated, a surprising result. It was so astonishing, in fact, that some foreign commentators regarded it as the most significant public protest to occur in China since the 1989 demonstrations in

Tiananmen Square, which resulted in brutal suppression.

However, things have progressively gotten worse since that time, and even Hong Kong – which has an independent administrative system under the principle of “one country, two systems” – is under threat. This can be demonstrated by recent cases of Hong Kong book shop owners who have gone missing for months simply for selling books that are politically banned in mainland China.

These individuals were being controlled and punished by the Chinese Mainland authorities.

It is not surprising that the amendment of an Extradition Bill has sparked the largest protests Hong Kong has seen in recent decades.

The bill would have allowed judicial extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China, which is prohibited under the current Extradition Bill. Undoubtedly, this change could have undermined the city’s judicial independence and endangered dissidents. In the case of the “missing” booksellers, it is easy to

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imagine that they could have been criminalised if the amendment passed, leaving Hong Kong citizens worried for their freedom.

I am truly distressed to see that Hong Kong’s government also continues to suppress the voices of protestors, since the “One Country, Two Systems” system used to guarantee a more robust protection of civil liberties than anywhere else in mainland China. But now, the increased intervention from mainland China is invading Hong Kong’s autonomy. As the suppression has escalated, more and more protesters began to wear face masks to protect themselves from arbitrary arrests.

As a result, a mask ban was enacted to deprive protestors of their right to self-protect. Ironically, police officers continue to be unrecognisable, wearing their own masks.

As a Chinese mainlander, I fear to participate in any social movement against the government due to potential repercussions, and this is hard for those outside of this conflict to understand. They do not

know what it is like to have the police turn up at their doorstep, threatening them with arrest for daring to speak out against the regime; I do not want this to happen to me. Further, it is risky to show resistance in Australia, as the walls have ears.

The brutal suppression experienced by protestors, such as those who participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the imprisonment of pro-democracy activists like Liu Xiaobo, further rationalises my fear. Although some demonstrations indeed have achieved their goals, they are still alleged to be unlawful and participants can be convicted for “subversion”. As a result, I’ve learnt how to self-censor due to a fear of probable political consequences.

In contrast, Hong Kong citizens are at the forefront of a war between authoritarian and liberal values and some are dying to fight for their freedom. They realise the threat to their freedom stems from a lack of universal suffrage, so the implementation of universal suffrage becomes

another goal of their protest. On the 23 October 2019, the Chinese government officially withdrew its Extradition Bill more than four months after the Hong Kong protests started. I believe these events will encourage Hong Kong citizens to continue their fight for implementation of universal suffrage. My only hope is that Hong Kong citizens can live in a society where they feel safe after their persistent efforts.

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Halloween 2017 Abbie Holbrook

CW: Sexual assault I spent my childhood scared of the monsters lurking underneath my bed, terrified to walk into a room without the light on, and could not leave my stuffed teddys above the covers for I feared that ghosts would take them in the middle of the night. On the night of Halloween 2017, I came to the terrifying realisation that the monsters I should be scared of were those that disguised themselves as humans, lurking amongst us on Earth. A monster, dressed as a taxi driver, welcomed me into his car and gave me the promise of a safe ride home at the end of the night. Rather than delivering me home in one piece, this monster sexually assaulted me, taking a piece of me with him as I stood numb at my boyfriend’s door. I felt disgusted, paralysed with fear, ready to rid myself of my own costume from that night. After Halloween I wore this costume (the one hanging up before you) several times over. My thinking behind this was that the more times I wore the costume, the less I would associate it with Halloween thus attempting to forget what had happened. However this could not have been further from the case as I grew an incredibly toxic relationship with this costume. Each time I wore this costume, it too, like the taxi driver, consumed part of me. I could not wear it without reliving the events of Halloween 2017. In order to fully rid myself of the paralysing hold that this event had on me, I had to shed the costume that covered my body. The process of making this artwork was a cathartic release. With each cut of fabric, every hole made, and every stitch sewn, I was able to set free the monster that lived within the threads of these clothes. I was able to fully realise that I was not to blame for the events of Halloween 2017. That the only monster that night was not those lurking under my bed, but the man who took advantage of me.

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SCUM Manifesto: Valerie Solanas

By Eliza Gudgeon

SCUM Manifesto - SCUM being an acronym for the Society for Cutting Up Men - is an important piece of satirical feminist literature that essentially scrutinises the wrongdoings of men. (Note: not ‘wrongdoings of man’ as ‘man’ too often incorporates women, and according to SCUM, women have no wrongdoings). The title gives the responder a somewhat subtle clue that this manifesto may not fit within the ‘normal’ confines of feminism. But does it have to? This does not make SCUM a less profound piece of female literature. It was entirely revolutionary. Yet also entirely problematic.

ist in a time of turmoil. She grew to be a polarising figure, though perhaps hated more than loved. Feminists of the time fought over whether she could be included in their movement, some even say that this division fractured, if not completely split, the National Organisation for Women. Many only know of Solanas as ‘the woman who shot Andy Warhol’ which is an injustice in itself. People tried to pin the shooting to SCUM and her ideologies but in reality, she just wanted to kill him.

She thought he had stolen her play.

Solanas’ life was a chaotic whirlwind, always with SCUM at the forefront.

Valerie Solanas was an anarchic flame. She did not intend to advocate for equality, she made this objective blindingly clear with her anti-male rhetoric. According to her, the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene! Maleness is a deficiency disease! To call a man an animal is to flatter him, he is a machine, a walking dildo! We must eliminate the male! So, yes, you could say that SCUM is controversial, confronting even.

Entwined within the 108 pages of satirical (often contradictory) writing, Solanas makes certain contentions and points that are chillingly insightful, especially considering her socio-cultural milieu. She claims that men yearn to be female, and thus declare inherently female traits that are admired, particularly “emotional strength” and “independence” as male. She says that conformity stems from men constantly trying to prove their manhood. Thus, they cannot be individuals and, subsequently, females must act like a ‘woman’ to compliment their gender identities. The patriarchy exists because men cannot accept that they want “Mama” (the female) to

You cannot look at SCUM without trying to understand Solanas. Her life undoubtedly shaped her work, she was an open lesbian, a manic schizophrenic and a radical extrem-

guide them. Prejudice exists so that the white man can project his failings upon someone else, to divert blame and maintain an image that is complementary to their egos. Religion exists to tie women to men.

Men can only ever talk about themselves, occasionally they formulate ‘intellectual conversation,’ but this is purely to impress the female.

Men cannot make change, so they resort to extracting ‘beauty’ from the status quo. Then, men wrap up all of these dire failings and put a nice little label on them: the human condition. Oh no, it couldn’t possibly be labelled the male condition!

That would be exclusive to females!

We couldn’t do that!

Carol Hanisch stated that Solanas’ “passion and outrageousness... let others be more passionate and outrageous.” In other words, Solanas liberated those fearful to express themselves. She was the crystallisation of womens rage in the sixties.

Perhaps she represented the irrational thoughts of women, making them feel less isolated. Although her ideologies were in no way perfect, she - in a very Foucauldian manner - refused to conform to the prescribed boundaries of discourse.

And perhaps this disobedience to the norm was, and may still be, what some women need for empowerment, to build confidence in

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their own ideologies. She attacked the boundaries, which not only allows us to set new ones, but liberates us to be confident in doing so.

It is difficult to truly understand what Solanas intended to say about women, for Solanas was a walking contradiction; you can interpret SCUM in a multitude of ways - as a social piece, a feminist piece, a call for revolution and maybe even violence - and still not come to the conclusion Solanas desired. And honestly I think she’d hate you for trying to interpret it ‘correctly.’

Do I love this wild manifesto? Yes! Saying no would be much easier, because I wouldn’t need to explain why I hate it - it would be obvious. It is not what feminism stands for. It is discriminatory. It is even immoral. But Solanas did not intend for it to be taken completely literally, SCUM embraces a satirical flare. Solanas was provocative and she intended to be heard. She demanded to be heard. Avital Ronell summarises my thoughts exactly, saying Solanas “took no prisoners, took pleasure in the injurious effects of language and, with Lacanian precision, understood that words are bodies that can be hurled at each other, they can land in the psyche or explode in the soma.” And for this, I admire her, in all of her questionable glory.

Solanas claimed that SCUM “set out to destroy the system, not attain rights within it.” This is fundamentally relevant, even in today’s society. To attain gender e q u a l i t y, how

could we possibly change a system that works against woman, and has done so for centuries? How could a system so deeply ingrained in all aspects of society be ‘changed’? I do not think it can. So perhaps Solanas is right. Perhaps we do not need to change the system. We need to scrap it and start again.

Note: this does not have to entail killing off men.

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Untitled Asil Habara Through

the digital art, I strive to examine the relationship of technology, social media, the male gaze and female friendships via females.

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An Interview with DJ Gulia Jillard Interview by Rachel McCrossin

First off, introduce yourself!

I am Eliza Clarke, also known as Gulia Jillard as my DJ persona. Also, a pisces!

What got you into DJing?

In my second year of uni here in Canberra, and my first year of college, I started going to the univibes events and really got into the music. Woroni hosted a Women in DJing workshop which I went to, and I decided to give it a go. There were heaps of people there and it was a great platform to see so many women giving it a go.

Did you feel any boundaries as a woman?

Initially it does feel like a bit of a Boy’s Club, but I had so many friends who were DJ’s who were so supportive.

Woroni this year has also made an effort to have more specific workshops, like female DJ’s of colour, and there are heaps of opportunities for creating a more inclusive environment, for womem to get confident in the field.

But on a more serious scale - At the initial woroni event, the women leading it brought up situations of assault they’ve experienced. I’m lucky enough that I haven’t experienced any of that.

But because of the gender imbalance in the industry, it’s definitely important to be aware.

How has your confidence developed over your time?

Initially, when starting out - there were times when I would do a set and tell myself it is incredible that I kept going.

There was one gig I did for a friend where I forgot my headphones and was merely mixing from ear, which was pretty messy! I started out at little events, and over the last year or so have been playing at bigger ones. The more you play the more comfortable you get – it’s almost harder to perform

for small crowds, and the atmosphere when playing for a bigger crowd is just so exciting and really amps up your confidence!

How do you feel when you’re up there playing?

It's super exciting when you get a good reaction and response from the audience I’m a bit of a perfectionist, but when you’re djing and you’ve only got 2 or 3 minutes to mix a song, you have go with it, and its really exciting when it all works! You get a bit nervous when you’re playing music that you enjoy, that the crowd won’t like it as much as you do and won’t want to dance! So when they are, its very exciting.

Personally, seeing female DJ’s like yourself, as well as others around Canberra and even globally, is super inspiring. I feel like recently there has definitely been a lot more of a platform, emerging over the last year!

Definitely! Its great because there’s such a platform for young people to get

out there and perform here and Canberra. Especially with initiatives from groups like Woroni and Univibes!

How did the name Gulia Jillard come about?

I was initially DJ Towny, because I’m from Canberra and I was playing around Uni but acknowledged at one point that would had to go. Then one day I was working at Priceline Pharmacy and I had a bit of a lightbulb moment – you know, because I have red hair and love Julia and seeing women in power! But someone – they know who they are – tried to tell me they had thought of the name the year before and I’d rejected it – but id like to stick by the fact that this was not the case…

Any plans for the near future?

At the moment, not particularly, other than continuing to play around Canberra. Id like to at one point get into producing my own music. Im really into Lofi house, and I feel like there definitely aren’t a lot of women out there producing that! But I’m really enjoying playing sets at the moment, as a hobby I’m super passionate about!

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Indigenous and Black Feminists to Stand With and Get Behind Bossy Team

In 1974 the Combahee River Collective was formed, a Black feminist lesbian organisation in Boston which remained active from 1974 to 1980. The Collective was instrumental in drawing attention to the fact that the white middle-class feminist movement was not addressing the concerns and needs of Black women. They were committed to fighting racial, heterosexist and class oppression. Perhaps most famously, the collective released the ‘Combahee River Collective Statement,’ outlining the history of Black feminism, problems in organising Black feminists and Black feminist issues and projects.

In so-called Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander feminists always have and continue to challenge the white-middle class mainstream feminist movement. We encourage non-Indigenous Bossy readers to step back and listen to Indigenous/Blak feminists, learn and make space. Below are some of Bossy’s favourite writers whose works include but are by no means limited to feminist issues and should be appreciated in their own right.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson is an academic, feminist and author who wrote the incredible book ‘Talkin’ up to the White Woman, Indigenous Women and Feminism.’

cluding The Guardian, Saturday Paper, Vice, Junkee and Archer Magazine. We recommend the article ‘Sobering statistics’ published in The Saturday Paper (2019).

