Grapeshot Magazine | FIST

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SYDNEY GAY & LESBIAN MARDI GRAS

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ISSUE 7: FIST

CONTENTS 7 NEWS

19 REGULARS

37 CREATIVE

8 NEWSFLASHES

20 GRAPESHOT UNDERCOVER

38 PORTRAITS OF POWER

10 THE LONG COMMUTE: SEXUAL HARASSMENT ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT

21 THE CHALLENGE

40 THE HARDEST PART: A SHORT STORY

12 NEWSFLASHES 2 14 WHITE AUSTRALIA’S SHAME: IDOLISING COLONIAL STATUES 16 WILLTHE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN? 18 SEX VS. TERRORISM: AUSTRALIA’S DEADLY LOTTERY

22 ILLUSTRATED 24 BIOLOGY IS NOT BINARY

42 QUEER STORIES <3

28 SEX ED IN AUSTRALIA

45 REPEAT OFFENDERS

30 EXOTIC AND EROTIC

46 SHIT LIT

32 JEREMY FISHER INTERVIEW

47 TRAILER TRASH

34 PUNCHING HIV IN THE NUTS

48 MUSIC

36 COLOURS OF THE WIND

50 BOOKS

26 UNSEALED SECTION

27 FEATURES

49 POP CULTURE REWIND 51 HOROSCOPES

WE’RE HIRING We need a kick-ass, dedicated team to take the reins and help us continue our production of high quality, student-driven writing, design and journalism in 2018. If you’re enthusiastic about Grapeshot and are keen to dedicate a lot of blood, sweat and late nights into helping us produce the sexiest student mag out, flick a cover letter and resumé to grapeshot@mq.edu.au!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The Editor-in-Chief oversees every aspect of the magazine, from design and editorial, through to marketing. They also act as the primary contact for the university, Campus Life and the student body. So when Grapeshot gets into trouble (see: all Grapey editorial for 2017), the Editor in Chief is 100% accountable.

DEPUTY EDITOR

While the Editor-in-Chief is directing the team and dealing with bureaucracy, the Deputy is liaising with section editors and executing content. The role requires strong leadership skills, for giving praise when due and kicking ass when needed. Like the Editor-in-Chief, the Deputy is all across all aspects of the magazine.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND DESIGN ASSISTANTS

The Creative Director and Design Assistants are responsible for the overall aesthetic and branding of Grapeshot. They illustrate and design every single glorious page in coordination with the theme and content. The position of Creative Director requires someone with a knowledge of programs like InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. The Design Assistants are there when the Creative Director calls, to whip up a pattern or illustrate a section opener. Artists and/or illustrators are encouraged to apply.

NEWS EDITOR

The News Editor compiles all the articles for the news section of the magazine including newsflashes, interviews, and news-features. The News Editor is required to be across Macquarie news and everything that happens on campus. The position requires someone who is thoroughly up to date with current affairs and is able to find new angles on old stories.

Applicants should have skills as a writer and reporter, in order to regularly produce articles to tight deadlines.

FEATURES EDITOR

The Features Editor is required to source articles for the heartiest section of the mag. This requires someone with a

broad knowledge base, and experience as a writer and reader of creative non-fiction. The Features Editor commissions and curates long-form, non-fiction articles, specifically immersive, narrative journalism, interview-based profiles, and memoir pieces. The Features Editor is required to work closely with contributors to give guidance, perform structural edits, and see the work through to publication.

REGULARS EDITOR

The Regulars Editor is across both the Regulars and Repeat Offenders sections of the mag. They commission content that is experimental and light-hearted, and are responsible for all book/film/music reviews. The Regulars Editor is also required to take on a lot of the comedy-writing themselves, including the famous Grapeshot Challenge (which this year included a date with a Sugar Daddy, binge-drinking through a uni week, and calling triple zero from the middle of Heathcote National Park).

ONLINE EDITOR

The Online Editor curates all the content for the Grapeshot website and social media, keeping it as up-to-date as possible. While the magazine editors have monthly deadlines, the online editor is subject to daily deadlines. The position requires someone who understands online media and how to get as wide a reach as possible, who understands all different forms of writing.

MARKETING AND ADVERTISING MANAGER

The Marketing and Advertising Manager is in charge of all events held by Grapeshot. This includes working closely with the Editor-in-Chief to organise whole events, running O-Week stalls and assuring that the magazine attracts as much new interest as possible. They are the primary contact for advertising clients and are responsible for maintaining the Grapeshot Media Kit that is sent out to advertisers on a weekly basis.

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

If you’re keen to be involved but are short on time or experience, the Editorial Assistant is a great way to learn the ropes. An Editorial Assistant will conduct interviews, write articles, and work with the rest of the team in generating ideas and content for each issue.

Keep an eye on our FB for more info: facebook.com/ GrapeshotMagazine Hope to hear from you!

EDITORIAL & CREATIVE PRODUCTION EDITOR IN CHIEF Angus Dalton

DEPUTY EDITOR Emma Harvey CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brittney Klein NEWS EDITOR Tess Connery REGULARS EDITOR Nikita Jones FEATURES EDITOR Max Lewis CREATIVES EDITOR Cameron Colwell ONLINE EDITOR Erin Christie COPY EDITOR Yehuda Aharon DESIGN ASSISTANTS Daniel Lim & James Booth SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Amanda Burgess MARKETING DIRECTOR Shinae Taylor

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS + ILLUSTRATORS Brendan Alder, Bohdi Byles, Tieri Cafe, Holly Fisher, Bek Fritz, Ursula Huxtable, Olivia James, Nathaniel Keesing, Emma Kocbek, Kanchana Krishnan, May Niang, Belinda Ramsay, Jasmine Reyes, Emma Rssx, Guy Webster, Charlie Zada

EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD Eliza Kitchener, Jasmine Noud, Mahyar Pourzand, Zwe Paing Sett, Paul Russell, Anthony Ryan

PUBLISHER

COORDINATOR

Kim Guerin

Melroy Rodrigues

Grapeshot would like to acknowledge the Darug people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work, and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.

SEND PITCHES, IDEAS, QUESTIONS, WORDS, PHOTOGRAPHY, ART TO GRAPESHOT@MQ.EDU.AU

NEWS

NEWSFLASHES GOOD UNIVERSITIES GUIDE: HOW MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY STACKS UP

Lester, put this discrepancy down to the fact that the universities with the highest entrance scores have a higher population of students entering tertiary education straight out of high school, rather than mature aged students.

The Good Universities Guide has released its 2018 Institutions Rating Report, ranking Australian universities on criteria such as graduate employment, starting salaries of graduates, and overall student satisfaction.

“People [coming to university] straight out of school are finding it difficult to get a job,” Mr Lester said.

Overall, Macquarie University performed quite well, ranking 10th in the country for graduate employment, with 69.7% of students finding full time employment within four months of graduation – just a tad above the national average of 69.5%. Macquarie University also has the highest rate in Australia of full time employment for students who studied in the creative arts field.

REACHING OUT: WHY MACQUARIE STUDENTS ARE STRUGGLING TO FIND SUPPORT

Macquarie University scored five stars in a few areas, including the Architecture and Building, Health Services and Support, and Science and Mathematics categories.

Five stars were also scored in the Student Demand and Learning Resources categories at an institutional level.

There were other areas Macquarie didn’t perform quite as well in. Starting salaries saw Macquarie graduates starting at an average of $53 500 per year, this time coming in under the national average of $56 000 per year. Macquarie came in under the national average in both the Skills Development and Overall Experience categories – two of the most important categories for graduates looking back at their degrees.

Another concerning statistic is the student: teacher ratio.

Ideally, the Good Universities Guide recommends having no more than 19 students for every teacher. Currently, Macquarie University has 27 students for every teacher.

The report comes out yearly, and is primarily used as a tool for people who are looking to enter tertiary education, helping them to compare and choose a university to attend.

This includes high school students, international students, and mature aged students - amongst others.

A major point made about this year’s report is that the universities with the highest entry scores don’t necessarily have the best student experiences or employment outcomes. According to the guide, the universities with the highest average entry scores are the University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, and the University of Western Australia. None of these universities cracked a top 10 ranking in the overall experience field, and only UNSW managed to place in the top 10 for students finding full time work after graduation.

Chief Executive of the Good Universities Group, Chris

8 || News

By Tess Connery

CW: This article contains mentions of self-harm, suicide, and discussions of sexual harassment and assault.

Results from the recent Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report into sexual assault on campus have revealed that over one in ten students affected didn’t seek support because they didn’t know where to go.

The AHRC report that was released earlier this year outlines how a third of Macquarie University students have been sexually harassed in a university setting and 77 out of 950 respondents had been sexually assaulted somewhere between 2015 and 2016. Looking at students in a broader sense, the ‘After the ATAR’ report compiled by youth engagement experts, YouthSense and Year13, revealed that when university students were asked about how they felt about their life at the moment, 20 per cent said stressed and 22 per cent said mental health was a reason for considering dropping out of university. On top of all this, a 2017 Headspace report revealed 35 per cent of tertiary students experience self-harm or suicidal thoughts.

These results are alarming but not altogether surprising.

Students today are facing a lack of career prospects, a competitive job market, threat of automation, financial difficulties, greater HECS-HELP debt, a housing crisis and academic pressure.

As students, we recognise the need for professional mental health support. The ‘After the ATAR’ report revealed that 51 per cent of young people surveyed identified a need to see a mental health professional. Quality, accessible and relevant mental health services are needed by students, including those studying at Macquarie University.

Macquarie’s Campus Wellbeing is responsible for supplying these services. This department offers a range of assistance

NEWSFLASHES to students including counselling, disability support, advocacy, welfare, medical services and religious and spiritual resources. Counselling services can be accessed through an online self-referral form and appointments are bulk billed.

secure a prompt appointment with Campus Wellbeing should contact him directly via his email at vc@mq.edu.au.

However, while Macquarie may be offering a range of wellbeing services, many students find it difficult to access them for a variety of reasons.

“In terms of wait times for things that involve crisis and critical incidents, we have immediate same-day responses as needed for students,” he said.

This is evidenced by the AHRC report; 98 per cent of Macquarie students who replied that they had been sexually harassed in a university setting did not report the most recent incident or seek support or assistance from their university. In the case of sexual assault, 91 per cent of Macquarie students did not seek support or assistance from the university. There is evidently a gap between the services available and people being able to access them.

“What can be the biggest problem though is student availability. So, a student may say they’re only available at Fridays at 4 o’clock. That practitioner may not be available on Friday at 4 o’clock for five weeks. That’s where it blows out in terms of the wait time. So, some of it has to do with the service, a lot has to do with the student,” he said.

The AHRC report revealed that 48 per cent of Macquarie students ‘know nothing about’ or ‘know very little’ about where to seek support or assistance within the university regarding sexual harassment. Without being aware of the policies and assistance that exists within the university, it is impossible for students to be able to access it.

Benjamin Wilkes, Manager of Allied Health and Campus Wellbeing, spoke to Grapeshot and agreed that lack of knowledge is an issue.

“We know in general that five out of every seven people that are affected by mental health for instance, they never get treatment, and some of that is because they don’t know where to go,” he said.

Campus Wellbeing is attempting to combat this problem by promoting student services through a variety of mediums.

This includes the launch of WellbeingWise, which is an online portal accessible through iLearn.

“It’s been a co-created unit by students about how to present wellbeing information and that includes key contacts as well,” Mr. Wilkes explained.

Wait times prove to be another significant barrier in accessing support services. Macquarie students are reporting wait times in excess of four weeks for counselling services. Such a long period before being able to speak to mental health professionals can be detrimental to wellbeing and academic success. Financial, academic and emotional pressures can compound on each other and threaten academic achievement and overall mental health.

When Grapeshot spoke to Mr. Wilkes about wait times, he stated that delays are largely dependent on student availability.

From this it is clear that while Campus Wellbeing is endeavouring to contact and connect with students in their time of need, there are underlying resourcing issues that prevent this.

A 2016 study found that no large Australian university has enough counsellors to meet international or Australian and New Zealand Student Services Association (ANZSSA) recommendations.

Despite university fees being on the rise, and the threshold to pay them back being lowered, none of this funding is being channelled towards helping students successfully cope with the pressures that come with studying within a tertiary learning environment.

There’s good and bad news to take out of this. The good?

Macquarie University does offer a comprehensive range of services that receive positive feedback by the students who are able to access them.

The bad? The statistics clearly show that financial, social and mental difficulties are on the rise. Students are struggling to cope with the increased pressure of all aspects of life. Campus Wellbeing is necessary. However, lack of knowledge, waiting periods and an overall shortage of resources inhibits students from accessing the services in their time of need.

by Emma Kocbek

Campus Wellbeing – (02) 9850 7497

The Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University has pledged to help resolve this issue. At a speaker event lead by the Respect.Now.Always. team, Bruce S Dowton told the crowd that any student who is concerned about being unable to

News || 9

THE LONG COMMUTE

SEXUAL ASSAULT AND HARASSMENT ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Last month, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) released its landmark ‘Change the Course’ report into sexual harassment and sexual assault figures at Australian universities. In particular, the survey results revealed alarming statistics about the number of university students experiencing sexual harassment on public transport, with an average of 22 per cent of respondents stating they were harassed while travelling to or from university in the past year. However, these instances were even more prevalent among Macquarie University students, with 27 per cent of respondents stating their most recent incident of sexual harassment occurred during their university commute. Submissions to the Report described a range of sexual harassment experienced by students on public transport, including staring, leering, unwanted physical contact, and offensive comments of a sexual nature.

Reading the Report, I was taken back to an incident I experienced last year on my commute to university. Like any good student, I was preparing for a full day of classes by hastily skimming through my textbook, attempting in vain to finish a week’s worth of readings in 45 minutes.

It was as the train passed over the rickety Hawkesbury River bridge and back into internet reception (a moment all students from the Central Coast know well) that a man approached from the other end of the carriage, squeezing into the seat beside me. ‘What’re you reading?’ he asked, leaning across me to examine the pages of my book. I shrugged him off and continued reading, hoping that by ignoring him he would take the hint and go away. It didn’t work, and he proceeded to strike up an entirely one-sided conversation, filled with unrequited compliments and personal questions about what university I went to, what I was studying, and what station I was getting off at. Eventually he realised I wasn’t going to respond, so he stood up, called me a bitch, and left.

