Judy's Punch by UMSU communications

EDITORIAL

udy’s Punch was a magazine published by the UMSU Wom*n’s Department until 2006. It is unclear why its publication ceased, but it was likely due to funding cuts to the student union following the introduction of voluntary student unionism. In 2013, Judy’s Punch was relaunched as a blog, and in 2014 a hard copy edition of the magazine was published once again. This year we set out to continue the work of reinvigorating the department’s publication, aiming to create a progressive feminist magazine full of writing and art in varied forms. The 2015 edition of Judy’s Punch might look different from its previous incarnations in the early 1990s, but some things remain the same. Women’s ways of seeing the world lie at its heart. We live in a society which deems our stories and experiences unimportant, simply because we are women. Judy’s Punch is a recognition and a celebration of the unique, diverse perspectives women students have to offer. A space which is reserved purely for this purpose is unusual, subversive even (hence its name). The volume of submissions we received for this edition speaks to just how important this space remains. It has been an honour to facilitate the coming together of so many talented women. We wish to thank the many writers, artists and sub-editors who contributed to Judy’s Punch in 2015. We also thank the UMSU Media Officers for their assistance with this publication. We hope Judy’s Punch fulfils your feminist fantasies - Judy will surely be punching at the patriarchy for a long time to come. Allison Ballantyne, Lucy Curtis and Lillian Ward.

Cover by Aïsha Trambas Title art by Grace Reeves 2

CONTENTS Yan Zhuang

Herstory

Brown

Essentially Woman

A Small Relationship

Caitlyn Jenner and the Problem of Assumptions

Women Tackling AFL

Teaching Cinematic Sexism

Pop Vinyl Problems

Mary Ntalianis

Girls on Film

Jaynaya Dwyer

Dear Ol’ Col

Sorcha Buchan

Medieval Manners

The Never-Ending Story

The Invisible Victims

Samantha Lock

Portrait of an Abuser

Yan Zhuang

8 Lies I Told Myself

Hands

Moth

Bathroom Preludes

Slut Shamed

Matilda Brown

Dust

Mishma Kumar

Penance

Sonnet 1.3

Unexpecting

A Love Letter to my Best Friend

Girl Look Up

Herb

Flying Solo

The Perverted ‘P’ Word

Drink Away the Patriarchy

Shameeta Kuhadas Hien Nguyen Brittany Lambert Ayu Astrid Maylinda Danielle Croci Claire White

Zoe Grant Natalie Hardwicke

Erika Lucciola Madeline Gibson Olivia Morcom Isobel D’Cruz Barnes

Simone Pakavakis Hayley Franklin Caitlin McGregor Alice Boér-Endacott Mishma Kumar Dalia Gala Eliza Colgrave Taylor Mitas Frances Gamble 3

HERSTORY A Feminist Flashback Yan Zhuang

bortion rights and child sexual assault campaigns, women’s refuges and consciousness-raising groups are just some of the things women’s rights activists were involved in during the 1980s. In this interview, Yan Zhuang takes a trip down memory lane with Katrina Sawyer, a onceactive member of the Melbourne University Feminist Collective. Was the Wom*n’s Department your first experience with feminism? In the 1980s, when I was at Melbourne uni, I was involved in the Feminist Collective – that’s what it was called back then – and the Gay and Lesbian Collective, and in a few other smaller groups. We had groups for specific things, like an abortion action campaign group, and an anti-bicentennial collective, which was an Aboriginal solidarity group. When I started going to the women’s room and collectives, I was very confused about the difference between socialist and radical feminists. I was pretty young and it hadn’t occurred to me that there were different types of feminism. So I took myself off to 4

a course at the CAE (Centre for Adult Education) in women’s studies, and then suddenly all the debates made sense. About half the women who formed the core of the feminist collective would have identified primarily as radical feminists, and half as socialist feminists. I identified more as a radical feminist, but I also had very close friends who identified as socialist feminists, and it wasn’t an acrimonious relationship between the two groups, but it did lead to different debates. Could you tell me about some of the campaigns you were involved in? We had some lecturers who people thought were sexually harassing students, or were the ‘lay for an A’ kind, so we did a campaign where we found out the names of the lecturers we believed were doing that and cut letters out of newspapers and magazines to make posters with their names. We pasted them all over the uni and over the backs of women’s toilets, and just advertised who the lecturers were. I think, in fact, the feedback was positive from administrative staff who’d also experienced that

behaviour. I think they were glad to see someone doing something about it, but we didn’t get caught. No one could quite pin it on us. We had a campaign around incest. One of the collectives some of us were very involved in outside uni was called Zelda’s Place, which was a refuge for young women escaping incest. So we designed a poster that said ‘one out of four girls and one out of seven boys are being sexually assaulted at home’, and we tried to get that put up in trams. We were willing to pay for that; we got money from god knows where, and the trams refused to accept it! So we ended up just putting it up in public spaces. We organised speakers on abortion and a lot of people were also involved in anti-domestic violence or anti-rape work. And there was a lot of crossover with women working in refuges. I was also working at Women’s Liberation Halfway House, a refuge for women and children escaping domestic violence, and with that, at one point, we were doing another campaign around incest, and a bunch of us just went and camped in the city for about a week. We camped at [St Paul’s Cathedral], and they couldn’t really evict 5

us because we were there about incest, and we’d just intermittently go across to the Department [of Human Services] and harangue them to start up a refuge for young women escaping incest. We used to go to a lot of demonstrations and put issues around domestic violence and child sexual assault on the agenda. And some of us were also involved in a group called ‘Shut Down Wynn Leighton’, which was the girls’ prison. If girls were raped or bashed at home and had to run away, they’d get done on what was called a Care and Protection Order. So it was a criminal act to be a girl and at risk of being raped and abused, which made no sense. And most of the girls there were victims of these crimes, so we were trying to get that shut down. And we had consciousness-raising groups as well, that old-fashioned idea from the 1970s, but they would tend to meet in people’s houses. Women would sit around, and you have a topic – say parents, or careers, or sexual assault – and each woman in the group talks about their experience. Because gender oppression is so incredibly normalised, often it’s very hard for people to see, but by sitting around John McKinnon, National Library of Australia, 3510654

and talking about their lived experiences and how that’s made them feel about themselves, the theory is that women become empowered and have a better understanding of their own oppression. It might be that one meeting we just discuss what fairy tales we read as a child and the impact that had – like if you read Cinderella-type stories a thousand times, what impact does that have on you? And because you often start to disclose quite personal things, often those groups become very bonded, and it’s a very radicalising experience. And quite a few people in the Feminist Collective would share houses as well, particularly the socialist feminists. I remember we had one big meeting with a lot of the activists on campus about whether we could buy a block of flats and live together forever; we didn’t end up doing it, but that was how seriously we took that stuff. We were talking about how we’d keep one flat in common where all the kids would have a childcare thing, and we’d have a shared library and have our own flats within the block, but also a communal space. People were very committed to that way of living. 6

We weren’t as radical as people before our time; some of the people before our time were really radical. I can’t remember if this was at Melbourne uni or some other university, but there were a group of women who actually kidnapped one of the guys in the student union who’d organised a very sexist event, and [they] held him captive for 24 hours and attempted to re-educate him. And he eventually did some sort of retraction and apology for the sexist behaviour. We, at least, never kidnapped people. That was in the 1970s; it was a bit more radical then. Did you have any feminist icons? So Zelda’s House was named after Zelda D’Aprano, who was a socialist feminist who chained herself to the doors to the Commonwealth building in Melbourne, demanding equal pay in the 1960s. She’d been extraordinarily active through the 1960s and 1970s. She’d done stuff like organise a group of women to get on trams, and say, ‘Well we’re paid three quarters of the wage, so we’re only paying three quarters of the fare. What are you going to do about it?’ They’d take petitions down to the police to say, ‘All these women

have signed that they’ve gotten an abortion, are you going to arrest us all?’ as a way of challenging the abortion laws. I had enormous admiration – and still do – for people like Zelda D’Aprano, who stuck her neck out very early. Did your activism at university influence your life after university? Certainly in the long term. I taught women’s history at Victoria University for a while and I was involved in community work intermittently. I did film-making about social justice issues. Even the work I’m doing now is still very informed by activism and the idea of social justice and children’s right to be safe and not institutionalised. And there was a belief in being anti-professional that I still hold – the idea that any... [people] I’m working with are peers and not just clients, and that they know more about their lived experiences than you do with your work experience. I now work in a school for young people who haven’t coped in mainstream schools, a re-engagement program for young people who’ve experienced trauma. I’ve got two kids. I’m doing a Master’s in student 7

wellbeing at Melbourne uni. My eldest son and my two housemates are all at Melbourne uni, so I’m still Melbourne uni-obsessed! My girlfriend was also in the Feminist Collective, and we’ve known each other for thirty years. My activism right now is very limited. As embarrassing as it is to say, I just fill in various ‘email your parliamentarian’ things, about whatever the latest campaign is. I’m a member of the Greens now, but I often imagine that when I retire I’ll hopefully become a thorn in the side of the government and be constantly pursuing them about the education and welfare needs of disempowered young people. My activism now is mainly around that, and probably will be until the day I drop off. There’s absolutely no education like an activist education. More than anything I learnt in a classroom, I learnt through activism and working in refuges and activist organisations. I would so strongly recommend anyone who was teetering on the brink of it to throw themselves into it while they’re still young.