Celeste Liddle is a freelance writer and union organiser who has contributed to several publications including The Guardian. You can follow them on Facebook at ‘Black Feminist Ranter - Celeste Liddle’ or on Twitter at @utopiana. We recommend reading: ‘I’ve spent my entire life feeling like a fraud who didn’t belong’ in ABC Life (2019).

Miranda Tapsell is an actor and screenwriter, most recently writing Top End Wedding. Together with Nakkiah Lui, she hosts the podcast Pretty for An Aboriginal. You can follow her on Twitter @missmirandatap.

Nakkiah Lui is an actor, writer and comedian. Lui is co-writer and star of the ABC comedy sketch show Black Comedy and play ‘How to Rule the World.’

You can follow Nakkiah on Twitter @ nakkiahlui.

Nayuka Gorrie is a talented writer and comedian who you can find at @ nayukagorrie. They have also written for and peformed in Black Comedy.

A quick google will also take you to their work in a range of platforms in-

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91. The Day I Become a Woman 92. We Don’t All Start from the Same Place 94. The Farewell 96. Ask 97. The Pill: Friend or Foe 98. Juice that Runs when Held 99. Community Guidelines 100. Floriade 101. Co-Star: A Life Companion 102. The Many Layers of Earth that is You 104. The Broken Compass of Student Politics 106. I Just Want to Ride My Bike 107. 1960’s Silence 108. Caught Between Cultures

4. Estuary (a tidal mouth of a large river which meets the sea”) I’ve come through anger, experience, and cultivation. Now I let go, ready for the boundlessness ahead.

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The Day I Become a Woman Pat Bruce Today I get lasered Today I freeze sperm Today I put on make up and do my hair Today I stop man spreading Today I am going to a girls only pres Today I have never been more nervous and excited Today I wear a dress for the first time since I was four Today I say goodbye Today I become a woman

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We Don’t All Start from the Same Place Vaishnavi Rathinam

93 CW: Abuse, trauma, mental illness, suicide, ableism Facing reality can sometimes be challenging. For me, it’s been a brutal experience. I was born into what was essentially a cult where emotional, physical and sexual abuse was a part of daily life. Like many survivors of childhood abuse, I repressed memories, disassociated, and generally practised disconnecting from my own experience to get through day after day of violence. I lived a double life, enduring a nightmare in private and performing a façade of what I imagined to be ‘normality’ in my outside daily life. Half a year ago I was finally able to escape. That’s when I was forced to confront the full reality of my history, and what that meant for me in regards to my capabilities.

I’ve always felt ashamed and frustrated at what I perceived as my inability to ‘keep up’ with my peers.

I would push myself academically, socially and professionally, but often felt too drained to consistently accomplish what other people seemed able to do daily. At 22, when I left my abusive situation, I was unemployed, socially isolated and, having taken years of program leave and only being able to do university part time, still technically a first year. Just like anyone else, I had dreams for my life – to finish my studies, pursue my passion for writing, build my own relationships and career. But I was watching other people in their twenties take steps towards these things while I was getting left behind. Now as well as being estranged from my entire family, who branded me a ‘crazy liar’, was also homeless.

I had to tell the truth to get the help I desperately needed from people around me, crisis services, and Centrelink. Plenty of them were very compassionate, but plenty weren’t.

Those who are homeless, unemployed, or suffering from mental health issues are often survivors of abuse who have fallen through the gaps in the system. But people in this vulnerable state are commonly regarded with judgement and suspicion, and accused of being lazy or weak. I’d had a lifetime of internalising this message: that if you’re struggling to keep up with what society deems an acceptable pace of functioning and ‘success’, then that’s your problem. I have a diagnosis of PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Terrifying flashbacks, recovered memo-

ries, nightmares, dissociation, panic attacks and episodes of depression have always been part of my life. I’d been in therapy and understood the facts about these conditions, but I had internalised so much stigma that I frequently abandoned any healthy tools I had learned and simply told myself to ‘get over it.’

If this article has affected you in any way, do not hesitate to reach out to resources in the community:

It took me having a suicidal breakdown and coming completely undone in front of my partner for me to realise that I needed to radically re-educate myself on my own mental state. I started to reflect more on the severity of what had happened to me. Enduring a lifetime of incestuous abuse had subjected me to years of brainwashing, robbed me of my innocence, and burdened me with a ‘taboo’ secret that made it almost impossible to relate to my peers. It had putincredible stress on my mind and body throughout every stage of my development. I had been doing myself a disservice by undermining what I’d been through. Once I understood this, I started to realise that my struggle to function the way many others could was not because I was ‘weak’ or ‘lazy,’ but because there had always been other significant demands being placed on my energy.

1800 Respect: 1800 7377328, 24/7.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service for people living in Australia.

I began reframing my view of my life.

I was not ‘behind’ for someone my age at all. I had just started my twenties, and yet had escaped an abusive environment that had trapped others for generations. I had stood up for myself and what I felt was right, despite being surrounded by my lifelong abusers. I had navigated homelessness and family estrangement whilst still doing university. I was constantly working to ‘unlearn’ the toxic behaviour I’d learned in order to become a better friend and partner. Every day I was waking up to an avalanche of grief and trauma, but choosing to believe that there was still hope.

We don’t all start from the same place, but the danger of ableism is that it assumes we do, and makes no space for us if we don’t. My history has given me some lifelong scars.

I’ve needed to re-adjust my dreams, and learn to live with the uncertainties and fluctuations that come with recovery. But I’ve also experienced the tremendous relief that comes with finally validating my own trauma, rather than shaming myself for it.

Canberra Rape Crisis Centre: (02) 6247 2525, 7am-11pm, 7 days a week. Also available for in-person appointments on ANU campus.

Lifeline: 13 11 14, 24/7. Lifeline is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention services.

ANU Crisis Support Line 5pm-9am weekdays, 24/7 weekends and public holidays. Phone (voice calls only): 1300 050 327 SMS Text message service: 0488 884 170

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The Farewell Maddie Chia

On the 5th of September, Australian screens were graced with Lulu Wang’s new movie, The Farewell. Originally premiered at the Sundance Festival, Wang’s movie has now opened around the world to the general public. This movie featured an all Asian main cast, including rapper and Crazy Rich Asians star Awkwafina. The female protagonist Billie narrates the movie, in which a bizarre plan is concocted by her family to travel to China under the false pretences of a wedding, in order to say goodbye to the grandmother who has been diagnosed with cancer and only has weeks to live. The film is loosely based on the director Lulu Wang’s personal experience — a farewell party disguised as a large celebration with the whole family.

The last few years have been a landmark time for Asian representation in television and movies with Fresh Off the Boat, Crazy Rich Asians and even the Netflix Original, To All the Boys I’ve Loved. Before with a female Asian protagonist. For me personally, I have loved every second of it. It has been empowering to see people who look like me on the screen with their own backstories and complex relationships instead of just the nerd in the background. As a 2nd generation Australian-born Chinese, when I heard about this movie I was extremely sceptical as to whether it would be any good, especially after watching the trailer. I assumed the movie would appeal to 1st

generation American/Australian-born Chinese, or Asian immigrants, due to its central theme surrounding the complexity of Chinese cultural traditions.

When I was growing up and still to this day, I felt as if I never really understood the Chinese traditions of filial piety and a strong sense of connection to China. Sure, my family celebrated Chinese New Year with a barbeque and red packets, but that was about it. My Mum made me study Chinese in high school and eventually for my HSC, in order to connect more to the culture that I was ancestrally connected to, but never felt as if I was a part of.

I was never Chinese enough to fully understand the 1st generation Australian-born Chinese; but I also wasn’t white enough to fully understand the other kids.

I was a hybrid. An anomaly.

I went to watch this movie with my younger sister Ellie, who is 15, and my mum. My first reaction was to the fact that the cinema was almost full.

It warmed my heart that people of all different ethnicities, genders and ages wanted to watch a movie about Chinese family dynamics, especially considering that more than half of the movie was in Chinese with subtitles in English. As a society, we have really come a long way in acceptance of one another’s cultures.

Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, I was in love. I was hooked. The protagonist Billie, played by Awkwafina, was extremely relatable not just because of her patchy Chinese, but also for her sense of uncertainty as to what to do with her life. Wang‘s use of a blend of the Chinese and English language to establish the sheer distance between America and China exemplifies the poignant notion of what many modern-day families experience: being scattered throughout different continents. For me personally, I was immediately drawn to the similarities within my own family, specifically my grandparents and the relationship Billie has with her grandparents. I drew so many parallels between Billie and her Nai-nai’s (grandmother) relationship with my own relationship with my Pohpoh. In the movie, Billie’s Nai-nai’s way of showing affection was to feed her food and call her ‘stupid child’ as a pet name. This made me laugh (rather too loudly) in the cinema, reflecting fondly on my Poh-poh who feeds me so much food when I am back in Sydney, to the point where I literally can’t walk!

She also says, ‘I love you, but I have to criticise you’. Just these small details really emphasised the intrinsic connection we have as humans to our family. Despite where we are in the world, there will always be bonds and ties to our culture and family that shape our identity. This fragility is heartbreakingly explored through Nai-nai’s elation at seeing her whole family in one room

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again after so many years, with half the family living in Japan and the other in America.

Within the movie, Wang also tackles with some of the big questions, including what it means to be loved and to love, what does God mean to us, who does our life belong to, and what are we. She explores these beautifully through wide-panning monochromatic cinematic shots and modern covers of well-known ‘Golden Age’ songs.

Throughout the movie, she utilises the motif of birds as a symbol of freedom and innocence, juxtaposed against the urban landscape of both Changchun and New York City, which symbolise the entrapment Billie and her parents feel in relation to their ‘Americanised’ views surrounding Nai-nai’s cancer diagnosis.

The movie then goes on to explore the notion of what it means to love someone and the value we place on the lives of our family members. Throughout the movie, the dilemma is of whether ‘the lie’ of not telling Nai-nai is protecting her or hurting her. This dichotomy directly alludes to the differences between Asian and Western ways of thinking in relation to the autonomy of an individual’s free will. It also brings up the notion often ingrained into Chinese families — why do we lie to the people we love? The character Haibin perfectly summarises this in one of the scenes, saying, ‘in China life belongs to family, whereas in the West whole life belongs to oneself’. This duty to carry the emotional burden for Nai-nai is an ongoing debate between Haiyan and Haibin, the two sons. Haiyan, the son living in American (Billie’s father) argues that it is unethical to change the prognosis of Nai-nai’s treatments, whereas Haibin argues that it is the correct thing to do in Chinese culture.

Our culture plays an integral factor in the shaping of our identity, and as individuals we deal with grief in different ways. Throughout the movie, Wang explores this notion of displacement and feeling isolated as a result of migration, especially through Billie’s monologue to her Mum detailing her heartbreak when she had to move to America.

Billie expressed her sadness about the old apartment being gone and the playground she used to spend time at being demolished. This really emphasises the rapid pace of society’s restructuring and how things that played a major factor in our identity can suddenly be

gone, leaving us feeling confused and displaced. This hit especially close to home for me as once my Great-Grandfather (Tai-yeh) who lived in Singapore died, we stopped going to visit the country altogether. I never got to say goodbye to places I spent childhood holidays playing in or say goodbye to the maid. I never had that opportunity, just like Billie.

Wang utilises a monochromatic colour scheme for the shots of scenery and also dull clothing to really emphasise the idea of ‘living death’. The drabness of Billie’s clothing especially highlights her overwhelming sense of sadness and helplessness in relation to the lie.

The movie is almost a black comedy, as all the family members are waiting for Nai-nai to die. The low angle shots and slowed-down shots of the family walking to and from both the hotel and Nai-nai’s apartment eerily mirrors a funeral procession. Each day, the same formation, same drab clothing, pretending to be happy in order to ensure Nai-nai has no idea.

However, the ending was extremely confusing and I felt as if didn’t properly do the film justice especially after the powerful scenes just minutes ago

showing the branches of the family going their separate ways. It felt very abrupt and forced, and I have to say I was quite disappointed.

Despite the ending, the movie did stir up some strong emotions for me and I had to sit in my chair for ten minutes afterwards to stop myself crying. This movie completely surpassed my expectations, and carries self-reflexivity for any family, especially Asian families. After watching it I cried when I arrived back to college, thinking about how little time I now get to spend with my Poh-poh since coming to ANU. It made me feel helpless to the power time holds over our lives and the way it dictates our every move. I think from this film, many people will relate to the universal feeling of not spending enough time with family due to life getting in the way. However, after reflecting, I called my Poh-poh and told her I loved her; because at the end of the day our family shaped and continues to shape our identity, whether we chose to accept it or not. I implore everyone to go watch this movie. It is guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes and a smile to the face. A definite must-see if meta-fiction and self-reflexivity are your thing!