10 || News

What is most surprising about the incident was just how unsurprising it is. When I have told this story to friends from university, instead of being met with shock, the response from other female-identifying students is invariably the same: a swapping of stories, counter-tactics that they have found helpful, or an endless list of women they know who have experienced a similar situation. Sexual harassment on public transport is at crisis levels; particularly for women and gender-diverse persons, with the report revealing double the number of female-identifying students reporting experiences of sexual harassment than male-identifying students. While public transport services are clearly not within the control of universities, the AHRC acknowledged in the report that these statistics were still significant “because travel to and from university is considered an important part of students’ university experience.”

The main issue with public transport is that it is, by its very nature, conducive to persons committing sexual harassment and sexual assault, with the confined and transitory aspect of trains and buses inadvertently creating spaces where perpetrators are guaranteed close interaction with other passengers. Perpetrators are emboldened in public transport spaces, where it’s often difficult for targets to get away, and the enclosed spaces and crowding offering proximity and anonymity. In this regard, the results of the AHRC report reinforce what is already known about sexual harassment and sexual assault on public transport: there is little social or legal risk or accountability for this transgressive behaviour.

However, it’s important to note that 57 per cent of students who stated they had been sexually harassed on public transport said that the perpetrator was a student from their own university, with a further 11 per cent of perpetrators being students from another university. This result challenges the assumption of anonymity, and further highlights the importance of university engagement in the prevention of sexual harassment and sexual assault in public transport spaces, particularly where the perpetrator is a university student.

some students said their experience of sexual harassment or sexual assault was so debilitating that they withdrew from university altogether, affecting their future access to employment and education.

The results of the AHRC report expose how universities can no longer claim to be immune to the issues faced by the broader community around sexual harassment. At the release of the ‘Change the Course’ Report, Vice Chancellor Professor Bruce Dowton commented that “One incident of sexual harassment or sexual assault is one too many.

Both are unacceptable, and as a community we should take action to ensure no one experiences either.”

As a stakeholder in improving awareness and implementing change around the issues of sexual harassment and assault, these results mark a significant opportunity for Macquarie University to demonstrate their commitment to taking these statistics seriously.

The university must examine the ingrained gender stereotypes that shape the harassing behaviours that are experienced by students, as well as develop stronger partnerships with public transport authorities to improve the situation of sexual harassment and sexual assault in public transport spaces.

by Belinda Ramsay

Sexual assault support services Campus Wellbeing – (02) 9850 7497 Universities Australia Sexual Assault Hotline - 1800 572 224 1800 RESPECT - 1800 737 732 NSW Rape Crisis Centre - (02) 9819 6565

While the obvious alternative to public transport is electing to drive, the steep financial burden of purchasing a parking permit, on top of the difficulty of even being able to find a free parking spot on campus, creates significant barriers for students who would prefer the safety and comfort of driving their own car. This leaves them with no other option than to catch public transport; and while usage of these systems results in significant environmental, economic and social benefits, it may be at a personal cost to the individual. Students may avoid travelling on the bus or train at certain times or feel it necessary to avoid public transport altogether. This may result in the student missing classes, having limited timetable options and not being able to participate fully in university life and on-campus opportunities. Additionally, the AHRC report revealed that

News || 11

NEWSFLASHES SRC SELECTION PANEL UNDER FIRE A student has raised concerns about the selection process of the Equity and Diversity representatives on the SRC after revealing that a university staff member urged her to go for GLBT Representative rather than Women’s Representative, even though she had not identified as queer in her application.

Georgie Slater applied for Women’s Rep during the SRC election period last semester. She had experience in leadership and representing women as the MQU Labor’s Women’s Officer, and had been endorsed by President of the Women’s Collective, Jasmine Noud.

When university governance officer Air Sinthawalai called Slater and informed her that she wouldn’t be shortlisted for Women’s Representative, she was slightly confused and disappointed.

Then, Sinthawalai suggest Slater run for GLBT rep instead.

“This shocked me greatly,” Slater told Grapeshot. “As a bisexual who was not ‘out’ so to speak, I didn’t know how they would know that I was LGBT+.

Turns out they didn’t. In my statement, I discussed how it is important for women to work with members of different minority groups, such as LGBT+, to ensure we all succeed together. They thought this meant that I’d be better suited for the position of Queer rep. Clearly their understanding of intersectional feminism is greatly lacking.”

Queer reps on the SRC are required to sign a statement officially testifying that they identify as queer. Slater had done nothing of the sort, or identified herself as queer in her application process. At this point in time she hadn’t come out to her family and many of her friends.

12 || News

“They were willing for me to go for the position despite having no idea about my sexuality,” says Slater.

“Imagine if I wasn’t bisexual. They would have been happy to shortlist someone for Queer rep that they didn’t even know was queer. That gets under my skin, that the university just didn’t care about whether the person representing LBGT+ students was queer or not.”

pick their own representative? Why do four straight people get to decide who will be the best queer rep?

Why do two men get to have input on who will represent women the best? Why do four non-first nations people get to decide who represents our Indigenous population? Why do four abled people get to decide who represent the disabled students on campus?”

Slater raised concerns about the university’s conduct and again presented the endorsement that she had been given from the president of the Women’s Collective. As a result, she was shortlisted for Women’s Rep and secured an interview with the selection panel.

“It’s structured to prevent any real change, any real activism and any real hope for the disadvantaged students on campus.”

She hoped to be asked about her plans for women on campus, her experience in representing women before, and why she believed the role to be important. But this wasn’t the case. Slater says that she was quizzed on how she’d be encouraging students to attend on-campus events, rather than on the experiences of women on campus.

“In instances where there was a perceived misalignment between the candidate’s application and the Equity and Diversity category that they were running for, i.e. when the Selection Panel felt the application did not address the selection criteria for one category but did for another, the Selection Panel provided candidates with the opportunity to change the equity and diversity category that they had selected rather than exclude them from selection all together. This was posed as a suggestion which the candidate could accept or reject.”

“They should be making their decision based on ability to represent women and understand their needs on campus, not on how they get the numbers for events,” said Slater. “It just felt like they were trying to rule out any activist taking on the position if I’m honest.”

When the selection panel process was first introduced in 2012, the then student representative to Council, Gemma Quinn, told The Australian that the practice of a university-directed panel selection student representatives was a “travesty” and that “independent voices will continue to be quashed”.

Slater echoed these concerns.

“Why can’t the University trust their minority and marginalized students to

Grapeshot contacted Air Sinthawalai and head of governance services, Zoe Williams about the incident.

Williams replied, saying:

The present Women’s Rep is Madison Poynter. It is yet to be seen whether the current SRC will take a formal stand against the selection process in time for the next SRC election period in 2019.

by Angus Dalton

ALL PUNISHMENTS LIFTED FOR FORMER GRAPESHOT EIC Angela Heathcote was removed from her position as Editor-in-Chief of Grapeshot at the end of last semester, a week before she was due to finish her studies. Her removal occurred after the university directed her to remove a comment she had posted from her personal Facebook account on a Grapeshot article without supplying reasoning behind the directive.

As a result Heathcote was referred to the Disciplinary Committee. Heathcote didn’t attend her initial hearing as she was unaware of the summons that had been sent to her student email.

The Committee ruled in her absence that she would be prohibited from re-enrolling to study at Macquarie in the future and banned from attending her graduation ceremony.

After the decision, Heathcote applied for a hearing so she could present her side of the story and evidence to support her case. As a result of the hearing, the punishment was lifted.

GLORIA JEAN’S HAS MORE THAN ITS BEANS ROASTED The Macquarie Centre outlet of Gloria Jean’s has found itself in hot water during the early days of the marriage equality postal survey after it was accused of attempting to capitalise on the debate. The chain store – which currently sports a 2.2 star rating on Google reviews – set up two tip jars on the counter asking people to cast their coins into the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ jar, alongside a sign that reads ‘Gay Marriage?’.

A Facebook user raised concern with the tip jars yesterday, posting on the Gloria Jean’s Australia Facebook page: ”‘As a member of the LGBT community I find this belittling and a

gross oversimplification of the issue.

‘Gay marriage’ affects all LGBT people, including trans and non-binary individuals, and tone deaf things like this continue to trivialise such an important issue.”

Gloria Jean’s has a past of supporting homophobic groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby, which it donated $30,000 to in 2010. There have been calls for the LGBTQI+ community to boycott the franchise due to close ties to the anti-gay Hillsong Church, although the company was handed over to different owners in 2014.

Macquarie University students were active in calling and visiting the store to raise concern, and soon after the jars were removed.

A spokesperson from the Retail Food Group, the body that owns Gloria Jean’s, told Grapeshot, “the brand does not condone this behaviour nor does it reflect the values of Gloria Jean’s Coffees. Please be assured we have been in communication with the franchise partner and advised for the jars to be removed as we do not wish to cause offence”, and went on to state the coffee chain doesn’t tolerate discrimination of any kind.

STUDENTS RALLY BEHIND BLOCKED GRAPESHOT ARTICLE A disagreement between Grapeshot’s Editor-in-Chief and the publisher, Kim Guerin, resulted in an article concerning sexual assault and harassment on campus bezing blocked from the print version of Issue 6. A blank page with the words “This was an article about sexual assault and harassment on campus. It was blocked by the university.” was printed instead.

Within a day of the magazine hitting stands, students and other concerned parties, such as End Rape on Campus, rallied behind Grapeshot, expressing concern on social media.

journalists: “The article simply sought to give credit to our Women’s Collective for being at the forefront in advocating for policy change, and the efforts of my predecessor, Angela Heathcote, in investigating the mishandling of sexual harassment cases on campus. Apparently, this was too much for the university to bear.”

Publisher Kim Guerin says she requested amendments to the piece because she was concerned that the relationship between the Respect.

Now.Always. team and students would be damaged by the article.

Students commented on Grapeshot’s Facebook, ‘That makes me so mad and it’s disappointing that they would rather cover it up then work actively with the student community to makes us feel safe.’ Another student wrote, ‘The irony that they say the article would be detrimental to the ‘strong relationship’ between the student community and the university when the denial and censorship of the article just shattered any strength in that relationship.’

When asked to comment on the incident, Guerin said: “Macquarie University’s student magazine Grapeshot is produced with the publisher’s guidance. Grapeshot has its own editorial guidelines and the University, as the publisher, works with the editorial team to ensure publications are consistent with these guidelines.”

The blocking of the article was covered by Junkee and Honi Soit.

Editor-in-Chief Angus Dalton told

News || 13

WHITE AUSTRALIAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SHAME: IDOLISING COLONIAL STATUES

I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that Macquarie University sits on – the Wattamattagal people – as well as all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also wish to extend my respect to Elders past, present and future. Land was not given, it was stolen. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

My name is Bohdi and I am an Aboriginal person. I wish I could tell you more, that I am a proud person from a certain country, and that I come from a long line of Indigenous people who I can trace back. I wish I could tell you that I have such a strong connection with the land and my Indigenous community back home. But I can’t. I can’t because all of that was taken from me the day that my pop and his siblings were taken under the White Australia Policy.

My pop grew up in missionaries and foster homes and was taught that he was not Aboriginal, but was a white person.

As a result of this, it wasn’t until he passed away when I was 17 that I even discovered the existence of my own Aboriginality, just before I started at Macquarie University.

Macquarie… What does that name bring up for you? Do you feel pride in your university? Do you feel proud of its name and the connection it has to the past? Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s statue in Hyde Park says he was, “a perfect gentleman, a Christian and supreme legislator of the human heart.” His grave in Scotland is inscribed, “The father of Australia.” What an amazing man that Macquarie University (amongst many other things) is named after. So why was his statue, along with that of Captain James Cook, vandalised recently?

A perfect gentleman who knows the human heart so well said in 1816, “All Aborigines from Sydney onwards are to be made prisoners of war and if they resist, they are to be shot and their bodies hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fall, so as to strike terror into the hearts of surviving natives.” A perfect gentleman who was instrumental in the invasion and genocide of Indigenous people. Yet, not once is this mentioned amidst the boasting and pride on Macquarie University’s webpage titled ‘Macquarie’s Influence’. In fact, Indigenous relations are not mentioned at all.

There was uproar when these statues were vandalised.

White Australian, Alan Jones said on Twitter that Aboriginal man Stan Grant “would go the same way as Yassmin Abdel-Magied.” The Daily Telegraph said Grant had inspired politically-correct Taliban. Extremists. Terrorists.

People defended the statues because they are part of Australian history, much like people defending the confederate statues in the United States. Sure, Macquarie might have done some horrible things but these colonial figures are part of the story that made Australia what it is today. Anyway, it’s history. I wonder though – where are the statues of Adolf Hitler, who did horrible things, but was a part of history? Why are there no Nazi statues?

I agree that Macquarie had a role in Australian history, but I don’t think we should be idolising him with street names, banks, rivers, suburbs, and our university. We even have a museum room dedicated to Macquarie in the university’s library, which makes me sick to core every time I walk by it. He belongs in a textbook and in a museum. His presence doesn’t deserve to live on.

I want to make it very clear that I don’t agree with the vandalism of the statues. However, I wonder if people started listening to Indigenous people instead of talking over, shoving aside or silencing them, maybe Indigenous people wouldn’t feel like they must go to such drastic measures to be heard. Why can’t we listen? Many Australians are ashamed of Australia’s black history, both with Indigenous culture as well as the horrors Indigenous people faced.

It is important for me, as an Indigenous person, to recognise here that there are many white Australians who do acknowledge the history, acknowledge the horrors, and are progressively moving forward with Indigenous people to strengthen connections and to make change. There are many white Australians who express empathy and compassion towards Indigenous people. There are people who understand why colonial statues are problematic.

Dr. Brené Brown is an academic from the University of Houston who researches shame. In her work, she outlines three things that are vital to know in understanding it: Shame is universal. We all have it.

We’re all scared to talk about it.

The less we talk about it, the more control it has over our lives.

Shame is not the same as guilt. It is not ‘white guilt’ that people are suffering from. Guilt is a focus on behaviour, shame is a focus on self. Guilt says, “I made a mistake” and shame says, “I am a mistake.” If White Australia was feeling guilty, it would acknowledge the shitty behaviour and amend it. White Australia is living in an epidemic of silent shame and most people are not even aware that they are experiencing it.

