Growing Strong 2024

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The University of Sydney was founded on stolen land. All of us are beneficiaries of this in some way or another. The Women’s Collective organises, builds and works on the unceded sovereign lands of the Gadigal and Wangal peoples. We honour and respect the ongoing resistance and knowledge systems of First Nations Elders, warriors and matriarchs. We do not honour the system which has inflicted settlercolonial terrorism upon these communities for 236 years. We recognise the harm that colonial, liberal feminism has done to First Nations and racialised groups across the globe. The systems which uphold patriarchy are colonial systems. We also recognise that land acknowledgements can and have been utilised to appease settler guilt and are treated as a performative and disingenuous checkbox. We commit to grappling with settler guilt, and joining the diverse crowd calling for global decolonisation and land back. From Gadigal to Gaza, from Wiradjuri to West Papua, from Aotearoa to Armenia, liberation and land back for all.

NOTE FROM EDITORS

This edition of Growing Strong is rooted in two main values that we commit to for the year of 2024: Abolish the Colleges & Decolonial Feminism.

Our feature brings you a variety of Feminist voices, from historical insight into Women in the Student Union, letters to younger selves, yarns with Blak women, decolonial poetry, Palestine & feminism, a history of college culture and discussions on intersectional enviro activism. We have poured our hearts into this edition, curating each spread to reflect the themes in the piece. We hope our edition inspires introspection from feminists young and old, we must challenge our feminism to keep it growing strong. We would like to give a special thank you to the editorial collective and to this year’s SASH Office Bearers, Martha Barlow, Ellie Robertson, Olivia Lee & Georgia Zhang, without you this would simply not exist.

From your editors in chief, 2024 WoCo Convenors

FRONT COVER: Dana Kafina. EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE: Martha Barlow, Iggy Boyd, Eliza Crossley, Ariana Haghighi, Ramla Khalid, Olivia Lee, Simone Maddison, Gracie Mitchell, Esther Niamh, Alana Ramshaw, Ellie Robertson. ARTISTS: Eliza Crossley, Ishbel Dunsmore, Deen Kafina, Alana Ramshaw, Rand, Rani Sirris, Jo Staas, Arkie Thomas. WRITERS: Jordan Anderson, Martha Barlow, Eliza Crossley, Grace Curry, Olivia Lee, Holly Miller, Gracie Mitchell, Alana Ramshaw, Ellie Robertson, Grace Street, Georgia Zhang. BACK COVER: Alana Ramshaw.

We are: anti-capitalist. anti-colonial. anti-racist. eco-feminist. for Queer liberation.

The University of Sydney Women’s Collective, aka WoCo, is an autonomous activist space on campus for women and non-binary people. We are a group of activists involved in organising on campus and beyond. We meet throughout the semester to organise campaigns, learning groups, mobilisations like rallies and more. We fight to end rape on campus, for Abolitionist Feminism, for decolonisation, for reproductive rights, for safe and affordable housing and to abolish the Colleges.

responding to Disclosures of Sexual Assault

Responding to a disclosure of sexual assault can be difficult to navigate. The way that you respond to the disclosure can have a serious impact on someone’s healing journey. Being informed on how to respond in a situation that is very distressing can be extremely helpful for the person disclosing the sexual assault.

Your response to someone’s disclosure should be validating, non-blaming and compassionate. Being careful in a situation where someone trusts you in their most vulnerable state goes a long way in reassuring the person.

Key things to say:

• “I believe you”

• “You are not alone.”

• “This is not your fault”

• “I will help you.”

• “I can find you some resources to get help.”

Additional considerations:

• Ask them what they want to do - eg. do they want to report to the police, the uni, seek counselling

• Ask if you have their permission to document what they’ve said - consider how to keep this private and secure

• Do not try to “take charge” of the situation, eg. by reporting without their consent

• Do not pressure them to report if they do not wish to

• Do not judge or question their decisions, eg. “why didn’t you leave”

How to report a disclosure OR complaint of sexual MISCONDUCT WITH THE UNIVERSITY

Dear survivors. We believe you, we hear you, we want justice for you.

The University has a reporting system that allows you to make either a disclosure or complaint of sexual misconduct if it has occurred at or in connection with the University, including at an event or residential college. The form will connect you with the Safer Communities Office, who will work with you to provide support, such as counselling, health services and emergency accommodation. Reporting an incident will not affect your enrolment, academic status or visa status (for international students).

If you have difficulty with the university system, also see the resources on the next page.

Disclosures

A disclosure can be made if you wish to inform the university of the incident and receive support, but do not want the university to investigate. Your disclosure will remain anonymous, unless you choose to provide contact details.

How to report online:

1. Access the reporting page by scanning the QR code or looking up USyd sexual misconduct reporting

2. Read the information provided to decide if you would like to make a complaint or disclosure

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Go to the online form

4. Answer as many or as few questions as you are comfortable with.

complaints

A complaint can be made if the incident occurred at or in connection to the university, and you would like the university to investigate. Making a complaint will require providing more specific details about the perpetrator and the situation. The university may take action against the perpetrator, and/or implement interim measures to protect your safety.

How to report over the phone:

1. Call 1800 793 457

2. Choose option 2, then option 1

RESOURCES FOR SURVIVORS AND SEXUAL HEALTH

Counselling:

Student Counselling Services | A counselling service provided by the University of Sydney. They offer 1-6 free sessions to students in person or via telehealth.

Email student.counselling@sydney.edu.au or look up USyd Student Counselling Services and fill out the registration form.

The Gender Centre | An organisation based in Marrickville providing counselling, housing and employment services for trans and gender diverse people.

Call (02) 9519 7599 or (02) 9569 2366 or visit the website

Health services:

RPA Sexual Assault Service | Provides counselling and medical services including forensic kits and STI testing.

Call (02) 9515 9040 or (02) 9515 6111 after hours, or visit 16 Marsden Street Camperdown

NSW Health Sexual Assault Services | A list of sexual assault support services around NSW for those not near campus. Visit the website.

ACON | An LGBTQI+ service offering advocacy and practical support around sexual health, mental health, drugs and alcohol use and domestic and family violence.

Call the Sydney office 02 9206 2000 or visit 414 Elizabeth Street Surry Hills

Hotlines:

NSW Rape Crisis Centre | A free 24/7 hotline run by professionals who can provide support and referrals to services.

Call 1800 424 017

Rape and Domestic Violence Services

Australia | 24/7 crisis counselling and support services for those at risk of or experiencing sexual assault or domestic violence.

Sexual Assault Counselling Australia: 1800 211 028

Domestic Violence Impact Line: 1800 943 539

LGBTIQ+ Violence Service: 1800 497 212

Lifeline | 24/7 suicide prevention crisis support hotline for anyone experiencing a personal or mental health crisis.

Call 13 11 14

LEGAL RESOURCES

LegalAid NSW | Provides means tested legal support over the phone and in person.

Call 1300 888 259 or visit the website.

USyd SRC Solicitors | Free legal advice, representation and referrals for USyd students.

Call 02 9660 5222

Women’s Legal Advice Line | (02) 8745 6988

Domestic Violence Legal Advice Line | (02) 8745 6999

Housing resources:

Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre | Free emergency accommodation and case management for women and girls experiencing housing instability.

Located at 174 Redfern Street, Redfern Call 9319 4088

Link2Home | Crisis accommodation phone line for those experiencing housing instability

Call 1800 152 152

Twenty10 | Housing services and legal support for young LGBTQI+ people.

Call (02) 8594 9555 or visit website

FIRST NATIONS RESOURCES:

First Nations Women’s Legal Contact Line | Call(02) 8745 6977

Wirringa Baiya Aboriginal Women’s Legal Service | Provides legal advice and support for First Nations Women, including domestic and family violence and sexual assault.