UMSU Wom*n’s Department, Lillian Ward

BROWN Shameeta Kuhadas

My body is something I have learned to love. Lightning stretch marks across my shoulders, my thighs, my breasts. Chocolate skin darker at my knees, my elbows, my nipples. Chocolate skin, though I am not sweet. I have dark hair that is never in its natural curls. It falls straight down my back in warm sheets that tickle and I find long hairs in my bedsheets, in my handbag, in my underwear. I have glasses that sit low on my nose, dark frames that blend into my hair, thick lenses that magnify my small eyes. I have a nose piercing, glittering bright gold against dark brown skin. I have lips of two colours, dark and full. I have a full stomach, freckles, hair on my belly. Love handles, swelling over the tops of my jeans. I have soft thighs and broad shoulders, hair coloured bright green under my arm and as long as it’s ever been. Grass against healthy soil. I have strong calves that are honed into tight weapons. I have strong feet, used to balancing in sharp heels, used to rising in anxiety and discomfort, balancing on my toes to bring back some measure of control. The back of my hands are dark but the palms are light and ruddy, marked by muddy rivers of palm lines. My skin is dark and unknown. Unknown by my friends, who every summer ask, ‘Do you tan?’ My skin is unknown by magazines, which suggest colours and clothes for people with ivory skin, with medium peach skin, with dark tan skin. My skin is unknown by makeup companies, by lingerie companies, by hosiery companies, none of which seem to understand the term ‘nude’. It is unknown even by my family, who suggest lightening creams and lotions and potions with kind, pitying smiles, as if they are offering sage advice. My name is unknown. It is a thing to be stuttered over, a label of difference and confusion. It’s something I now cringe to hear, syllable dripping over syllable, longer than the names of my friends. It’s my birthright, yes, but it’s also just one more point of difference and when I’m not with my family, when I’m not with people who look like me, it’s something I set aside. My skin is not the most interesting part of me. The blackness of my hair is boring to me, how it absorbs light and heat. The shape of my nose, the thick hair covering my body. The broadness of me, the curves, the sound of my voice when I put my parents’ accents on. These things are not important to me but to you, to you they make up all of me.

Shameeta is a Master of Social Policy student with an interest in representation of POC, women and queer people in media. She has a background in Gender Studies and Anthropology.

A誰sha Trambas

ESSENTIALLY WOMAN Talk White Feminism to Me Hien Nguyen

E ARE ALL WOMEN FIRST wear it like a badge and trespass on their history. We are entitled to legacies of struggles not our own. WE ARE ALL WOMEN FIRST trample upon bodies battered broken in the name of our safety. Claim a victory for the sisterhood in the women who succeed in spite of the toxic, self-serving farce that we call solidarity. WE ARE ALL WOMEN FIRST don’t bring race into it. Don’t tell me what it is like being non-white in a society that sees colour and thinks synonym for nonhuman. Take away your skin your flesh your blood your human experience just tell me about your woman experience. We are all women first. So whiteness is essentially womanness essentially underneath deep down every woman is a white woman is refracted whiteness So let us slice and dice their identity into isolating parts of different causes and effects as if they are add-ons merely heaping onto a universal womanness Exorcise your divisive melanin. Erase your cultural distractions. Embrace the purified womanness. WE ARE ALL WOMEN FIRST keep it between your teeth bitten down on history. Your life is up for debate. Oppression is a cunningly well-made argument. WE ARE ALL WOMEN FIRST swallow the ink and pretend it can blacken words of whiteness. Branded onto blue black onto broken colours onto battered bodies. WE ARE ALL WOMEN FIRST underneath me you us them the fundamental as a woman I look at you and come right back to me. WE ARE ALL WOMEN FIRST whiteness is essentially womanness essentially. Underneath me you us them the obscuring cultural shroud a woman is a woman is a woman anything else is a distraction.

Hien is a person of colour who feels very strongly about intersectional feminism and has intense feelings against White ‘free nipples & hail vaginas’ Feminism™. 10

Lep Beljac

A SMALL RELATIONSHIP Brittany Lambert 1. A Wednesday I can’t even remember what I spoke About, last night I think we played Would you rather and Word games, I didn’t want to Play badly in front of you

3. A Friday Night and A Saturday You come over to my house In the morning we have, Regular café eggs and A walk on the river track You try to fix a man’s chain You take a photo of me on the bridge, that I never see

You left me a towel But I left it in Geelong I listen to songs about Pretending, in the car ride home And I think about how unexpected You are, a dream

I don’t know what we’re doing but I drive you home We go the wrong way When we get back we shower, do it I forget what happens after I think maybe your friends come over

2. A Friday We were tired, I saw your new Tattoos, that smell We listened to sad songs And met in bed again I asked you if you hear the trains At night

4. A Tuesday I wait outside on the front couch For you to arrive We make sandwiches, watch a film And do it together Like it is meant to be That way

I hear about things in your past But I don’t know what that means For me, now Lying awake hearing, The InterCitys, V-lines After doing it again

Though you are not all here Pretending, maybe Like me You go to work and develop One hour photos, off a Robin Williams disposable

5. A Saturday Night I come over but you aren’t here At all You are at the bike Fussing, angrily A list of things comes up To distract you, ASAP I can tell you are elsewhere I can’t reach you I go for a walk, you come I believe you are sorry And we spend some time but it’s, Not the same 6. At My House I think about you a lot You’re in my dreams I listen to you sing, usually I tell you We can’t kiss But I want to I want to touch you I ask to make soup I look foolish but, I can’t help it I hope that you know But maybe you just Hate it, now

Brittany writes poems when recalling past daily life in its normalcy, alongside the feeling of amiable mystery. She edits the house newsletter The Fairfield News. A Small Relationship describes her first Tinder experience.

Hate that it happened I don’t 13

Aïsha Trambas

CAITLYN JENNER AND THE PROBLEM WITH ASSUMPTIONS Ayu Astrid Maylinda “It’s my view that gender is culturally formed, but it’s also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation.” – Judith Butler

ne of the fundamental problems plaguing our society is the problem of assumptions. We seem to assume there is a metaphysical core to everything that relates to gender, language, and sexuality. I hate a priori postulations. I hate essentialism. Most of all I hate unstudied opinions. If we want to acknowledge that everything has a stable, organising core, we should at least own up to it, instead of trying to mask it under the guise of ‘natural’. In Western society Christianity still plays a major role in informing popular morality. It’s disturbing that in the 21st century – amid all the investigations into identity politics – Lawrence Khong, a Baptist Church senior pastor, can claim in one breath to be a Christian and that the “natural family is a universally accepted norm and a public good”. I see this as contradictory because I assume most Christians are New Testament Christians, and thus they should adopt a stance of universal love: love beyond the cishet-normative schemata. Following from this assumption, it would be conscionable for me to say that Khong is hypocritical for preaching a message of overriding divine love and then claiming that the cishet nuclear family is the normative ideal and good for society. How can he claim that love is universal and then use the same doctrine to uphold the legitimacy of a select group within society, while subtly marginalising everyone who doesn’t belong? The assumptions inherent in the statement go woefully unquestioned. I often wonder how many Christians would look at Caitlyn Jenner and call her an abomination. I also 14

wonder how many people, regardless of religion, gender, and sexuality, would look at her and call her beautiful just because they did not want to look insensitive – or worse, uncultured. Trans activist Janet Mock once held an interview in which she turned the questions often directed at trans women onto a cis woman. A notable question was, “who was the first person you told you’re cis to?” After the intense round of questioning, the latter felt like she was “a token”. When a trans person transitions, the first thing everyone pays attention to is their appearance and how well their it fits our idealised binary archetypes of male and female. The trans body is itemised and decoded like a palimpsest with fresh ink. Trans women are predominantly asked questions about body parts traditionally associated with gender that make them feel (as articulated by the cis woman) invaded and scrutinised. I don’t subscribe to the belief that our bodies are universally identical canvases for societal transcription and encoding, because who am I to say that everyone has the same metaphysical core at the centre of their being? But the trans body should not be a ground on which ideological battles are fought. I would think that after Caitlyn Jenner presented as a man for so long, aligning herself with the archetypal modern woman in terms of physical image would be rather like coming into a sisterhood, and that in itself could present a wonderful source of comfort. In this case, beauty is a source of empowerment in the form

‘A trans person is first and foremost a human being.’

of the presentation of one’s inner identity on the outer, creating a sense of female solidarity for the individual. Calling her beautiful is understandable – but it reveals the extent to which feminine identity is bound by the limits of physical beauty in mainstream media, as satirised by Jon Stewart: “You see, Caitlyn, when you were a man, we could talk about your athleticism, your business acumen. But now you’re a woman, which means your looks are really the only thing we care about.” Welcoming Caitlyn to the world then becomes an question of how she fits into our idea of acceptable womanhood and its physical markers: breasts, reduced jawline, lowered hairline, fuller cheeks, thinner nose, absence of Adam’s apple, etc. She is acceptable because she is conventionally beautiful. Because she doesn’t challenge the accepted standard of feminine beauty. Because she fits right in. But what about other women who either can’t afford or don’t want prohibitively expensive reassignment surgery, who are confident in their identity but cannot afford to display societal markers of their inner gender identity on their bodies, or don’t feel compelled to do so? They are marginalised, persecuted, and obsessively scrutinised for how different they are to what we think a woman should look like. In light of this, calling Caitlyn beautiful then becomes some kind of affirmative action by the mainstream, some kind of overgenerous reassurance that she fits in. This is great until it becomes the dominant discourse about a nuanced human being 15

who is more than just her transition. Who has raised beautiful children. Who has had a rich life as an athlete and motivational speaker. Who, in my experience of watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians, seems to be one of the only members of the family who does not see fame as anything more than a nuisance. Who has achieved personal freedom on her own terms. A trans person is first and foremost a human being. The core of one’s being is uncertain, and a lot of our epistemic attempts to identify what makes us human is unnecessary essentialism that can become dangerous for a person who has just begun living a new identity. Caitlyn now risks being known only as the person she has announced herself to be on the cover of Vanity Fair. The phenomenon of looking at Caitlyn and summing up her existence singularly with the adjective of ‘beautiful’ is exactly what is wrong with the world today. Our society struggles to accept that categorisation is ugly, unnecessary, and more pernicious than we think.

Ayu is an English and Linguistics major who loves life by hating on it. She is working on building a Judith Butler shrine in her bathroom and plans to change the world one word at a time.