Dr. Brown says that shame needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgement. Australians are scared of even discussing Indigenous issues because they fear there will be heavy backlash and judgement, and so they stay silent and treat it like a big secret that does not need to be told. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

I am not scared to bring up White Australia’s shame because it needs to be accounted for. I strongly believe that in acknowledging the shame, things can start to shift, change and heal. When you shine the light on the darkness, the darkness dissipates. When Australia starts acknowledging the damaged, broken, racist past, the racism just might start to dissipate too.

by Bohdi Byles

News || 15

WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN? 16 || News

The Catholic Church is one of the world’s longest standing religious organisations, and with just under 1.3 billion global members, it’s the largest non-governmental global provider of healthcare and education. However, the charitable work of the ‘one true church’ has been overshadowed by a litany of public controversies, from their stance on homosexuality as ‘acts of grave depravity’ to their well-documented opposition to IVF and abortion. Most serious as of late are the allegations and convictions of the sexual assault of children at the hands of Catholic priests.

Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and vocal critic of the Church’s practices, has consistently asserted over his 30 years of studies that between 6 and 9% of Catholic priests act sexually with minors. If Sipe is correct, then a minimum of 24,948 priests across the globe are currently in the position to sexually abuse children. These statistics are also supported by the New York based John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“The official teaching of the Church on sexuality is that every sexual thought, word, desire and action outside of marriage is mortally sinful… It is not a reasonable guide to healthy, mature, sexual development,” says Sipe.

A 2003 Swiss study found that 50 per cent of the Catholic clergy are sexually active, despite taking a vow of celibacy. Experts have commented on how these seemingly unattainable standards of celibacy have created a culture of secrecy. While most sexually active clergy are only engaging in behaviours with consenting adults, the imposition of silence has fueled a system in which the sexual abuse of children by priests is buried by the Catholic Church, thus allowing offenders to worm their way out of accountability.

The link between celibacy and child sexual abuse has been extensively discussed. Speaking at the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2015, Baroness and professor of psychiatry, Sheila Hollins, surmised “the issues there, it seemed to me, were to do with priests not really seeing a relationship with a teenage boy as being an offense, possibly because they identified with them more as peers than as children.”

The systemic cover-up of child abuse is protected and aided by legislation. Section 127 of the Evidence Act (1995) enables members of religious organisations in Australia to not report instances of child molestation perpetrated by their fellow clergyman. On a global scale, statute of limitation laws have limited victim’s ability to seek justice and compensation.

had until they were 25 to bring charged against the perpetrators. Wilson brought the proposal forward over 6 times and only succeeded into having it signed into law in April of 2017, following extensive changes suggested by the Church and the Chairman of the Judiciary committee. The time to pursue justice was extended until the age of 38.

As the abuse of children becomes a topic that more people are aware of, films and popular culture have begun to explore the issue. Works such as the Netflix documentary series, The Keepers, Australian made Don’t Tell, and the 2015 Academy Award-winning film Spotlight have been gaining popularity at a rapid rate.

“Experts have commented on how these seemingly unattainable standards of celibacy have created a culture of secrecy.”

Spotlight was based on the true story of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, who first publicised the relocation of alleged offenders from parish to parish in their 2002 reports on the abuse of children by Catholic Church authorities. Conducting interviews with attorneys, victims and parents, the team of journalists discovered that Cardinal Bernard Law encouraged his lawyers to settle claims of molestation by priests and bishops under his jurisdiction quickly and privately. Families were allegedly promised that the priests would be removed from circulation. Priests would be classified as on sick leave or unassigned before being sent to a new institution.

Attorney Eric MacLeish, who represented over 300 victims over 3 years, admitted to settling against 45 different priests during this time.

The allegations and studies barely scratch the surface of what is, and has been for years, a global problem.

They are just the surface tension of a systemic crisis that has impacted over 200 deaf students in Wisconsin, 547 German choir boys over 6 decades, and has caused over 40 suicides in Victoria – as well as countless other lives.

Secrecy has become part of the fabric of the underground world of the Catholic Church, enabling priests, bishops and cardinals to escape punishment. Ultimately, it’s the lives of the young victims that are so brutally impacted.

It is a system where power acts in the absence of accountability, and it has yet to be broken.

by Olivia James

In the United States, Senator C.T. Wilson from Maryland, who is a survivor of child abuse, has been trying to push through a bill since 2003 that would extend the time allowed to victims of child sexual abuse to sue alleged perpetrators. Previously, survivors of child abuse only

News || 17

HERPES VS. TERRORISM: AUSTRALIA’S DEADLY LOTTERY The apparent threat of terrorism in Australia can safely, without ignoring the facts, be called a scam. Alertness to the perceived threat of a terrorism incident has been opportunistically used by the Liberal government to push through changes to our democracy which otherwise would have been unconscionable. Australian Prime Ministers have a shocking track record of using awful events as reason for pushing legislation.

For example, Howard’s use of the Children Overboard deceit, in which Howard lied about the deaths of children for political gain. Subsequently, many Australian leaders have taken a similar approach to asylum seekers.

According to a survey conducted by the Australian National University in 2016, 45 per cent of people said they were somewhat or very concerned that they or their family could be the victim of a terrorist attack on Australian soil. This, taken on its lonesome, is worrying enough, apart from the fact that statistics in no way align with this fear. In the past two decades, three people have died at the hands of terrorism in Australia. I am in no way minimising these tragic deaths, when I suggest that our fear far outweighs the facts. Why does our government and a portion of our media find it necessary to furnish us with an enemy, and create a narrative of fear, instilling the idea that we must fight for and protect our Australian way of life?

Humans are wonderfully inept at assessing probabilities, whether sober or not, and we have a habit of underestimating big risks and overestimating the small ones. To give an example: in 2014, two-hundred and eighty people died from Hepatitis C, and that number grew to six-hundred and ninety in the following year. Yet more people imagine they have a possibility of winning Powerball, than taking steps to avoid catching a STD. Within Australia, notification rates for many STIs are increasing. Although no longer a death sentence, still around one thousand people contract AIDS a year.

These diagnoses lead to a plethora of subsequent medical problems, costs and treatments that may in turn, have their own unpleasant side effects. The economic cost to the patient and society at large, and the emotional turmoil that disease incurs, far outweighs any perceived terrorist threat. People’s lives may be forever changed due to one chance, and commonly, unplanned sexual encounter. For to think rationally

18 || News

and reasonably whilst in the heat of the moment is not only difficult, but it can also be a libido killer. Yet, ‘between 1997 and 2009, infection with HIV, syphilis and gonorrhoea was the underlying cause of death for 1,549 Australians.’ Do we see the same uproar, concern and budget considerations by the government over these deaths?

Considering these statistics and the subsequent cost to the nation in lost productivity and overall medical costs, surely the threat of death by STI’s are immeasurably greater and in need of far more monetary assistance than any illusory terror act? Of course not. For this does not support the prevailing narrative, and it cannot be manipulated to push through racist legislation.

Is our population as worried about not wearing a condom during sex as they are about ‘queue jumping’ immigrants? Does our Prime Minister see no shame in trying to add a co-payment fee to our Medicare system, a system which saves so many lives and is the envy of other countries, whilst simultaneously upping defence spending, and allowing the military to take on domestic terrorist matters? Does he see no irony here? I ask you dear reader, should we be doing more as a nation to fight the threat to our long-term health outcomes, as well as acknowledging our laissez faire attitude toward safe sex? |Or should we continue to demonise one small portion of our society, thereby echoing the sentiments of our Prime Minister who stated, “the very real threat of homegrown terrorism… has increased with the spread of global Islamist terrorism”? This insistence that our way of life is under imminent danger is preposterous.

Our society is under far more threat from the so called ‘liberal’ government curtailing freedoms, destroying dissent, and showing an absolute reluctance to fix the human rights abuses which Australia is so evidently guilty of.

Sex is far more dangerous than terrorism in Australia today, so go get checked people, and always wear a condom – if not for your own sake, then for the preservation of Medicare and the taxpayers’ peace of mind.

by Brendan Alder

REGULARS

UNDERCOVER:

HOW TO LOSE A NAZI IN FIVE EMAILS Back when I was studying the rise of Hitler in Modern History, if you told me that in a number of years the exact same thing would be happening, I don’t think I could have comprehended it. Aside from a couple of nutjobs like the KKK, Nazism is dead, right?

Time, unfortunately, is a flat circle, and with a racist twistie in the White House, the degenerates who used to be too scared to voice their beliefs beyond ‘just a joke, bro’ have come out of the sewers. Literal swastika stickers and horrific posters are cropping up in Unis and even high schools Australia-wide. I’m not going to give the ‘organisation’ behind the stickers a namedrop, so I’m referring to them as the National Doo-Doo Heads, or NDDH for short. I wanted to figure out exactly what they were about and how they recruited members, so naturally, I tried to join them.

I don’t know what it is with racists but they just don’t know how to design websites. They either look like someone’s first go at Wordpress while on ketamine or a ten-year-old’s Geocities page from 1997. The NDDH HQ is the former, with the bizarre choice of monochrome palette and buttons that shake when you hover over them. The JOIN page insists you be physically fit, mentally sound, straight edge and, funnily enough, straight and white. Knowing that I’m unfit, mentally unwell, drink very often and am probably not straight, I thought I’d lost my chance, but I had one thing on my side – pale, dry, and retina-burning whiteness. I decided to go for it.

Hiding behind a VPN (with my proxy location set to Germany as a goof in case they tried to track me) I sent them an email. “I saw your posters around Macquarie and I was relieved to find people with similar beliefs,” I wrote.

“I’m concerned with the amount of international students they are letting in, and wish to join the fight to prevent this.”

This, of course, isn’t true, but I felt like it was a convincing argument a racist at Macquarie might spew out. I signed off as ‘Mark’ and my Nazi alter-ego was born.

A reply came back with disturbing speed and a list of rapid-fire questions with no email formalities. They ranged from the simple like “how long have been a nationalist?

How would you describe yourself politically?” to the brazen “What do you think of Hitler and the Jews?” I was really in the shit now. I took time to reply, getting deep into Nazi forums to see how these buttholes speak. I even harked back to the unpleasant memories of high school modern history to remember key words of Hitler’s Philosophy.

Seemingly satisfied with my answers, the ominous game of Who Wants to Be A Nazi continued.

“What do you think of Donald Trump? What is your racial background? What National Socialist writings have you read?”

That last question was a doozy. Returning to the forums and making a mental note to search Youtube for a compilation of cute animals sneezing as a palette cleanser

20 || Regulars

later, I found five (not counting the shit-opus Mein Kampf) choice nazi writings - some of them not bonafide Nazi, but placing a gross little toe on the line. Donald Trump? Well, he’s a modern day Hitler. At least we can agree on that.

The next email was short and to the point. “Here is a link to our discord, where you will be further vetted.” Discord is a chat app used by gamers so they can communicate while playing. Had I finally breached the inner sanctum?

Not quite, as it turns out. I was quarantined to the welcome room, unable to peer inside the other channels. Still, I could see how many members there were in the group – though not currently online – and, holy dumb fuck, it was more than I expected. Over 30 Nazis in this one virtual space. I was staring fixedly at this until I was moved without warning to a channel titled ‘Interview Room’. “We’ll have a voice chat at some point when we’re all free,” said the moderator who moved me. Dick-fucking-Christmas. An interview with a Nazi.

I was starting to worry – chat history showed these interviews went for an hour. I tried to stall. “I haven’t got a headset atm, sorry if that sounds like a poor excuse.”

“We can’t go any further until we have a voice chat.”

I briefly left the discord chat while I tried to wrangle a way to make my voice heard, only to find that the link shared to me in the email was, like my relationship with these suckbags, temporary.

“Can I get another link? The other one timed out,” read my hurried email to them.

“You’re still in the chat,” came the terse reply. “Just join again.”

“I opened the link in private browsing, so I can’t get back to it. Is there another way?”

Thus endeth my discourse with the Nazis. Maybe I was too technologically inept to be worthy. Perhaps they thought I was trying to share the private chat with outsiders. Its likely they caught on to the fact that I wasn’t, in fact, a piece of shit. Whatever the reason, they simply didn’t reply, leaving me to ponder on my brush with hate.

The experience left a bitter taste. Chatting with members hammered home that these aren’t just basement-dwellers shouting about Islam on the internet. They are real life people spreading propaganda and attempting to recruit numbers. If there’s one thing I urge you to take away from this piece, beyond the goofs, it’s that you absolutely cannot be complacent. Complacency is what led to millions of innocent people being slaughtered. If you see a poster, tear it the fuck down, and don’t repost it on the internet - that’s how these guys get airtime. If someone says something racist, even as a joke, even out of mere ignorance, challenge it. And if you see a Nazi, I can’t tell you to punch them but let’s just say I wouldn’t complain if a magical punch-like movement occurred in the vicinity of their face.

by William Blazkowicz

C H ALL E N G E :

YOUNG EDITOR FINDS LOVE

NIKITA GOES TO A SPEED DATING EVENT LIKE IT’S 1999.

So I think my fellow editors may have been hinting at something when they suggested this. Well I don’t need them and their stupid loving relationships, PSSH! It’s not like I haven’t tried to find love… and then immediately given up.

When I came out as bisexual, I figured that I had expanded my romantic options by at least 50 per cent. I’ve never been more wrong, and I used to believe I was straight.

As a young gay moving into the city, movies and TV shows like The L-Word and Pride had set me up with unrealistic expectations. I had been prepared for a tight-knit LGBTQI+ community, an engaging social sphere and nightlife full of people with similar interests in the similar sex. The reality of Oxford street and Newtown was pretty underwhelming.

On the bright side, this new era of open gay bars and open-minded regular bars reflects the attitude shifts that have led to LGBTQI+ people feeling less and less persecuted in the 21st century. On less bright-side, WHERE ARE ALL THE GAY WOMEN? As it turns out, plenty of straight women wear Doc Martens and boyfriend jeans meanwhile gay girls are flouncing about in delicate floral. The fashion trends which once set us apart for recognition in a sea of heteronormativity have gotten as confused as I was when I was 17.

The impacts of technology and the internet on the gay community also deserves a mention here. In the absence of tight networks and clear-cut fashion stereotypes, the gay scene has moved online, and with it gay spaces are disappearing. Small bookshops once used as LGBT meeting places are pretty much obsolete and speciality clubs and bars are disappearing from city streets at a rapid rate (although I’m pretty sure we can blame Mike Baird for that one). In their place we got Tinder (also Grindr and Her depending on your preference).