First Nations Response | Free food and support services prioritising First Nations people experiencing food instability, as well as health and referral services. Visit the website or @firstnationsresponse on Instagram.

Food resources: 3

Food hub | Food pantry providing free food items for USyd students, located in the Wentworth building on campus. Visit the USU website.

Prepared by your 2024 SASH Officers, Martha Barlow, Ellie Robertson, Olivia Lee and Georgia Zhang

A Woman's Place is in her Union

STRENGTH IN SOLIDARITY

ALANA

RAMSHAW

EXPLORES THE FEMINIST HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN UNION MOVEMENT

In 1817, Welsh textile manufacturer and utopian socialist Robert Owen formulated the goal of the 8-hour work day. His now famous slogan echoed across the world:

“Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours

rest”

On 21st April 1856, stonemasons in Victoria walked off the job, demanding and winning Australia’s first 8-hour day. This spurred a series of further major industrial wins. By the early 20th century, Australia had one of the most progressive labour environments in the world.

Ever since this turning point in Australian history, women have formed

the bedrock of the Australian blue-collar union movement, steering some of its most salient moments. From the formation of the Female Confectioners’ Union to Zelda D’Aprano’s lifelong fight for equal pay and beyond, countless women have worked tirelessly within trade unions – institutions that were never designed for them — to win some of the most crucial feminist demands underpinning the way women live and work today.

A predecessor to what is now the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), the Female Confectioners’ Union held its first 47 person-strong meeting in Melbourne in 1916. The Female Confectioners’ Union was formed in response to the

Victorian United Confectioners’ Society, the latter who were not adequately representing the interests of women who comprised the majority of the industry’s labour force. As labour historian Cathy Brigden writes in her essay The Female Confectioners Union, 1916-1945:

“One of the key motivations for the union’s formation was in response to female confectionery workers’ ‘sweated’ conditions (a term used to denote exploited labour), and the desire for better representation of their industrial concerns”.

MEMBERSHIP OF THE UNION

Membership of the Female Confectioners’ Union grew to 900 by the end of 1917. In the same year, the Union successfully appealed the 1914 Wages Determination made by the Confectioners Wages Board, an action which saw many

Members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union on strike gather in a meeting hall, March 15, 1958 Image sourced from Wikimedia commons.

Image taken by Jenny Scott

women receiving wage rates that prime minister Billy Hughes described as “obviously insufficient for subsistence”. The Union’s activities were met with opposition by men in the industry, including male workers who would “tell the girls not to join”. The Union’s next attempt at increasing female wages at the Wages Board in 1919 was also obstructed by the men’s union delegates voting with the employers.

The Female Confectioners’ Union, alongside a number of other women’s unions that emerged in the early 20th century, carved out space for women in a patriarchal labour movement through persistent agitation, strengthening the movement itself and making life and labour easier for women of all professions and walks of life.

Over fifty years after the inception of the Female Confectioners’ Union, feminist activist and Communist Party member Zelda D’Aprano began working as a clerk in the Melbourne office of the male-dominated Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union (AMIEU).

In the same year that she started working for the AMIEU, the Union was used as a test case for the 1969 Equal Pay case

at the Arbitration Commission. After the case’s failure on 21st October 1969, D’Aprano chained herself to the doors of the Commonwealth Building, and again on October 31.

In a 1996 interview with Robin Hughes, D’Aprano describes the Union’s male-dominated office culture and her eventual sacking:

“I had so much faith in these people, in communism, all that stuff. And when I think of all the fighting that I’d done in the unions, in the hospital for other people — everything that I had done — and he a communist sacked me because I dared criticise him, justifiably I felt, and I still feel, and I was sacked on the spot. And the interesting thing is that no other union would employ me either.”

Retaining her left-wing values until her passing in 2018, a statue of D’Aprano was erected outside Victo rian Trades Hall in 2023. Along with the rest of civil society, the Austral ian union movement has made significant progress in terms of its advocacy for women since the 60s, with some of the most significant developments having been made within the past year. As a result of the decade-long ‘We Won’t Wait’ campaign spearheaded by trade un ions, laws came into effect

in 2023 incorporating the annual provision of 10 days’ family and domestic violence leave into the National Employment Standards, an industrial instrument defining the minimum basic rights and conditions of all workers in Australia. In December 2023, the first tranche of the Closing the Loopholes Bill passed, protecting victim-survivors of family and domestic violence from discrimination and adverse action from their employers.

In spite of these wins, and in spite of the flourishing of ‘pink-collar’ unions such as the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association and the NSW Teachers’ Federation, women are severely under-represented in blue collar trade unions and in blue collar industries more broadly. Women comprise approximately 5.18% of the Maritime Union of Australia’s membership, and comprise 3.5% of automotive

19th of January 2024 gendered amenities, and one in five women don’t have access to sanitary bins in their workplace.

With the union movement as a whole facing a problem of declining density that worsens by the day, the survival of the blue collar movement hinges (at least in part) on its ability to attract and advocate for women, migrants and all other workers on the margins of the Australian blue collar workforce.

The words that Zelda D’Aprano stated in 1996 still ring true today:

“The whole basis of society has to change. It has to become people-caring, people-friendly, and I think that’s going to come very soon”.

I could write innumerable articles about the many women leading the Sydney union movement today who give meceed in these pursuits. However, stewardship ofsibility for their future, lie just as squarely with the rank and file.

Image from city of PAE Library

France’s self-inflicted crisis of

France is famously a secular country with a Republican universalist model enforcing a principle of laïcité that upholds the separation of church and state, committing the government to be indifferent towards religions in the political realm and in policy. It takes an intentionally opposing stance to the ‘communalist’ and multi-cultural Anglo-Saxon model exemplified by the United States. However, in practice, French secular Republicanism is a performative anti-racism strategy that upholds a hegemony characterised by Western versions of freedom, female liberation, secularity, and ‘civilisation’. In Sex and Secularism (2009), Joan Wallach Scott uses the term ‘sexularism’ to describe France’s paradoxical foregrounding of female sexuality in its Republican secularism, identifying the hypocrisy and gendered Islamophobia of France.

The construction of brown bodies may be further analysed through the Copenhagen School’s concept of ‘securitisation’, a normative theory which outlines how figures and institutions with authority socially construct and ‘securitise’ people and issues as ‘threats’ through discourse and other communications or media. The French police force and the school system are two such institutions which disperse a whitewashed history and culture that marginalises and ‘securitises’ the ‘other’– particularly Muslims or those from France’s former colonies in the Middle East - North African region. This occurs along gendered lines, with brown men being perceived as terrorists or gang members, and veiled Muslim women either viewed as submissive victims of their husbands and Islam, or as anti-social threats to Western civilisation and the community.

In 2023, two major events showcased the gendered nature of systemic racism in these two realms. In June 2023, footage circulated of 17-year-old Nahel M, of Algerian descent, being shot point blank by officers as he drove away from them after being stopped, despite their claim that he was driving at them. Despite this murder being part of a clear pattern of racialized police violence against young men of colour, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told the British press that it was “totally unacceptable” to say that the French police are racist due to the colour-blind policy of the Republic. A few months later as French children prepared to return to school, the Education Minister Gabriel Attal announced a ban on abayas – a simple, loose over-garment – in schools. Claiming that students should be protected from potential religious discrimination, it has instead led to female students being harassed by school administration for simply wearing any kind of loose-fitting clothes, whether an open kimono or other types of cultural long dresses.