TW: sexual harassment

WOMEN TACKLING AFL Danielle Croci

lthough women make up nearly half of all spectators at AFL games, the treatment of women within the league remains sub-par. Sociologists Peter Mewett and Kim Toffoletti define football as a space for women to escape the everyday, to challenge a traditionally masculine domain and to bond socially. However, as fans women are harassed at matches and the authenticity of our love of the game is consistently called into question. As a cisgender, white, straight woman, I acknowledge that I am privileged in this space. For me, the harassment peaked with a well-dressed, middle-aged man who got angry at my eager cheering for Brisbane (a team that I don’t even go for) and decided to lean his arm, wedges in hand, on my leg. “Would you like some so you’ll be quiet?” he asked. It may have had something to do with the fact that he had thought his team would win easily, only to find that wasn’t the case. Nevertheless, it violated my personal space and left me embarrassed. I have numerous other stories but I won’t waste the ink. Let’s just say these stories come from someone who only goes to the football occasionally. Women are often questioned about the authenticity of their fandom in male-dominated spaces, so it’s hardly surprising that this occurs in AFL. A woman’s interest in the game is often put down to sexual attraction to footballers. It is considered only natural for men to focus on women’s physical appearance in sport, but god forbid you comment on the appearance of a male footballer! Although it may be a joke, it effectively questions women’s credibility, not to mention being incredibly heteronormative. Surely women couldn’t be intelligent enough to enjoy football for what it is, and if they are, what does it mean for the hegemonic masculinity of the AFL? Some argue that women pretend that they’re 16

interested in football to impress men. I like that they think that I have the dedication to study an entire sport to impress someone, but considering how lazy I am, that’s impossible. In my experience, men can be hesitant, then either eager to chat or dismissive. In fact, many of my male friends are more interested in politics or the creative arts, and view sport as something that has always been foreign to them. I don’t think there has been a single occasion where I have been made more attractive to someone by my interest in AFL. And even if this were the case, it would mean nothing because my interest is not about pleasing them. In interviews conducted by sociologist Matthew Klugman, a respondent described how she hid her love of AFL from fellow feminists out of fear of being admonished for being interested in a male-dominated sport. However, in my experience it’s fantastic when you meet other feminists who are interested in football, because you can enjoy the game whilst also critiquing the culture. I go to the football with these women, and talk footy mostly with women. Our conversations can divert to admiration of individual players, but usually focus on tactics and calling out bad umpiring decisions. Although men and women are now equally represented in the fan base, it can feel empowering to appropriate what is still considered a male space and defy expectations. Meanwhile, women involved in the game, from journalists like Caroline Wilson and Neroli Meadows to goal umpires like Chelsea Roffey, are faced with a level of harassment and sexualised criticism to which their male counterparts are not subjected. If you need a further reminder of how ‘unwanted’ you can be as a woman in these spaces, look no further than The Footy Show. In particular, the host Sam Newman has made lewd comments over the years, donned blackface and groped a mannequin with Caroline Wilson’s face

stapled on it. All of these actions consciously remind women and other marginalised groups that they are not welcome in the boys’ club of AFL. Thankfully, there are alternatives such as The Marngrook Footy Show on NITV, which features Indigenous women including Shelley Ware and Leila Gurruwiwi. Finally, there are the women who play (definitely not me, due to a severe lack of coordination). There are amateur state leagues but no national counterpart and, let’s face it, it doesn’t pay the bills. In recent years, there have been exhibition games between Melbourne and the Bulldogs as curtain-raisers to the men’s game. However, bizarre scheduling - with the games beginning at 10:10am on a Sunday - does women of the game a great disservice. Comments by the general public are reminders that even as athletes, women’s bodies are objectified and kitchen jokes haven’t gone out of style. Sure, there have been baby steps in the areas of gender and LGBT equality. Essendon has officially affiliated an LGBT-friendly supporters’ group, the Purple Bombers, as a safe space for fans. This year, St Kilda appointed Peta Searle as an assistant coach, the first woman in an AFL coaching role. Channel 7 will televise the women’s exhibition match live this year, and the AFL are hoping to fast-track the establishment of a national women’s competition by 2017. But this is not enough; more action is necessary, as well as a societal shift in the way we view women as both spectators and athletes.

Danielle is in her final semester of a BA (Politics and History). She writes for Lip Magazine and plans to write her Honours thesis on women in AFL. 17

Grace Reeves

TEACHING CINEMATIC SEXISM Claire White

hen Reese Witherspoon and Australian producer Bruna Papandrea launched Pacific Standard, a production company dedicated to producing films with strong female leading roles (beginning with Gone Girl and Wild), I thought, “Hell yes, this is what we need”. The representation of women on screen is a topic that has gained prominence in the mainstream media this past year, with more publications such as Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Australia’s own Daily Life highlighting the issue and actresses such as Meryl Streep, Salma Hayek and Cate Blanchett speaking up. Girls like films. Women are the most influential audience at the box office. So why are we not receiving the representation we deserve? And why is the Screen and Cultural Studies major at our very own University of Melbourne perpetuating the problem? I love movies. I came into my Arts degree with the intention of doing Screen and Cultural Studies (also known as cinema studies). In year 12 I knew it was what I wanted to do, so much so that I came to Open Day two years in a row to listen to the wonderful Wendy Haslem talk about the major. However, now halfway through my degree with two cinema studies subjects under my belt and two more 18

for this coming semester, I find myself disappointed. In terms of content, the subjects are what I like to call ‘sausage fests’. This is really jarring to me, since for both cinema studies subjects I have undertaken, I have had female lecturers, coordinators and tutors. By scanning the faces of those who attend the lectures and my tutorials, I can gather that the majority of cinema studies students are also women. We dominate this subject, but the content we are being taught does not reflect this. Introduction to Cinema Studies was a good subject, as we studied Thelma & Louise and had a couple of weeks dedicated to feminist film theory. However, in my second year subject, Hollywood and Entertainment, every film we studied was directed by a man and had male-dominated crews and casts. I will admit I did enjoy the films we studied, but all twelve of them had at least one male lead in a maledominated story. The films where we saw a woman in a lead or joint lead role numbered only five: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Jurassic Park (1993), Gravity (2013), The Avengers (2012) and Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2, (2003 and 2004). Even when women had lead roles, they were almost always outnumbered by men, who remained the main drivers of the plot.

Most of the theorists we engaged with were also men. My teachers may have been women, but the subject was taught in the male voice. I acknowledge that female directors have always been significantly fewer in number, but surely it would not have been that hard to choose some films with more female characters, or at least to provide some recognition of feminist theoretical approaches to film. Now that my semester two subjects are available on the LMS, I am excited to find that women feature more heavily in Film Genres and Auteurs. It includes a retrospective of films by Australian director Ann Turner, who will also be giving lectures throughout the course. Likewise, Australian Film and Television demonstrates how easy it is to include women filmmakers and protagonists in the study of film. Take note, Hollywood and Entertainment. Follow their lead.

Claire is passionate about three things: women of the stage and screen, red lipstick and pink Moscato. She studies Arts at the University of Melbourne, majoring in Media and in Screen and Cultural Studies.

Lucy Hunter

POP VINYL PROBLEMS Mary Ntalianis

have recently discovered that my shameless spending sprees have resulted in obtaining a rather large collection of pop vinyls. Pop vinyls, also known as pop dolls, are bobble-head figurines of pop culture characters. My collection currently includes Marceline the Vampire Queen, The Black Widow, Harley Quinn, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and so on. Apart from being an adorable addition to my geekyteenage-girl-bedroom aesthetic and costing way too much money, my collection represents something else. Comprising only female characters, my all-girl pop vinyl super team showcases women and girls, who usually aren’t at all well-represented in popular media. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Bechdel test. It uses basic rules to evaluate the representation of women in films. To pass the test a film must have two female characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. Sound easy? The Star Wars trilogy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Avatar, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo all fail the test, just to name a few. To be specific, according to a 2015 report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television 20

and Film at San Diego State University, in 2014 less than a third of speaking characters in film were women, who also made up only 12% of identifiable protagonists. Additionally, over 70% of female characters in film were white, creating massive disparities in racial representation in popular media. Female characters were commonly younger than their male counterparts, and approximately a third of speaking female characters were shown partially naked or in sexually revealing clothing. A higher proportion of male characters had an identifiable occupational status, while females were more likely to have an identifiable relationship status. Female characters are also likely to fit into recurring stereotypes, such as the femme fatale, the stay-at-home super mum and the Bond-girl-type sidekick. Maybe people who fall outside the white, male, heterosexual, neurotypical gaze would enjoy some characters and storylines they can relate to, who knows? The lack of diversity in our media perpetuates stereotypical views of women and people of colour. These issues are related to the lack of diversity in the media industry, with over 90% of directors and over 80% of film writers being male. Women are also less likely to be cinematographers, editors and producers. It was this discovery that led me to count one by one the gender of over 1,500 pop vinyls listed on Funko!’s website. After 45 minutes of painstakingly scrolling through pop culture characters, I came to my conclusion. Among the worst offenders were Marvel, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and WWE. The better collections included Disney, Game of Thrones and Tarantino. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was the only collection where the number of female characters actually exceeded the number of males. Approximately 80% of pop vinyls are male, while only around 16% are female. Maybe I won’t end up spending as much money on my collection as I originally thought…

Mary is an Arts student and an intersectional feminist. She likes flavoured vodka and the Pusheen sticker set. Mary also contributes at Farrago and Maggie Journal. Grace Reeves

Jaynaya Dwyer

watch television in many different ways, ranging from outright delight to nervous displeasure. I have learnt treasured life lessons from ladies on television. This began long before I had the ability to critically analyse, even if I had wanted to look for meaning in light entertainment. These representations were rarely progressive. Art can be avant-garde and film can be radically feminist, but television must be approached tentatively and often the best we can hope for is that the glitzy fantasies we treasure will appropriately discern the fine line between ‘guilty pleasure’ and great offence. On the TV screen, too often it seems that female characters are conceived as wards of the prop department, rather than actual people portrayed by actual human beings. Girls growing up in the ‘90s were finally permitted to imagine their adult selves in the image of powerful tele-ladies like Ally McBeal and Carrie Bradshaw. These women were, however, too often preoccupied by various romantic kryptonites to attend to their often mentioned but rarely witnessed careers. Pleasurable TV events are numerous. Satisfying feminist viewing experiences can be few and far between. 21

Within the industrial confines of television production, dependence upon advertising revenues has traditionally fostered a focus on drawing the largest possible crowd. This has become a competition in being the most pleasant and the least controversial, appealing to the perceived conservative values of a mainstream audience. It’s funny how ‘appealing to everyone’ has so often meant appealing to the values and whims of middles-class, old, white men. Women must be unashamed in finding intense pleasure in viewing television’s reworking of the dominant archaic patriarchal myths. Furthermore, I don’t believe that it is useful to attempt to rigorously classify shows into pro- and anti-feminist categories, as this misses the swathes of important material that falls into a grey area somewhere in between. Evolving funding models in a post-Netflix era have been a real game changer in enabling broader representation of female experiences on television. As always, we must stay tuned. But Australian television, as is often the case, has been adorably slow to follow suit. This is why I find Puberty Blues so exciting. The show is a 2012 television adaptation of Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey’s 1979 novel of the same name.