Virgin. We looked into the straight speed dating first, and oh boy, did some of them look seedy. For every single straight speed-dating event I could find, the age requirements were “Women: 21-35, Men: 26-40”, and many of them were for ‘professionals’ or ‘elite singles’. Because I think this challenge was more about kick-starting my love life than actually traumatising me, we went straight for the gay one.

Dear Pluto holds monthly speed dating events for lesbian, gay, and bisexual young people. They hold them at a snazzy wine bar in Redfern and they run pretty much like what you’ve seen in movies – you stick on a nametag and go on 20 dates which last for about 8 minutes each. At the end, you circle who you want to see again and if it’s a match… bada-bing bada-boom.

The only thing missing from this pop culture experience was the endless stream of desperate weirdos. Oh, I mean sure, I did meet a woman who told me she spiritually identified as a wolf but she was kinda funny actually, and then 8 minutes later I met a professional video editor who dished out some pretty solid career advice and invited me to a monthly networking event. I also met Liz (not her real name, I’m no creep), one of the most gorgeous, funny, engaging women I’ve ever met. She walked me to the station and we went on a date the next week.

The air of desperation I had been expecting was all but nil.

Everyone at that speed-dating event was a just a normal human being, sick of having to slog through dating apps and confusing gay bars. All this signalled to me – bar the fact that yes, guys, I should definitely put myself out there more – is that gay people are starved for gay spaces. The mass appeal of the online sphere is fading, DOWN WITH TINDER!

by Nikita Jones

As a bisexual woman on Tinder I have experienced literally everything bad about the online dating platform.

On the straight side, you’ve got men going from ‘hey’ to propositioning sex in the next line, random naked pics tucked into the middle of profiles, and BDSM dudes looking for someone to call them ‘daddy’ right out of the gate. On the gay side, you’ve got couples looking for a third to ‘spice things up’, straight men looking to ‘turn’ a lesbian, and straight girls looking for ‘friendship only’ on a dating app. It’s a fucking minefield out there.

Although I hate Tinder, the idea of speed dating was definitely no more welcoming. Like most young people, my go-to word association for ‘speed-dating’ is ‘sad virgin’. It’s the kind of shit Miranda does in Sex and the City, or Kim from Kath and Kim. It’s even a scene in The 40-Year-Old

Regulars || 21

I LL U S T R A T E D :

WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE SEX TOY SAYS ABOUT YOU

VIBRATOR

You’re the cool-mum friend. You still own the mobile phone your parents bought you in high school and if you wanted to you could probably still sell it at market price. You’ve never been hit with a late submission docking no matter how “stressed” or “failing” you claim to be. Also, you’ve definitely named your vibrator. Something old-hollywood like Cary Grant or Marlon Brando. You do this so you can make reference to your self-love habits in front of your friends at brunch without lowering your voice. Trust me, the waitress has clued in.

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F A N C Y GLASS D I L D O

With you, it’s fabulous or nothing.

You’ll overpay for shoes and eat chicken nuggets for dinner all week.

You’ll turn up to class in a gaudy faux-fur luk on Monday and rock trackies’n’thongs on Tuesday. You can go from an attentive and emotionally supportive friend, to a missing person at the drop of a hat. Seriously, where are you? I’m worried that the glass shattered inside you and you’ve been sent to the ER.

A N AL B E A D S

Always up for a PB. Nobody cares that you’ve hit ten thousand steps for the day. We also don’t care how many ‘steps’ you did with your so last night. You still have an active facebook presence and your most liked post is your ice-bucket challenge from 2014.

This inability to turn down a challenge has lead to many unfortunate nights out and a bank account in constant flux. Despite this, you make friends easily as people are inherently drawn to your inexplicable intensity. You sometimes refer to these friends as ‘gym buddies’.

FLESHLIGHT

You’ve always gotta overdo it. Often accused of running a joke into the ground, you’re an unapologetic fan of puns, memes, and banter. You’ll overeat and over-exercise but never at the same time and you’re the kind of person that runs headlong into the surf in order to check the temperature of the water. Despite this insanity, there is a method to your madness. You can MacGyver yourself out of most situations and your friends consider you the ‘Rube Goldberg machine’ of people. Your methods are strange as fuck, but you’ve been stumbling through life rather successfully so far.

B I G O L ’ B AG O F FRUIT AND VEG

You’re the master of improv. Up for pretty much everything from karaoke to a six-day bender – wherever the night takes you. Snapchat is your social media of choice and you’ve never been on a phone plan in your life. You haven’t visited the doctor in six years because you believe dark chocolate, red-wine and vitamin-c cures everything. Also, pal, you’ve gotta throw it straight in the bin right after or you’re only asking for trouble.

Regulars || 23

BIOLOGY IS NOT BINARY

S P E C I E S T H A T C H ALL E N G E W H A T Y O U W E R E T A U G H T A B O U T SEX IN HIGH SCHOOL In high school biology you probably learned that your sex chromosomes, XX or XY in mammals, determine whether you are male or female. Like so many things in the school science curriculum, this is not only extremely over-simplified but rather behind our current understanding – turns out research moves much faster than the government can update the syllabus. In reality, biological sex is much harder to categorise or pin down than just looking at sex chromosomes. Back when our ancestors were single-celled eukaryotes swimming in primordial soup, there were many different ‘sexes’ or mating types, and as long as you found a mating type different to your own, you could produce offspring. Over time, producing either very large (eggs) gametes, or very small (sperm) gametes became the most advantageous and therefore the most common. As organisms became more complex, more and more sexual traits began to emerge. All biological traits exist on a continuum, and each of those traits may be more or less ‘male’ or ‘female’ at any one point in time depending on your, genes, environment, hormones, neurochemistry, the list goes on. Here is a short, and by no means complete, list of species alive today whose physiology inconveniently doesn’t fit the syllabus definition of biological sex.

by Ursula Huxtable

S P O T T E D H Y E N AS ( C R O C U T A CROCUTA)

Spotted hyenas live in hierarchical, matriarchal packs and all individuals have a penis which is erected and presented in greeting ceremonies to determine rank and status. Since the clitoris and penis are both derived from the same embryonic tissue, they have the potential to develop into very similar organs. In hyenas, penis size is an honest signal of testosterone levels, which are higher in more aggressive, assertive individuals and males will often approach females in a subordinate fashion. One hypothesis states that since the vaginal opening is within the penis, mating must be on the female’s terms – a huge evolutionary advantage – so this trait has been selected for in all individuals.

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R E D - S I D E D GA R T E R S N A K E S ( T H A M N O P H I S S I R T AL I S P A R I E T A LIS) Female mimicry, an alternative mating strategy where males look and behave like females in order to avoid conflict with other males, is common in many reptile, bird, fish and insect species. In Red-Sided Garter Snakes, many of the male mimics not only look and behave like females, they also produce pheromones which identify them as females to other males. It has been hypothesised that one reason for this may be that when they emerge from hibernation, they use the courtship of other males, which usually involves covering the female’s body, as a means of warming up more rapidly.

CLOWNFISH (AMPHIPRIONINAE)

Clown fish usually live in groups with two large fish, the breeding pair, and many small males. If the female is lost, the breeding male will begin producing eggs to become the breeding female, while the largest of the small males will grow to become the new breeding male. Other species of fish such as the Indo-Pacific Cleaner Wrasse live in harems and if the male is lost, the largest female begins producing sperm and becomes the new male. This kind of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sex switchingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; has evolved independently multiple times in fish.

G R ASS Y E LL O W B U T T E R F L I E S (EUREMA HECABE)

Grass yellow butterflies can usually be sexed by looking at ultraviolet patterns on their wings, with males tending to have larger UV patches. In butterfly matting systems, it is the female who has different sex chromosomes (ZW) and the male who has the same sex chromosomes (ZZ). Wolbachia are symbiotic bacteria which live inside insect cells and cause no damage to their hosts. In some Grass Yellow Butterfly populations, Wolbachia can cause individuals that are genetically male to become reproductively viable females. The bacterium cannot fit inside sperm cells and so they modify gamete production during development to produce eggs instead, and so the number of females in the population increases. But because infected females carry only ZZ sex chromosomes, all offspring produced will also be ZZ females, and so the number of ZZ females will be higher. If the butterflies are treated with antibiotics, the next generation tends to have an increased number of males as the bacteria no longer causes ZZ individuals to develop as female, but their numbers are still increased.

H U M A N S ( H O M O SA P I E N S )

Humans like to think of themselves as an exclusively dimorphic species, that is, a species with discrete male and female categories. In reality, humans often express ambiguous sexual characteristics, or intersex variations, which are estimated to occur in about 1 per cent of the population. This statistic may be higher since not all intersex variations are identifiable through genitalia â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some are genetic, anatomical or hormonal and are often never detected. Humans are also the only species (that we know of) that also possess a concept of gender, which, depending on who you ask, is either completely unrelated to or at the very least not solely determined by biological sex. Gender has been shown to be a highly socially-determined trait, with enormous variations in gender roles, expression, and identity across cultures. In the West, we tend to push people towards characteristics we determine as either male or female but our understanding of gender is, like most psychological traits, in its infancy.

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U N S E AL E D S E C T I O N :

Dear Grapeshot, I recently attended an event and ended up chatting to a group of people, one of whom was hearing impaired. She wasn’t particularly vocal during the conversation, and it wasn’t until I noticed her hearing aid that I realised she was lip reading. Later on, I saw her talking and laughing with a friend, in sign language.

I’ve always wanted to learn sign language and times like this remind me how useful it would be. Do you have any advice on where to begin?

Sincerely, Tap on the Chin Dear Tap on the Chin, First of all, I gotta say you guys are real considerate bunch.

This kind of empathy is a really great step towards raising awareness for the Deaf Community.

The first thing you need to know is that AUSLAN (Australian Sign Language) is not just English with your hands. AUSLAN (unlike Signed English) has its own grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, meaning that translation from English to Sign Language is not just a direct word-for-word equivalent. So have patience with yourself, you wouldn’t expect to learn French in a week.

Note: Signed English – the direct English/Sign equivalent you may be thinking of – is often used to teach hearing

26 || Regulars

impaired children English, but is generally regarded as contrived and inefficient. Also, the sign alphabet you probably remember most of from high school is certainly helpful, but not singularly important.

Knowledge of certain signs and phrases is only the very beginning: being able to say ‘bonjour’ does not a French-speaker make. It is important to learn the culture associated with the language to fully understand how to sign and communicate through Auslan. Just like, in-keeping with the learning-French vibe, you’ve gotta immerse yourself in French culture and history to really begin speaking like a Parisian.

Some great places to start immersing yourself in this culture include the Deaf Society of NSW (deafsocietynsw. org.au) which offers beginners courses, and Tafe NSW where you can become officially certified. Failing actually being forced to get out of the house, there are many YouTube channels which provide a great starting point.

In particular, Asphyxia, a deaf artist from Victoria, has created many simple videos that feature vocabulary split into subject groups.

Ideally, all this stuff should be taught in schools instead of French, but bof, on s’en fout.

By Bek Fritz and Holly Fisher

FEATURES

NOBODY TOLD ME

ERIN CHRISTIE ON THE SAD STATE OF AUSTRALIA’S SEX-EDUCATION We all have some pretty messed-up memories from our high school sex education classes. Friends of mine have exchanged stories about cartoon cats rubbing up against one-another, teachers comparing sex to tickling or skipping, and being shown how to stretch a condom over plastic bananas. I found all of this pretty hilarious, having never been exposed to anything remotely phallic in the entirety of my sex education. It was a young male teacher who provided my seventh grade PE class with the basics, while blushing so hard I worried he’d spontaneously combust. His rudimentary, heteronormative explanation was thus: penis in vagina, ejaculation, pregnancy. When the

28 || Features

smallest boy in the grade slowly raised his hand, and asked about condom use, he was shut down instantly: “If you wait until you’re married, you don’t need to know about that, do you?”

A 2010 research report into Sexuality Education in Australian Secondary Schools by La Trobe University found that almost a quarter of teachers surveyed weren’t certain whether their school followed a specific policy with regards to sex education. The survey found that 95% of teachers taught ‘factual’ topics, including STIs, safe sex practices and birth control methods. While this sounds helpful, without a matching a policy, safe sex practices and

birth control methods can be taught as abstinence, and STI-prevention can be reduced to ‘waiting until marriage’.

If schools are failing to outline what their students will be taught, then there is plenty of room for personal beliefs, ideology, and religion to slip its way in. This same 95% also taught ‘social topics’ including decision-making and dealing with emotions when sexually active.

Nobody told me. I didn’t know that the Gardasil injection and consistent condom use is pretty much guaranteed to prevent the spread of HPV – the virus I was told had a high chance of killing me if I had sex with anyone who wasn’t a virgin. After my sexual debut, I disclosed to my mother that I’d be getting tested. After affirming I’d used a condom, she burst out laughing. “Condoms prevent the spread of HPV.”

For my peers and I, this advice came in the form of celibacy. And the only emotions associated with discussions of pre-marital sex were guilt and shame.

Nobody told me. I didn’t know that the weird feeling I get when I see my ex walk across campus is only the remnants of feeling vulnerable after having sex for the first time. For a while there, I bought into the idea that girls lose a piece of our soul to each person we bang – poetic advice handed down by my high school librarian. “That dick has a piece of my soul and I want it back,” I told my friend, smirking. She laughed and shook her head, as we have learned to do.

One day in year ten, our PDHPE teacher rolled the TV set into class, lighting up the class like the words ‘early mark.’

Before starting the video, however, our teacher treated us to an anecdote about a friend of his who procured such a painful bout of herpes after having sex with ONE MAN who had himself engaged in intercourse with ONE OTHER PERSON in a context that WASN’T MARRIAGE. Our excitement waned, and promptly died, as the TV screen introduced us to the snarling face of Pam Stenzel. Stenzel is a Christian sex-educator, renowned in the United States for her screech-preaching on abstinence and the horrors of birth control. While writing this, I sought her out on Youtube, and spent an hour laugh-wincing at what I saw.

In the first ten seconds of an educational video, Pam, with her double-denim and ‘can I speak to the manager’ haircut, says ominously: “If you have sex outside of a permanent marriage relationship – you will pay. No one has ever had sex outside of that context and not paid. God created sex with boundaries – and when sex happens within boundaries, it’s awesome. But when sex happens outside of boundaries, it’s horribly horribly destructive.”

Nobody told me. I didn’t know that it’s no one’s goddamn business how much sex I’m having, and with how many people, and on what basis of regularity. I don’t have to justify it to my friends, my old teachers, or the doctor who forced me to get tested because I was having sex outside of the context of marriage. I didn’t know that no one outside of that freaky little small-town high school actually gave a shit or thought twice about my sex life.