In the French state of ‘sexularism’, the country is symbolised by the bust of the figure of Marianne,

race, gender, identity, and security

the “goddess of liberty,” depicted in many French artworks, including the famous Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix (1830) which celebrates the Second French Revolution. The showcasing of breasts has always been symbolic of the ‘emancipatory’ Republic, which underpins the 2010 Parliamentary commission discussing the full veil in France, and the resulting campaign to ban it from public spaces in 2011 entitled “the Republic is lived with an uncovered face.” Muslim women and their choice of covering have since been constructed (once again) as a major geopolitical threat and an invasion of French liberty. This ‘affair’ began with ‘the battle of the veil’ in colonial Algeria in the 1950s under French colonisation, and it has followed a pattern of colonial white saviourism that reproduces racialized and gendered tropes. It resembles the phrase of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, that ‘white men are saving brown women from brown men’, which arose in the context of the 1829 interdiction of sati by the British colonial powers – silencing the female voice in relation to this practice of self-sacrifice performed by widows in India. Today, young girls in long dresses in French schools have been told to wear belts to differentiate their dress from abayas, and to “show off their curves,” ironically in an effort to provide them freedom of choice and expression.

Such hypocritical discourse and laws go to an extreme of ‘feminism’ that identifies liberation in the naked female body and sets a standard of sexual ‘freedom’. Élisabeth Badinter, philosopher and writer, is among the French liberal feminists that view the full-face veil as a kind of “civil self-mutilation” and a “pathology.”

Invited to speak in the Assemblée Nationale’s 2010 commission on the “headscarf affair,” she is quoted describing these women as “sick” deviants of “perverse satisfaction: power over others due to the lack of reciprocity, exhibitionism, voyeurism.” Supported by art historian Nadeije LaneyrieDagen, she referenced Greek, Roman, and Enlightenment culture and philosophy to describe the importance to Western civilisation of one’s individuality in the face and body.

This crisis of sexularism and Islamophobia must be seen as a systemic problem that is rooted in Western Enlightenment ideals, and as an issue that is perpetuated by continual universalistRepublican readings of the centuries old Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the French Constitution in a country that refuses to acknowledge its wrongdoings and legacy of its colonial projects. In this sense, the solution is not just to pursue a communalist and multicultural approach like that of the United States, United Kingdom and France’s European neighbours – for they also discriminate against non-white people, and especially against immigrants. Particularly seen with the international solidarity for the death of George Floyd, this is not just an issue of colour-blind Republicanism, but of an international system of white-supremacy and Western civilisation that takes insidious gendered and racialized forms.

By Grace Street

How the colleges came to be and how they will burn

TW: This article contains mentions of hazing, violence, sexual assault, and death that may cause distress.

Sydney University’s residential colleges are sexist, elitist institutions that perpetuate violence on campus and beyond. The colleges were created to house the wealthy elite, in a time when tertiary education catered only to the most privileged. The colleges’ governance frameworks are now enshrined in a muddle of 160-year-old constitutions that allow selfgovernance and rent-free ownership of the land they were built on. While our conceptions of University have changed, the laws around residential colleges have not, and their impunity and elitism instill in their alumni a culture that is (and always has been) deeply misogynistic and violent.

This culture has been documented by women’s activists. In 1958, ‘Freshers’ were subject to initiation rituals involving beatings, tackles, and burns with silver nitrate. In 1977, the body of Annette Morgan, aged 18, was discovered partially naked on the premises of St Paul’s College. Postmortem forensic analysis revealed she had been raped and strangled. This murder was subsequently covered up by a collective response and no individuals came forward with information. In 1993, the phrase ‘enter the halls of misogyny’ was spray painted onto St Andrew’s College. In 2010, students planned to perform the song “Always look on the bright side of rape” in Colleges Revue. In 2012, a first-year was hospitalized and nearly died from being given a toxic mixture during O-Week. In 2016, the Change the Course survey conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission discovered that 51% of respondents from USYD Colleges had experienced sexual harassment, with 9% reporting sexual assault during their residency. In 2018, a private Facebook group was leaked, the group was operated by male St Paul’s students and contained degrading misogynistic content, including explicit photos that were not obtained or shared consensually. In 2018, End Rape on Campus’ Red Zone report documented: reports of male students ejaculating into shampoo bottles so that women would wash their hair with semen; ‘Freshers’ being locked in bathrooms and having vats of dead fish thrown onto them; and an annual event at St John’s called “The Purge” where students posted graphic photos and

details online about other students’ sexual activity. In 2023, St Andrew’s students were disinvited from inter-College Welcome Week events due to a pattern of misogynistic, homophobic, and intimidating behavior towards other College students. Most recently, at the end of 2023, a student from St Paul’s had their ear bitten off at a St Andrew’s event.

These patterns of hazing and abuse are created by elitism and enabled by the self-governance these institutions enjoy. The six most prominent colleges (St Andrew’s, St Paul’s, St John’s, Wesley, Women’s and Sancta Sophia) are structurally independent of the University. This means that there is little consistency or regulation of these institutions’ responses to sexual violence and assault. Too often, sexual violence is treated as a PR reputational issue, and colleges concerned with administrative numbers instead of student safety have an active incentive to cover up sexual assault allegations, silence discussions, and only engage in dialogue when given the opportunity to claim that they have ostensibly fixed this deeply misogynistic culture.

Almost two thousand Sydney University students (or their wealthy parents) pay approximately $30,000 a year for the privilege of living in residential colleges. In the midst of a Sydney-wide housing and rental crisis, this profiteering is simply unacceptable. The NSW Government has the power to abolish the colleges and their self-governance and replace them with safe and accessible student housing. Nothing short of this will bring an end to generations of violent college culture.

The Women’s Collective is bringing a petition to the State Parliament to force them to debate amendments to the college legislation, contact @ usydwoco to sign on.

To survivors, we see you, we believe you. We will fight for justice for survivors, to end rape on campus, and to Abolish the Colleges.

Art and words by

Eliza Crossley

He, The Pest

He sits behind his neat fence, between the blooms, and warns of doom. Impending from afar, they are coming, can’t you hear them running?

Together, we are bound to His word; chained down to fear, noli timere, he protects us all, thy Saviour’s call.

He teaches us of the kingdom that awaits us hereafter. You can hear His laughter, as their bodies lay slain, in our correction campaign.

The mission seeks to rectify their lost paths. We are their hope, if they choose our words. And together, we saved shall fly.

By Grace Curry

Obeying Orders

I tell them I don’t know how it happened

The gun knows not of who bears its arms

Their forms lay lifeless and their gazes are searching Pained wails and hushed cries

I tell them it’s not my fault

I was obeying orders

The flag is torn round its edges

I tell them I’m better than the others

That I know of the horrors before me

Their eyes challenge me I look away

My pistol is loaded with their dying words

You’re no better than anyone, they say

You’re just as bad, maybe worse, they say

The truth of their words is cutting

I don’t answer them, just lock and load

I do it for them and for you, I tell them

Late at night when they ask

It’s the anniversary today

From when we last died

You’ve gone to lay flowers

I choose to drown my sorrows

For King and Country, that is our one truth

I turn to Him and ask

He shakes His head

It was my duty is what I tell them I had no idea what was happening But what about our lives? They cry

Do we not matter? They scream

I shrug and shoot

By Grace Curry

MEDICAL MISOGYNY

Medical misogyny is extremely prevalent in our society; it leads to misdiagnosis, ignored symptoms and, because of negligent care, it can even amount to death. Medical misogyny also manifests in the lack of research dedicated to the health issues experienced by women, when compared to the extensive medical attention dedicated to men’s health issues. Furthermore, when women suffer from so-called “male diseases”, such as heart attacks and lung disease, stigma and ignorance exist insofar as how these illnesses manifest in women. This means that women can be misdiagnosed for not presenting the same symptoms as their male counterparts. A horrific example is that women have a 59% increased chance (compared to their male counterparts) of being misdiagnosed as experiencing a heart attack. Even when women are diagnosed correctly, they are less likely to receive the treatment they require to survive, demonstrating the extent to which women experience medical misogyny.