‘... it is a rare delight to witness a narrative driven by two girls’ intense and unwavering commitment to their friendship.’

Puberty Blues is the story of best friends Sue and Debbie. They are going through high school in Sydney, desperate for popularity, curious about sexuality and destined to gloriously hit the road for Byron Bay in a mutual promise to live a ‘big life’. It should be standard viewing and not only for the ‘70s moustaches, panel van nostalgia and education in vintage insults (e.g. “Rack off, moll”). The show’s value lies in its refreshing portrayal of sisterhood. Competition between women for male attention is the main driving force of countless female plot lines on Australian television, and is inherent in the narrative structure of shows like The Bachelor and The Real Housewives of Melbourne. This year, as soon as The Voice cast a second female judge, Channel 9 saw it as only natural to mobilise this horrific trope, advertising an ensuing ‘catfight’. As a viewer it is a rare delight to witness a narrative driven by two girls’ intense and unwavering commitment to their friendship. In the show’s final moment Debbie and Sue flee holding hands, whispering intently, “boys will always be there”. The show promotes the idea that women have more to gain from each other’s company than they have to lose from the threat they pose to each other. Debbie and Sue are refreshingly assertive, capable and intelligent. They learn not to wait on the beach nursing Chicko Rolls for the boys they are ‘going round with’. Before the audience, they instead become girls 22

who steal surfboards. They learn to communicate to their partners how dissatisfying they are finding their early sexual experiences. They are accused of ‘getting all femmo’ and they learn not to care. The show complicates and questions a long-celebrated surfing masculinity and is complex in its portrayal of multifaceted girlhood. Through the comfortable distance of bad ‘70s haircuts and outdated manners of speech, Puberty Blues commits to a dialogue on girlhood that is painfully rare on Australian TV. I guess what I’m saying is that when I’m a cool aunty in a few decades’ time, Puberty Blues is going to be every unassuming teen’s birthday gift.

Jaynaya is an Arts student majoring in Politics and Screen and Cultural Studies. She likes old-timey things like knitting, walking through forests and Hemingway. Sometimes she develops a mysterious American accent from watching too much TV.

TW: sexual harassment

DEAR OL’ COL Sorcha Buchan

he concerning aspects of college culture are not a new topic, but their discussion is nowhere near concluded either. The self-entitlement of the privileged white male remains integral to the entire college system of success, making it worth continuing this dialogue. Once one becomes aware of entitlement, it suddenly reveals itself in almost any normal situation. The confident smirk of a well executed politically incorrect joke, the ironic captions of Facebook accounts, the slightly too rough, playful push of a corridor neighbour, a loud and bawdy presence in nightclub queues. For the white, self-entitled ex-private schoolboy, the world is a playground, a vast cornucopia of pleasurable, intellectually stimulating and fun experiences. And that is why self-entitlement and aspiration are the perfect union. Self-entitlement becomes fatty insulation, protecting the ego (to some extent) from the more challenging aspects of life, such as failure, rejection, social anxiety or alienation. Self-entitlement gives these boys the right to strive harder, further and more aggressively than other young people. There isn’t as much fallout for them, and this mindset is a powerful and inspiring tool. Thus, these people become our school captains, college leaders, politicians, and more. They have a similar cultural experience, perpetuating a legacy of self-entitled, privileged white boys in positions of power. Colleges implicitly promote this kind of elitist culture because

it is historically tied to exclusivity, prestige, and, to put it bluntly, guaranteed success. These boys aren’t to blame; self-entitlement is an unappealing but highly beneficial trait to have, and the old boys’ club will do a lot of good for society. These boys work hard. They will give back to their community through charity, often very sincerely and with great compassion. They will care about world issues. They will feel as much as they can the pain of others and they will fight to be educated, intellectually challenged and to grow. These things need to be said; however, the indictment of selfentitlement and the old boys’ club doesn’t comprehend the complexity of the situation in its entirety. The other side of this culture is the oppression of women, rape culture, slut-shaming, xenophobia, casual racist and sexist undertones, and the tokenistic treatment of LGBT culture. Self-entitlement and the legacy of the old boys’ club indirectly (and sometimes directly) promote these serious cultural problems, which are frustratingly incongruous with the shiny surface of college life. This culture is a rotten egg, eating itself from the inside out while appearing appetising to the onlooker. As a participant in this world, the last year has been filled with ironies and a mess of contradictions. Ultimately, I am the hypocrite. I love this exclusive world I have been invited into, and I hold it dear with patriotic passion. The traditions excite me and the college makes me want to achieve more. 23

My aspirations grow, fuelled by aggressiveness borne out of the college experience. The college also provides opportunities for me. In some ways, as a feminist, I almost feel more empowered than ever. People are helping me grab life by the balls and go as far as I want to go, unconstrained by what society wants for me. When I am opinionated, assertive and idealistic the college sometimes makes me feel badass, not bossy or too opinionated, as women are so often accused of being. Throughout the last year I felt like I was being treated like a legitimate human being (read: f*ck the patriarchy). Yet as a woman, when you take a step back, it is actually rare to find you’re being treated without gender bias. And if you disagree, you’re really not looking properly, or maybe you don’t want to. That’s also fine with me. Here comes the awful punchline, the hypocrisy on my part and the terrible irony. I remember the exact moment when the reality of college culture hit me, the awful pain in my chest as I had to emotionally divorce myself from the patriotic feeling I had been harboring all semester. I was sitting with three boys from my corridor (not friends but not-not friends, a frequent phenomenon at college), watching as they labored over an intense video game. The usual routine would be that I would come in, some form of conversation would occur and then a barrage of sub-par insults would be casually thrown my way. There was rarely maliciousness

or any truth to anything that was said. It was just the careless word jumble that you have with people you live with, like the burbling noises babies make when content. In some ways, I guess it was almost affectionate. Most of the guys I lived with, although 110% enrolled in the almost-despotic regime of the old boys’ club, were completely harmless and well-meaning. On this day, I had just walked in from a lecture I was legitimately interested in, so my head was sharp with ideas, intellectually alert instead of dulled by the usual cloudy

hangover. The guys called me a dumb slut and in quick succession, frigid, something they hardly ever said. Then, making casual reference to domestic assault, they teetered on the brink of a joke about sexual violence (although this is definitely not what they meant). But instead of just sharply retorting as usual, on this occasion I was actually frightened. It was as if these people were strangers who could pose a threat to me, who could rape me. But this was something I inherently knew to be untrue. It then dawned on me quite shockingly... they really 24

don’t understand what they’re saying. They don’t understand the seriousness of joking about sexism, to the point that they were on the cusp of joking about rape. When I was outraged about it, they looked around blankly as if I were hysterical. They thought, and probably continue to think, that I’m an overly emotional hysteric (definition: a non-docile woman). And that is the truly concerning thing about college culture right now. They don’t realise the seriousness and impact of being a player in that

performance. Their awareness of the privileges that come with being a white male is infinitesimal. The guise of “banter” hides the fact that their words subtly undermine their friends who are female, queer and people of colour. On a sub-conscious level, this allows them to elevate themselves within a class system: a system that I believe is alive and well. I implore you to examine college culture meaningfully, because when you do, this oppressive hierarchy will rear its ugly head. The mentality of the old boys’ club is that they have the

right to say and do what they like, regardless of how their behaviour marginalises those around them. Particular incidents really drive it home. These have left terrible, ugly and undeserved wounds on people outside the small minority of privileged, white, self-entitled exprivate schoolboys. This isn’t a piece of despair, rather a hopeful request: maybe I’m too idealistic, but dear ol’ col… We’re better than that.

Sorcha is a 20-year-old Arts undergraduate. She hails from the sunny coast of Sydney and has an interest in writing about the micropolitics of her decidedly nondescript existence. Marley Holloway-Clarke

MEDIEVAL MANNERS Zoe Grant

woke up one Saturday and despite my killer headache (which I could attribute to a night of heavy drinking), I suddenly understood why I detested chivalry. Chivalry was something that I had always considered suspect, but this was the first time I had been able to articulate precisely why. I spent the first few hours of that day lying in bed, explaining my argument to a pretend audience and consolidating my thoughts. Criticising chivalry is seen as ungrateful and manhating, but this is based on an understanding that chivalry and courtesy are synonymous. They are not. Chivalry is gendered. Chivalrous acts are only performed by men for women, whereas courteous acts can be performed by anyone for anyone. Chivalrous actions imply incapability. To go out of one’s way to perform an action for another who is already capable of it because this person is a woman is unnecessary and demeaning. Holding the door open as you leave because you see someone walking towards it is courteous and acceptable. Standing up to open the door for both men and women is unnecessary but acceptable. However, standing up to open a door for a woman but not a man demeans women and undermines their capability. It’s no surprise that the concept of chivalry is archaic. ‘Chivalry’ originally described a knight’s code of conduct during medieval times. To bring honour to themselves, knights were expected to behave nobly in battle and gallantly towards women, and to uphold class 26

differences. Existing in a society where strict gender roles were enforced, chivalrous behaviour was a means to maintain said honour through the subordination of women. Fast forward to the present and this concept has not completely disappeared, despite the advances we have made across many areas of our society. The assumption that women should be flattered by chivalrous behaviour does them a disservice. Defending chivalry as a romantic notion which promotes treating a woman ‘like a lady’ is an insult not just to the woman towards whom the behaviour is directed, but to women in general. To treat someone ‘like a lady’ by doing for her what she can do quite capably for herself allows a man to establish dominance over her and affirm his masculinity. The idea of chivalry is rooted in the patriarchal nature of our society and reinforces gender stereotypes. For this reason, it cannot possibly be flattering. I do not deny that courtesy is flattering, but not when it masquerades under the guise of ‘chivalry’.