So, I’m telling you now, in case you’ve arrived at this campus off the back of six years of conflicting messages, misinformation and Pam-shaming. Nobody cares. Be safe, be happy, and do as you please.

by Erin Christie

Alright, Pam. Way to terrify a group of horny teenagers straight off the bat. “Are you married? No? then DON’T” she continues, berating everything that exists outside the context of abstinence. She twirls her hair mockingly, pretending to be an idiotic teenage girl who had sex with her boyfriend because he claimed to love her.

The pill? That’ll make you ten times more likely to contract an STI, or worse, you’ll become STERILE or DEAD. Endometriosis be damned, no contraceptive devices are allowed, for anyone or any reason. It’s Coach Carr from Mean Girls, but without a trace of satire.

Stenzel embodies a fear-mongering attitude that is adopted by many schools who don’t adhere to a balanced sex education policy, including the one I attended. Her running theme is that when she worked as a guidance counsellor in family planning, the girls would come to her with either unwanted pregnancies or STIs saying, “nobody told me, I didn’t know.” As I look back on six years of scare tactics, then another three spent deep in midnight discussions with my friends, attempting to undo the damage, I realise there’s another side to that story that Stenzel, my teachers, and even one pushy doctor refused to consider.

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EXOTIC AND EROTIC

M A Y N I A N G O N T H E REA L L I F E I M P A C TS O F ‘ Y E L L O W F E V ER ’ Both of my parents moved to Sydney in their early twenties only to return to their home-country in mid-2012, and so I have spent most of my teenage years growing up in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), a developing country in South-East Asia. During my time there, I ran into my fair share of creepy ‘sexpats’ on the hunt for ingenuous virgins (for when those mail order brides just seem too darn cliché.)

From my personal experiences, I noticed people had very distinct preconceptions towards Asian females regarding sexuality. It seems that there are two very drastic perceptions towards oriental women in the sense that, often, we are either overly sexualised – with ‘Asian fetishes’ stereotyping us as the risqué schoolgirl from all your tentacle-porn fantasies – or desexualised as the archetypal subservient housewife who spends bland weekday afternoons herding her only son into the Epping branch of Kumon. For too long have these ladies been depicted as two-dimensional characters, type-caste by the same society that so evidently lacks understanding of the Asian female psyche.

“Small, weak, submissive and erotically alluring.

She’s fun, you see, and so uncomplicated. She doesn’t go to assertiveness-training classes, insist on being treated like a person, fret about career moves…”

—Tony Rivers, “Oriental Girls”, Gentleman’s Quarterly, 1990 Such stereotypes were extremely confining for me, given my upbringing. My family has always been led by strong matriarchs who have never shied away from their sexuality and took ownership of their femininity. Every morning my mother would dress up in six-inch heels and a form-fitting Myanmar outfit in lace, tailor-made to hug at her curves in the strongest portrayal of Asian beauty. There was nothing sexier than the tenacity of her dominance and personality, which contrasted to her traditional costume that paid homage to her roots. However, it was disheartening for me to learn that her compelling disposition meant she was discredited in a workplace run by old farts as board

members and overpaid executives who criticised her for dressing the way she does as a divorcee. Funnily enough (and no, this was not at all comedic), it seems her strong-willed behaviour was only tolerated in the past when she was married because her sensual dress code represented her sexuality as the possession of another man. This is the same patriarchal society that breeds deeply-seeded kinks involving little Asian girls with Hello Kitty™ butt plugs, but screams blasphemy as soon as these girls start taking ownership of their own sexuality.

A clear line exists between ‘having a type’ and degrading racial fetishes: one is a personal preference while the latter dehumanises an entire demographic of people by projecting lewd sex-pectations upon them. This image of Asian women as the flavor du jour is one that has existed since the early twentieth century. In The Toll of The Sea (1922), starring Anna May Wong, she meets an American love interest who later becomes the father of her son.

But of course, Allen “Asshole” Carver leaves them both in China to re-marry a white American woman from his hometown who then insists on visiting her husband’s former fling to kidnap their illegitimate child – thus resulting in Anna May’s eventual suicide. The media, through films such as this, has negatively portrayed interactions between the East and the West in which the lead man exercises his dominance and power over the dainty Asian woman who is subject to humiliation. In 2017, we refer to this as the ‘Asian’ tab in PornHub. Nothing could be more objectifying than the idea that my ethnicity is little more than an erotica category.

It is upsetting that Asian women throughout history have been held back in many aspects of their lives due to race and gender in both the East and the West; but newer generations have embraced their sexuality to the fullest and refuse to be typecast as another Madame Butterfly, Miss Saigon, or Lotus Blossom. We are neither your ‘dragon lady’ tiger mom or meekly obedient mail-order bride. Such pervasive labels that Asian women once wore are dated, and the new wave of Lucy Liu’s are treating an epidemic of yellow fever. #NotYourGeisha

by May Naing

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THE MAN BEHIND THE PINK BAN W R I TER , 7 8 ER , M A C Q UAR I E A L U M N I A N D G A Y A C T I V I ST J ERE M Y F I S H ER O N B E I N G K I C K E D O UT O F R O B ERT M E N Z I ES C O L L E G E Dr Jeremy Fisher regards himself as a ‘footnote’ of gay history. He was expelled from Robert Menzies College in 1973 after the Dean discovered he was gay; the Anglican leader believed that Jeremy’s sexuality was the result of him being possessed by a Chinese mask. Jeremy mightn’t view this event as hugely significant, but the union action and student solidarity that followed his expulsion is emblematic of the moment the gay radicalism that flared in New York’s 1969 Stonewall riots finally hit Australian shores.

I’d mostly read about Jeremy on A Radical History of Macquarie University, which, if you’re ever curious, is a detailed and fascinating blog that charts student activism and protest at Macquarie during the 70s, dedicated to proving that the university didn’t always possess the ‘alienating, authoritarian’ atmosphere we know today. As the main character in Macquarie’s most famous instance of student activism, Jeremy features prominently on the blog.

It’s a little surreal rocking up out the front of Jeremy’s Federation-style home in Haberfield. I duck under an arch of dried vines and up a path lined with lavender, and he greets me at the door with a soft, kind voice. We’re meeting a day before we originally planned.

“Sorry to muck you around with the date,” he chuckles, leading me through a hallway and to room overlooking a long garden fringed with frangipani trees. Jeremy explain that there’s a movie in production for the 40th anniversary of Mardi Gras next year, and his time at Macquarie will be part of the plot.

‘They asked if I could be at the set tomorrow night at Fox Studios,’ he says. ‘I’m afraid I bumped you down so I could make it!”

By fluke, I already know about the film, and Jeremy’s role in it – my boyfriend had an audition to play him. The movie is called Riot, and it follows the Gay Rights movement in the 70s, including Sydney’s first Mardi Gras in 1978. The annual extravaganza that now parades down Oxford Street each year began with an impromptu celebration organised by the Gay Solidarity Group, who wanted to denounce anti-gay laws and the routine police harassment of the queer community. Hundreds of people walked down Oxford street, shouting ‘Out of the bars and into the streets!’. They were met in Kings Cross by police, bashed, and thrown into paddy wagons. The Sydney Morning Herald published the names of every person arrested, outing many people publicly.

Some lost their jobs as a result. Jeremy, who attended the march, recalls some of those badly injured were Macquarie students.

“It wasn’t really a march,’ he says. “It was a protest. I didn’t get to the end of it, and when I got home the phone started ringing to get bail money so we could get people out of jail.”

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The people who attended that original protest are now known as the 78ers. They have their own hallowed float at Mardi Gras and, at a rally for marriage equality in September, the group received a raucous cheer from the 30,000 people in attendance.

Jeremy had been involved in activism well before the events of 1978, partly of his own volition, and partly because of his expulsion from Robert Menzies. He had arrived in Sydney in 1972 from Goulburn and got a job printing Winfield cigarette packets in Five Dock. He knew he was attracted to men, but didn’t know anything about being gay other than the hysteric media coverage of various demonstrations that were cropping up in major cities. To be gay was to be an activist, he thought, and to a degree this was true at a time where acting upon his sexuality was illegal.

He recalls walking through Glebe – a then decrepit suburb mostly owned by the Anglican Church – to find the headquarters of Gay Liberation, a radical organisation that split off the more ‘conservative’ CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) group.

He was welcomed in by a man who had been married with children, but had decided to be open and honest about his homosexuality. The man had been part of the Communist Party, and regaled an 18-year-old Jeremy about the need to throw off the chains of their oppressors and how sexuality was being used as social control. An hour later, they were having sex on a mattress on the floor. This, Jeremy writes in a memoir piece from the time, was the real Gay Liberation.

He moved into the Gay Liberation house, but only stayed a week; the gas heater in the bathroom exploded into flame. The fire, and the fact that Glebe was a long slog from Jeremy’s linguistics course at Macquarie university, convinced Jeremy that he needed to move.

He secured a spot in the under-construction Robert Menzies College, a new accommodation block for Macquarie students on Herring Road. He joined the Gay society on campus, a tight-knit group that also included Jeff Hayler, the head of the student’s council.

“We’d have our little meetings in the union building. So much has gone up around that building now, but the top floor was a function hall where they’d hold concerts – Split Enz, I remember them playing!”

Jeremy became treasurer of the group. He kept various items relating to the group in his room, like posters and Gay Liberation badges. While his new life in Sydney allowed him to be freer with his sexuality, it was still an incredibly difficult time to be gay – Jeremy had ambitions of being a teacher, and homosexuals were strictly banned from the profession.

Sitting across from me at his dining table, he tells me of the day it all became too much.

“I’d been into town and met a guy, who basically sexually assaulted me. I hadn’t told my parents about my sexuality.

I was in a college which was Anglican. Very evangelically Anglican. The guy who was the master claimed I was possessed by a mask my parents had given me. I attempted to take my life. I was found by the cleaner and taken to Macquarie hospital, which back then was a big psych hospital. That’s when my parents were contacted and things came out into the open.”

When he woke up in hospital, Jeremy was interrogated by a psychiatric registrar, who told him that the master had found Gay Liberation badges in his room. Jeremy admitted he was involved in the group, and that he was gay. The master, Alan Cole, refused to allow Jeremy back into the college until he sought help to repress his urges. Cole also refused to return Jeremy’s bond because of the ‘mess’ that had been left in the room after his suicide attempt.

Students mobilised.

The Macquarie University Student Council immediately launched a campaign that called for Robert Menzies College to be disaffiliated from the university unless Alan Cole repeal his decision. The Staff Association similarly threw their support behind Jeremy. But what of the university executive?

“Justice Rails Mitchell was the Deputy Chancellor,” Jeremy recalls. “He took charge of the committee which was investigating the charges that Robert Menzies shouldn’t have the right to exclude people, because it should be a secular college and not impose religious viewpoints. But he was just a bastard. He railroaded this view that basically I was a little shit, and that the college could do what it liked. As far as he was concerned they were all doing what people should be doing – standing up for Jesus.”

In the face of blatant discrimination, the action of the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) saw construction workers on campus join the fight in a case that would solidify Jeremy’s experience in the history books as the first time an industrial union acted in support of gay rights.

The BLF, led by environmental activist Jack Mundy, protected Sydney’s environmental spaces and housing areas for the vulnerable by implementing ‘green bans’. Workers would walk off a site where a development was seen to be unethical or environmentally damaging. Through this kind of strike action, iconic parts of the Rocks were protected from redevelopment, chunks of the Botanic Gardens were saved from demolition, and housing for Indigenous Australians in Redfern was preserved.

Robert Menzies College was still under construction in 1973; students had to trudge across a muddy field to Dunmore Lang for their meals. The BLF decided to enact a green ban in support of Jeremy. Workers refused to pick up their tools until the expulsion was reversed; the strike is now remembered as the world’s first ‘pink ban’.

“The guys on the working site didn’t give a rat’s arse about people’s sexuality,” Jeremy says. “All they cared about was people getting a fair go, and they didn’t see my situation as getting a fair go.”

on campus. With mounting pressure from students and extensive press coverage, the university and the college finally reversed Jeremy’s expulsion.

It’s an offer Jeremy didn’t take up. He had never wanted to return to the college. Rather, he wanted to challenge the precedent that gay people should hide their sexualities or suffer the consequences. The progression of civil rights, Jeremy says, is about visibility.

“Before that time, gay people were invisible. But by keeping on saying, ‘don’t throw me out of college, here I am, I’m not going away’, we established a visibility that then allows parents to say, ‘I can accept my gay children. They’re there, and they should have the same rights’.”

Since his eventual graduation in 1976, Jeremy has had a career as a professional writer and editor. He’s the author of the short story collection How to Tell Your Father to Drop Dead and released his celebrated crime novel Dirty Little Dog last year. He’s been the President of the NSW Society of Editors, the Executive Director of the Australian Society of Authors, has been a judge on the Walkley Awards, helped establish the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and four days after our interview, received an Order of Australia Medal for his work.

I ask what he’s receiving the OAM for. He shrugs and tries to play it off.

“I have no idea why-” “It’s for education, professional association and services to the literature industry,” says his partner, Lloyd, who comes in from the garden and proudly recites the full name of the prize. Jeremy and Lloyd have been together for two decades after meeting through an ad in Outrage, a gay magazine from the 80s.

I ask what Jeremy makes of the current debate about same sex marriage.

“Well in the early seventies, we were arguing that the patriarchy needed to be dismantled and that marriage was a chain for women, and that nuclear families kept everybody in thrall,” he chuckles, and glances at Lloyd. “I guess my views have modified from that.”

I notice silver bands around his and Lloyd’s ring fingers.

“To think these days the whole issue of same sex marriage is even there, and people support it … I mean, you were a pariah to admit you were gay back then. From my perspective, looking back over 40 years, there’s been a tremendous amount of change.”