The lack of research in this area is deeply rooted in misogyny, there is an unbalanced focus in the medical field on male issues in comparison to female issues. There is extensive research and wariness around health issues that men have to deal with more so than women do. Women can be misdiagnosed for not presenting the same symptoms as their male counterparts.

The medical field is and has always been tailored towards the health interest of cis men, and many professionals believe that the male-focussed model has worked for such a long time that there is no need to change it. Consequently, due to the unwillingness to study women’s health, there is only slow hope of progressing beyond the status quo. When bias and misogyny come together for issues that affect all genders, it results in a major loss of hope when it comes to female-specific health problems. Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), Endometriosis, Menopause and Perimenopause are all examples of disorders that predominantly affect women. While it is reported that 1 in 10 women have been diagnosed with PCOS, this number is inaccurate due to the lack of education

women have about their own bodies. Why is it then that there is such insufficient assistance for women who suffer medically?

Like many areas of the medical field, women’s health issues are categorised as requiring specialist professionals. This makes medical care less accessible for women, as a regular doctor’s appointment/ hospital visit often cannot provide adequate medical treatment. Thus, when being treated for the immense pain of conditions such as PCOS and Endometriosis, women receive “band-aid” treatment; typically some painkillers or the birth-control pills for a longer lasting distraction. Alternatively, women will have to jump through extra hurdles, such as getting a referral to a gynaecologist or endocrinologist, to get the care that they need. Typical fees for these consultations in Australia range from $350 to $450, depending on which clinic you go to and whether you have private healthcare or not.

There are a number of axes of oppression that compound this issue. The inequality particularly affects women of a low socioeconomic background, the LGBTQI+ community and women living in rural areas. Transwomen are more likely to face prejudice and discrimination when accessing medical care. Rural women also struggle to access medical care, a 2016 study found that women living in rural NSW travelled as many as nine hours, one way, to access an abortion.

Ultimately, the healthcare system should not be dedicated to research exclusively done for cis men. We need to have a healthcare system that allows women and diverse genders to get the help they need and deserve. Our government needs to begin treating minority groups as humans, not as a product of profit. If misogyny continues to pervade the medical field, women’s suffering will only continue.

By Ellie Robertson

12

Images of Tallulah Brown

Feminist liberation over liberal feminism; From the river to the sea; Always was, always will be.

Content warning: this article discusses sexual violence, genderbased violence and colonial violence.

Feminism must be anti-racist and anti-colonial, which necessitates anti-Zionism. Dismantling the patriarchy must, too, come hand-in-hand with dismantling colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and racism, otherwise it risks being colonial feminism; for the white and wealthy.

Palestinian men are at the forefront of the armed resistance, a fact which means they face the most targeted dehumanisation campaign. One tool for this campaign is through the constant repetition of language, “women and children,” when referring to innocent lives lost, as though Palestinian men are somehow immediately guilty for being men. This presumption of guilt feeds into harmful, racist stereotypes of brown/Arab men as violent and unworthy of innocence, ultimately perpetuating the dangerous idea that Palestinian men are “legitimate” targets of Israeli violence. This stereotype affects women too, implying that Palestinian women are incapable of participating in a resistance.

A second tool for this campaign has been disinformation, often disseminated by Israel in order to spark global moral outrage and demonise Palestinians, with a laser focus on Palestinian men (and teenagers). Unverified and later disproven allegations of mass rape by armed resistance groups on October 7 spread like wildfire through supposedly feminist circles. Despite the years of verified, proven and well-documented evidence of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women, men and children, there has never been global moral outrage for the Palestinian victims of state-sanctioned sexual violence, or any other form of violence for that matter. This article questions the agendas of colonial, liberal feminism, and seeks to call to action an immediate end to the dehumanisation of Palestinians, an immediate and permanent end to the genocide in Gaza, an end to Israel’s 76-year long occupation and a dismantling of the apartheid system of government.

“To be clear, sexual violence and rape allegations during October 7 should be investigated. Guided by antiracist and feminist commitments, I assert that perpetrators of genderbased violence must be held accountable. Victims, all victims — including Palestinians who are subjected to sexual violence — deserve justice.” [source: Tatour]

These are the words of Dr Lana Tatour — a Palestinian woman and lecturer with expertise in settler colonialism, race and

racism, human rights, and Palestine. She teaches at a University in so-called Australia. We echo her words.

Colonial projects like Australia, French-colonised Algeria and Israel have historically encouraged and used gender-based violence as a tool for land and resource theft, and to eliminate Indigenous peoples or ‘assimilate’ them. In fact, sexual violence is one of the main tools in the coloniser’s toolbox, from Blak Australia to Algeria to Palestine. In Asafa Jalata’s article The Impacts of English Colonial Terrorism and Genocide on Indigenous/ Black Australians, she quotes Catharine MacKinnon (1994) who says, “It is . . . rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill and to make the victims wish they were dead. It is rape as an instrument of forced exile, rape to make you leave your home and never want to go back. It is rape to be seen and heard and watched and told to others: rape as spectacle. It is rape to drive a wedge through a community, to shatter a society, to destroy a people. It is rape as genocide.” (pp. 11-12)

In French-colonised Algeria, Algerian women experienced, and continue to experience, Orientalist hypersexualisation. They were often forced and coerced into unveiling themselves for the sexual gratification of French settlers under the guise of “secularism” and progressivism. Algerian martyred men’s genitalia were dismembered and put into their mouths, their bodies left to serve as an example of French cruelty to the Algerian population.

In Palestine, testimonies from the Nakba include the Tantura massacre where several young Palestinian women were raped by the Alexandroni Brigade, their bodies left lifeless despite the town’s quick surrender, and then added to the mounting mass grave which today sits beneath a parking lot. Imprisoned Palestinian women, men and children have reported sexual violence during detention (often without trial or charge) since the foundation of the Israeli state and continue today. The 2021 report by human rights NGO Defence for Children International - Palestine (DCIP) published a report about the rape of a 15year old boy by Israeli prison authorities in Moskobiyyeh, an interrogation and torture facility in Jerusalem. Just one day after the US State Department enquired about this report, the Israeli state designated DCIP a terrorist organisation, showing ultimately how the Israeli state provides coverage for and reinforces sexual violence as a weapon against Palestinians.

Another example, reported to Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asserts that “A Palestinian female freed from Israeli detention said more than 15 fellow Palestinian women

were raped by Israeli interrogators to force them to confess to charges leveled against them and collaborate with the Israeli intelligence.”

These perpetrators were never held accountable; these victims never received justice. Not only do the heinous acts of sexual violence go unrecognised, but the very system of colonisation, occupation and apartheid against Palestinians goes entirely unacknowledged. In fact, today, under the cover of liberal feminism, racist tropes around Palestinian men being ‘rough’, ‘barbaric’ and ‘deprived of sexual experience’ create a breeding ground for deliberate disinformation which is then used to justify and enable genocide. In their public statement and call to action, the Palestinian Feminist Collective asserted, “Since October 7, we have witnessed the resurgence of liberal, Orientalist, and colonial feminist tropes by Zionist leaders, Western media outlets, and liberal feminists dehumanizing the entire population of Gaza. Within this context, Palestinian men have been depicted as lascivious, brutal aggressors and sexual predators, and loveless fathers who use their children as human shields.”