Zoe is a PhD student at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. She has been a feminist since age 14 when she first saw Amanda Palmer’s hairy legs.

Jasmin Isobe

TW: sexual harassment

THE NEVER-ENDING STORY Natalie Hardwicke

t was a Thursday morning and I was wearing a bandage on my right wrist. I was relatively new to the team and I was still waiting for my ergonomic mouse to be issued by the IT department. My RSIridden wrist, along with the bags under my eyes, were the first parts of my body to remind me that I am actually ageing, despite the fact that I was only 23 when this incident occured. I had just logged into my computer and was reading through emails when my director walked into the office. He had to pass my desk to get to his, and said good morning as he walked past but stopped when he noticed my wrist. He smirked, leant over my desk and asked me – within earshot of about ten other people – “What happened to your wrist? Did you get a new boyfriend?” He winked at me, laughed at his own joke, and proceeded to walk to his desk, all before I had time to register what he had just said and react to it. The people who heard all of this looked at me with their mouths open, but no one said anything. We just continued on with our day like it was any other. In the role I had before joining this team, my desk was right outside the senior commissioner’s office. Every day I would get men visiting my desk, asking me to pass on a message to the commissioner or just stopping by for a friendly chat. A blonde, 23-yearold girl sitting outside the boss’ office must be his secretary, right? The funny thing was that I was a senior business analyst at the time and actually outranked some of the men who approached me. My female 28

director picked up on what was happening and we soon swapped desks with each other. Needless to say, male visitors to the latest person who sat outside the commissioner’s office were few and far between. These situations have not been uncommon throughout my career. One of my former colleagues, who was about ten years older than me, used to constantly chat to me on the instant messenger platform we had at work. The lines of communication had to stay open because we were working together on a project. However, one day he asked what kind of movies I was interested in. I told him that I liked character-driven movies. The next week I found an internal mail package on my desk with three burned DVDs inside. All of them had a movie title written on them in black ink. I asked my manager if he was familiar with any of the titles and he looked at me in shock. Apparently they were all well-known soft-core pornos. I didn’t know soft-core porn was a thing, let alone that there were popular and well-known movies within the genre. That same colleague would later try to press the emergency stop button in the lift we were riding in together, and to hug me goodbye after I announced my resignation (not related to a case of sexual harassment, but rather disengagement with the company as a whole). I have since moved cities for work and realised that weird and inappropriate colleagues will follow me wherever I go. I had a male boss who kept asking me

‘I have... realised that weird and inappropriate colleagues will follow me wherever I go.’

why I was single and would tell me that I was ‘really hot’. I had a colleague try to add me on Facebook, follow me on Instagram, and add me on LinkedIn. After I blocked him on all three, he would visit my desk every day to ask how I was going, tell me about his work, and ask me if I wanted to get a drink with him on the weekend. There was another guy who I was on a selection panel with as part of a recruitment process. After we had conducted the interviews and hired the successful candidate, he began to email me. He would ask me for coffee and say that it was related to the recruitment process – that we were required to conduct a review of how we ran the interviews. When I arrived at the meeting, our third panellist was conveniently unable to attend, and our meeting turned into this guy asking me what documentaries I liked to watch, if I was single, and whether I’d be interested in meeting his 13-year-old daughter next weekend. My experience with unwanted attention in the workplace is this: how you react and deal with it is what makes the difference. Most of the time, just telling the person that I found their approaches inappropriate or that they made me feel uncomfortable has been enough to stop their advances. In other situations, the Human Resources department has had to be involved to ‘monitor and assess’ the situation. The thing I find the most interesting about my experiences is that I did nothing to warrant the advances or comments of these men, other than be myself. I don’t consider myself a flirt. I’m laid back, 29

friendly and polite. Since when did being a genuine person open up the floodgates to inappropriate advances in the workplace? I’m now 27 years old, and since I joined the workforce at age 18 stories like these have only accumulated. The thing is, these stories should not exist. I feel like a reminder of boundaries, etiquette and situation would not go astray. If we spend a third of our lives at work, then our working environment should foster a supportive and respectful workplace culture.

Natalie will soon graduate with her Master of Publishing and Communications. She works as a writer and freelance consultant, specifically focusing on internal and employee communication within the workplace.

TW: domestic violence, sexual assault

THE INVISIBLE VICTIMS Samantha Lock

ust like any other warm evening in December, Susan, a 41-year-old mother of two, finished wrapping the last of the presents for Christmas morning and went to bed in her comfortable Toorak home, in Melbourne’s affluent south-east. Later that night, her husband came home drunk and raped her. Early the next morning while her children slept, Susan carefully arranged the presents under the tree, slipped a collection of Christmas carols into the CD player and, to the pleasant hum of festive tunes, prepared the family breakfast. In August of 1986, Susan met the man she would later marry. She was a gentle, mild-mannered girl. He was ten years her senior, sharp-witted with electrifying charm. They married quickly, just weeks after her eighteenth birthday. “It was just small things in the beginning,” Susan says. “He would speak in commands and threats and sometimes there would be an explosive argument over nothing where I’d be left in tears, wondering what I’d done wrong… I would ask myself, ‘Is this normal? This can’t be normal’, but somewhere down the line I just became completely lost.” “Some nights if I didn’t have dinner on the table in time he’d say, ‘I work sixty hours a week, you’re fucking useless.’ I would eat separately and in tears. I felt like I’d failed my family. I felt like I was worth nothing at all.” 30

The shame and guilt that pours from Susan’s face is palpable. It took her 29 years to leave. In May this year, with no job or money of her own, Susan finally left. She is staying in a friend’s spare room. Her boxes are piled high against the walls. For Susan, domestic violence didn’t show itself in rough punches or veiled bruises. Her abuse was of a more insidious kind. It was in the firm tone that told her to have dinner ready by seven that evening, and the fear of repercussions if it wasn’t. It was in the humiliation she experienced in front of her children, belittled and mocked for every error. It was all the times she was forced to cancel a night out with friends, until slowly the friends disappeared. It was in the manipulation that discouraged her from working, and then chastised her for not. It was the slow and deliberate draining of her selfconfidence and the desperate dependence that ensued. Most tellingly, it was in the gradual erosion and manipulation of her reality that convinced Susan that all of this was okay. This is what domestic violence can look like. It can be a string of shocking violations hidden beneath the veil of a forced smile and the unremarkable humdrum of daily life. The Victorian Department of Health and Human

Services’ Health Costs of Violence report found that one in five Australian women will experience some form of domestic violence in their lifetime. On the more extreme end of the scale, one woman will be murdered by her partner or former partner in Australia every week. According to the report, violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, or economic. In fact, it needn’t be ‘violent’ at all. Most incidents will go unreported. The women who do seek help will struggle to have their stories heard. And now, with tougher restrictions imposed upon government-funded domestic violence support, the struggle is even harder. Payment schemes such as Crisis Payment, Special Benefit, Parenting Payment and Income Support are touted as readily available options for women subjected to domestic abuse, but these aren’t always easy to access. Last week, Susan’s claim for a crisis payment was denied. The Department of Human Services, the national government agency responsible for delivering services and economic support to Australians experiencing hardship, valued her assets as ‘above the allowable limit’. Susan says the reality is very different. “I might seem wealthy on paper, but the reality is I can’t access it.” “I still don’t really know where I stand financially. If 31

I want to pay for legal advice I’ll go into debt. And until any settlement is reached, I can’t access anything.” Liana Buchanan, Executive Officer of the Federation of Community Legal Centres (Victoria), says, “A woman escaping economic and physical abuse has no idea what the household assets and debts are. She will struggle to get help because she just doesn’t know how much debt, assets or super there is.” Buchanan believes means-testing victims of domestic violence does not take into account the complexities of abuse and should not be the sole determinant of a woman’s access to support. The degree of risk to a woman’s safety, the risk of homelessness and the risk of mental illness associated with the abuse are often ignored by government agencies. Emily Owen, psychologist and social worker at St John of God Hospital and Therapy Centre, says domestic violence is not wealth discriminatory. “Financial abuse is one of the most powerful tactics an abuser can use to keep a woman trapped in an abusive relationship,” says Owen. 2015 Australian of the Year Rosie Batty, whose son was murdered by his father in 2014, believes limiting access to financial support simply puts more women at risk. “[Government departments] are so removed from reality,” Batty said on the ABC’s Q&A program this Jasmin Isobe

‘One cannot help but wonder if an awareness campaign amounts to nothing more than lip service...’

year. “Women cannot flee or run if they’re contending with financial stress.” The Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House’s 2011 Seeking Security report was the first of its kind in Australia to provide a comprehensive picture of the economic impact of domestic violence on victims. The report points to often overlooked financial burdens such as the cost of temporary accommodation, ongoing legal battles, and health problems related to the abuse that continue once a woman leaves the family home. Support from government agencies, independent and not-for-profit services are critical to helping women from all socioeconomic backgrounds become financially independent and secure. Recent announcements in the 2015 federal budget revealed harsh funding cuts to crucial frontline services for domestic violence prevention and support. Eligibility for payment support is subject to greater restrictions than before. Now, just one measure – financial hardship – determines a woman’s access to financial support. This means women such as Susan who don’t fit these narrow government definitions will continue to be ignored. Despite former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s oftcited commitment to stopping violence against women, his only action of significance was a proposed partially 32

funded $30 million domestic violence awareness campaign. One cannot help but wonder if an awareness campaign amounts to nothing more than lip service when the services that women need are underfunded and under-resourced. Faced with an uncertain financial future, Susan is now trying to find a job to cover her living expenses. Struggling to regain financial independence, she has been out of the workforce for over ten years –“Not by choice but because a job would have meant I had some kind of financial control, and that wasn’t tolerated.” On average, one woman is murdered by a partner or former partner in Australia every week. The allocation of a meagre $30 million* to domestic violence prevention versus $1.2 billion to fight terrorism seems disproportionate at best. If urgent action isn’t taken, the consequences will be felt far from the closed doors that silence domestic abuse.