Leaving Jeremy and Lloyd’s house, I have a new sense of the history that has led us to this moment. I, like many other gay people, have been in despair about the postal vote and the vitriol unleashed by it – but it’s undeniable that the support far outweighs the hate. It’s people like Jeremy who got us here, who were courageous enough to stand up for rights when being gay was an illegal act; that’s what makes him far more than just a footnote.

by Angus Dalton

When the university still refused to act, the pink ban was extended to other buildings on campus – many of the lecture halls we use today were being constructed at the time – and threatened to extend the ban to all of the construction sites

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PUNCHING HIV IN THE NUTS A HOW-TO GUIDE

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I’m sure most of us have been there. You’ve just met a hottie and all you two want to do is smash. But you forgot the condom. Whoops. You then spend the next four weeks having panic attacks anytime you get the slightest sniffle until it’s been long enough to get an STI test. Odds are, you’re probably fine and Fiona Applebottom or Dick Smith didn’t give you HIV. But why add to our crippling existential anxiety when all you need is to know about is the miracle drugs PrEP and PEP? Here’s a how to guide on punching HIV in the nuts!

PrEP What exactly is PrEP you ask? I spoke with Dr Benjamin Bavinton, who’s a Research Fellow in the HIV Epidemiology and Prevention Program at the Kirby Institute. He explains that if “someone considers themselves, or has been assessed to be at high risk of HIV acquisition”, then PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is for you. It works by taking a daily dose of the drug Truvada, and when taken correctly, if HIV manages to get inside your body, it’s unable to replicate. If you adhere to the medication, take it every single day, and you have condomless anal or vaginal sex, you’re not going to get HIV. “It’s basically 100% effective” Dr Bavinton proclaims. That’s pretty mind-blowing to me; this right here is literally how we’re going to beat HIV. But how do you get PrEP? The government has licenced and approved the wonder drug, but it’s not under the PBS (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme), so if you go to your local chemist it’s going to cost over 10k per year. Unless you want to eat Mi Goreng for the rest of your life, this isn’t really an option. Luckily there’s large scale trials of the drug, and the one here in NSW is called EPIC-NSW. It’s free, it’s still enrolling, and there’s no cap! The Kirby institute will be running the study until it’s available on the PBS, so you literally can’t lose.

I know you’re about to run to the nearest clinic and ask your doctor about EPIC-NSW, but there are some things you should know. PrEP isn’t going to stop STI’s, so you can still get the clap or Syphilis in your spine (it’s a thing, look it up). There is also ‘Start-up syndrome’, where in the first few days, “less than 5 per cent of people will experience some nausea, headaches, dizziness, and maybe some diarrhoea” Dr Bavinton warns. Sounds like a really intense cleanse to me. He also warns of some potential long-term side effects. Firstly, there is an incredibly small risk of damage to your kidney and/or liver functions, and so regular tests are required to make sure our organs are A-OK. Another risk is “the reduction in bone mineral density” which could lead to bone fractures. I wondered if this was the start of a plug for Caltrate. It’s so rare he tells me, that for all the people who’ve participated in studies and had a reduction in bone mineral density, not one person has had a fracture. Nevertheless, it’s important to visit the doctor regularly to make sure you’re not suffering any side-effects.

PEP Okay, so imagine you’ve put as much effort into getting on PrEP as you do your readings (i.e., very little), and now you think you’ve been exposed to HIV. This is where PEP comes in. Our wonderful HIV gladiator Dr Bavinton explained what to do if you think you might be at risk.

PEP (Post Exposure Prophylaxis) is taken if you think you’ve “been exposed to HIV, usually through some form of sex that’s high risk”. Now this is the more important part, you HAVE to go to a hospital or a clinic within 72 hours of that exposure, or it won’t work. Please do not wait.

When you arrive, “you’re given a course of antiretroviral medication (AKA anti-HIV medication) that you take for 28 days”. Seems simple enough. It works by “getting into the cells in your body that HIV targets, the drugs in there prevent that cell from being able to replicate that virus”.

I like to imagine the drugs jumping out and shouting “Surprise bitch” and shooting the HIV with a shotgun.

But because the virus is going throughout your blood and tissues, it’s IMPERATIVE that you take the drug regularly for the entire time it’s been prescribed for to make sure there’s enough of the drugs in all of the cells that could be targeted by HIV. AKA, there’s enough shotgun shells to blast a cap in every HIV virus particle’s ass.

I’ve actually been on PEP before. It was several years ago now, but after a long night of hooking, I realised I was probably a bit more unsafe than I should have been.

Oh, and the person I slept with told me they might have HIV but hadn’t bothered to check yet. Awks. I went to the nearest hospital, told them I think I’ve been exposed to HIV, and they put me on PEP. That was the easy part, as the next four weeks were a living nightmare. I was constantly vomiting, awful diarrhoea that stunk up my work’s toilets, made even grosser as the loo was right next to the kitchen.

Eww. The worst part was that for 28 days, my blood felt like it had been replaced with bleach. But I made the right choice. Dr Bavinton told me that it was likely I was on the older PEP drugs, and that the new combination “might have some side effects in the first 10 days, but typically the side effects of that newer combination will subside after the first week, and for the rest of the three weeks, the majority of side effects will subside for most people”. So really, you have no excuse not to go on PEP if you think you need it.

If you think you need either, please don’t hesitate to ask your doctor about it – these drugs are the answer to ending HIV.

By Nathaniel Keesing

If you want to know more about EPIC-NSW, visit: epic-nswstudy.org.au If you need more information about HIV, visit: endinghiv.org.au

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COLOURS OF THE WIND

G U Y W E B STER O N G A Y M AS C U L I N I T Y A N D T H E P RE J U D I C ES W I T H I N T H E LGBTQI+ COMMUNITY In many ways, I am the epitome of the White, Gay Man. I know all the lyrics to ‘I Will Survive’, I’ve quoted Brokeback Mountain in everyday conversation more than once, and if you want a one-man rendition of The Book of Mormon you need only ask (no one ever asks.) I am a walking stereotype, and by all accounts, a living, breathing example of the quintessential Homosexual. And yet, there are many times I’ve felt branded as a failure by the gay community, and I’m not alone in this experience.

As a teenager I hated my body. I remember getting changed in the boy’s locker room at school, seeing my lanky form in the mirror and digging my nails into my skinny torso until I almost broke skin. I remember at 21, holding my virginity to me like a dangerous secret. I remember recording my voice, playing it back, and trying to change its most effeminate qualities.

As a gay man, your homosexual identity is aligned with a specific label. Subscribing to Grindr is almost like planning a trip to the zoo where you’re left to navigate the various ‘enclosures’ of the homosexual species: Twink, Bear, Otter, Wolf, Cub, Chub, Bull, Bunny, Pup, Twunk.

Not only does this sound like another attempt at rapping

by Iggy Azalea, it also prioritises your physical appearance and divides you based on this.

Gay identity, especially in Australia, is linked to a culture which values many of the harmful stereotypes assigned to masculinity. High sexual libido, a conventionally muscular body-type, and emotional repression underpin many of these values, and labels. In many ways, this culture is just a miniature model of the very patriarchal system which oppresses the LGBTQIA+ community, perpetuating the same destructive ideals of toxic masculinity.

Not only has this divided what is supposed to be an inclusive community, it has simply repurposed the feeling of alienation we felt before coming out. In a 2015 study conducted by Yale University, researchers found that ‘rates of anxiety and depression were higher in men who had recently come out than in men who were still closeted.’

Despite the leaps and bounds made toward greater acceptance of homosexuality, the culture around and within the community is not just worrying, it’s actively affecting gay men. Suicide rates among gay men remain high. A 2014 study revealed that, in Canada, more gay men were dying from suicide than from HIV. It’s a terrifying statistic that is directly linked to the identity politics which brand many gay men as failures because of a specific body-type, socio-economic status, or ethnicity. Grindr itself is synonymous with these prejudiced judgements, delivered as sharp, crushing insults. No, @DickMaster69 I’m not Macauley Culkin, stop asking. If that one’s not harsh enough for you, within two minutes of installing the

app, I received my first ‘Fucking Ugly.’ Within the space of 10 minutes: ‘Fix your face.‘, ‘Do you ever eat?’, and many more insults that were as cruel as they were unoriginal.

It is this toxic culture which is particularly harmful to young gay men as they try and discover their homosexual identity in adolescence. As a white, cis-gender man I know that I fulfil some of the tropes of homosexual identity which are valued by this culture. It is only through careful evaluation and well-meaning friends that my own transphobic and racist assumptions were discovered and deconstructed. When I couldn’t understand the purpose of gender neutral pronouns, when I felt defensive at the words ‘white privilege’, when I dismissed asexuality. In all these instances, I personified the toxic values within gay culture. I inadvertently labelled not only some gay men, but other members of the community as failures, as somehow less-than. It took time to find, and critique these problematic assumptions, and it’s a process I’m still engaging with. Thankfully, there are many other gay men who are taking on similar critical self-reflection.

Under the influence of the increasing strength of intersectional feminism, the queer community has changed, evolved, gained an ‘I’, an ‘A’, a ‘Q’, even a ‘+’, and started pushing back against the racial and gender biases in the movement. We are beginning to illuminate and deconstruct the assumptions which have positioned bisexuality as a failed homosexuality, erased the experiences of people of colour, and alienated those who don’t fulfil the conventional aesthetic of homosexuality.

But there is more to do.

As gay men, we are not impervious to patriarchal influence, we are not inherently more progressive, or more inclusive just because of our homosexuality. In fact, by all appearances we have simply appropriated the prejudices and directed it to minorities within our own community. We can do better.

So yes, I will belt out my own rendition of ‘Reflection’ from Mulan to my clearly uncomfortable dogs. I might join a gym, or watch a musical, or wax my entire body and roll around in glitter like its hundreds and thousands and I’m a delicious scoop of ice cream (a ‘Golden Gaytime’ if you will).

But this doesn’t define my gay identity, or serve as reason to fail those who hate Disney, or musicals, or the gym.

Because there are as many gay identities as there are colours of the wind.

Anyone catch that Pocahontas reference? No? Okay.

Nevermind.

by Guy Webster

CREATIVES

PORTRAITS OF POWER A SERIES BY KANCHANA KRISHNAN

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Art for me has always been an end result of a soulful read, be it poetry or prose. With the faceless portrait series, I wish to capture some of my favorite women writers whose essence is signified by their words. They are not defined by their physical features but rather by their powerful words. My emphasis has been on those words which defines them. I have complimented the various facets of the emotions through my color palette such as painting Dickinson’s hope with the liberating purple, Akhmatova’s ice shattering observational words with the subtle blue and Christie’s brilliant mysteries with a touch of black.

by Kanchana Krishnan | @literaryartjournal

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THE HARD PART We set a time: 7:30, before dinner, but when Tom has had enough time to recover after work — we’re like a couple a decade older than we are, like that. I have the day off, so I clean up our bedroom, put on some incense before I decide that’s A Bit Much and stash it away. Our room is stylistically minimal. Our bedsheets are grey, our walls are white, the wall art upon them is similarly monochrome, abstract. We have bookshelves and they are also black. There are clothes on the floor, but they are mine, never Tom’s.

I love to do this, as I limp about the house, occasionally sitting down with my laptop, scrolling through Facebook, getting assessments done in a thousand cuts, and doing my readings. I love to remember that so much detailing of my current life can begin with the qualifier ‘our.’ I think about going to the store and appeasing my housemates by getting groceries with which to make dinner, it is a nice bright day, and I have recently worked out the path to the Woolies down near the station that requires the least navigational thought. But also it would require I put shoes on, change out of this pair of tracksuit pants (this caveat is negotiable), and fit my leg on, and who could be bothered?

We haven’t fucked in weeks, hence the forethought. Tom is constantly working or studying and I am tired all of the time, the state of forgetting what being energetic is like is one of those things I haven’t recovered out of yet. Tonight

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is the night, and nothing except a relapse of the severe migraines is going to stop me getting a root.

I want this to be easy, I think, in the front yard, legs twined, fingers crossed around a cigarette.

I want to dissolve into him like aspirin in water. I want to open up like one of the grey myrtles in our front garden did in the last week of winter.

Also what I want is to feel intense hot vivid violent passion, but it’s so far away, these days. The ideal idyllic future I recall I’d envisioned in my late adolescence bore a strange resemblance to the life that I am living. Life is, for the most part, cool, calm. We lack energy but also drama.

I don’t do anything all day that I do not want to do, except when I shower with the razor and the shaving cream to prepare myself. After it’s done there’s blond hairs circling and then clumping around the drain. I try to get myself in the mood (But it’s hard because it’s always hard because my legs are full of lead and my arms are anvils) and play around with the dildo. I don’t come easily but when it’s the erogenous horizon I stop and then I’m gasping in the shower, fist curled around the top of the glass frame, and then I think (absurdly) of all the things I’ve missed since those two headlights came from the blue on that road I always got nervous around and then came the long grey procession of waiting rooms and doctors and pains I found it hard to describe

because the words were always out of reach when I needed them.

Recovery comes with its own set of milestones, and this is one.

I would like sex to be like it is in the gay indie movies Tom adores, which is to say I would like it neon-lit and designed for the pleasure of somebody else watching. I want a string score, I want a fade-to-black. I would like to have a good fuck, which would require something else.

In the evening, I sit on the bed wearing a white shirt that still smells like ironing spray. These clothes are dry, crisp. The anticipation I’ve felt all day has become physical and my skin aches to be touched. There’s a skylight on our ceiling and right now in the evening it’s lighting up the room. It feels good to have carved out this space; last time it was like this we had two separate things on and then began an encounter both of us drunk and coincidentally on the same bus home together and then we got yelled at by some bro in a Michigan University jumper, and when we didn’t stop making out I copped being called a faggot and a bottle of Coke on the head, and then Tom called out that it’s Newtown and he shouldn’t be here if he doesn’t want to see that, and the driver stopped the bus and we had to walk home, only it was council cleanup so we found this one black sofa and cos it had been so long we just fucked on that — after Tom did his spiel on how the lock-out laws were pushing out all the dickheads to the good suburbs — and I felt good about it but when I told my friends about it I acted like I was ashamed.

Tom’s coming up the stairs. He shuffles through the door, wearing his Coles shirt that’s a little too tight. Like always, he collapses on the bed and gives a big wheeze and I lean over and kiss him and he pulls away at first, looking at me quizzically before he remembers what day it is. “Oh, right,” he says, and kisses back, before he slumps away from me again.

and he says, “You look so virginal,” and I smile and then his tongue is in my mouth, I can taste his lunchtime Vegemite sandwich. I take off his pants because by now I’m good with my fingers, they know the way around his hook belt and his zipper, and then I shuck off my pants. We’re sitting there on the bed and I can’t tell how much I’m enjoying this because all I can think about is the relief that it is finally happening. I sort of go limp when he kisses me, like there’s an ice floe on me and he’s piercing it with his kisses on my mouth and my neck and my clavicle, and then I’m being unpeeled, and then there I am in my purple Bonds with his finger snaking slickly underneath the waistband and — Christ, when did he even open the lube?