It is for this reason, that shallow concern for Israeli women’s and girls’ rights (always conveniently leaving out Palestinians’ rights), exemplified by the women’s march which took place in Byron Bay in the midst of an ongoing genocide against Palestinians, are revealed for what they are - a racist attempt to demonise Palestinian armed resistance groups, to delegitimise the legitimate struggle for liberation, and shift the focus from the countless war crimes (including crimes of genderbased violence) committed by the Israeli state to unverified allegations which do not meet the evidentiary standard for reputable human rights organisations. “The reports cannot be viewed in isolation from current events, and they dangerously feed into the orchestrated propaganda campaigns that Israel is running, which aim at dehumanizing Palestinians as a means of deflecting attention from and justifying the genocide in Gaza.”

[Tatour]

The Women’s Collective (WoCo), the Autonomous Collective Against Racism (ACAR), and the First Nations Collective (FNC), in a combined statement, stated, “We stand unequivocally against sexual violence and assert that victims deserve justice.

We also take a strong stance against genocide-enabling, against Israeli pinkwashing and against colonial and liberal feminism. We extend this stance against the US-Israel-Europe-Australia genocide alliance. Feminism must be anti-racist and anticolonial.

Palestinian women (and children, men, and gender-diverse peoples), have experienced state-sanctioned sexual violence for 76 years, have had their justice denied and their traumatic experiences erased in the colonial narrative. They have long been the subject of a dehumanisation unique to colonised peoples; their humanity stripped for doing the most human thing a person can do in the face of colonial violence: resist.

But despite all this, Palestinians continue to resist, shifting the narrative and paradigm as time goes on and truth unfolds. We call on feminist organisations worldwide to commit to antiracist and anti-colonial feminism, and stop the propaganda which justifies and enables genocide.

Feminist liberation over liberal feminism. From the river to the sea.

Always was, always will be.

A YARN WITH FIRST NATIONS RESPONSE

“We know it’s not a risk because we know blak women are deadly.”

Coral: My name’s Coral Lever. I’m a proud Wiradjuri woman from Nanima mission, central west NSW, now living in socalled Sydney here for the past 20 years with my family.

Kim: I’m Kimberly Peckham, a proud Wiradjuri woman from Nanima mission as well. Coral’s sister. Living here on Gadigal land in Marrickville. I’ve been living here only a year but I was out on Dharawal country for about six years.

Coral Kim

Rand: Can you tell us a bit about the First Nations Response (FNR) space, and the kind of services that it provides?

Coral: Our day to day work is food relief, but we’re also looking to build functions around why families are in that position; doing research about it, getting some tangible evidence around it. We also do a lot of referral services for everything from domestic violence to emergency medical care, helping people with housing. We say that food is the soft entry point, and that from there we’re able to really connect with community and start to help on the front lines of the issues that are impacting people on the day to day.

Kim: I think really decolonising the food security and food relief space, because there’s not many First Nations services in that space that’s all predominantly religion-run or big organisation-run. There’s no for community by community work within that space. Particularly for mobs.

Rand: Can you tell us a little bit about how the organisation is run? You say it’s blak-led, so what does that mean and look like?

Coral: I think the name First Nations Response stays true to the essence of how we began. We started out 2 blak mothers, responding to an urgent need in community and we’ve built on that. We wanted to keep it blak-owned, blak-led and blak-run. Even in our constitution we’ve embedded blak ways of doing things into the core of what we do. It will always be 100% blak-owned, blak-run, regardless of who runs it.

Kim: When you go into other services, you’re always given a non-First Nations person to talk to and it’s about getting rid of that shame factor of being able to ask for all mob. We have lived experience utilising services like this, wish we had black-run ones, so we’ve lived through having no dignity, having our trauma dredged through, having to explain our circumstances over and over again for bare minimum. Whereas we don’t do that. You come in, you get what you need, you don’t have to stay, you can stay if you want, we’ll provide.

“we’re operating the blak way in a white system.”

Kim: It’s not a crime to be poor. Except that this society is shaped [in a way] that it is. And you get criminalised constantly for not having food.

Coral: And we know this first-hand. Our mum was constantly in jail for stealing. Constantly. At one point left her kids at home with no parents for the first few months of moving to Sydney, for six months because she stole food and got locked up. So we know first-hand the dangers of that. She couldn’t tell anyone that she left her kids at home unsupervised because the dangers of us having been removed. So for 6 months it was our brother’s job to go out there and steal and rob and break into houses and cars, simply because he needed to bring food home to his siblings. And that’s how desperate it can get. And we tried. We went to all the avenues for food. We were sexually harassed. We were ashamed, and surveilled. It was awful. And all we needed was food. And that’s why we’re not mandatory reporters.

Kim: And that’s why a lot of mob don’t utilise services because they’re scared that they’re going to be noted for neglect. And it happens all the time. It’s this idea of not fixing the underlying issues of inflation, cost of food, circumstances, so “let’s not fix the issue, let’s penalise the family and the mum”.

Rand: When activists say, “stop the war on blak kids, no forced removals,” is this what they’re referring to?

Coral: Yep this is essentially how it starts. That’s how kids start to get earmarked at schools, accessing doctors... our mum was clearly a heroin addict. She’s got 13 kids between her Mum and Dad. Each time one of us kids were born, our family had to intervene to stop us being taken from our Mum. And even though she was drug-affected, she was actually a great mum. She didn’t need that kind of intervention. And it happens all the time. It’s shocking that that’s the path. They’re not trying to help, or fix anything, or get people housing or out of domestic violence, or into employment, or kids into a daycare. They’re just trying to remove the kids.

Rand: It’s so important that there is someone like you leading this organisation who has the food poverty literacy and knows what those challenges actually look like.

Coral: We’re operating the blak way in a white system so we’re going to keep to our morals and values, but we do have to operate in their policies and terms. And this is how we do it. We have to document all of this stuff, and turn up with strong evidence and data. We’ve got the solutions, but we need to be able to prove the problem. It’s a huge onus on us. But it needs to be done or else nothing’s going to change.

If you’d like to sign up as a volunteer at FNR, scan the QR code here!

If you’d like to read the full interview scan the QR code here!

FEMINISM AND ENVIRO JUSTICE MUST GO HAND IN HAND

Activists often claim that our “climate justice must be intersectional”, which, of course, rings true. But, what does this actually look like? What does it actually mean to understand environmental destruction as a feminist issue and vice versa?

Ecofeminism, as a theoretical approach, goes to the heart of the intrinsic connection between the systemic subjugation of women and environmental degradation. It asserts that capitalism and the patriarchy – as structures that ubiquitously affect our society – reduce women and the environment to objects that are subject to the domination of men. Ecofeminism also makes the connections between capitalism and the patriarchy, postulating that capitalism is inherently misogynistic and indeed, these structures of oppression function to reinforce each other. For example, the term “mother nature” - rather than, say, “father nature” - attempts to diminish women as being “mastered” and conquered by men. In this sense, the consequence of ‘feminising’ the environment is men believing that they are compelled to dominate and destroy the environment. Thus, suggested by ecofeminism, environmental justice and feminist liberation are grounded in the same goal of uprooting these oppressive structures.

To further examine these links, it is critical to note that the degradation of the environment disproportionately affects women, as it does disproportionately affect marginalised groups. An example of this is the increase of domestic violence in the aftermath of climate change induced natural disasters - more than half of women interviewed following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, for example, had experienced domestic violence. The ostensible degradation of men’s masculinity and the loss of their control can (wrongly)

fuel domestic violence, indicating how environmental destruction can reinforce women’s oppression. Men also feel (again, wrongly) justified in perpetrating domestic violence because of the stress of natural disasters, meaning that often this violence is tolerated or even accepted. This is particularly so when the media focuses on the devastation caused by natural disasters and community bonds forged by this shared trauma, further marginalising women and victims/ survivors of domestic violence. Even post-disaster, temporary accommodation can situate women in spaces where they are more likely to experience domestic violence. Therefore, domestic violence following climate change induced natural disasters epitomises the link between feminism and enviro justice.