*Since the writing of this article the Turnbull Government has announced a $100 million package to fund a Women’s Safety Program

Sophie Sun

TW: domestic violence

PORTRAIT OF AN ABUSER Yan Zhuang

e has hands rough from manual labour and eyes lined with crow’s feet. His teeth are nicotine-stained. You first meet him when you are seven. He’s your dad’s friend and you go to dinner in a cheap restaurant. There are no other children your age there. You read a book until you fall asleep at the table as the adults talk late into the night. He gets loud when he’s drunk and big with his gestures. Sweeps his arms wide and something crashes to the floor. He nearly overbalances in his chair. Everyone laughs. He’s been divorced once. He has a son older than you who you’ve never met. You go to his house to eat dinner once every few months: your family, the families of your dad’s friends, and him alone because he doesn’t have one. These are the people who will stand in for your extended family halfway across the world for the next decade of your life. He and your dad smoke at the table until the air is hazy. When you are twelve, you watch The Godfather after dinner. You pretend this is your mafia family. He teaches you how to eat a sea urchin when you are thirteen. You’d driven up to Byron Bay for the weekend and somewhere along the coast he and your dad decide they want to try their hand at fishing. Neither of them have ever fished before. They set off with rods and worms and come back with a bucket of sea urchins instead. He shows you how to slice one open, and tells you to mind the spikes when he hands it to you. Its inside is gooey and yellow. It tastes like the sea. He has strong opinions on politics, and America, and house prices, and so on. You are too young to understand most of it and boredom takes care of the rest, but he and your dad talk for hours whenever they get together, voices progressively louder the more they drink. He gets married when you are fourteen. His marriage is one of convenience, go the whispers amongst your dad’s friends. The way your dad tells it, he wanted someone to look after the house and he had enough money to seem attractive. And the woman who became his wife? Oh, she just wanted a way into the country. One time, he drives his car into a tree. It happens on an empty stretch of road in the dead of night after he’s been drinking. He waves off people’s concerns and says he’s done it before. He has a stack of fines to show for it and a well-honed knowledge of which streets the police patrol. He will do it again, and again. He subscribes to the belief in being in-your-face about wealth even if you’re not wealthy. As a wedding gift, he buys his wife a Louis Vuitton bag, one of the ones with ‘LV’ printed all over it, which either never go out of style or were never in style at all depending on who you ask. The first time you see them together is at a dinner celebrating their marriage with the rest of your dad’s friends. He drinks. She shows off her new bag. Someone runs out to buy a cake. Because you’re the youngest, you get the biggest piece. 34

‘His lips get loose when he’s drunk. That’s how you find out, in a roundabout way.’

He gets… well, you know how he gets when he’s drunk, the whispers go. Yeah, like… violent. Not violent, someone else hastens to say, just aggressive. Just aggressive, yeah. His wife works in some diner that pays under the table. She doesn’t speak enough English to hold a conversation and doesn’t bother to learn. He fusses over how you’ve grown every time he sees you and makes you stand back to back with your mum to see if you’re taller than her yet. When you eventually overtake her, he gives you some advice. Grow till you’re 170 centimetres. Taller is better, but any taller than that and you won’t be able to get a guy. He lives in an apartment where you can see the Sydney Opera House from the balcony. On New Year’s Eve, when you are fifteen, you all gather at his house to watch the 12 o’clock fireworks. His wife is working late that night, and by the time he goes to pick her up at her workplace at 11pm, he’s already halfway drunk. When they get back, you hear them before you see them, voices, indistinct, carrying up the stairs. As the door swings open, she is saying, half hidden from view, “Well, if you stop drinking so much–” “Stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” His voice is loud, and everyone quietens down. “I just think –” “I don’t give a damn what you think. You better stop talking, or I’ll make sure –” When they walk into their living room, everyone is talking again, and their arms are around each other. He squints a lot. He once joked that it makes him look rakish, but to be honest, it just makes him look like someone you don’t want to associate with. He gets busier with married life, with a wife who, according to him, demands too much. Your family gets busier too. You see him less often. Once every few months turns into once a year, turns into nothing at all. His lips get loose when he’s drunk. That’s how you find out, in a roundabout way. He tells his friend when they’re drinking together, who tells your dad, who tells your mum, who tells you. It only happens because you’re asking about something else. I don’t think it’s a good idea, she says. You know how he is with his wife. How he sometimes gets… aggressive. You’re eighteen, and old enough to know what it means. He tells his wife once when she tries to call the police that she’ll be dead before they arrive. Eventually he and your dad drift apart. Different aspirations, your dad says. He drinks too much when he gets together with your dad’s friends. That’s why his wife never liked us, your dad says when your family goes to dinner at someone else’s house. Someone else speaks up. And he gets kinda… aggressive, sometimes, when he gets drunk. Yeah, the general consensus is. But still, everyone scoffs, it’s stupid that she didn’t like us just because of that. Just making judgements without reason, that woman. 35

TW: domestic violence

8 LIES I TOLD MYSELF

Erika Lucciola

ou have probably read at least one article in your life about abusive relationships. Many are stories of visible scars, 000 calls, hospitals and fear. Other relationships are just as coercive and imprisoning, but there aren’t bruises, black eyes, or clumsy falls from the stairs. These are abusive, but under the skin, where nobody can see the scars. In any case, they are there. When you look at yourself in the mirror, what you see is only the shadow of whom you used to be. And still you deny it; you say to yourself, “if there is no blood, not a bruise or scar, I am not in an abusive relationship”. But you are wrong. I was in a verbally and psychologically abusive relationship for almost two years. I beat myself up most of the time, I cried my eyes out, I lost self-confidence and self-esteem. It wasn’t always bad; even now I save some good memories. They may be stored in a little dark corner of my mind, but I know that they are real, that they happened. Because that’s exactly how he used to keep me tied to him. Those good moments were the reason I didn’t want to give up on him. But those same moments are now hazed by the insults, the tears, the grudges, and that unbearable feeling that I was to blame for all that was wrong in his life. So why didn’t I walk away from such a toxic relationship? I guess I never really realised how poisonous it was until I hit rock bottom. These are eight sweet lies I kept telling myself, to convince myself that my relationship was exactly what I wanted it to be. 1. Violence is physical. If it’s not physical, it’s not violence at all. Bullshit. Too often, verbal and psychological violence is not recognised. While you can cope with words like stupid and idiot, it becomes much harder to deal with names like slut, asshole, idle, or worthless. Words are powerful weapons; they can be as sharp as knives and as subtle as poison. When you start silently taking small doses of insults, you somehow become less offended by them over time, and you also think you become immune to their harshness. But you don’t. In fact, you start believing what you are told because, in your head, there must be a reason for them to say it. Your perception of the world around you changes and it doesn’t matter how strong your personality is – if you find the person 36

who can shake your self-confidence you are likely to fall into the trap. The wellbeing of a relationship is based on reciprocal respect, which depends on all the little things; words are significant enough to become a serious issue. 2. They say they are sorry and that they won’t do it again Apologies will come with promises: “I won’t do it anymore.” “I didn’t mean what I said. If you don’t make me this angry, I swear it won’t happen again.” “I am sorry. I know that only you can change me; if you can’t, nobody can.” If you hear one of these phrases more than once, it means that their promises will never be followed by action. They need those words to buy themselves some time to make you trust them again. And sometimes they truly believe they can change, but they won’t even try. 3. Love comes with drama. If you are in your early twenties, you probably believe that true love should be painful, complicated and messy, or else it means a lack of passion and desire. You probably think all the other couples are missing out. Unfortunately, you’re the one missing out, and not just on the life that you could have with a person who makes you happy every day, but on all the things you don’t have the time or energy for because of your Cathy-and-Heathcliff relationship. Cut out the self-made drama; life is going to give you enough hassles to feed your love with. 4. I am responsible for the person they choose to be. When you start dating someone, you usually know what you are looking for in a relationship. And that person knows it too, so they will try to be as good as you want them to be, to become the perfect partner, to get through your walls, so that at some point you will if the prince/princess turns into an ogre (not of the Shrek variety), you will believe it is somehow your fault. They convince you that if they hurt you it is not out of their own willingness; it is necessary to teach you

A誰sha Trambas

‘You didn’t fail this relationship, this relationship failed you.’ something. And you start listening to them – believing them – because, hey, they love you, that’s why they lose their mind sometimes. It’s not because they are manipulative and emotionally unstable, but because their passion is so ardent that they go nuts from time to time. They say you should be grateful for that because it means they care. When a relationship ends, both sides have to claim some responsibility. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up trying to understand why the person you love blames you for everything that is wrong in their life. If they can’t admit their own mistakes and shortcomings, what is wrong with them might not concern you at all. 5. Jealousy means love. Even though a bit of jealousy can be good and spice up your relationship from time to time, it can become constant, persistent and blind, growing like a cancer on your relationship over time, making you sick. Just a simple delayed reply to a message can turn ‘Who you were with? What were you doing?’ into verbal abuse, leaving you with the idea that you are not good enough to be trusted. If your partner becomes obsessive, suffocating, and irrational, that’s not love: that’s possession. Don’t let anybody objectify you. You are the only master of yourself. 6. If they say you are not destined for greatness, there must be a reason. I have always been very self-confident; I have always known what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. I am a supportive partner, always ready to hold your hand if you fall behind, so I was very surprised when the person who was supposed to support me the most told me to redefine my goals and expectations, essentially telling me to fly lower. It didn’t matter how good I was at something or how hard I found it to get where I was, he always made me feel that if he had wanted to, he could have done it better, sooner, and effortlessly. Try your best and be proud of it, even if you don’t succeed. The person who truly loves you will cheer for your achievements and understand your failures.