His finger enters me and this is the hard part, the part where I have to give in and be weak for a bit so he can turn me over, because it’s one fingers and then two fingers and then I hit the bed with a “Fuck!” as he enters me in his short but thick way and I think about how I was worried not having the spontaneity of our earliest hook-ups — we started as mates who met one another on Grindr — but it doesn’t matter because my vision’s kaleidoscoping like pleasure’s rocketing so fast through my body it has to project onto my sight. There’s a warm spurt on my own chest and I ball sheets up in my hand and he’s still going, and I’m resigned to this feeling now, and I realise through the post-coital haze he is telling me he’s telling me how good this is, and then there’s a fragile crisp moment where he sort of grunts and withdraws and I can feel his head hitting the pillow next to me and it’s done, it’s done, it was good but now it is done.

by Cameron Colwell

“How was work?”

“Exhausting.”

I try and put my arm over him but he’s too big. I wonder if it’s going to lapse like it always does into a circular conversation where we exchange complaints about how tired we are. “Alright, then.”

He says, and turns around, and lifts me up with his thick fingers on my waist. He laughs and I ask why

CREATIVES || 41

QUEER STORIES Having your rights thrown around for debate by a bunch of people who should, actually, have zero sway over how you live your life isn’t super fun. (Read: It fucking sucks.) We reached out to Macquarie’s queer community and asked for stories of love and hope to galvanise those feeling down, and remind everyone that the debate is about one thing only: love.

I went on my first ever date with this beautiful man and gosh I liked him. He was tall, super cute and had the absolute dumbest laugh I have ever heard in my life – so of course he was just my type. I was worried it would be hard to communicate with him though – he is profoundly deaf and doesn’t verbally communicate but that was still remains to this date the very best date I ever had. A nice dinner and a walk by a lake with hands held – a totally cliché sappy gay scene and I reveled in it. We communicated through writing and AUSLAN and the entire date was adorable. I loved that he wore rainbow coloured hearing aids – so out and loud and proud of it. I was too new to the queer world and too scared of it so that date was the only date I had with him so we never did become more than great friends but I consider myself lucky we are still very close today. That date did teach me a lot of things though – regardless of disability and/or sexuality, we are all equally deserving of some cheesy, soft love.

I was 18 and decided that I needed to come out to my parents. I was done not being able to express myself and be my true self. I was about to tell my mum when I completely chickened out and started talking about what we were going to have for dinner that night. I went back into my room and my best friend geed me up to try again, so I went back and, once again, was super close but started talking about who’s birthday was next in the family. Head held heavily, I went back into my room and my best friend saw how upset I was.

I asked if she could do it for me because I obviously wasn’t doing so well. She waltzed right in there and told my mum, then came back out and told my dad. Both of my parents already knew and were fine with it. What a relief! That experience made our friendship stronger and we’re still best friends after six years! Shout out to Lindi for being a quality best friend!

I met my girlfriend through a mutual friend, and we ended up getting along really well, probably a bit well to be honest.

Then we started hanging out just the two of us and after a walk around Macquarie Lake she gave me a bunch of flowers and some chocolate and asked if I’d be her girlfriend. And that was nearly a year ago, and I don’t think anyone has ever cared so much about me in my whole life. I don’t really believe in love at first sight, but the more I look at her the more I love her, and the more I appreciate her wonderful existence. She puts up with my terrible puns and the fact that every time she flirts with me I impulsively reply with ‘GAYYYY’ (sweetheart I can’t help myself and I am not sorry and I still love you).

I’m hand in hand with my girl walking along the waterfront at Glebe. The sun is coming up and we haven’t slept yet. I’m barely a morning person, let alone an all-nighter person, but she’s pulling me toward a bench to watch the sunrise and I’ve never been happier.

We’ve got a plastic container full of shitty late-night-menu pizza we took from the dodgy pub we’d left a couple hours earlier. We’re laughing and kissing and trying to lure every single dog that walks past with pizza to let us pat it. I don’t think I ever really liked dogs before but she loves them so much and it’s so infectious that in the space of the month I’ve known her I’ve become a dog person.

We’re quiet for a couple minutes, just eating and watching the sun come up when she pulls away for a second, pauses, and says ‘I think I love you.’ I don’t know what to say for a moment, and I can hear her hearing me pause and saying that she shouldn’t have said that, but my heart is beating so fast and I feel so warm and it’s far too long a pause before I tell her ‘I’m so glad you said that, I feel the same’.

I knew that I loved her before then, but it’s that moment that I realise I’ve never felt like that about anybody before, and I’ve fallen into it so comfortably with her. And it’s still so comfortable, and I’m still just as in love.

Jasmine Noud

have you ever been with a girl? we went to an all girls school. we were sixteen. you told our peers you’re bisexual. i didn’t know what bisexual meant but i knew what a blowjob was. we often held hands and spent hours laughing on msn messenger. one day, you told me you liked me and i did not understand have you ever been with a girl? it was senior year. we sat in physics. i thought about kissing her a thousand times. in my dream she felt the same and my heart didn’t hurt anymore have you ever been a with a girl? i was with my first boyfriend. we were starting university. he did law and my immigrant parents adored him. he was tall, handsome and white. i tried to make a home out of him but i often felt something was missing have you ever been with a girl?

She is the first girl I have ever dated properly, and loved. And I think she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

it is 3am. she pulls me closer and i feel safe and secure. she is the sun, full of love and warmth. her smile makes me forget all the bad seconds, hours, days, years. time resets when we kiss and we fall for each other all over again every time. i say ‘i love you’ to my friends and family more often.

Mon W

Jen Puth

42 || CREATIVES

I met my girlfriend on Tinder. The first message she sent me was “have you ever tried peanut butter and nutella together?” so I should have known she would be perfect.

On our first date we both freaked out upon seeing a spider, and I asked her who would kill the spiders when we lived together. I immediately wanted the ground to swallow me whole upon realising I had just implied, on our first date, that I was imagining us moving in together – conforming to every U-Haul lesbian stereotype ever.

Our first kiss was in my parked car listening to George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’. On my first attempt she thought I was going in for a hug and we missed but we got it right the second time. It was probably the most awkward kiss ever, but I felt like I was floating the whole drive home.

The first time I told her I loved her was just as awkward. I’d been waiting to find the perfect, romantic moment to say it, but it slipped out accidentally when she almost stepped in front of oncoming traffic while waiting to cross the road. I said, “God, I love you, but you’re an idiot”. I then spent the rest of the date panicking because she didn’t say “I love you” back – and also because who the fuck confesses their love for the first time in the same sentence as calling them an idiot?! But an hour later, after I had already mentally drafted the emergency text I was going to send to my best friend as soon as our date was over, she said, cool as a cucumber, “I love you too by the way”.

We’ve been together now for almost two years. My parents call her their second daughter, and sometimes I think they like her more than they like me. My little brother definitely likes her more than he likes me because she watches all his YouTube videos. Her mum regularly makes me cookies and her dad refers to us as “his girls”. I can’t wait for the day we have marriage equality, so I can throw a huge gay wedding, bathe in conservative tears and marry the girl I love.

Emily H I went to my first Mardi Gras with J, a very good friend, I’m asexual (I don’t experience sexual attraction) and she’s pansexual. Before the parade started we were joking around and she said that “we should never date, it would end terribly”. As she said it I realised that I was in love with her, it was the most ridiculous romantic comedy moment, like a light bulb going off above my head. Being the socially anxious creature I am, I laughed and agreed with her.

My partner and I were best friends in high school. We had planned to move to Sydney together since we both decided to come to MQ, and then right before the HSC we started dating. We’ve done a lot of growing and been through many changes together- sometimes it feels like we’re a lot older than we are. They recently began coming out as trans. I’ve known for a few years, and I was already questioning my sexuality, but the recent debate has made me question and doubt all over again. The politicising of my relationship has made me fearful about one of the most positive aspects of my life. It’s been very difficult - I already struggle a lot with anxiety - but I’m choosing to love in the face of fear. I choose to love courageously so that the world knows people like my partner and I exist, and will have the education and support they need and deserve in the future. I choose to love courageously.

To AJ, my Sugar Mumma, my wolverine, my little shit: so many names I can call you but I still can’t use your real name here and that shows to me just how far this world has to come in accepting queer love. Anyway, enough of the bad stuff, this is a happy story to warm your heart. This is a story of love against all odds.

When I found out she was a farmer, I tried so very hard to resist her. How could this work? A vegan and a farmer? It sounded like the beginning to a really bad joke.

But it was impossible. This girl drew me in like no one had ever before, she filled my heart with pure joy.

The more I got to know her she made me laugh and cry and sing and brought out my ridiculous silly side that had been hidden by many years of a struggle with depression. She cared for me and made me feel safe in a scary world.

So although the world seems intent on telling me that my love for her is second class, I know they are so very, very wrong. Our love is real and so very beautiful, and even if it doesn’t last, this girl has changed me and I’m so ever grateful I let her in. I love you A.G.J Isla

We danced around each other for 5 months, I would always tell myself “she’s not interested in you, she said so” whenever she flirted or we were cuddled up together on a couch. One day we were in the queer space with my head in her lap when a friend walked in and asked us if we were dating.

We looked at each other in confusion before both saying “I guess…?”

Afterwards I discovered that she realised she liked me at exactly the same time as I did, but because I agreed with her so readily and was asexual she thought that I wasn’t interested either. tl;dr, my girlfriend and I are absolute idiots.

K

CREATIVES || 43

QUEER STORIES ~POETRY EDITION~

MARRIED HEARTS

LOVE POEM

A message! I insist

When all I was trying to do was be honest and

Resist?

everyone said “oh you’re just confused,

Resist-

you’ve never dated a girl,

The call of battle

so surely there’s no issue

Bloods desire

you’re basically straight”

To strut about and fuel this fire

all I wanted was to

And scrape our veins out

love who I love and

Fused together

say I’m here in this world.

And wrap this battered flag around their hearts-

When all I was trying to do was be authentic and

Their hearts

my second boyfriend said,“I have friends who are bi,

Will never know such joy as joy

maybe they’ll be down for a threesome,

we’ll bring with open arms

It doesn’t count if it’s

And pray

another woman anyways”

Do not convert us to their socialist

all I wanted was to

Left wing

be seen and heard

Ways.

but not oversexualised.

He says,

When all I was trying to do was be sincere and

That you will only nod and sigh for years gone by

some people said, “All that straight passing privilege,

For women-

must be nice but really,

proud and pride!

I wouldn’t date a bi girl

How many peoples do you think that you may hide and shudder from inside

they’re far too risky”

Your unaccepting minds?

get out of my head and reject the

Think gently now

limited narratives

And only gentle, strength

of how we’re supposed to feel, love and be

And let us wrap this battered flag around your hearts

So here’s my queer love poem:

And fuse these married hearts in colour-

I exist and

Brilliant

I matter and

Bursting colours.

I have to be me.

by Rachel Machkevitch

by Amber Loomis

444 || CREATIVES

all I wanted was to

REPEAT OFFENDERS

SHIT LIT:

IT - STEPHEN KING

CW: Mentions of sexual assault, pedophilia I read that weird child-orgy scene from It so you don’t have to.

The newest It remake has officially broken opening weekend box office records. Suddenly clowns are all over the news again like it’s 2016 and Donald Trump isn’t president. However, in the course of making one of the most popular horror films of this decade, director Andy Muschietti and the three screenplay writers had to first make a few alterations to the original text.

First of all, Stephen King’s It is 1,200 pages long. That’s double the size of the final Harry Potter book, and at least twelve times as batshit. The book is dedicated to King’s kids, which seems sweet, but read on…

The novel is largely a thematic story about childhood fears and the apathy that develops in adulthood. The book shifts back and forth in time, following the same group of friends through two separate encounters with ‘It’ – in childhood and adulthood. King doesn’t shy away from touchy subjects, and for the 80s, he does a pretty good job at promoting tolerance and progressive values. Both Stan and Mike are fully realised three-dimensional characters, and we’re able to empathise with their persecution regarding their respective Jewish and African American heritage.

That being said, my buddy Stevie K also doesn’t shy away from presenting childhood issues in their harshest, most undiluted forms. This is perhaps most evident in the character of Beverly Marsh, the Solo Female™ of the ‘It’ group.

The 2017 film has its own issues to do with casting and oversexualising a 16-year-old teen to play an 11-year-old girl, but I think the reason why nobody has dwelled on that too much has something to do with how the book is so much more wildly fucked up.

For those who have gone their whole lives blessedly avoiding the leviathan mess that is Stephen King’s It, the knowledge that a prominent sex scene was cut from the 2017 film may surprise you. ‘But aren’t the main characters all eleven years old?’, you ask. Why yes, yes they are.

SPOILER ALERT from here on out.

46 || Repeat Offenders

In the book, after the kiddos defeat the titular creepy clown motherfucker, they end up stuck in the sewers.

Things are looking bleak for the fifth graders as the group begins to splinter from the stress of committing murder in self-defence against a supernatural clown at a pre-pubescent age.

Not to worry, Beverly comes to the rescue with an obscure solution. According to the text of the novel she ‘suddenly knows what she must do’ – as a side note, this kind of reasoning happens a bunch in the book, characters just ‘suddenly know what to do’ in response to totally bizarre situations. In this case, the apparent solution to getting lost is to hold an orgy. Beverly undresses and, one-by-one coerces her six male companions into having sex with her.

The scene goes on for ten pages and includes eight orgasms, two references to Beverly’s paedophilic father, and an overload of metaphorical bird imagery. It is also impossible at any point in the scene to be ignorant to the fact that these kids are literally eleven years old.

One of the book’s general praises is its authentic and unfiltered representation of childhood. These kids aren’t innocent little angels, they’re gritty, inappropriate, and struggling. My complaint here isn’t that this scene is an unrealistic portrayal of immature erotic impulses, but that this book – written by a middle-aged man probably high on cocaine – was aimed at other adults. It’s necessary to consider audience and purpose as opposed to just ‘authenticity’ when looking at fictional representations of sex.

While King has been quoted as saying that he didn’t consider ‘the sexual aspect’ of his ten-page sex orgy, it’s highly doubtful that his bizarrely platonic reading of his own scene extended to It’s audience. King has also said that if he was writing the book today, he would not include the child orgy because quote, ‘people are more sensitive to that kind of thing’. Yes, Stevie, those PC SJWs are surprisingly really narky about child sex scenes.