The inverse also rings true, that is, that the subjugation of women adversely affects the environment. Therefore, climate justice is a feminist issue. Take Israel’s genocide in Palestine as the most salient issue affecting feminist organising in 2024. Indicative of this, Israel’s campaign of using white phosphorus and carpet bombing Gaza are destroying Palestinian lands, which is patently incompatible with environmental justice. This flies in the face of Israel’s incessant greenwashing, demonstrating that enviro justice must truly be feminist and anti-colonial.

Thus, as feminist liberation necessitates environmental justice, as environmental justice necessitates feminist liberation, and as feminist liberation and environmental justice are intrinsically intertwined, our activism against the climate crisis must always be intersectional. For, if it is not, our activism will be bullshit.

BY JORDAN ANDERSON

ART BY ISHBEL DUNSMORE

May the Best DRAG

CW: This article contains descriptions of transphobia.

Now in its 16th season, not even counting the international spin offs, RuPaul’s Drag Race has inarguably catapulted drag into the mainstream. Beginning in 2009, the show has pioneered queer representation on television, and, thanks to the thousands of viewers it attracts each year, it gives drag queens the opportunity to make a real living off their art form. Yet, in recent years, fans and contestants alike have begun to notice a glaring omission from each season’s line ups: drag kings.

Drag is an inherently difficult thing to define, but can be described as a queer art form generally understood to involve the performance of gender, exaggerating masculinity and femininity for entertainment and self expression. Drag Race contestants typically fit the same mould as RuPaul - cis, gay men who participate in “female impersonation”.

However, drag has always been something people of all genders and sexualities have participated in, and drag kings are hardly a new phenomenon. The convention of women dressing as men dates as far back to the Chinese Operas of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). Most significantly the 20th century saw many drag kings emerging out of underground queer and Black club scenes. During the Harlem Renaissance, out and proud butch lesbian Gladys Bentley became one of the highest paid Black women in the US by performing as a drag king in nightclubs. Stormé Delarverie, another prominent drag king, rose to fame as the MC of Jewel Box Revue, North America’s first racially integrated drag

revue. Into the 80s as the AIDS epidemic worsened, many gay men stopped attending clubs, and high profile gay clubs in the US began hosting “women’s nights,” where the drag king culture continued to thrive.

Drag kings have been essential to the growth, survival and safety of drag culture. They have long been an integral part of the drag community, and fierce, unique performers in their own right. Many drag shows and competitions feature drag kings and queens competing alongside each other. So why has Drag Race been so slow to follow?

Clearly the exclusion is rooted in misogyny. Drag king Hugo Grrrl, winner of the first season of New Zealand’s House of Drag discusses a mindset held by RuPaul that “men are people who do drag the best,” an idea he notes is “problematic as fuck.” By extension, Dragula winner Landon Cider argues that drag kings spark resistance from men who feel threatened by drag kings’ potential to redefine male identity.

The looming presence of drag kings doesn’t mark the first time RuPaul has felt threatened by change on his show. For a show made to celebrate the breaking down of gender barriers, the show has been contradictory around gender from its conception; most notably in its treatment of transgender contestants. During season 5, Monica Beverly Hillz was the first drag queen to come out as transgender during a season. RuPaul initially responded positively, telling Monica: “I invited you here because you were fierce. You deserve to be here.”. However, RuPaul stated toward

Photo of Beau Jangles taken by @capturedbycorinne

Photo of Hugo Grrrl

(???) Win

season 9 contestant Peppermint, that if she had started physically transitioning by the time she was on the show, he would not have cast her. He went on to state that drag becomes a “different thing” once you start “changing your body,” proving Hugo Grrrl right when she stated RuPaul thinks men are better at drag than women, he claimed that “drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once it’s not men doing it.”

Not only are these comments hurtful, but they are also deeply out of touch with the reality of drag. Clearly, RuPaul’s various stances on gender and drag are contradictory. He attempts to mock the concept of gender, deconstruct boundaries and take gender less seriously, yet gatekeeps who can participate in drag. Considering the visibility of Drag Race, this means that RuPaul’s voice is unfortunately the one that appears to speak for the whole drag community - a reality that couldn’t be further from the truth.

By Martha Barlow

So what do we miss out on by excluding drag kings (and more generally, anyone but cis-men who perform as women)? Firstly, it represents an simplistic version of the art form that does little to challenge gender norms. Drag is undefinable. Yet, by presenting drag as simply cis men dressing as women, Drag Race runs the risk of confining a revolutionary queer artform into the very kind of box it is supposed to fight against. It also undermines women and gender diverse people’s contributions to the art form, presenting an essentially ahistorical version of drag that reinforces misogynistic ideas that men are better at drag. Furthermore, there are significant material consequences for drag kings, preventing them attaining the kind of mainstream commercial and financial

success open to drag queens. Drag king Beau Jangles has discussed how this exclusion has a “trickle down effect,” affecting local booking opportunities for drag kings by delegitimising and undervaluing their art form, thus enforcing a gender wage gap within the drag community.

Yet, many in the community remain hopeful. If the inclusion of trans queens has told us anything, it’s that with a little bit of pressure, change is possible. Recent years have seen many milestones for inclusivity on Drag Race, including the first trans male contestant, Gottmik, and the first cis-female winner, Pandora Noxx on German drag race. Co-host and executive producer Michele Visage has also supported the idea of kings on the show - it seems the only person left to convince is RuPaul.

Ultimately, in the context of the severe crackdowns on drag performers and trans rights in the US, the drag community needs allies more than ever. When drag kings are fighting for inclusion and equality, it is particularly difficult to see so much of that exclusion coming from within the community itself. To give RuPaul her credit, she has done perhaps more than anyone to increase the visibility of drag. But with great power comes great responsibility, and Ru’s continued exclusion of kings from the show only serves to create more division within a community that should be united.

RuPaul, World of Wonder - the time has come for you to include drag kings in your cast. Good luck, and don’t fuck it up.

Photo of Hugo Grrrl

Photo of Beau Jangles by @capturedbycorinne

UNPAID PLACEMENTS AND FEMALE INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

To understand the adverse effects of unpaid placements, it is integral to recognise the disproportionate impact of placement poverty on international students, particularly female international students. While unpaid placements are already a financial burden on domestic students, international students, who are restricted in their hours of work and pay full fees, are placed under even more pressure. A housing crisis, a cost of living crisis, significant inflation and a lack of paid work characterise what it entails to be an international student at the University of Sydney. Financial pressures faced by domestic students are exacerbated and accentuated when it comes to international students. This is especially true for female international students.

Many of the degrees requiring placements - nursing, teaching and social work - are highly feminised, meaning women disproportionately foot the bill. Unpaid placements present a serious obstacle that affects the academic and career paths of students. The financial hardship these students face is enormous. When it comes to housing, international students generally pay more than their domestic counterparts due to exploitation from profiteering purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) providers. Further, international students must pay upfront tuition, are not entitled to student loans, and are restricted to working only 48 hours a fortnight.

Unpaid placements may force students to delay their degrees, or study part time in order to balance placements and financial demands, this means these students can only access full time employment later in life, leaving them often dependent on others during the duration of their degree. The absence of pay then has a knock on effect as it keeps women in lower paid industries. For international students language and cultural barriers, social exclusion and lack of local connections present further challenges when trying to access placement programs. So, to complete a degree, international students often work harder than anyone else and still do not get paid for it.