7. It’s worth it for the good moments. These make it the hardest. Because for what other reason on earth would you stay in an abusive relationship? Of course it can’t be all bad. They cry, apologise, promise it will never happen again and they make love to you the sweetest way they can. They take you out for dinner, they make you laugh, they make plans for the future and you feel happy again. You think you’ve made it – that it won’t happen again. But it will. It’s not your responsibility to make them a decent person: you are not a saviour, a nurse or Mother Teresa. You don’t have to sacrifice your life in an attempt to make theirs better. Unfortunately, if they don’t seek change, there is little you can do. Save your good memories, though; it’s still love you sent out and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. 8. To break up means to give up. Ending my relationship was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. While many people may think that it is easy and freeing, it is actually terrifying. Once you have started doubting yourself and relying on just one person, admitting that your big love story was a failure isn’t easy. But what you still don’t know is that the failure isn’t on you. You are not giving up on your love, on your partner or on the days, months or years you have spent working so hard on your relationship. You did all you could, you put your heart out there and got hurt. You didn’t fail this relationship, this relationship failed you. It doesn’t deserve you, so it’s time to walk away. Your friends and family are tired of seeing you diminishing yourself, crying and being miserable. They still hug you when you need it but they feel powerless. What you need to know is that they are there for you and they are still going to be there when you find your way out. But you have to be the one willing to end the relationship and stop the abuse. There is something that abusive relationships can teach you like nothing else can. Sharply, painfully, and brutally, they make you realise what kind of relationship you don’t want, and the kind of person you don’t ever want to turn into again. Just remember, there is someone out there who is more important and deserves all your time, effort and love: you.

TW: domestic violence, sexual assault

HANDS Madeline Gibson What does a hand mean to you? Have a look at your hands The way they move The wrinkles on your palms How tenderly they encounter the world Now clench into a fist Raise only your middle finger Now raise all your fingers, strong And press your palm to the horizon. What does a hand mean to you? I have ten fingers and they are not enough To count the young women I know Who have felt the dark hand of rape And yet my youthful hands have only seen Nineteen years of this world. Look at your hand At the creases on your skin Like imprints from every time You have caressed another Skin on skin Fiery lust and gentle love

Now look at your hands. They hold more than just your books today Or your beer tonight They hold the power To inflict pain or pleasure Please do not confuse the two, For your pleasure could be her pain And those hands never go away They linger in her dreams From the darkness they creep in They take hold of what was once sensual And remind her That she has no control over her very skin. My hands are tired Of wiping the tears off young girls’ faces Who have felt the coercive hands Of rape and sexual assault And I can no longer look at them and tell them truthfully that they will be okay. What does a hand mean to you?

Have you ever touched someone And made them cower Or tell you ‘no, stop’ Have their hand pull at yours Or push at your body

I look at her hands Held against her eyes pulling at the tears that come down her face as if they came directly from her internal organs Each one tugging at her insides, agonisingly

Because I may not be able to count On my fingers those girls I know But neither the boys whose hands were Uninvited Against their tense and fearful skin.

One day, I tell her One day this will make you stronger And although this pain you feel cannot be extinguished It does not need to be You can turn all your sorrow and all your anger into power And with that power you can ﬁght Then maybe one day, you can stop someone from feeling what you feel now. What does a hand mean to you?

Madeline is studying Psychology, practises Buddhism, and aspires to take down the patriarchy. Marley Holloway-Clarke

TW: sexual harassment

MOTH Olivia Morcom Like moths we are drawn to the light. For in light places, The bad things only happen in your mind. The world is not that scary They say.

Like moths we are drawn to the light Because here nothing can happen But still they look And in them you see mammalian maleness Following you into the fluorescent lights of a midday shop a hulking bloodshot shadow where no shadows should be cast.

Look but do not touch And yet something is still touched in the looking. Some private place is violated As the film that separates you From the outside world Is penetrated. Torn.

Some are snatched away. Led with words Of distress, of kindness A play on compassion as artful as the lure of the lyrebird Or perhaps a beautiful predator That only shows its true colours at the eleventh hour

Look but do not touch In his right hand, he held a book of prayer And some coloured beads That danced with the movement of psalm and tram And in his eyes he held my body. A violation of faith perhaps, or a loophole found somewhere between the virgin and the sacrificial lamb. He clambered through this loophole and followed me As I searched for recognition or help In the faces of strangers, A cornered creature pursued By the decaying bastion of A Man of God.

But for the rest of us The lucky ones We run from streetlight to streetlight In a game of chasey that we pray has no end.

Look but do not touch. A licence to stare unashamedly burnt like a cattle brand Into the skin of my upper thigh, on the swell of my breasts Looking doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hurt. It wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t put you in jail.

Liv is busy supervising kids for money while she completes her BA. Keen to do something more useful than finding multiple ways to arrange her pot plants, she will begin her training as an English teacher next year.

Kitty Chrystal

BATHROOM PRELUDES Isobel D’Cruz Barnes

middle-aged woman sits in a nightie on the ledge of a bathtub, makeup half-done and hands clasped in lap.

Tess: When Vincent and I bumped into Sally Robertson at Safeway last night and she asked me if I remembered John Townsend, I very well nearly told her that while I wouldn’t know him from a bar of soap, I would never forget the suffocating scent of his mother’s air freshener from down on their bathroom floor whilst I vomited, but instead I said: “Oh, vaguely. I’m sure his face would come rushing back if I saw him in the flesh.” What I didn’t and couldn’t tell Sally was that while our high school parties were no doubt unforgettable for some and while John was truly great for always having us over and all, all I had left of those days were my private realisations. What I didn’t and couldn’t tell Sally was that somewhere in the grimy crevices of John Townsend’s mother’s bathroom tiles must remain my first true moments of introspection. All those nights of reckless abandon that I spent drinking enough so as to be able to think unselfconsciously, gazing at myself in the cabinet mirror, not understanding why I couldn’t exist outside without feeling like a sort of imposter, wondering why it was seemingly only here that I could reflect, despite being amongst friends. I did not tell these things to Sally, and certainly have never expressed such sentiments to Vincent. I have never told Vincent that inserting a tampon in a toilet stall at Luxor Lounge is today still my most striking confrontation with loneliness. I have never told him that matted through Belinda Wayson’s bathroom rug must surely be some skerrick of my virginity, that her mirror is lined with my 16-year-old reflection wondering if it was beautiful, but that I trust Belinda’s 16-year-old self remains there too. Vincent 42

is unaware of the fact that any reason I have to be in the bathroom is secondary always to a desperate need for a moment of selfhood. Vincent is ignorant of the feeling of not belonging to a space, and ignorant that he is a force behind that phenomenon. He does not know that I practise a sacred ritual with a mascara wand and an eyeliner pencil before heading out for the night, that staring into my unrecognisable face I can ask myself why I want to look attractive tonight more so than yesterday or tomorrow night and why my nose is so damn crooked and why I want to sleep with Andrew Selinger so much even though I have complete faith in him to tell Vincent and ruin everything. Vincent merely scoffs at my dithering. He complains that my makeup takes too long to do. My makeup takes five minutes but sometimes I sit on this bathtub ledge and pretend I am coming to all my conclusions for the first time. Vincent does not understand that bathrooms are preparatory places, not just for peeing and fucking and spewing, but the facilitators of pep talks, contemplation, debriefs, confrontation, that bathrooms in bars are a communal space where women meet unintentionally but with such familiarity. That we, after saying excuse me, sorry, beg your pardon could I just squeeze past thank you whilst walking through the crowd burst through the toilet doors. We push for mirror space, to get to the sinks, to get to the hand towels, fall into each other blindly and stupidly, fumble in bags, congregating in front of the mirror, watching each other’s sacraments, taking note, looking away, not wanting to impose but acknowledging that this space is shared and sacred, sizing each other up out of habit anyway, taking precautions not to look judgemental, taking measures to look intimidating, taking up as much space as possible, speaking loudly of terrible boyfriends and girlfriends and mothers and teachers and crushing insecurities, as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder applying

lipstick because we’re self-conscious or because it’s too noisy outside or both or one causing the other, shoulder-to-shoulder, temporarily united in a universal act so mundane but somehow still necessary to our livelihoods, asking each other, “Is there lipstick on my teeth?” “Where’d you get your skirt?” “I love your hair.” “Sorry, excuse me, but does this look bad?” “You okay darl?” “Does that guy outside seem like a creep to you?” Finally I find myself in a space where my questions can be answered, uninterrupted, where I can look down at my scuffed boots with my tired underwear around my ankles and contemplate the stretched cotton and fake lace with polyester threads unravelling, contemplate the last time I felt appealing, the last time I was conventionally attractive, the last time I had desires, what those desires were, are, who I can talk to them about, and the bathroom is certainly the best place, outside the scrutiny is unbearable, but here, nobody cares and everyone understands. Now, the bathroom so necessary for boosting our morale when we say something stupid or simply say too much or too many men have asked for a lighter, a number, attention; when Vincent says something cruel in front of our friends; when Vincent says nothing and my voice is too loud; when I can’t stay awake so I take a Dexedrine, when I don’t want Andrew to get ideas so I leave to look uninterested and he doesn’t follow so I get disappointed and maybe tell a woman I’ve never met before about it, when I need to remind myself that I’m real before I become permanently stuck in emotional abstraction, mull over the last twenty years of marriage in the cubicle, splash my face with water, do my ritual all over again, swiping my lashes up and to the side, scrubbing my lipstick off and reapplying 43

it, not feeling that same sense of voyeurism from the women at the sink that I feel on the outside, praying to no one that one day I will feel as comfortable as this in a place that’s not a badly ventilated box made of tiles. In my own house it is no different. I do my rituals at the mirror, stare down into the sink, reminisce on the bathtub ledge, inspect my shoes drunkenly on the toilet and try to assess how long is abnormally long to be in this room when guests are over. I can hear Vincent climbing the stairs, his shoes are on, I expect he’s dressed, ready to go, already complaining about how long I take despite the fact I’m not within earshot, I don’t have to hear it for myself to know he’s saying, “For Christ’s sake, Tess.” Insistent rapping on bathroom door. Tess stretches and leans back. Tess: I think I’m sick, Vince. I think this will be dreadful. You’ll enjoy it more if I stay here. You know me; I’ll be awful company in this state. Go on, you’ll enjoy it more. Just don’t wake me when you come home. Silence. Footsteps descending stairs.