In short, if you came out of It with an unfathomable desire to read the original text, let me save you 1,200 pages. It ain’t worth it.

by Nikita Jones

TRAILER TRASH:

TEETH (2007)

Before I sit down to watch a movie, I make myself a cup of tea. It is very rare that I let my tea go cold. However, in exceptional circumstances, when a film is so enthralling, my tea could sooth second-degree burns. This is perhaps the best way for me to sum up my feelings about Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth. The 2007 black comedy’s plot revolves around vagina dentata (Latin for ‘toothed vagina) and male castration fear in a hilariously perverted horror-comedy that surprisingly has quite a lot of depth. All I can say is that my mate Alex was a real trooper. As the film ended we were both in tears, but for vastly different reasons. I was in stitches where Alex, from the look on his face, was in physical pain.

In the opening, we are introduced to Dawn, a devoted Christian spokesperson for an abstinence group. Oh, you thought this was going to be subtle? No, no. Dawn is soon ‘tempted’ by an attractive boy, Tobey, and all is well until she finds out she has teeth in her vagina when he tries to rape her. Still with me? One brutally unsuccessful trip to the gynaecologist later, Dawn learns to control and use her odd superpower to her advantage, getting even with sexual predators.

to give birth to a calf?”. Meanwhile, Alex winced in pain and sheltered his crotch whenever someone fell victim to Dawn’s Venus Flytwat.

Fellas relax, it’s make believe.

Look, Teeth may be trashy but it is a guaranteed laugh.

Despite its absurd premise, it unexpectedly received positive vibes from critics based on its ability to bring a fresh feminist perspective to cinema. The horror genre is notorious for representing women as hopeless victims to sadistic violence, and in this film the tables have simply turned. My take on the use of attempted rape as a recurring motif is that it simply drives home a rather progressive if nauseatingly explicit point . There is no more taking what you want from us when you want. Times have changed, so keep your hands to yourself – we may bite.

by Tieri Cafe

Side note: let’s just acknowledge that consensual sex is a dumb phrase. It’s like saying wet water – the consent is implied in the word and when it’s not, it’s rape. Simple.

Anyway, Lichtenstein was kind enough to throw another spanner into the works in case we were getting bored and included a not-technically-but-still-super-gross incestuous moment with Dawn and her stepbrother, Brad. Her plan to seduce Brad and mutilate his privates as revenge for his involvement in her mother’s death ended with poetic justice when his dog munched on his castrated penis like it was a free dinner.

Without a doubt, the highlight of this whole film is Dawn’s gynaecologist appointment. The professional-gone-pervert disguises his assault with his ‘examination’ resulting in the loss of four fingers to her genital gremlin. Unfortunately for my dad, he happened to walk in during this scene and proceeded to stop mid-sentence, “Hey do you know wherWhy is that man’s arm inside that woman like she’s about

Repeat Offenders || 47

P O P C U L T U R E R E W I ND :

VIDEO KILLED THE LESBIAN LOVER CW: the following article includes mentions of violence against women and sexual assault.

You know what I find reeeeeally sexy? You know what really, really turns me on more than anything? Being loved, respected and cherished by a wholesome partner who has no intentions of harming me, or any other woman, in any fashion, ever. On the list of things that entertain me and/or turn me on, gratuitous violence against women is glaringly absent. And yet, for some reason, popular culture keeps wanting to feed me some.

IT’S ALL FUN AND GAMES Guys. We need to have a serious chat about video game culture.

It’s not just about the lack of representation of women as people with their own autonomy. It’s not even about the fact that it’s beyond rare to see a fully-clothed woman with average or small breasts (and don’t give me any crap about unrealistic 8-pack standards for men in video games because I know you know the difference between a power fantasy and sexual objectification).

It’s about the overt sexual violence that gaming culture has absorbed. It’s about the fact that sexual assault is frequently lumped in as the motive for the macho man to come in and become the hero character.

Why are the only women in Grand Theft Auto sex workers in skimpy clothing that hang around dodgy back alleys waiting for you to beat and murder them? Why is there a fanbase on YouTube for people who upload videos of them buying sex from, and then proceeding to kill, these women? Why in this horrendous game do you apparently not only get your money back when you kill a prostitute after you sleep with her, but also benefit from a health boost? What the actual fuck?!

Women who try and speak out against the dangerous and disgusting sexualised violence of video games are routinely served with threats of death and sexual assault.

OH DOCTOR, IT CAN’T BE! NOT… DEAD LESBIAN SYNDROME! Back in the day (50 years ago, give or take), gay was not okay. In fact, gay was so very not okay that when queer characters began to creep their way into popular media they were frequently killed off. The violent death of Julie Solkin on Executive Suite is cited as the birth of this unusual cultural trend; just after the writers reveal that Leona loves her back, Julie gets hit by a literal motherfucking truck.

The Bury Your Gays trope was born: you could write about a lesbian, but you absolutely could not give her a happy ending. In order for queer characters to be written about, their narrative arc had to reinforce the underlying cultural belief that queer = bad.

Much like paisley and The BeeGees, this trope did not stay in the 1970s where it belonged. The most recent outrage it spurred was March of last year, when beloved lesbian leader Lexa Woods was killed off on The 100.

48 || Repeat Offenders

In true Bury-Your-Gays fashion, a stray bullet hits Lexa just after she and her girlfriend, Clarke, have a beautiful, meaningful night together. Compare this to Poussey’s death in Orange is the New Black, where Poussey finally has a happy relationship, and has just reached her freedom when she is crushed under the boot of a C.O. The overtly sexualised death of Sofia in Atomic Blonde as she’s strangled to death in her lingerie (I just… WHY?). Since 2015, 52 WLW characters have been killed off of primetime US television shows – which is, let me check the numbers here, yes, way more than the WLW characters who have been married. The message to queer women is clear: we still do not deserve happy endings.

“SEXY” NON-CONSENT This is the most visible, and arguably the most serious out of all of my examples. And yet, sexual violence against women is a trope in television and media is the most widely defended.

Let me clarify: there is a significant difference between representation and exploitation. There is an argument for drawing awareness to the prevalence and magnitude of sexual assault and its impact. Lady Gaga did a fantastic job at this when she brought out her single “Til’ It Happens To You”; trigger warnings were utilised effectively, and scenes in the music video emphasised the unacceptability of sexual violence. It is not necessary to graphically represent sexual violence to draw awareness to it.

Among the many bones I have to pick with 13 Reasons Why, the graphic depictions of sexual assault are near the top.

The camera flickers between Hannah’s face and Jessica’s thumping bed as the audience is forced to watch nearly two full minutes of the latter being assaulted. Two minutes that include the camera panning down Jessica’s legs as Bryce removes her underwear.

Period drama and medieval fantasy have even more to answer for. I’m constantly baffled by defences of the sexualised violence in Game of Thrones. “It’s for accuracy!” you cry. “Get off your feminist soapbox!”. 1) It is a fictional show? Set in a fictional place and time? I cannot see the relevance of any arguments that pertain to accuracy. 2) Even adequate arguments about the representation of sexual assault do not excuse the gratuitous way in which they are typically depicted. While the creator of Reign, for example, had valid arguments for historical reality of Queen Mary’s situation and the threats she was under, the horrific way the sexual assault subplot was executed, and the complete lack of content warnings made it inexcusable.

Women, and especially queer women, are in need of three-dimensional representation in film and television.

However, if your idea of ‘three-dimensional’ is disproportionately sexy, brutally assaulted, and murdered, we’ll pass, thanks.

by Jasmine Reyes

MUSIC:

LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO – TAYLOR SWIFT I’d like to make a public service announcement: Taylor Swift’s new single, ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, isn’t the ground-breaking, self-deprecating anthem she wants you to believe it is. Eight whole years have passed since Kanye West took to Taylor’s stage during an acceptance speech and snatched the mic away. The old Taylor might be dead, but the new one still seems to be up to the same old tricks.

She thrives on drama, using her continued feud with West to drive her image, the exact image she incongruously appears to be trying to shed in ‘Look What You Made Me Do’.

The single is odd at best, both lyrically and structurally.

The titular lyric, ‘look what you made me do’, reminds me of Annie Wilkes screeching at Paul Shelton in Misery after she breaks his ankles so he can’t escape. It’s a common phrase for anyone trying to shift blame off themselves for their own mistakes. The lyrics that follow are nothing impressive either. Swift refers to having her enemy’s name written on a list ‘in red underlined’. She checks it once, then she checks it twice, like a quasi-Santa Claus. The real kicker comes as Swift pauses mid-song with a random voice-over, stating that the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Because she’s dead!

‘Look What You Made Me Do’ is attempting to acknowledge the way the media portrays Swift and allude to the fact that she isn’t who we think – whoever that may be by now. Swift is playing to the same old celebrity reinvention narrative which already killed off old-Katy Perry and old-Miley Cyrus.

However, the references to Kanye in the song show that Taylor’s still blaming the feud for the way she is perceived.

winning the case, Swift promised to donate to charities to help women who may be in her situation but cannot afford legal representation.

Sexual harassment is an incredibly real problem, and I don’t negate the trauma faced by Swift. I even feel pretty gross drawing attention to it for this review. However, the symbolism of the case, and the message Taylor was spreading here was beginning to signal a favorable turnaround in her public image. Unfortunately, Swift announced her new album only a week later, coming right off the back of the media attention she’d already been receiving. The video followed a few days after the announcement, with some sources claiming that it cost a whopping $12 million to make. The sexual assault case was swiftly swept under the rug of public consciousness. Do you see how there might be a problem here?

Taylor – imma let you finish – by giving your new album a good listen, but I’m not going to do it from an unbiased position. I’ve gone from an eleven-year-old Swifty, changing the name of the romantic hero in ‘Teardrops on my Guitar’ to match that of my brother’s best friend, to a cynical semi-fan attempting to take all my admiration back. Rather than the vulnerable sincerity that made her famous, Swift’s songs now seem to be steeped in narcissism and a sense of faux rebellion. I’m mourning the death of old Taylor, because new Taylor kind of sucks. And I miss that old angle, I really do. My girl Taylor has finally gone out of style.

by Erin Christie

Then there’s the music video. My Facebook feed exploded with it, as more and more people delved further and further into its many hidden symbols and meanings like misguided detectives. I wasn’t too interested in the painting of the locket on the floor just under the bathtub beside the word ‘no’, but there was one hidden reference that did stand out – a dollar bill, sitting in a bathtub full of diamonds.

Recently, Swift counter-sued a radio DJ for battery and assault, claiming that he inappropriately groped her at a meet and greet – an incident that cost him his job.

Although he sued her for millions for defamation, her counter-case only asked for a symbolic dollar. After

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BOOKS:

H U N G E R - R O X ANE G A Y

Hunger demonstrates Roxane Gay’s voice as one of the most significant in modern literature. A memoir, the book details Gay’s struggles from her early childhood of dealing with trauma, and the obesity which occurred as a result. She eschews the traditional understanding of a self help book, choosing instead to just reveal a glimpse into who she is, who she was, who she wanted to be and who she is trying to be.

Gay makes it explicitly clear in the very first page that this isn’t an inspirational story or a motivational story. Instead, it’s a story about the struggle of retaining one’s humanity in a culture that is seemingly hell-bent on ignoring it. What’s most impressive about Gay is that she is afraid to show her own flaws but in trying to articulate her fears and confront herself over them in this book, she shows just how strong she is as she unlearns the things she has learned and to exist in a shape the world won’t allow her to exist in – as a morbidly obese queer woman of colour.

As she recalls traumatic moments where she was unable to walk up a handful of stairs or the humiliation she endured as a morbidly obese woman on airlines, she offers a hesitant and conflicted look into her psyche

50 || Repeat Offenders

and a harrowing yet poignant glimpse into Gay’s hunger to exist in a world that just isn’t for her. But it’s not just the world she continues to fight but also herself as she seeks to “undestroy herself”.

Hunger is also an uncomfortable reflection of a world that is almost universally inhospitable to women. It’s a raw and powerful book as she traces her self-destructive behaviour from eating disorders to deliberate attempts to put on huge amount of weight to avoid romantic interest from men.

It’s tempting to call her brave or inspirational, but Gay consistently objects these labels. This is not a story about a linear form of success. Instead, it’s a disconcerting and cathartic observation of a person trying but not always succeeding, in not only trying to just exist, but to live.

by Charlie Zada

HOROSCOPES GEMINI

Spring has sprung! Time to get your summer body ready by eating whatever the fuck you want, only exercising if it feels good and slathering yourself in sunscreen.

TAURUS

Mercury is no longer in retrograde but you’re still a bitch. Funny that.

LEO

When Marty McFly returns from the 50s at the end of Back to the Future, and sees himself get into the DeLorean there should then be two Marty’s existing in the 50s at the same time, which would collapse the space-time continuum.

Therefore it is realistic to assume that Doc murdered the original Marty instead of sending him back in time.

AQUARIUS

Hey boo, how’s it going? Looking good today – SIKE! You’re an asshole.

PISCES

Blub, blub. You’re a fish.

VIRGO

I can’t be bothered to write another one.

Here, take some sex tips from shitty fanfiction: “Draco climbed on top of me and we started to make out keenly against a tree. He took off my top and I took off his clothes. I even took off my bra. Then he put his thingie into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.”

CANCER

You’re doing it wrong. The actual lyrics to the opening of Lion King are: Nants ingonyama bagithi, Baba, Sithi uhm ingonyama, Nants ingonyama bagithi baba, Sithi uhhmm ingonyama, ingonyama, Siyo Nqoba, Ingonyama, Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala.

ARIES

Don’t settle for someone who only loves you for your toes.

SCORPIO

Your pet is actually a human trapped in an animal’s body. This sounds like a fun set-up for a Disney movie, but remember that your pet regularly follows you to the bathroom and has watched you pick your nose while you cried over The Bachelor finale.

LIBRA

Think with your brain, not your heart.

This should be easy because your heart is just a muscle and it doesn’t have the capacity for cognitive thought. This has been a practical tip.

SAGGITARIUS

As the equinox approaches, your romantic opportunities will increase. This is because you will magically transform into Australian sweetheart and Hollywood film star, Margot Robbie.

CAPRICORN

Keep reading all those self help books.

One day it’ll work. Maybe.

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