The problems faced by female international students are exacerbated by the intersectionality of identity variables, including race, ethnicity, and country. These students deal with several levels of prejudice and discrimination, which can amplify the effects of unpaid internships. The mental health and general well-being of female students might be negatively impacted by the stress brought on by financial strain and the difficulties of unpaid internships.

Engaging in an unpaid placement forces female international students to rely on other jobs to cover their expenses. This forces many to take an unsafe job or a job unrelated to their fields and requires them to devote a huge amount of time to these jobs, which could be rather used to study well, had they not felt the financial burden due to the lack of paid placements. Exploitation is yet another concerning effect. International female students may accept unpaid occupations even when they are not in their best interests due to their vulnerability, especially if they have vulnerable immigration statuses, which are a consequence of uncertain student visas, asylum seekers, and conditional work visas.

Having placements that guarantee pay is crucial. The University sector, which sees individual institutions regularly maintain a profit in the hundreds of millions, must create an accessible and equitable environment for students engaging in tertiary qualifications that society regularly refers to as “essential”. Placement agencies must ensure that placements are paid at a rate which is at, or above, minimum wage. Furthermore, where agency remuneration is not available or sufficient to meet the minimum wage, this university must provide compensation at a fair and equitable rate for students undertaking mandatory placements.

Reeyaa Agrawal calls for fair and just renumeration.

Art by Jo Staas

Stella Donnelly is here, and she’s not afraid to stir shit up.

It’s been nearly 5 years since Australian singer-songwriter Stella Donnelly’s debut album Beware of the Dogs hit our ears, and her potent feminist messages haven’t lost their kick.

Beware of the Dogs is a record about accountability – shining a light on injustices perpetrated by the government and the patriarchy and the turmoils of the female experience, all against a boppy, indie-folk sonic backdrop that I can’t help being charmed by. Starting off the record as she means to continue in Old Man, Donnelly calls out the sexual entitlement of the familiar character of the ‘white man,’ with ‘white teeth in a suit’, threatening karmic consequences for his actions: ‘you grabbed me with an open hand, the world is grabbing back at you’.

In the pared-back and devastatingly raw Boys will be Boys, Donnelly echoes the victim-blaming sentiments often aimed at sexual assault survivors: “why was she all alone / wearing her shirt that low”. She calls for these ‘boys’ to be held accountable, or as she puts it, it’s ‘time to pay the fucking rent’.

Watching Telly is a continuation of Donnelly’s critique of mainstream conservatism, this time when it comes to reproductive rights. She sings “I’m not worthy of the choice to make my own choices for my body” against a hypnotic electronic synth backing, perhaps to mimic the way media inculcates regressive messaging, packaged in bright lights and major keys.

In the album’s namesake, Beware of the Dogs, Donnelly nails the existential fear for the future we have as young people, as we watch those in power succumb to capitalist interests and ignore the environmental vandalism carried out in service of profit. Donnelly likens the Australian government and capitalist powerhouses destroying the environment to “an architect / setting fire to her house”, whilst politicians, who are “painted little gnomes”, greedily scramble for our votes, spouting empty promises and neglecting the issues that really matter.

Her pure vocals allow her aussie accent to shine through. Throughout the album’s 42-minute runtime, Donnelly is very much there in the room with you; it almost feels like she is playing a gig at a grimy pub, a scene which she directly riffs on in Tricks, one her most popular songs on the album. Amidst references to Kyle and Jackie-O and Southern Cross tattoos, she criticises the pressure on women to perform and pander to the tastes of men: “you only like me when I do my tricks for you”. In the contrastingly sparse Face It, Donnelly reveals a more personal experience of performing, that is, the façade she presents to the world: “my eyes are painted on /… my smile is pasted on”.

The pointed edge of her cynical commentary is softened by vulnerable moments in which Donnelly holds herself accountable too; acknowledging that there are always two sides to a relationship and its demise. The magic of the album lies in these moments, where Donnelly’s vocals are authentic and intimate. In the floaty, ambient Allergies, Donnelly sings about the feeling of inadequacy after a failed relationship and it’s clear this hits home for her – her sniffles are audible between verses. Her fragile, whispery vocals plead “call me in the morning / put me in my place / I did my best to love you / I did my best to stay”. In Bistro, the mirrored verses, first accusations to her partner (“you never loved enough”), then acknowledgement of her own shortcomings (“I never loved enough”), show Donnelly’s self-awareness and willingness to be vulnerable with her audience, even when things get ugly. This partly explains the magnetism of her songs – her unashamed openness allows us to connect with her, whether that be in righteous anger, regret, grief, or playfulness.

She doesn’t seem to fuss around with excessively grand symbolism either, bar the strange yet charming metaphor of her as a mosquito. Often she tells it exactly like it is, with lyrics that fall off the tongue as if she had just thought of them a moment earlier: “what the hell is going on? / I don’t buy it” (Die), “my mum’s still a punk and you’re still shit” (Season’s Greetings).

Weaved through these moments of cynicism is refreshing honesty and vulnerability, with cleverly spoken emotional truths we can all relate to. It’s an album that makes me think I’d love to go for a drink with Stella Donnelly sometime. Or perhaps a protest.

By Holly Miller

By Rani Sirris

19th of January 2024

Growing Stronger

A HISTORY OF FEMINIST ACTIVISM AT SYDNEY UNIVERSITY

Issue Vol.1 No.2024

From the days of the 1970s liberty print to the cry of modern-day megaphones, feminist activism has played an integral role in Sydney University’s student activist culture. Although our protests have changed over the decades, women and gender diverse students have continually fought for change and gender equality all the same.

The history of feminist activism at Sydney University is shaped by our continuing campaigns. While women have pushed for gender equality since the beginning of the University’s establishment, activism on our campus took off in the late 1960s. This period witnessed the advent of the Women’s Liberation Movement, a Western-based social and political movement that focused on ‘liberating women’ – albeit chiefly white and cis women – from Western society’s patriarchal confines. These confines included unpaid work and the gender pay gap. With the ethos of ‘solidarity and sisterhood’ ringing through Women’s Liberationists, Sydney University’s Second-wave feminists saw their chance to push for wider social change.

Sydney University was the epicentre of Sydney’s 1970s Women’s Liberation Movement. Historian Emma Grahame describes in Australian Feminism: A Companion, the Second-Wave feminist movement at Sydney University was distinct from other movements across Australia in its focus on generating a theoretical base; many other universities focused more on practical action and changing women’s lives ‘on the ground.’ This focus made Sydney University

a base for Sydney’s early SecondWave feminists to generate new ways of thinking, or paradigms, about women in a society that upheld patriarchal institutions.

This desire for new ways of thinking reached its peak during the month-long Philosophy Strike of 1973. The strike was born from a dispute within the Philosophy Department over the proposal of a new ‘Women and Philosophy’ unit, the strike resulted in the creation of the Sydney University Women’s Studies Department. Now known as the Gender Studies Department, this department set a precedent for feministfocused university courses across the country. These courses are vital for carving out an academic space for gender diverse perspectives in what remains an often patriarchal space.

While Sydney University was arguably the hub of the movement’s intellectual activity, these ideologies subsequently proliferated into the surrounding suburbs and throughout Australia. The theoretical base established at the University gave way to feminist organising spaces across the city, notably the Women’s Liberation House. First established at 67 Glebe Point Road in 1970, the Women’s Liberation House provided Sydney’s early Women’s Libbers – most of whom were either students or academics – a female-only space to hold consciousness-raising meetings, where women spoke openly about their personal experiences in a male-centric world. These gatherings were accompanied by the publication of feminist newsletters – such as Australia’s

BY GRACIE MITCHELL

second-ever Women’s Liberation newsletter, Mejane – from printing sets within the Women’s Liberation House, helping to disseminate the aims of the Women’s Liberation Movement beyond feminist spaces. The political ideas incubated within the Women’s Liberation House also engendered broader social change for Sydney’s women. For example, the establishment of Glebe’s Elsie Refuge – the first secular domestic violence refuge for women and children in Australia – was a direct result of the discussions held at the Women’s Liberation House. While these events occurred beyond the university, Sydney University nevertheless played a crucial role in spurring feminist activism in Sydney during this time.