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Ask Chelsea Rock

CW: Sexual Assault Somehow, I had ended up in the emergency room that night. The make-up I had carefully applied earlier in the evening now stained my face. The laughing and dancing now a distant memory fading into the events of the night. My body felt as if it had been set alight, eyes burning from the fluorescent hospital light reaping down on me, much harsher than the lights from earlier. My friend sits across from me, holding my hand tightly as I drift in and out of a restless sleep.

A buzzing night had turned into something so sinister that I had found myself being led to a small room, where doctors and staff filtered in over the early hours of the morning and asked all kinds of questions. I felt so small. Scared. Vulnerable. Like a child, dressed in my bright pyjamas, no match for the never-ending sterile white sheets.

They asked if I wanted to be seen by the Forensic and Medical Sexual Assault Care (FAMSAC), I was confused as to why I would need it. They explained they would conduct a forensic and medical investigation and retain evidence if I were ever to go forward with a case. Evidence. In short, a rape kit. The words felt as though someone had slammed into my chest. Fear crept into my stomach, pulling hard and making me feel ill from the inside out. The idea daunted me. For some reason I had this preconceived notion in my head that this would occur in some dark hospital room, that there would be so many prying eyes and invasive procedures focusing on all parts of my body. I was frightened by potential embarrassment, by the judgement.

But I proceeded.

Small talk and a few hand pats were all we could muster in that room, waiting. Not

entirely sure what to expect.

Two women entered. A nurse and a doctor. They smiled and announced they were with FAMSAC, pushing a large trolley in, filled with various tools and sprays. My stomach turned, and I could feel my heart race. Their laugh injected a sense of normalcy into the room. Exposed daily to an array of horrors but maintaining a smile. It was like natural light had suddenly poured in and presumption of a dark room suddenly dissolved. They asked me for my name and all the basics, often stopping to slip in a joke or a smile, telling me about themselves, their own lives. They moved on to the reason I was there, nudging instead of prying, gently explaining the procedure. They focused a lot on consent.

Stating their objective was to give back the consent I had lost earlier in the night. Every step they took they asked my permission, they explained every step and what it was for. It was comforting. I felt as though I retained some power.

they removed only the necessary clothing at each time, beginning with my nipples, they laughed when I meekly showed them my nipple piercing. The most daunting part was to come. They asked, explained what was happening and worked quickly. It was like a pap test, painless. They gave me an STI check and a blood test. They told me how to care for my abrasions and told me to rest. Afterwards, they provided me with their names and numbers, information sheets and another smile. They called me for my results and still provide check-ups to this day to make sure I’m okay.

They began with the room, sterilised it, prepared it. The two of them working together, so well-rehearsed, so efficient.

One kept me company and made sure my friend was okay. The most daunting part was approaching and although they had made me feel at ease, fear crept up my throat once again and I was afraid.

If this article has affected you in any way, do not hesitate to reach out to resources in the community:

They assured me they would stop whenever I said NO. They asked permission before every step. Initially beginning with taking photos of the bruises on my body. Quickly, efficiently, and painlessly. They worked their way down. The idea was everywhere he had touched me, violated me, they swabbed for his DNA. His evidence. I said yes, I wanted to see it through. For myself.

They asked if I wanted my friend to stay. I laughed and said she had always seen me naked, why stop now. With my permission

In light of the trauma experienced earlier in the night, I am so grateful that such amazing, professional staff were able to be there for me. The invasiveness, the embarrassment, was made easier. FAMSAC provided comfort where I thought there would be none.

Thank you.

Canberra Rape Crisis Centre: (02) 6247 2525, 7am-11pm, 7 days a week. Also available for in-person appointments on ANU campus.

1800 Respect: 1800 7377328, 24/7.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service for people living in Australia.

Lifeline: 13 11 14, 24/7. Lifeline is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention services.

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The Pill: Friend or Foe? Reema Hindi, Ruby King, and Julia Benoit

Reema The contraceptive pill can be seen as a symbol of sexual freedom and liberation. For some, it’s a necessity. For some, it can be bought without stigma. When I went on the pill I felt excited, like it was some sort of rite of passage and a part of growing up. The pill gave me the capacity to be in control of my body. I didn’t realise I would lose control of my mind.

Yaz, Yasmin, Cilest, Aviane. We get prescribed these pills with pretty feminine names like they are our new beautiful best friend. But my first friend quickly became my enemy.

At first, she made me cry uncontrollably for no apparent reason. I thought it was all part of the adjustment period, “it can take up to a full year” she said. But the crying did not stop and I quickly felt my logical self slip away as my new friend grew more powerful and begun forcing unexplained outbursts of anxiety. I could not help but question my new friendship. She promised independence and support for my bodily autonomy, and in some ways she did keep that promise.

She told me I didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant anymore and I could even skip my usually painful and long periods. But in reality, I had never felt more out of control within my apparently liberated self.

After having a long and painful panic attack for the first time in my life I decided to cut ties. Three months after we’d met, I broke up with my friend and replaced her with another. My new best friend was much gentler and I immediately started to feel like my usual calm and happy self. But is this my true self? How can I be sure? Maybe I’m just used to the side effects of a toxic companion. What scares me now, whenever I am feeling low, is that question - is this really me?

Or is it ‘Yaz’?

Ruby After years of battling severe depression and a generally malign view of life, on a flight back from a chaotic family holiday, I decided it was time to stop the pill.

Three years of psychology, medications, exercise and diet focuses, taking on less stress and receiving the enduring support from family and friends, all seemed to have no significant effect. I felt stagnant in my recovery and all too unimpressed with life. So I made the decision to cut out a seemingly minuscule pill that I had been taking since I was 15. In a matter of mere weeks I felt lighter, calmer, more focused, more alive. I regained aspects of my personality I believed I had lost and I was able to have enough energy and power to complete more in my daily life. The dark cloud over my life started to shift at an exponential rate. I know this tale could be one fallacy; correlation does not equal causation. But for me it is impossible to deny such a fierce connection between a life altered and one simple decision.

Julia I was put on the pill when I was 16 (and distinctly not sexually active) for an odd skin condition, and in hindsight I really don’t think the pill did anything to help it anyway. I was prescribed a high oestrogen dosage pill, which I stayed on for years. I only stopped taking it this year after hearing whilst I was overseas in France that the French were making laws to ban it due to its especially high risk of blood clotting. Upon discussing this with friends, I found that some of their pills were also banned in other countries.

Things were starting to look dodgy.

Is the pill a mind control drug created by men to incapacitate women? Well, it seems that the effects of the pill vary too much between women to make such a claim, but despite it sounding pretty ridiculous, I think we should question

why the pill is used so liberally whilst impairing so many women. With the normalisation of the oral contraceptive pill the burden of birth control has skewed massively to rest on women.

Why haven’t more resources been allocated to developing male methods of birth control and why have the methods we have discovered been so sparsely accepted and implemented? Can we imagine a world where our male friends know the anxiety and stress of missing a pill or forgetting to get a new script on time? I’m not sure that men are ready to take on this burden in a space where birth control is so concretely considered a women’s issue.

It feels hypocritical to be writing this article while everyday at 5pm an alarm goes off on my phone and I ingest this pill.

For me staying safe and preventing pregnancy takes priority over my mood and mental state, but I feel very trapped and supressed into making this choice. Ultimately, I think I speak for most women when I say that birth control is a burden forced upon us by society and by medicine, leaving us no choice than to be fully responsible for the actions of two people. It seems like such a far off concept to see this shift.

The pill embodies a sense of independence, control and sexual freedom given to us by modern medicine, which cannot be overlooked. But time and time again, in the sacred spaces of female conversations, we hear our friends weigh the price of decreased sex drives, increased appetites, tears and anger. Another cost-benefit analysis of control and freedom.

The choice is up to you.

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Karolina Kocimska, Juice that Runs when Held (2019), Photoshop

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Karolina Kocimska, Community Guidelines (2019), Photoshop

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Floriade Maddie Chia

It’s that time of the year again.

Spring!

New beginnings, warmer weather, daylight savings and, of course, lots of blooming flowers.

Floriade is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated highlights of the Canberra spring, running from the 14th of September to the 13th of October. As university students balancing work, study, socialisation, and sleep, we often forget to take time out for ourselves to unwind. With exam season creeping closer and closer, it’s so important that we set aside time for self-care. For me personally, I know sometimes everything can get a bit much sometimes, especially living away from home. But it is okay not to be okay. I have found that being around nature has really helped me with my depression and mental health, which is why I’ve been going to Floriade weekly.

Floriade, first and foremost is a celebration of all things spring, with pop-up stalls selling everything from clothes to food, live music, fairy floss, and of course lots of flowers! I remember the elation I felt when I walked into Floriade for the first time; surrounded by flowers of every colour and people enjoying themselves. It well and truly felt like Spring. There is just something about Floriade; something magical. Maybe it’s just me and my rose-tinted view of spring!

There is just something so intrinsically beautiful and nostalgic about eating fairy floss while walking through fields of flowers. It honestly makes anyone feel better, even on the gloomiest of days. The experience changes each time I go, too; whether it is with family, friends, or myself.

When I went with my family, it was a bonding experience filled with lots of laughter and cheesy photos with tulips. When I went with my friends,

it was a much more relaxed atmosphere, listening to the live music and strolling through the park, looking at the stalls. When I went with myself it was liberating and a little exhilarating. To just be alone with my thoughts. Watching the world go by.

Enjoying the company of nature. Not to mention the fact that I bought four friendship bracelets for myself, because why not!

All in all, Floriade is one of the best experiences, in my opinion, that Canberra has to offer. Whether you are young or old. Female or male.

Looking for the perfect date location.

Procrastinating.

Release your inner child!

Buy a pinwheel!

Run through the flowers!

Forget about responsibilities for a day and go have fun!

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Co-Star: A Life Companion Clare Myers

Day 1 [Co-Star] Remember, your version of reality is your own version of reality.

[Me] Funny, Specsavers emailed me today, it’s time for my eyes to get tested.

Day 5 [Co-Star] Your vision is clear regarding your home and family.

[Me] See, I just needed to get new glasses.

Day 10 [Co-Star] It’s your birth month, and as a fire sign, it’s time to heat things up.

[Me] *to my inner conscious*, I know a yoga membership is expensive BUT, a) I look good in lulu-lemons, b) the activewear and cafe brunch is a vibe and what my life should be, and c) this app is my life, it I need to heat things up then it’s HOT YOGA TIME. Day 19 [Co-Star] What you believe is what you create. Your positive attitude is half your power.

[Me] I am a true born artist. I should enrol in ceramics. I can create whatever I put my mind to. It’s time to let go of that pressure I put on myself to be perfect.

My year 7 art teacher, who literally threw me out of class saying I had no talent, is clearly wrong. All my life I’ve been lied to. Co-Star has shown me the way. I believe and my world forms around me. I will be the next Picasso.

Day 28 [Co-Star] There will be a chance opportunity that affects the way you articulate yourself. This opportunity will arise suddenly, perhaps in your morning routine,

the social environment you live in, or mundane conversations with your barista.

[Me] KNEW IT. I’ve been hitting on my barista for so long now. Damn those biceps, that cute smirk, devilish laughter.

How smoothly he pours milk into that cup, then adds the heat and BAM, I’m gone, take my ovaries, I am yours. This is clearly my moment. *Clears voice* “I’ll have a large, weak, 3/4 full, almond milk latte, with cinnamon on top if you got it.”

Day 40 [Co-Star] Your ego is currently being tampered with. The moon is currently where the sun was when you were born.

The angle brings complexity and transformation. The moon stands for your emotional world. The sun represents ego and focus. As the moon is in your sun sign, a fresh start is coming for you tonight. It is encouraged that you make a resolution for yourself.

[Me] Resolution? Easy. I will never go a day without wearing Birkenstocks. They are my one true footwear. They mould to my pathway of time. They smell like me.

They carry me through rain, hail, shine, my darkest days, and my first dates.

Day 53 [Co-Star] Your Mars is in Scorpio, so you have a reputation for being out for revenge.

[Me] Damn, that makes so much sense, no wonder I was fuming that my friends watched Game of Thrones without me.

Maybe the passive aggressive sticky notes on their door was a bad idea.

And… on that note… I should probably cancel the order of snakes I was going to hide in their room…

Day 67 [Co-Star] Lately you must endure the pain of letting go. Work at being spontaneous, effortless, and easy.

[Me] What!? I’m the easiest person out there. I’m only a little type A. You know?

The toothbrush and toothpaste, after being used, go back in the cup next to the sink. Simple. The tea on my shelf, the labels and brand need to be the right way up, facing outwards, ordered from tea bag to looseleaf and by size of their box. No biggie. Bed made every morning, that’s normal right? But there is a specific order to place throw pillows, and only one way to fold the blanket and place the runner. Again, that’s nothing major. And yes, I do colour co-ordinate my binder folders by subject, along with notebooks, highlights, and sticky notes.

But that’s all for the sake of organisation.

I write lists in my head of everything I need to do, my day is not done unless all are achieved. If people can’t keep up with me, that’s their own fault, I can just take over their work. Group projects are literally the bane of me. I part my hair the same way since I was five. I get frustrated while waiting in line. And, I, must, always, win.

Day 88 [Co-Star] Your happiness cue is to lead.

To be happy you need to be in charge.

Make a decision and create a life where you have autonomy.

[Me] I have to dump my boyfriend.

What a shame, he made me coffee every morning, that was sweet. But it’s so clear. I have to let go. Make a move to be the butterfly I am.

I’ll always have Co-Star.

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The Many Layers of an Earth that is You Samihah Fattah

Five things you can see.

Four things you can touch.

Three things you can hear.

Two things you can smell.

One emotion you can feel.

This is a grounding technique used to prevent or intervene the experience of having a panic attack, anxiety, or overwhelming e m o -

tions. It is considered a healthy coping mechanism. An overarching stigma associated with mental illness has resulted in a lack of general societal knowledge as to what exactly your brain is doing and why, when you experience these emotions. This lack of understanding can sometimes exacerbate a sense of lacking control when dealing with anxiety and its symptoms.

We often wonder, “Why is my brain acting this way? How do I cope with this? Is this due to nature or nurture?”.

Thinking of yourself as an earth with many layers can help you to understand these questions and serves as an analogy to reconstruct the way we think about mental health. Think of yourself as your own planet: you have an inner core, upon which you build by adding layers of your experiences and identities, until you truly form yourself.

Growing up, people adopt many layers or identities. These can be related to a home life, a school life, a professional life, and sometimes lead to the adaptation of different personas when around different people. In addition to this, gender and racial identities can add further layers. Due to the socio-political structure of our society, most people inherently equate a white, heteronormative, male perspective with the general ‘human experience’. If you are, say, female and brown, from the minute you are born, you automatically take on two other identities in addition to simply ‘human’.

The intersectionality of these layers can make it even harder to grasp the complexities of who you are, as well as the fact that society does not give you the benefit of freely practicing or accepting unconventional layers.

As you grow and adapt to the world, your brain will develop ways to accept your identities. It does this by adjusting to and provid-

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ing coping mechanisms for situations which are unique to you. For example, as a practicing Muslim in the current political climate, you might jump to the defensive when questioned about your religion, especially if you are unsure of the reactions that revealing this information may entail. Your brain may blurt something out in defence, as a coping strategy for a stressful situation. If you are dealing with a challenging layer of yourself, your brain will develop defence mechanisms that seek to leave you as unscathed as possible in volatile social situations. In other words, your brain is trying to protect you. In the long term, however, these mechanisms can be unhealthy or damaging to the inherent parts (layers) of yourself.

Additionally, someone who experiences trauma is often forced to add a new layer on top of all of this. Trauma can often occur in situations where your brain finds that you cannot fight something nor run from it, causing you to ‘freeze’. Dissociation can develop from this ‘freeze’ response, and is a coping mechanism wherein you feel extreme detachment from yourself and/or a traumatic event, sometimes to the extent that you may view yourself as if from a third person perspective. This form of defence can be scary. However, it is important to remember that this is just a coping mechanism, as are panic attacks, anxiety attacks or depressive episodes. Your brain is trying to help you. The problematic part is that your brain may become accustomed to habitually using these coping mechanisms if left unchallenged.

Viewing your trauma experience as a layer of yourself can actually make it easier to acknowledge and in turn, cope with it. In this way, you may be better able to recognise certain behavioural patterns as coping mechanisms for your mental state. Dissociation is just one example of a coping mechanism that can go undetected.

People often don’t pick up on these behaviours as they aren’t acknowledging their mental health as an identity layer that you can deal with. For myself and many others struggling with mental health, viewing this experience as simply a layer can create a healthier relationship with mental illness.

Being born into a complex intersection of identities – particularly in the case of systematically undermined identities – can instil coping mechanisms from

day one. It is almost as if trauma is passed down through generations. The struggles of your ancestors with invisible mental illnesses, unbeknownst to their culture or in wider society, may become or add to your own struggles.

You may be burdened with unhealthy, intergenerational instincts of submission because your brain has been convinced that you cannot fight nor fly.

This is not your fault, and fortunately, there is a bright side: nothing in the brain is an unmoveable rock and the terrain of these layers can most definitely be changed for the future.

The important notion here is that defence or coping mechanisms are just that; they can be adjusted or replaced when you no longer need them or when they become unhealthy.

The idea is that, the more comfortable and accepting you are in regard to your trauma or trig-

ger s (that is, the more you understand that your mental health experience is just a layer of your mind), the better you will begin to manage them. Yes, these defensive

mechanisms once helped you cope, when you did not know the emotions you were dealing with. However, as you become aware of tools that enable you to think about mental illness from a different perspective, you can use them to build new, more effective strategies for yourself. We are all our own planets, with layers upon layers making us who we are. Take care of yourself, and acknowledge that these mechanisms and layers are strengths that have helped you to grow into the complex being that you are. When you know what you’re dealing with, when you understand your mental health layer, you have no need to be afraid anymore.

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The Broken Compass of Student Politics Madhumitha Janagaraja

CW: mention of sexual assault, mention of suicide Being an elected student representative has been a uniquely harrowing and rewarding experience, among many other things. At the very least, the reality of such a role is far different to what I suspect most people must expect - especially in the current climate of ‘disaster fatigue’ where advocacy has become even more prominent as we begin to once again raise questions around our expectations for student representatives. What does holding ANUSA accountable for its responsibilities look like, with that accountability also fostering genuine empathy and appreciation for the work our representatives do? To what extent do we underestimate the burden placed on these individuals, or hold uncharitable perceptions of them?

I possess the faintest recall of my aspirations and expectations before

commencing my duties - grand, lofty goals for structural change and the burning determination to achieve each of them. What I could have never imagined was the weariness and frustration that comes to accompany this passion, the financial and personal sacrifices, the tenuous interpersonal relationships that need careful navigation or the weight of personal responsibility that ends up resting on your shoulders.

It is far too easy to forget how strained ANUSA’s resources actually are - I, too, am a university student. I struggle with my courses, I fight with my parents, I worry about making rent and I deal with my suffering health.

The stipend I receive is enough for perhaps 9 hours per week - I can’t remember the last time I worked less than 30.

Student representatives have continued to take more and more on over

the years - the amount of responsibility, emotional labour and time commitment required steadily increasing but our resources, funding and level of training stagnant. Universities are but a drop in the ocean of damaging structures that affect student welfare - student associations have to prioritise both the provision of pastoral care and support services for students adversely affected by them, but also the advocacy necessary to dismantle or change these structures so they no longer exist in the first place. Moreover, the most powerful way to do this is as an institution and institutions require a staggering amount of administration to function.

The association has a platform which allows it to respond to these issues in a way that individuals would struggle to - because it is an institution that is respected as an important stakeholder by other bureaucratic structures, but also because it is an organised

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force that can mobilise more effectively, capitalising on its resources.

It has designated professional staff that can be consulted for integral knowledge, methods to easily and quickly communicate with the wider community and the necessary connections with other stakeholders.

However, in that capacity ANUSA is no different to any other company possessing and using these resources means the same legal and financial obligations - to its staff, the students and the government. This administration is a full time job in itself - like any other CEO of a charity or activist organisation, so too is our own President.

This may be more tangible in context - for instance, a sudden slash in funding towards a specific student service often involves various overlapping issues and ramifications. This cut is likely the result of government reluctance to invest funding in education - where the university is then forced to find different ways to make profit. In this situation, I would not only be responsible for relentlessly lobbying the university while communicating updates on the situation to the student body, but also for developing strategy and a long term vision for mobilising students to protest the situation at a federal level all while bearing the increased load of pastoral care cases and my regular administrative duties.

I’m likely also subject to the frustration of an asymmetry of information, which is simply a weakness of bureaucracy than it is one of student associations - where I’m bound by confidentiality and can’t justify my actions well enough to a student body that is missing that crucial context. This isolation is often heavily disheartening - my personal failings are publicly scrutinised and my words and actions unfortunately made representative of an entire group of people. In an effort to defend the autonomy and best interests of the students I represent, I repeatedly forsake my individual right to either.

I can’t even begin to count the number of times this year that I’ve broken down and simply sobbed in a bathroom stall after a meeting - whether in the face of institutional betrayal, the criticism I can’t defend myself

against due to confidentiality or simple exhaustion from missing meals and sleep. These are tears that no one will ever see. I have been on the receiving end of infrequent harassment. I have had drunk people vomit on me. I have handled disclosures at all times of the day and night. When my close friend passed from suicide, I couldn’t even take time to grieve because a new issue had appeared, and there was no one else who could appropriately handle it. I’ve always tried to be the representative that people needed me to be - even at the cost of my own health, mental wellbeing and academics. I do it because I genuinely love this association, and I do it because the people I fight for mean the world to me.

respectable I would strongly beg you to reconsider that perception.

I don’t say these things to boast or martyr myself - and I certainly don’t think this should be the experience of a student representative. I say them because I’ve seen my experience mirrored in other representatives who are in a similar position to me. I see it in the tired eyes, the shaky hands after that fourth cup of coffee and vicarious trauma. These people are working far harder than any human should be and handling situations they do not have the training to manage - only to be criticised for ‘not caring’, depicted as ‘not doing anything’ or to be on the receiving end of jokes about being a ‘political hack’.

We can continue to develop new accountability measures like KPIs for ANUSA and more communication channels with the student body, but as important and irreplaceable as those will be, it doesn’t change the fact that there are only so many hours in a day and a limit to human capacity. Potential solutions and remedies to this situation have been discussed for years - and I like to think that conversely, we’re slowly moving towards better support systems for representatives and making these positions more sustainable and safe for these individuals.

Are there some individuals who enter these roles for purely egocentric reasons; to pad a resume or for a power trip? Perhaps. The vast majority, however, genuinely possess a desire for change - and work extremely hard for it. Complete altruism is an erroneous concept - in an environment as arduous as the one we occupy, it is not enough to want things to be better, but to also visualise yourself at the centre of that change.

That form of ‘egocentrism’ manifests as the determination necessary to actually fulfil your role - it would be impossible to hold on without it.

Nevertheless, I fail to understand the integrity being questioned - of course we get something out of it, otherwise we would never do it. Isn’t that the same for anyone, doing anything? If you believe that self-sacrifice and effort that come with any form of conditions or self-gratification are somehow inherently worthless, or any less

I also don’t say any of these things as a dismissal of constructive criticism or feedback - we all have our roles to play in our fight to have our views represented and our effort to create change. I’ve certainly had endless criticism for most of my colleagues, and numerous disagreements - criticism and feedback are a necessary part of the process. However, it’s even more important to refrain from conflating professional frustrations with your personal regard for a person, and it’s important to be highly conscious of how unreasonable and overburdened some of these positions are.

At the end of the day, these are just words you are reading as an external observer. Nothing could possibly communicate the actual experience of living it, but I ask that you make the effort to take a moment and appreciate the ANUSA services you directly interact with, as well as the invisible labour of generations and generations of SRC we all unconsciously benefit from.

Believe in the integrity of your representatives even as you continue to challenge them - they fight harder for you than you realise.

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I Just Want to Ride My Bike Lucy Vandergugten

It is 2019, and all I want to do is ride my bike.

Regardless of my gender, sex, gear or ability, I want to ride my mountain bike.

Without your preconceptions of what a woman can do, without your conceptions of my biological make up in comparison to yours, I want to ride until the end of the day when I have to peel my fingers off my handlebar grips. I want to get muddy and dusty and sometimes a bit bloody. With mud caked onto my makeup if I so choose, or dirt plastered onto a layer of sunscreen I applied on top my cyclist tan lines. My bike might come to a holt before that big jump or that mass of rocks and I’ll think about it and weigh in on the risk. Maybe even decide that today is not the day to jump that far or ride something that steep. Or maybe I’ll just ride it anyway, leave all caution and reason in the carpark. I’ll cry when I crash or I’ll show up at the bottom of the trail, bruised and scraped, and simply get on with it. This is how I would like to ride my mountain bike as a woman.

In 2019, a woman set off to ride her bike across an entire continent. Across hun-

dreds of kilometres of straight, empty, desolate roads. She simply wanted to ride her bike. Her legs were strong, and she trusted them, instead she set out to conquer her mind. In the many hours spent in the dark, riding at night to beat the heat. But with any challenge, as great as this, things don’t always go to plan.