Feminist activism at Sydney University today remains loud and clear within the Women’s Collective (WoCo). WoCo can trace its origins to the early days of the Second-Wave feminist movement at Sydney University, where feminist activist groups, such as the Sydney University Feminists, provided a voice on campus on issues such as reproductive justice, sexual violence, and abortion access. Today’s WoCo mirrors the broader focus areas of 21st-century feminist radicals, with the collective being anti-capitalist, anti-Colonial, anti-Racist, and fighting for Queer Liberation. WoCo’s continued operation in 2024 reminds us, that feminist activists across time have made their mark on this institution’s social fabric, keeping our university accountable and providing a space for feminists to learn, act, and grow stronger through collective action.

A Letter to my Highschool Self

Dear Me,

At the moment you're probably wondering if life gets better after high school. Don't worry, it does. You have an apartment now, and you still have all your soft toys and Smiths posters (although you covered Morrisey's face with a sticky note). You stopped eating meat, stopped shaving your legs and got a septum ring, which doesn't hurt nearly as much as you think. No tattoos yet, but it's on the agenda. You still love your mum and dad, and you miss them all the time.

You still think about high school sometimes. You were right when you guessed you wouldn't feel any nostalgia. Now that you're out of it, you've started to notice how far into it you were. You still hate speaking up, talking back, getting into trouble. You can still feel the acute sting of humiliation from the one time you accidentally made a sarcastic comment within earshot of your year 6 teacher, the burn in your cheeks as you were forced to walk in front of the class to the whiteboard to mark your name with a demerit point. You've also spent a lot of time recently trying to work out if the term teacher's pet is sexist.

You're not crazy for noticing the distinctly irritating thread of misogyny that followed you and your friends throughout high school. You were right to get sick of the heavy summer kilts and the shirts that fit too tightly over the boobs. You were right to be furious during that moment in year 8 assembly when the vice principal warned you about the danger of short skirts. We had all heard the stupid line about distracting male teachers from friends and older sisters before, but we were yet to witness anyone actually say it. I remember a certain foreboding thrill when she finally said it, as though an ominous prophecy had been fulfilled. Just, please forgive yourself for not fighting back. Don't be angry for being disappointed in a woman you thought was meant to protect you. Don't feel silly for always feeling a little unsafe from that moment on. You were 13.

And please forgive yourself for being a spectator to the bullshit. It's not you. It's just the way they build the system. They drip feed you academic validation and citizenship awards and leadership roles, reward uniform compliance and perfect attendance and always Trying Your Best. So of course, as you grew older, more worldly and critical, a disconnect began to grow between your feelings and behaviour. On the one hand, a fire was being lit inside of you as you learnt all about misogyny and sexism and gender identity - yet on the other hand, the tempting dangle of band 6 grades, flimsy paper certificates and that shiny, shiny school captain badge kept the lid firmly jammed on the pot. The school system was trying to scare your voice out of you right when you needed it the most.

I'm here to tell you: there is somewhere to put it. All this anger. Somewhere beyond your HSC drama performance of Fleabag.

You're not entirely free of your teacher's pet legacy yet. You still get that sting behind your eyes and the lump in your throat when you feel an argument approaching. You still doubt yourself, even about stuff you know to be true. You doubt your place in your degree, your ability to achieve great things. You still underestimate yourself, feel like you're not doing enough when you're working twice as hard as everybody else. But time has shown that you were right. You were right about it all. The curriculum is bullshit, they do design it to be more interesting to boys, and boys do get away with being disruptive as they like as long as they're charming about it. You weren't imagining it when the boys talked over you, and it was completely unfair when you got in trouble for wearing ripped jeans. I'm proud of you for arguing about that one, actually. You're getting better at arguing, and standing up for yourself. You're better at keeping your cool, not losing sight of what you care about. You're less worried about pissing people off.

You still get this feeling, sometimes, that the world might end if someone thinks badly of you. Another side effect of your years as a teacher's pet. But you'll learn that there's nothing you can say or do that will please everyone, so you may as well stick by what you believe in. The world won't end. And, if you're pissing some people off, it means you're doing something right.

You'll stop feeling like half a person soon. Don't listen to anyone who says high school is the best years of your life. How can it be the best time when you've only just scratched the surface of who you're meant to be? Because as it turns out, you're not a teacher's pet after all. In fact, you kinda hate the label.

It's funny after high school. The world gets worse, but life gets better. You get to shake off all the parts of your personality you just assumed you were stuck with. There is a beautiful reality out there that the person you were at 16 doesn't have to be the person you are forever.

I won't wish you luck because you don't need it. You're gonna fucking love it out there. Love, Martha Barlow xx

Anti-colonial - Opposing the colonisation of one state by another. Anti-colonialism is an attitude that seeks to decolonise colonised states by dismantling colonial structures and bringing restorative justice to oppressed populations.

Our GLOSSary

Anti-racist - Actively fighting against racism. Supporting actions and movements to dismantle institutional, structural and interpersonal racism.

Intersectionality - An idea coined by academic Kimberle Crenshaw referring to those whose identity places them within multiple minority groups, arguing that axes of oppression cannot be studied in isolation and are linked and amplified by each other. For example, intersectionality recognises discrimination against black women as more than a simple combination of misogyny and racism.

Greenwashing - A misleading marketing practice in which organisations will present their products and operations as environmentally friendly, for example claiming they are “carbon neutral”, when in reality they are causing significant environmental damage.

Nakba - “Catastrophe” in Arabic. Refers to the mass displacement, dispossession and murder of the Palestinian people in 1948 by Israeli settlers.

Ecofeminism - A activism that the patriarchal women and the environment. on patriarchy as the root destruction and the oppression

Hegemony - Dominance of a particular culture or idea over others, which those within a society are forced to conform to.

French Universalist model - A government adopted by the French government, that everybody is equal as a French all else. This model has attracted its failure to recognise multiculturalism diversity within its society, erasing identity in pursuit of a singular French

Apartheid - Deriving from the Afrikaans word meaning “separateness”, apartheid is the segregation of a population from society on the basis of race or ethnicity. Under apartheid regimes, ethnic minorities are systematically targeted and discriminated against. Examples include South Africa and Israel.

A form of environmental draws a link between patriarchal domination of the degradation of the Ecofeminism focuses patriarchy and capitalism causes for both the of the environment oppression of women.

Misogyny - The foundation of patriarchy which thrives off a deep hatred of women.

Capitalism - Our current political and economic shitshow where the economy is controlled by private actors who own and control production for the purpose of making profit. This occurs at the expense of the working class, who are exploited and alienated from their labour.

Secularism - Separation from religious influence or ideas. A secularist government bases its laws and practices on humanist principles rather than religious ones.

government model, that supposes French citizen above attracted criticism for multiculturalism and erasing cultural French identity.

Gender-diverseAn umbrella term to describe gender identities that do not fall within the gender binary, for example nonbinary or gender-fluid.

Kisses from the 2024 Growing Strong Editorial Collective Xx

Zionism - A Nationalist movement supporting the establishment of a Jewish ethnostate on Palestinian land. A form of colonialism that has displaced Palestinians from their homelands and created an apartheid state within Palestine.