She started to notice the beginning of pain, a set back in her legs, another challenge to meet. Upon sharing the news of an injury online, her followers, who had been supporting her great feat, began to send through messages and comments. The messages came from men on couches twiddling their thumbs, men riding bikes to their local cafe, men who tracked only numbers and figures. And as she battled the endless straight tarmac for hours on end, these men instructed her and told her what to do. They told her their opinions, what she was doing wrong, what would have been better and before she knew it her comment section was full of doctors, sports scientists and mechanics. So as she pedalled through mental challenges and physical pain, she also pedalled through constant uninformed criticism. Voices who felt they had the expertise to dictate how she should approach her own challenge. She simply wanted to ride her bike, in her own way. No matter what equipment she used or how she managed her own body. Amongst all this unwanted advice, were the quiet voices of the odd woman who would offer her a bed to sleep in or an emergency lift into the nearest town.

Only if she decided that she needed that.

Also that year, a transgender woman named Kate Weatherly won a podium position at a UCI World Cup Downhill race. She had battled twice as hard to get to where she was. She had sat more medical tests than just the compulsory drug test sat by every other rider. By all the rules of the sport, she was just

as worthy to be there as any other competitor. And yet, big brands voiced their opposition, major athletes took to social media to speak against her. Not to mention the torrent of online abuse from anyone who felt they had some authority on the sport. She simply wanted to ride her bike. They set out to attack not only her, but also the whole world of women riding downhill mountain bikes. Citing our lack of recklessness, their perceived reasons of why there aren’t as many women in the sport. The fact that we will never be fast enough.

We just want to ride our bikes.

So when I competed in my first downhill race I heard the voices of those who said, “You? Racing mountain bikes?” bouncing around my head. They were in my heavy breathing as my bike carried me down the track as fast as I possibly could at that time. For all those men who exclaimed they wouldn’t believe I could ride mountain bikes until I proved it to them, I was chasing the hardest proof I could find.

In the end, much to my own surprise, I came home with a race finish better than I could have hoped. And as I presented the trophy in front of their own eyes they still said, “Yeah, well there aren’t that many people in women’s categories anyway.” I’ll never be able to prove it to them or change their narrow minds.

Instead I’ll be here. Still riding my bike.

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Annie van Limbeek, 1960’s Silence (2019), Collage

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Caught between Cultures Asil Habara In these works, I seek to explore Muslim/Arab females, how they are perceived and how belly dancing can conflict with traditional culture in the medium of screenprinting. Bellydancing typically brings up a contradiction in the middle eastern culture where many follow the strict adherents of Islam. However, the dancing was not typically approached from a desire of being seen as sexual but as a means of celebration between females. Blurring the lines between performer and audience.

It has been highly exoticised and moved away from the enjoyment between females and to the male gaze. Coming from a diaspora view of my own culture I aim to continue exploring this concept through screenprinting and other mediums in order to understand my own identity of being an Arab Women.

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110. Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale 112. Blue Champagne 113. The Social Construction of Borderline Personality Disorder 116. Review of The Favourite 118. Mother Nature is Bigger than We Are 120. Sex Work and Decriminalisation 122. I’ve Decided to Revamp My Porn 124. Indulge 125. EG:1 - 1990 126. Party in Your Pants 127. Is this Modern Love?

6. Ocean (a large expanse of sea) How do you describe the ocean? It’s complexity and breadth? It’s contradictions and connections, the possibilities of life it extends to us all?

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Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale: A Harrowing Female Perspective On On-Screen Violence Sophie Tallis

CW: discussions of sexual violence and colonialism in film Spoiler Alert! This review contains spoilers for the plot of The Nightingale and Game of Thrones.

When the credits of Jennifer Kent’s latest release The Nightingale rolled at the end of its premiere at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, the director was met with sexist vitriol from one critic who told Kent — notably the only female director with a film in the Festival’s programme — that she was a “whore” who should be ashamed of her creation. In my own screening almost a year later, when the credits rolled, no one moved. Despite it being a busy Saturday session, the raising of the house lights was met with hush and stillness rather than the usual rush for bags and coats and bursting conversation that tend to follow the two hours of forced silence a movie demands.

Such was the power of the film. No one wanted to break the spell the film had cast over us. Eventually everyone gathered their things and left, but even so, the film’s impact was to last long after we had made the trip home and gotten on with our lives. For those two hours, we were all gripped by a simple story turned on its head, and with it subverting every tale of rape-revenge that is all too common in the media.

Set in 1825, The Nightingale takes place in colonial Tasmania, where 21-year-old Irish convict Clare (Aisling Franciosi) is at the end of her seven-year sentence under the charge of the English Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin). After con-

fronting him about his refusal to release her despite finishing her sentence, and therefore allow her to return to Galway with her husband (Michael Sheasby) and her infant daughter, it is revealed that Clare is regularly abused by Hawkins who considers her his property after he freed her from prison. Harrowing scene after harrowing scene, Kent unflinchingly and unapologetically presents the violent realities of colonial life for both convicts and the Indigenous communities the British Militia encounter. Her camera casts judgement on the perpetrators while dispassionately presenting the tightly framed scenes of violence to the audience. By the end of the first thirty minutes of the film, Clare has been repeatedly raped, her husband shot, and her child murdered. The rest of the film follows Clare as enlists the help of Aboriginal tracker Billy to find Hawkins and get her revenge.

It is unsurprising that the film has led to walkouts of screenings. While the violence in the film is on paper no more violent that what can be expected sadly from any HBO series or Quentin Tarantino film, the way in which Kent and her brilliant actors depict the emotional torment of this violence is very hard to watch. In the most brutal scene of the film which lasts only ten minutes but feels an eternity longer, the camera, which is framed in the almost square 4:3 aspect ratio, creates an inescapable claustrophobic landscape on the faces of Hawkins and Clare. The camera refuses to look away from the violence in tight shots which focus on the lasting pain of Clare and other victims of Hawkins’

and his cronies (Damon Herriman and Harry Greenwood) senseless and brutal crimes. The only reprieve provided is one slow pan from Clare’s anguished face upwards, mirroring her dissociation from Hawkins’ sadistic demonstration of his power.

After reports came of significant numbers of walkouts after its Australian premiere in Sydney earlier this year (approximately 20-30 in the 600 and 800 seat viewings) Kent stated that while the film is violent, it’s a meditation on the impact of violence, saying, “it’s about the need for love, compassion and kindness in dark times.” Perhaps what makes the violence so troubling is that as the audience, we see the humanity being taken away from these figures as Clare turns towards violence herself, thereby continuing what Kent calls the cyclical “fallout from violence.” Indeed, in her artist statement on the film, she said that The Nightingale is about finding the answers to the question of violence… [that] lie in our humanity, in the empathy we hold for ourselves and others.”

However, despite seeking to present this fallout “from a feminine perspective”, the film and Kent have been the subject of many discussions regarding the need for what some call gratuitous violence in order to tell the story of a rape survivor. Can’t it be argued that presenting degrading acts of violence does a disservice to the film and provides legitimacy to the same harmful attitudes that are at the root of such violence? Is it possible to present violence in a way that isn’t exploitative, that doesn’t make watch-

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ing violence against women a form of entertainment? Projansky questions this in her novel Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture: “Paradoxically, even texts [with graphics representations of rape] that explicitly articulate an anti-rape perspective can also inadvertently contribute to these backlash representations.” In portraying sexual violence, whether it is done exploitatively or not, the brutality of the violence itself can prevent audiences from engaging with its message. Instead, audiences feel like the filmmaker, or even themselves by watching, is validating the abuse and consequently feel complicit in perpetrating rape culture by engaging with a film that represents it onscreen.

Perhaps this is the root of the controversy The Nightingale is facing. Audiences are conflating the depiction of rape as disseminating and perpetrating the same “backlash representations” that Kent seeks to deconstruct.

While Kent argues that her film is a takedown of violence, there is something to be said about it buying into the Rape-Revenge genre of film. This typically follows a three-act structure along the lines of a brutal rape occurring to the protagonist, or a family member of the protagonist, followed by a violent fallout, and then either the survivor or their family seeking violent revenge against the rapist. Rape Revenge films are a subsection of the exploitation film genre that developed in the 1970s and 1980s, when media coverage of violent crimes influenced film makers into pushing audiences to their sensory limit. Many Rape-Revenge films have cult followings: Kill Bill; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; I Spit on Your Grave. Or, alternatively they have been lauded with awards, with recent films such as Nocturnal Animals, Elle, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri all winning and being nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes and SAG awards over their respective 2017 and 2018 award seasons. Indeed, the story of a rape survivor seeking revenge is present in Sansa’s season 6 plot of Game of Thrones and is the central narrative of not one but two Tarantino film’s in his Kill Bill series. The Nightingale itself won the Special Jury Prize at the 2018 Venice Film Festival. It’s evident therefore that this is a culturally ingrained narrative, and one whose films attract and capture audiences and critics alike.

But what has attracted much criticism is the way in which so many of these films link character development, complex female characters, and sexual assault

in reductive ways. As actress Jessica Chastain wrote in response to a highly controversial moment in the final season of Game of Thrones, when character Sansa Stark stated that without her rape and torture she wouldn’t have grown, “Rape is not a tool to make a character stronger. A woman doesn’t need to be victimized in order to become a butterfly… Her prevailing strength is solely because of her. And her alone.” There is no denying that after the young female protagonist of The Nightingale, Clare, is attacked that the audience sees a transformation from a meek and mild young girl into a tough and brutal woman on her violent mission. However, in many ways, what makes The Nightingale differ is the way in which Kent deconstructs this idea. Clare’s supposed character growth isn’t really ‘growth’ in the positive sense, which critics intend when discussing development. Instead Clare seeks to use the same violence that was used against her in order to regain her power. It’s unpleasant and hard to watch but it goes to the core what the film is about at its heart: a take-down of cyclical violence. It’s a film about trauma, and trauma of different kinds. So much more could be written about the film’s carefully researched treatment of Tasmania’s Aboriginal people with whom Clare eventually finds some semblance of solidarity with as other survivors of the Colonialist’s violence. Indeed, both Clare and Billy are survivors and perpetrators in a place of “inherent violence”, as Kent describes Van Diemen’s, as their use of violence becomes their only apparent means of survival.

Consequently, the terms that have been thrown at this film such as ‘gratuitous’ and ‘excessive’ lose their meaning when the film’s context and purpose are considered. The violence needs to be shocking to have its full effect. What separates films such as The Nightingale from their equally violent rape-revenge counterparts is that its violence is not designed to entertain, it is there to confront and challenge. This is what critics fail to acknowledge in their discussion of the film’s controversy. By focusing on the violence and deeming it gratuitous, they fail to fully engage with the context and purpose of its inclusion, and the execution of these films as a critique of violence rather than an exploitation film.

These modern rape-revenge films aren’t about the act of violence, instead they are about the ripple effect it has on survivors and wider society that allows this to happen. As Kent said in a post-filming interview: “Violence is shocking,

it’s heartbreaking, it rips peoples’ lives apart, it causes great scars in people that often can never be removed, that have to be a part of the new experience, and that’s what I wanted to put on screen.

If people find certain scenes, whether it’s a sexual violence or the violence in general, shocking, that’s good because it is shocking.” The Nightingale unlike its predecessors (and maybe even some contemporaries as mentioned above) which have graphically depicted violence and sexual violence on-screen, doesn’t do so for shock-factor per se.

It wants the audience to be uncomfortable with how this violence isn’t questioned by the witnesses. It wants them to feel conflicted when they see Clare regaining her power by perpetuating violence herself. It wants to shock its audience into confronting their own response towards this violence. This film is angry and truthful and without the inclusion of confronting scenes of violence the audience wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate the horror of this colonial context for those without power and control. Despite the sexist remarks that have come her way, it is hard to imagine this film being made without Kent’s nuanced understanding of gendered violence. If anything, being met with these comments only reinforces the power of this film as a representation of feminine resistance in the face of abuse. The violence that the characters of The Nightingale face and subsequently perpetrate demonstrates the power of humanity and the results of its loss. With this female filmmaker at its helm, The Nightingale is subsequently so much more than a film with graphic violence, but it is ultimately a humane exploration of violence against the marginalised and powerless in our society, historically yes, but with a clear and deliberate equivalency to today’s troubling times.

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Blue Champagne Lucy Bei

You roll in And pull parts of my sanity away with you.

Like sun speckled blue champagne, I drink you Up. Your luring mist, Seeps into the hidden crevasses of my mind, Perfuming my thoughts numb, You hypnotise Me. I search for you, Under wrinkled sheets of Ultramarine, Surges of your laughter, Echo to my Heart.

Constellations, Of scattered moonlight in liquid mirrors, Reflect in your expansive eyes, And onto Mine.

Your breaking rhyme, Pulsing timeless through my yielding veins, Entering your uncharted waters, In you I Drown.

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The Social Construction of Borderline Personality Disorder Linh Dan Ta Art by Ailsa Schreurs

Medicalisation is the redefinition of deviance as illness (J. Busfield 2017: 759).

It is a diffusion of power and a means of social control. The de-medicalisation of certain mental health disorders, such as homosexuality, reveals the temporal relationship between our conception of deviance and the dominant regime of truth.

What is pathological and what is normal shift across time and space, contingent on the mandates of hegemony (P. Bjorklund 2009: 17).

An exploration of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is epitomic of this. The disproportionate representation of women diagnosed with BPD, and its feminised aetiology, is both a preservation and symptom of patriarchy. However, its medicalisation can also act to legitimate BPD within the parameters of science and healthcare - unveiling the structures that perpetuate female suffering. Therefore, a pluralistic approach of the medicalisation of BPD can engender inquiry into the conditions and consequences of an oppressive, misogynistic society.

In Foucault’s analysis, 18th century Enlightenment marked the collapse of the Sovereign where previously power, discipline, and control rested on a single monarch decreed by God (M. Foucault 1975).

Modern governmentality saw the diffusion of power where discursive institutions naturalised norms and ideals that upheld

existing social arrangements. Those that were unable to fulfil the roles and expectations of civilisation were marginalised.

Medicine, especially psychiatry, replaced religion becoming one of the most powerful extralegal institutions of social control (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 6). This is mirrored in the medical incarceration of the “insane” during the Age of Reason that was preceded by a professional diagnosis. Problems of illness, both somatic and psychic, fell under the jurisdiction of the physician and the broader medical body, irrespective of its capacity to deal with it effectively (P. Conrad 2013: 205). The language of psychiatry therefore became a “monologue of reason about madness” (M. Foucault 1965: xi). An archipelago of the secure institutions of expert knowledge cast a psychiatric gaze over conceived deviances, medicalising social abnormalities as an apparatus of control (N. Rose 2006: 466).

The Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) emerged in 1952 as a standardising nosological tool and a central infrastructure of medicalisation, despite ambivalence on universal diagnoses. An American psychiatrist Karl Meninger boldly asserted that classifications should be abandoned all together claiming them arbitrary and credulous (A. Scull 2019: 278). A carefully controlled study revealed that agreement between two American psychiatrists intrastate barely reached 50 per cent (A.

Scull 2019: 278). Regardless the DSM’s use proliferated, contextualised by the consolidation of Western capitalism in the 1970s. The accompanying pharmaceutical revolution increasingly individualised risk and illnesses, seen as having genetic and individual causes, were mediated by self-regulatory and consumptive behaviours. Consequently, allopathic treatments were increasingly prescribed, reliant on clear diagnostic delineations and perpetuated by medicine’s attachment to both science and prestige (J. Busfield 2017: 762).

It is reductionist to claim that scientific advancements within healthcare are a sole engine of neoliberalism, however its implications carry the vestige of cultural and economic histories. Personality disorders present an additional contention and tenuous relationship with diagnostic validity as they do not include obvious organic malfunctioning, but are detected by interpersonal and behavioural effects (N. Manning 2000: 622). Hence, they are more susceptible to social interpretation and represent an embodiment of the ethnopsychological assumptions about the ideal self, the Other, and the modes of experience and behaviour that constitute abnormality (P. Bjorklund 2006: 16).

The latest reiteration of the DSM-V (2013) describes Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as a severe form of behavioural disorganisation (S.K., Cahn 2014: 263). It

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is characterised by a pervasive pattern of instability affecting: interpersonal relationships; self-image; and affects, and marked impulsivity that is self-malignant. A diagnosis is reached when five or more of the following criterion is met (DSM-V 2013: 663): 1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. (Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5.)

2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealisation and devaluation.

3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.

4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). (Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5).

5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour.

6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.

8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).

9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

Since the 1970s, BPD ceased to be gender neutral. An estimated 77 per cent of patients diagnosed with BPD are women (S.K. Cahn 2014: 259). This can be explained by the feminised symptomatology of BPD being a corollary of cultural imperialism, where female bodies are socially regulated according to dominant gendered ideologies. Tellingly, during this decade the tenets of second wave feminism grew in salience, concerned with sexual autonomy and the power imbalances in clinical encounters. Feminists fought to legitimate female sexuality and intimately linked the awareness and protection from sexual abuse (S.K. Cahn 2014: 264).

For example, “sexual impulsivity” (DSM-V 2013: 633) has specific expressions in relation to the BPD female patient, informalised as promiscuity or hypersexuality. In a controversial 1989 article on BPD and patient-therapist sex, psychiatrist Thomas Gutheil claimed that borderline patients “possess the ability… to seduce, provoke,

or invite therapists into boundary violations of…countertransference” (S.K. Cahn 2014: 272). Sharing this sentiment was psychiatrist Harold F. Searles, describing the symptoms of a “borderline woman” as “coquettish” and “seductive” in manner (S.K. Cahn 2014: 272). The clinical interpretation of “sexual impulsivity” as hypersexual and promiscuous, positions women with BPD as having a moral rather than organic illness (O. Bonnington & D. Rose 2014: 11).

This is symptomatic of patriarchy manifest in the prevailing culture of sexual violence and victim blaming against women (P. Conrad 2013: 202).

Furthermore, the causes of BPD and its significant comorbidity destabilises the epistemic quality of the DSM that avows for objective specificity. Historically, “borderline” was a descriptor for a pathological purgatory: between sanity and insanity, neurosis and psychosis , on the border and somewhere in-between (P. Bjorklund 2009: 5). Most clinicians and theorists characterise BPD in part by its very indeterminacy and paradoxical nature.

The dialectics of the symptoms vary from one contradictory extreme to the other – hence the psychodynamic therapy for BPD being named Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) (P. Bjorklund 2009: 5). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Report to Congress on Borderline Personality Disorder (2010) cite significant comorbidity of BPD with other psychiatric disorders such as: major depressive disorder; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); eating disorders; and social phobia (S.K. Cahn 2014: 270). This reveals a classification that represents gendered abnormality rather than a precise aetiology.

Symptoms of BPD such as impulsive sex and aggression are shared with ADHD, a disorder that has a male to female diagnostic ratio of 4:1 (U.P. Ramtekkar et al.

2011: 217). These behaviours are coded as masculine, culturally signifying virility and therefore contrary to the conceptions of female propriety (S.K. Cahn 2014: 263).

However the most harrowing comorbidity is that between BPD and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in particular the experience of sexual assault. In comparison with other psychiatric disorders BPD was the diagnosis most frequently associated with sexual abuse (B. Bandelow et al.

2005: 170). This is a near-universal finding buried in literature about BPD and replicated in multiple studies (P. Bjorklund 2009: 8). Furthermore the interview method conducted in these studies may have even led to a possible underreporting of sexual abuse due to the repression of traumatic

events (B. Bandelow et al. 2005: 177). The high rates of sexual traumatisation in patients have led to discussion of whether BPD represents a trauma-spectrum disorder (B. Bandelow et al. 2005: 176). However, trauma as an aetiological antecedent of BPD is entirely omitted from the DSM and all its reiterations despite the empirical consistency. The “borderline” woman acts as a disembodied epithet, objectivating the troubling aspects of womanhood as a pathological illness, rather than an acute reading to the madness of a society where sexual violence is pervasive (S.K. Cahn 2014: 273). The responsive anger, self-injurious behaviours, and interpersonal lability are villainised as attention-seeking, manipulative, and promiscuous. Similar to the 20th century Victorian malady of hysteria, borderline personality disorder is rooted in the moral vision of the ideal woman as silent, impervious, and willing (S.K. Cahn 2014: 259).

Thus far, medicalisation as the creation, promotion, and implementation of medical categories has partially explained the way mental illness is socially constructed (P. Conrad 2013: 200). The classification of illnesses involves the interpretation of medical findings, circumscribed by normative definitions of health and illness (P. Conrad 2013: 202). Additionally, one’s social ecology will inform the development and expression of mental disorders. However, biological reasoning as an outcome of medicalisation depoliticises the condition as an individual pathology rather than an embodiment of structural arrangements (J. Busfield 2017).

Medicalisation is therefore understood as a pejorative within sociological literature (P. Conrad 2013: 205). However, it can also act as an engine to legitimate mental illnesses. The role of the physician is to inherently intervene and alleviate suffering related to the body and psyche (P. Conrad 2013: 205). Psychiatry, and medicine more broadly, has become a repository of truth as an institution of expert knowledge (J. Busfield 2017: 759). The diagnostic mandates and clinical interpretations of a physician is seen as a moral and political arbiter – disinterested and objective (J. Busfifeld 2017: 759). According to Talcott Parson’s structural-functionalist theory, a diagnosis positively and medically sanctions patients under the “sick role” that entails certain responsibilities and exemptions. Being unable to fulfil the expectations and functions of contemporary civilisation, they’re afforded a different, albeit temporary, set of rights and duties (T. Parsons 1991). That is: the right to be exempt from normal social roles; the right not to be held responsible

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for the condition; a duty to seek treatment; a duty to co-operate with technically competent help. It frames deviance as amoral, unwilling, and organic (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 8). Conversely, the conception of personality disorders in the beginning of the 19th century was initially described as moral insanity (N. Manning 2000: 622). It implied a wilful deviance rather than a legitimate illness that’d warrant the “sick role” (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 2). This illuminates the way medicalisation can function in a positive way with pertinence to personality disorders.

However, there has been a de facto demedicalisation of borderline personality disorder (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 1). It is framed as an ontological deficit and self-inflicted deviance, contrary to the “sick role” (O. Bonnington & D. Rose 2014: 12). Not only does the de facto demedicalisation enacted by clinicians exacerbate the mortality of BPD by routing patients out of treatment, but acts to deny the existence of the disorder and invalidate its traumatic aetiology – in particular sexual assault. This is a harrowing parallel to the way survivors are often treated.

The psy- professions regard BPD as one of the most intractable, mirrored in the ubiquitous “difficult patient” label (S.K. Cahn 2014: 263). Psychiatrists mentioned the diagnosis of BPD four times more often than any other diagnosis when asked about the characteristics of difficult patients (O. Bonnington & D. Rose 2014: 1).

In the same study, “manipulative” was the most-commonly used adjective by health providers to describe patients with BPD (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 10). The DSM’s criterion of BPD is clinically reinterpreted as the following: manipulative; aggressive; attention seeking; uncooperative, surmised as difficult (O. Bonnington & D. Rose 2014: 12). This informed why health providers refused care as they believed patients with BPD feigned sickness to get attention (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 10). Thus, patients with BPD are displaced from the “sick role”, indicted under a logic of culpability where they are responsible for their own illness (S.H Sulzer 2015: 4). Literature on eating disorders found that patients diagnosed with BPD were denied care in eating disorder clinics. After being marginally, physically stabilised they would be removed from the ward in favour of caring for other patients who were “legitimately” sick. Although these patients met the clinical markers for anorexia, their disordered eating was labelled as pretence and an attempt to gain attention (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 11).

It creates a narrative of a contested illness that is more a moral transgression, and op-

erates as a rhetorical justification to routinely deny patients care as documented in the 2010 Report to Congress on Borderline Personality Disorder (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 11). An unfortunate corollary, while BPD has proven to be as manageable as Major Depressive Disorder, patients with BPD remains the highest suicidal patient group (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 2). 3- 10 per cent of BPD patients die from suicide, and one study found more than 70 per cent have attempted either suicide or parasuicide (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 3). Even though there is proven efficacy of BPD-oriented therapies such as DBT, and various psychiatric drugs that alleviate emotional lability, patients are either seen as resistant or that there is no legitimate disorder to treat. This creates a discourse of untreatability.

the embodiment of behaviours that are contrary to ideal femininity, contextualised in a period of feminist activism concerning the sexual liberation and violence of women. It’s categorical deviance functions to shroud the troubling aspects of womanhood that reveal a structurally oppressive society. Conversely, medicalisation can also act to legitimate the self-destructive feelings of patients which lie in a spectrum of responses to trauma, particularly sexual assault. By acknowledging the way medical conduct is influenced by social hegemony and the cultural history it carries as a means of marginalisation, health practices can be reoriented to prevent, ameliorate, and heal severe emotional pain (S. Cahn 2014: 275).

Bibliography

Additionally, research found that clinicians conceptualise these suicidal and self-injurious behaviours as a patient’s clinical manipulation rather than temporary coping methods for intense emotional pain – as described among BPD patients themselves (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 11). It seems that the stigma surrounding BPD is largely maintained in the healthcare system where professional opinion is socially organised as objective forms of knowledge. Thus, many patients diagnosed with BPD are then powerless in resisting exclusion from treatment (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 9). BPD carries the historical vestiges of personality disorders as moral insanity, from its original conception in the 19th century to the early 20th century revision of hysteria that disguised itself under a biomedical paradigm, but was the embodiment of the patriarchy values and attitudes necessary for the maintenance of Western, neoliberal, civilisation (P. Bjorklund 2009: 17). The restitution of the “sick role” requires the medical recognition of BPD, returning patients under the purview of treatment and compassion. Not only will this address the mortality of BPD, but validate the expressions of BPD as a response to the crippling oppression of modern patriarchy (P. Bjorklund 2009:6).

Bandelow, B. et al., (2005) Early traumatic life events, parental attitudes, family history, and birth risk factors in patients with borderline personality disorder and healthy controls 169 – 179 Elsevier Ireland Ltd doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2003.07.008 Barnicot, K. & Ramchandani, P. (2015) What’s in a name? Borderline personality disorder in adolescence 1304 – 1305 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg doi: 10.1007/ s00787-015-0787-0 Bjorklund, P. (2006) No man’s land: Gender Bias and Social Constructivism in the Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, Issues in Mental Health Nursing 3 – 23 Taylor & Francis Group doi: 10.1080/01612840500312753 Bonnington, O. & Rose, D. (2014) Exploring stigmatisation among people diagnosed with either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder: A critical realist analysis 7 – 17 Elsevier Ltd doi: 10.1016/j.soscimed.2014.10.048 , J. (2000) Introduction: Rethinking the sociology of mental health 543 – 558 Blackwell Publishers Ltd Busfield, J. (2017) The concept of medicalisation reassessed 759 – 774 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Cahn, S. K. (2014) Border Disorders: Mental Illness, Feminist Metaphor, and the Disordered Female Psyche in the Twentieth-Century United States 258 – 282 University of Illinois Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt6wr5rt.18 Conrad, P. (2013) Medicalisation: Changing Contours, Characteristics, and Contexts: 195 – 214 doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-6193-3_10 Foucault, M. (1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison New York: Pantheon Books Foucault, M. (1965) Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason Random House Inc. Horwitz, A. V. (2002) Outcomes in the Sociology of Mental Health and Illness: Where Have And Where Are We Going? 143 – 151 American Sociological Association doi: 10.2307/3090193 Luhrmann, T.M. (2007) Social Defeat And The Culture Of Chronicity: Or, Why Schizophrenia Does So Well Over There And So Badly Here 135 – 172 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC doi: 10.1007/s11013-007-9049-z Manning, N. (2000) Psychiatric diagnosis under conditions of uncertainty: person-

In summary, medicalisation is the distinction between health and illness. It is a negotiated process rather than an absolute category, contingent on prevailing systems of truth (S.H. Sulzer 2015: 6). This informs the way mental health disorders are socially shaped, and therefore functions as a tool of social control. The DSM as a nosological tool, classifies deviance and mandates it under medical purview. As an institution of expert knowledge, it naturalises and is informed by dominant paradigms constitutive of Western, neoliberal patriarchy.

BPD is a gendered disorder with women outnumbering men 3:1. Its symptoms are

ality disorder, science and professional legitimacy 621 - 639 Blackwell Publishers Parsons, T. (1991) The Social System B. S. Turner, Ed. London: Routledge.

Rose, N. (2006) Disorders Without Borders? The Expanding Scope of Pyschiatric Practice 465 – 484 Cambridge Core doi: 10.101745855206004078 Sapouna, L. (2001) Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, London, Routledge Classics Scull, A. (2019) The Delusions of Progress: Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Manual 270 – 298 University of California Press Sulzer, S.H. (2015) Does “difficult patient” status contribute to functional demedicalisation? The case of borderline personality disorder 1 – 17 University of Wisconsin-Madison Ramtekkar U.P., Reiersen A.M., Todorov A.A., Todd R.D. (2010) Sex and age differences in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder symptoms and diagnoses: Implications for DSM-V and ICD-11 217–218 J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3101894/

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Review of The Favourite Lucinda Janson

Sex. Cake. Power struggles between lesbians. Elaborately made-up men.

A duck-racing contest. You probably wouldn’t imagine these in a depiction of life in Queen Anne’s early eighteenth-century court, but in the hands of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite (2018), it’s difficult to imagine the period drama without it.

The film subverts and reconfigures the traditionally male-centric genre

with a surrealist, camp manner infused with historical detail.

The Favourite depicts the rivalry between two powerful women, for the favour of an ill-tempered and peevish Queen Anne. Covering events from approximately 1708 to 1711, it focuses on the downfall of the Queen’s established favourite, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marl-

borough, through the machinations of her cousin Abigail Hill, later Masham. The film concentrates on the power play between the three women, demonstrating, through visual and linguistic parallels, the closeness of their relationships. Early in the film, Abigail offers herbs, which she had previously used on her own arm when it was burnt by lye, to soothe the Queen’s gout-rid-

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den legs. Her success in reducing Anne’s pain is the first step in her elevation from servant to the Queen’s companion and later, ‘Keeper of the Privy Purse’. Once Abigail’s rise is assured, she appears in the same dramatic eye makeup that Sarah had previously criticised as ‘badger-like’ when worn by Queen Anne. That this reversal of fortunes is depicted through the women’s bodies is part of the film’s focus on the physical intimacy between the three protagonists. Even the rivals Sarah and Abigail are physically linked through their similar monochrome outfits and their prowess in shooting pheasants. The bond between the women relegates the male characters to the periphery – Abigail refuses to have penetrative sex with her husband on their wedding night, instead giving him a hand job while continuing to wonder about Sarah’s continued absence from court. She stares straight ahead and mutters, ‘Now she is gone I find myself more concerned than when she was here’, while her husband groans.

Indeed, the men of the film are restricted to largely ornamental roles, incidental to the main action of the film. They are set apart from the women by their outlandish costumes, wigs and extravagant makeup. While the women appear to wear little make-up and are dressed in subdued colours, the men of the court wear long, flowing wigs, richly brocaded clothes, powder, and rouge. From Godolphin’s pet duck to Harley’s insistence that ‘a man must look pretty’, the political rivals are all frivolous. Even the soldiers riding off to war are distinguished by their bright red coats and plumed head-gear rather than by their martial vigour. The women, by contrast, are engaged in far more ruthless battles for political and social power, accompanied by a soundtrack suffused with militaristic pounding. The women ride astride their horses, not in the more feminine side-saddle position, and they remain calm and controlled even in the face of masculine outbursts of emotion.

While it is possible to argue that the film anachronistically overestimates women’s power in the period, Lanthimos’ film should instead be seen as a feminist intervention in traditional, male-centric historical

narratives. The exaggerated reversal of male and female authority highlights the absurdity of a masculinist view of history which ignores women’s political contributions before the twentieth century. Historians have largely depicted Queen Anne as uninvolved in running the nation, while Sarah Churchill’s political influence has also been often downplayed. Sarah shaped the historical narrative to an extent through writing her memoirs. As Ophelia Field notes in her biography of the Duchess, Sarah was aware that a woman should not present herself as politically active, and thus supressed some of her role in shaping policy in her memoirs. These gaps in the historical record are acknowledged in Sarah’s burning of explicit letters from the Queen, destroying her ‘proof’ for future historians and erasing their sexual relationship from the narrative.

The Favourite’s rewriting of male-centric historical narratives forms part of the film’s broader subversion of the conventions of the period drama. This genre has traditionally presented a staid, innocuous view of the past, in which women are largely relegated to subordinate roles. The film’s linguistic and visual anachronisms, as well as its surreal and farcical elements, challenge this sedate view of the past. Moreover, the film consciously employs anachronisms to interpret unfamiliar aspects of the past for a modern audience. Thus, dressing the servants in denim serves to demarcate their lowly status, while the surreal, tango-esque dance moves performed by Sarah and Masham, while historically inaccurate, capture the tense, highly-controlled nature of the courtly dance.

While critics have seen these anachronisms as Lanthimos’ main departure from traditional period dramas, The Favourite also achieves a more comprehensive re-visioning of the genre. The film’s extreme wide-angle and fish-eye shots eschew the complacent realism of the period drama and remind viewers that they are watching an artificial reconstruction of an historical period.

The warped effect of the fish-eye lens attests to the artificial intensity of what Harley describes as ‘the distorted situation at court’. Anne herself is often imprisoned in the

centre of these extreme wide-angle shots, demonstrating her loneliness and relative powerlessness among her aggressive courtiers. Frequent extreme low-angle shots present the characters as tall and imposing, but this trick of the camera simply exposes their posturing as vain illusion. Lanthimos depicts Anne’s court as an unnatural, supremely artificial site of excess and intrigue, just as he reminds viewers that they themselves are watching a surrealist depiction of ‘real’ historical events.

In its anachronisms and absurdities, The Favourite presents a perfectly realised reimagining of Queen Anne’s Court for the twenty-first century.

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Mother Nature is Bigger than We Are Rachel McCrossin “Mother Nature is bigger than we are� is a meditation on the ethereal power of the natural environment, and our place in it. I aimed to capture the beautiful juxtaposition of being both lost and found in the bush, and the eerie sense of freedom this creates. I am fascinated by those moments in nature when you feel like you are totally by something beyond us, and wanted to embody this within a dreamlike mystery, with a gesture towards the supernatural.

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Sex Work and Local Planning: Within but Beyond the Bounds of Our Society Imogen McKay

Although sex work remains fiercely debated across the world, New South Wales and New Zealand have decriminalised sex work in response to overwhelming evidence that decriminalisation is the best-practice model (at least under capitalism), protecting sex worker’s safety and labour rights and promoting transparency in the industry. There is no national uniformity in the law reform across Australia, with eight states and territories all taking different approaches to the law and policy on sex work. Accordingly, there is no single or unified ‘Australian experience’ with sex work, despite what some radical feminists may suggest. Of course, these reforms should be celebrated, and we should continue to stand in solidarity with sex workers as they fight for decriminalisation across the country.

However, it is important that we recognise that the role of the criminal law in regulating sex work has largely been supplanted by local government land-use planning instruments and processes. Local

planning authorities have emerged as the key authorities regulating sex work, utilising a range of mechanisms to enforce what Croft, Prior and Hubbard describe as ‘a moral geography’ of where sex can be sold. While in most jurisdictions across Australia and New Zealand local governments do not have the power to outright ban brothels, they generally retain wide discretion to exclude sex work premises and street sex work from public spaces. This is telling of how tenuous the inclusion of sex work within the bounds of legitimate society remains.

Regulatory mechanisms are largely tools of confinement, with amenity impacts being one the most frequently mentioned justifications.

One mechanism used to regulate the visibility of sex work premises is anti-clustering controls, which prevent ‘like’ businesses from congregating.

This has harmful impacts on worker’s safety, minimising opportunities for premises to have similar opening hours that assist safety objects such as casual surveillance. How-

ever, perhaps the most commonly utilised mechanism is zoning, used by local councils to ensure that sex work remains a safe distance from ‘sensitive zones.’ While New Zealand’s decriminalising Prostitution Reform Act (2003) is an important and welcomed step, sex workers have increasingly pointed to the zoning rules that have made some sex premises worse off, forcing them to shut down or operate illegally. In the 2007 case of Conley v Hamilton City Council, Conley unsuccessfully challenged Hamilton local council bylaws that introduced highly stringent ‘permitted zones,’ forcing the closure of the brothel Conley had operated for two decades. Nearly all local planning bylaws, whether in the context of decriminalisation (New South Wales and New Zealand), or a licensing system (Western Australia and Queensland), have a similar clause preventing brothels 150-200m between hospitals, schools, churches and other sites deemed ‘sensitive.’ Street-based sex work is also prohibited near ‘sensitive areas’ in many jurisdictions.

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Further, sex industry premises and street workers tend to be more tightly regulated in suburban areas, with suburbia representing a space for the respectable nuclear family and middle-class values. The explanatory notes of the Queensland Prostitution Bill 1999 explicitly provide the aim being to ‘remove this activity from suburban streets.’ Thus, it seems that these policies are largely directed at removing sex work from sight in residential areas, wherein sex work and family occupation are deemed to be incompatible.

Zoning also operates to push sex work premises into industrial or commercial areas. The relationship between zoning mechanisms and gentrification cannot be understated, with the propertied class concerned about sex premises in the area lowering property process. This has been made clear in St Kilda, where more stringent regulation, such as traffic closures on Greeves Street, a known hub where sex workers have been working for decades, has followed from residential concerns and new commercial developments.

Searle’s research (2011) indicates that the majority of residents who are unaware of sex premises nearby do not perceive any negative amenity impacts and when they do, the impacts are mainly associated with other businesses in the area such as nightclubs. Further, in Martyn v Hornsby Shire Council, the Senior Commissioner of the NSW Land and Environment Court accepted that ‘there is no evidence that brothels, in general, are associated with crime or drug use’. Clearly, perceptions of the moral corruption of sex work leads planners to make assumptions about the disorderliness and criminogenic status of sex work. Croft, Hubbard and Prior’s research also highlights how local planners have not just supplanted police in acting as the key regulators but have taken on police-like powers. In 2015, Hornsby Shire Council lost in court against an unregistered massage parlour, after spending more than $100,000 investigating it, with the mayor indicating they planned to continue investigating the ostensible corruption in the industry instead of referring it to the relevant regulatory body.

While pointing this out, it is important to remember that the peak representative body for sex workers Scarlet Alliance maintains that local council regulation is the preferred mode of regulation and the most effective example of regulation.

Decriminalisation has been an important step forward in endorsing the safety and labour rights of sex workers. However, we need to be aware of how of how marginalisation occurs more subtly on a planning level and stand with the sex workers in our local communities fighting these planning decisions.

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I’ve Decided To Revamp My Porn Sayler Allen

CW: Explicit discussions of desire, body, the porn industry, probably way too much detail into my sex life I’ve decided to revamp my porn.

See, the sex I have with myself has had a long history of exploration.

Ah, the thrill of a bath tap, dripping and gushing. The rasp of a pillow, soft and teasing. Fanfiction in the dark, fumbling with fascinations.

But at a certain point, somewhere before high school, I discovered visual erotica. I believe this particular narrative featured ‘tits’ on the net. And so I squirmed in the study chair, aware I was doing something illicit but wanting nonetheless to be titillated by this newfound sexual imagery.

And so, I dipped my toes into the tepid pool of straight pornography.

PornHub, PornMD, random porn

ads on sites without parent control.

I quickly realized I had no interest in these ‘real’ people having ‘real’ sex, as it all seemed rather uncomfortable, like a couple of stick figures jumbling and bumping their drylipped, orange-skinned parts together in some programmed sequence of ‘pleasure’. Not the most satisfying introduction to the realm of adult entertainment. I think I then moved to anime, or its erotic counterpart of hentai, which featured a fair amount of gushing and bounciness. But at least hentai was honest about the reality of the situation, y’know? By its very medium, this was a message of make-believe. It’s a fantasy created by artists for the entertainment of the individual. Someone’s making it, and you’re consuming it.

And the sex-crazed grin on a pixelated marionette is much more pleasing than the grimace on the face of cum-drizzled actress. I suppose in

animation I feel separate from the object. In ‘real’ porn I’m uncomfortably aware of how that could be me. How I am the object. I look at this video and I see this woman.

This woman and all the things being done to her. I see her face and every expression that flitters by. Every part of her body seems closely monitored. I’m touching myself and suddenly very aware of my own body as it would seem to another. This isn’t two people learning each other’s bodies and expressing their desires so they can both reach a peak or some level of enjoyment. There’s a floating dick in the corner, one of great power and girth, which pumps away with drill-like relentlessness on this poor pussy. I can’t help but wonder if visual erotica as it is in modern times could get me off without this shitshow of posturing.

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It places women as the object of desire, who becomes the product that is sold to an assumed male audience, who have the luxury of removing themselves from the scene and merely imagining that dick as their own. Even when there aren’t any erections involved somehow the male gaze lingers. There’s a politics to pleasure and, unfortunately, we’ve found ourselves swimming through a cashflow of semen.

Occasionally I swing to the amateur, though it’s ‘realness’ brings its own challenges – does she know she’s being filmed? Did they upload this on the internet together? Or is this revenge porn? Stealthing? It’s so hard to tell.

Fantastic, now I’m uncomfortably aware of how the things that get me wet have the capacity to drown both society and my conscience.

readers. And not just with finished products, but throughout the creation of them, chapter by chapter.

Fanfiction exists in the mind of the reader and writer. Unlike the situated gaze of erotic film, of angles and objects, erotic fiction creates a scene through imaginings. There is no camera to capture desire, only the mind to create a fantasy of the senses. Can you feel the breath of their words against your ear? There’s a freedom in daydreams, and safety.

You can debate all you want about the moralities of different kinktags (and believe me, there has been much debate – complexity I doubt you’d find in the PornHub comment section), but ultimately these are characters. There’s a lack of material effect, of body, of people.

Alas, the allure of the visual remains.

My emotions. My morality. My clitoris.

So, I’ve decided to revamp my porn.

Just like I did when I was younger, I gravitate first towards fanfiction.

I think the joys of community creation, content without capital, is best highlighted in the explosive and unoppressed orgasms I’ve had from erotic fiction. The community is hardly free of conflict, but when I get down to it my conscience knows no one has been hurt by my fascination with barebacking. That cum is fabricated, I tell you.

See, fanfiction was originally created out of Star Trek zines which then reached the internet and proliferated through this ‘marketplace of ideas’. Only this product isn’t sold (and if it is, it’s no longer fanfiction – I see you, Fifty Shades of Grey). Instead, everyone decided to volunteer, motivated by a love of fantasy and getting people’s rocks off, supported by people who wanted the very same.

The sites that produce fanfiction are also forums for authors who post their labours of love and receive engagement and comments from their

Curatorship becomes an interesting novelty in the world of explicit bodies and paraphilias. In the fanfiction world, there’s recommendation pages and accounts managed by a likewise obsessed fan who steers you towards the safe shores of your beloved kinks, with tags (#alternativeuniverse) and masterposts. Is it strange to miss LiveJournal? Well at least we have Archive Of Our Own. Some of the most popular tags?

Angst. Smut. Fluff. Personally, I prefer my plot in that order, thank you very much.

But porn? There’s something painful in navigating PornHub – I get turned off before I can get off. I know most of these videos aren’t made for me, but I do wonder if it’s really made with anyone in mind except for a very particular manifestation of masculinity that seems more concerned with simulation than stimulation. Tumblr used to have an active community of women who supported each other in finding things to wank to, though I suppose that curatorship was another thing lost when Tumblr banned explicit images. Reddit forums have shown me certain genres, like reverse or female pov, which flips that situated gaze somewhat.

In my own research, I’ve found creative studios such as A Four Chambered Heart, which features highly sensual short films, many of which explore taboo and the boundaries of sensory experience. Or one of my favourites, Erika Lust, who seeks to “show all of the passion, intimacy, love and lust in sex, where the feminine viewpoint is vital, the aesthetic is a pleasure to all of the senses, and those seeking an alternative to mainstream porn can find a home.” The diverse range of people and pleasures in her productions satisfies in so many aspects and can be bought per video unlike the subscription model of many male oriented porn producers.

This is a sliver of my experience with erotica. I didn’t want to frame this in academia, nor in some form of confession, as if my desires are so transgressive that they cannot be explicitly told. This is an explicit bereavement with the state of our online perversions, of the twisted relationship between power and pleasure that exists in this visual form of the erotic. Of how I really really just want to get off to some damn good porn.

The search continues.

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Natasha Pidcock Indulge, mixed media (collage, acrylic and ink)

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Natasha Pidcock EG:1-1990, oil on canvas

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Party in Your Pants Ailsa Schreurs This work explores female self-pleasure as an individual, out-of-this-world experience, enjoyed by many. It was created by ‘drawing’ into recycled festival glitter with a vibrator, each work being on a different setting.

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Is this Modern Love?

Madeleine Castles Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and the impossibilities of love in the millennial age.

I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with my father more about a book than I did about Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends. All of the characters are irritating, unappealing, pretentious, and “I just don’t understand why they never say what they mean,” my father opined. In response, I replied that it was possibly “the most real and relatable novel” I had ever read. I was so taken by the novel that in fact I haven’t been able to shut up about it. Over the past year I’ve had countless conversations with my own friends about Rooney and the way she moved me.

Conversations with Friends follows university students Frances and Bobbi, best friends and former lovers, as they become involved with the older married couple Nick and Melissa. The complex dynamics that follow, including an affair between Frances and Nick, form the backdrop for a novel that ultimately interrogates the painful impossibilities of love and intimacy in the 21st century.

Rooney’s follow up novel, Normal People, is the one she has received the most acclaim for, including being nominated for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Nevertheless, it’s Conversations with Friends that I keep coming back to. When I first picked it up, I devoured it in almost a day. As the title suggests, the novel is littered with conversation covering everything from refugees and war to feminism, love, and capitalism. Instant messenger and email interweave seamlessly within the narrative. The novel’s characters hurl conversation back and

forth; sarcasm, dark humour, and mockery reign supreme. Dubbed ‘the first great millennial novelist’

by The New Yorker, it’s Rooney’s ability to convey the self-destructive, oftentimes frustrating, way in which her characters resist speaking openly and honestly that most clearly captures the ‘millennial voice’. Rooney’s young characters spend the entire novel talking, often incredibly intimately, yet still fail to get to the real truth at the heart of their relationships. The conversations are often indecipherable, both to the characters and the reader, as the struggle to say what you really mean permeates the narrative. As Nick remarks to Frances, “I never have any idea what you feel about anything”, they both spend the course of the novel attempting to decipher the riddles through which they communicate.

Where the novel’s conversation is defined by double meaning, Rooney suggests that the character’s true selves are exposed through physical intimacy. Conversations does not shy away from depicting the character’s sexual relationships, instead it reveals sex as intense, intimate and undeniably real. In both Conversations and Normal People, Rooney suggests that relationships are defined by the complex interactions between sex, power, and control.

Frances alternatively feels sexually “powerful” over Nick, while other times “the moment he touched me I felt hot and passive.” Sex is defined, not only by the power we have over other people, but by the individual surrender to another. Constantly caught between openness and embarrassment, dominance and

submission, Frances struggles to understand the consequences of her sexual relationships. After kissing Nick for the first time, Frances attempts to process how she should be feeling, instead arriving at “a lot of things I didn’t know how to identify”. Rooney shows us the fraught means of thinking through feeling, as her characters fight to keep up with an interpretive process that keeps slipping beyond their grasp.

While Frances labels herself as “not very emotional”, she must ultimately come to terms with the powerlessness and loss of control that accompanies falling in love. Although conversation can be manipulated, performed and used as a mask to disguise how the characters really feel, the consequences of physical intimacy ultimately cannot be protected against, or be manipulated.

As Frances realises, all she can do is “decide whether or not to have sex with Nick; I couldn’t decide how to feel about it, or what it meant.”

As Frances and Nick negotiate the complex boundaries between sex and feeling, they must confront the inevitable: if it isn’t just sex, what now? Sex might bring all the boundaries crashing down, but it also reveals the incredibly complex ways in which physical intimacy causes a loss of individual control. When Nick informs Frances that he’s started sleeping with his wife again, she spits back that “I just don’t have feelings concerning whether you fuck your wife or not. It’s not an emotive topic for me”, unable to own up to the complicated web of jealously and betrayal that defines their relationship. In an interview with The New York Times Rooney

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said, “I don’t really believe in the idea of the individual...I find myself consistently drawn to writing about intimacy, and the way we construct one another.” For the characters in Conversations, no amount of analytical thinking or fast conversation can save them from the painful, crushing reality of interdependent desire.

What does it mean to say that Rooney has been dubbed as the defining writer of millennials, particularly millennial women? In an interview with The Guardian, Rooney denied being the voice of a generation, declaring, “I certainly never intended to speak for anyone other than myself.” Yet, there is something incredibly empowering about a young woman writing novels about complicated young women for young women. Yes, Rooney’s female characters aren’t always likeable. Frances, particularly, makes some morally questionable decisions and lies

to practically everyone she knows.

However, Rooney ultimately refuses to pass judgement on her women; complicated and multifaceted, they’re real and that’s what makes them heartbreakingly relatable.

Finally, at its heart, Conversations is a genuine love story. If Frances asks Bobbi, “Is it possible we could develop an alternative model of loving each other?”, Conversations ultimately sees Rooney embrace love, even at its messiest, as a radical act of defiance in a world that seems to deny real connection. Love might ultimately mean hurting each other, but it’s in the intimate ways we shape each other along the way that make the pain worthwhile. In the novel’s final pages, Frances makes the decision to resume her relationship with Nick, despite its seeming impossibilities. What should we do then if this complicated, transgressive, and uncertain state is love in the 21st century? Perhaps, as

Frances concludes, we can’t ever understand something until we live through it. Modern love might be paralysing, messy and inevitably painful but, as Rooney asks, if this is the price of feeling something, her answer is “come and get me.”

Bossy accepts contributions from women-identifying, femme-aligned, non-binary, and genderqueer ANU students, staff members, and alumni.

E: anubossymag@gmail.com W: www.bossymag.com F: www.facebook.com/bossymag I: www.instagram.com/bossy.magazine T: www.twitter.com/anubossymag

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