Isobel is a music student and writer who seeks to combine her creative pursuits with feminist ideology. As a member of both communities, the inclusion and representation of LGBTQIA+ individuals and WOC is integral to her work. Jasmin Isobe

SLUT SHAMED Matilda Brown

was very in touch with my desires from quite a young age. I loved to self-evaluate and long felt I had a strong connection with my mind; everything I sought or experienced felt in line with who I was as a human being. Though my upbringing was not one of grand trial and tragedy, I adapted to many tough situations that made me mature quicker than most of my peers. At the time, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take much notice of it, but I imagine I was considered very odd for my age; my childhood was shortened by a longing for â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;adultâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; life and a desire to manifest what I was dreaming of, which was to become sexually active. There was never quite a moment where the penny dropped, more of a very gradual understanding of feelings that had been present within me for some time. To be sexually inclined is for some extremely confronting, provoking feelings of fear and insecurity, but for me it was a serene space that I loved and wanted to nurture. My naturally curious mind craved

more knowledge about sex, so it only seemed a sensible stepping stone when I began to explore the sexual world around me. I was one of the first in my year level to have a boyfriend, and, to my surprise, it isolated me more than I would have thought. My friends no longer related to me, I suppose, and my discussion of sexual endeavours made them more and more uncomfortable. Slowly but surely, I was being judged; despite my excitement and my sense of inner fulfilment, my friends and close acquaintances still treated me as if I had done something wrong. Nothing really changed from that point onward. I was a confident girl, I had good grades, good friends, and I loved getting involved in music and sport. But time and time again, I was scrutinised by those around me because of my openness to sex. When a friend of ten years messaged me, finally wanting to know about my sexual experiences, I remember being so thrilled

that someone close to me was taking an interest in what I was passionate about. I was so eager to share with her the things I had learned. But the next day I was humiliated as we sat around our table at lunch. In shock, I realised my friend had taken a screenshot of our conversation. The group began to make fun of me, and I sat in horrified silence as they laughed in my face and yelled snarky jokes, reading out my comments and making a mockery of my positive attitude toward sex. I had gained a reputation for being the sexual girl of the group, but I thought my friends understood and accepted this natural part of my personality. I was never ashamed of it, but I sure as hell was treated like I should have been. My friends, my siblings, and my peers all took part in this shaming. I was made to feel like an outcast, and whether these people realised it or not, they were saying that I didn’t have a choice. They were saying that I wasn’t permitted to explore (or even have) sex, that the way I was, was wrong. 45

While we have all outgrown our teenage years and moved on from the drama of high school, I still cringe every time I hear the word ‘slut’ or anything of the like. I hear it from empowered women and so-called feminists, from adults and kids in primary school. I hear it from boys and men and people who say they fight for equality. I hear the word, and shivers provoked by a grotesque patriarchy tingle through my eardrums. We have the right to choose how we act on our sexuality. We don’t have to conform to one particular opinion. End slut-shaming.

A creative at heart, Matilda’s appreciation of personal expression is what led her to become passionate about women’s empowerment. Chanel Phan

TW: assault, homicide, human trafficking, sexual assault

DUST Mishma Kumar The weather forecast for Delhi today is 42 degrees and Dust. I grew up with the weather being 42 and sunny, or 42 and windy, I have never had to deal with 42 and dust!

The dust cannot close their eyes when a man is killed, Nor can they strike when Another woman’s blood is spilled. They have front row seats to brutal violence; They do not understand how people can remain so silent When others fall like the fists of a drunk or the tears of a eunuch.

I am always amazed at how often I have to shower, Just to wash off the dust of this city. Even when it rains, The dust remains a constant power, Through the monsoon and through the summer.

The only noise, now, Is the aftermath silence. Do not tell them that this is better; Their night vision is much clearer than yours. They can see the horrors that lurk in the dark, Ready to fight the night wars.

It’s always in the shower That I experience my most profound thoughts of life. Today I ponder all the sights That must make those tiny dust molecules cry. Are they envious of me eating? Is that why they settle in and around my mouth, To share my meal? They must laugh when someone trips and falls on the stairs at Jahangirpuri; I swear you can almost hear them cheering when a baby first crawls, And the rumble of their warble when a boy learns to brawl.

We turn away so readily from what disgusts us, until we do not notice, Yet somewhere in the old dusty archives of our subconscious, We notice that there is something fundamentally wrong With a ten-year-old being blind – Begging for money, a chance, a life, someone dear. But only the dust listens to his fears. I have my most profound thoughts in the shower, Washing away the dust. Again.

Do you think they scream When they see another girl getting raped? The life force drained out of her as they watch on With nothing but hate. Or do they remain stoic as another child gets crushed, The pleas and cries of the underprivileged lost in the daily rush.

But at this moment I do not hate the dust of this city; They are the silent keepers of dreams and ambitions. And at night, when there is no one else to hear your tribulations, It is the dust that keeps you company and reminds you that You are God’s most loved creation.

They cannot exact revenge. I swear I hear them weep As another girl gets trafficked, Her heart thumping with the same beat of the wind As it scatters her tears. She will not know love today; And she can only cuddle her fears.

Mishma is currently studying while working as a Drug and Alcohol Counsellor. When she isn’t volunteering or coaching tennis, Mishma enjoys inventing healthy recipes and poetry writing.

Michelle Simpson-Hay

PENANCE

Simone Pakavakis

he hadn’t meant to do it. That’s what she kept telling herself. These things happen; nobody would find out. Alice peered into the mirror, her eyes straining through steam, soft fingerprint stains and smudges of flicked toothpaste. She wasn’t focusing her attention on the pimples growing on her forehead – not this time. It was her lips that needed inspection. Alice examined them closely and felt them with her forefinger. They were dry, cracked. The heat today had been bewildering; sweat patches had started under the arms of her school dress and spread so they were hard to conceal. Alice felt a dry flake of skin on her bottom lip and peeled it off. She watched it flutter down into the sink until she could not distinguish it beside the bold whiteness of the basin. Nobody would find out. Papa would not find out. Alice wrapped a clean white towel around her naked body, and, in doing so, caught her own eye in the reflection. What she had done was wrong, very wrong, but even Alice could not deny that this was exciting. Such excitement – as long as she was careful that it was kept secret – was warranted. Girls remember these things forever. She exhaled. Nobody would find out. Alice looked back into the mirror. She made sure, twice sure, that she looked calm and normal and plain. The bathroom was at the end of the hallway. Ma was cooking and listening to the wireless – she could hear it from here, something about King George VI, him dying, or something – and Papa was having a smoke. Alice peeped out from behind the door before dashing across the floorboards. She did not dare to glance at the door of her parents’ bedroom, slightly ajar, or at the miniature crucifix on the end table. Alice shivered. Droplets of water fell from her hair and trickled down her neck. Ma always called Alice for dinner at seven o’clock. Routine, Papa said, is essential for achieving grace in life. Alice thought that variety was also important, but a girl knows better than to question her papa. Alice always kept one eye on the clock, the little one that sat beside one-eared Rabbit, and the other on her homework. Sometimes, Papa would poke his head in and say, There’s my good girl. It was lucky that Papa did not enter Alice’s room that night. She was not studying. She was not a good girl. Alice sat in the stifling heat, hair damp, her schoolbag still zipped up. She should have opened her bedroom window; she was 13, tall enough to reach it now. At 6:55pm, Alice was writing in her notebook about 48

the softness of Dave’s lips. She couldn’t help thinking about it, all of it. After the kiss, Dave’s smile had been so big. Alice paused. What about God? You can’t hide anything from Him, even if you want to really badly. That’s what Papa said. She’d tried to stop him cursing at Ma once. Be careful, because He’s listening. ‘Course He is, Alice! He knows the shithole we’re in. For Christ’s Sake, he knew it when we were in the dugout, I’ll tell you that much. Papa’s eyes were bloodshot. They always were when he talked about Berlin. Alice, give us some fucking space and go to your room. God would know about Dave, too. He would know that she’d done a bad thing that felt nice, a thing you weren’t supposed to do. Alice! Papa’s voice bounced off the hallway walls and knocked her backwards. You’re late! Alice deserted the notebook and rushed to the kitchen. Her palms were sweaty. A metal fork clanged against the wooden table. Papa crossed his arms. Weren’t white lies okay? She hadn’t meant to do it, so nobody need find out. Papa closed his eyes and said Grace. Then: pass the tomato sauce. Alice stared intently at her fork as she lifted it to her mouth. She delivered the potato mash onto her tongue and swallowed. It was thick, lumpy. She reached for the salt grinder, but it wouldn’t turn, it was too tight. Alice? She nearly spat the sausage from her mouth. Could he know? She had only told one person; Rita was her best friend. Alice, I said, how was your day? Papa lowered his cutlery. Ma stared, too. What if Rita had told her father? What if Rita’s father had seen Papa at the shops? They were mates. They were in the war together. Alice inhaled, summoning herself to be calm and normal and plain. Voice shaking, she said, “Um, it was fine, it was normal, I guess.” Papa lifted his chin. That’s good then. It was clear to Alice what she must do. Escaping the kitchen and Papa’s gaze, Alice sat cross-legged in bed. All was black but a round shadow, flickering. She crossed her arms over her chest, her heart, and squeezed her shoulders. Her voice was merely a whisper. Alice said she was very, very sorry. She said she would never do it again. Never even think of it. She promised Him that she would make her Papa and Ma happy from now on. She promised she would wake up in the morning and be a new person, a good person. When she had finished, Alice tasted salty tears on her tongue.

**** “Wake up, Alice dear.” Ma’s voice was calm, but not gentle. Alice felt her mother eyeing her. But when she opened her eyes, Ma was gone. It took Alice several minutes before she remembered Dave and the kiss and Papa and Him and the unofficial confession. Her lips were dry, cracked. She felt a hard piece of skin on her bottom lip and didn’t peel it off. Alice sat upright and pulled the white sheet over. A small stain protruded from underneath. What in God’s name... Alice gaped. It was deep red, nearly brown. She glanced downwards. Spots of the same maroon dotted her nightdress. She felt a strange wet sensation on her thigh, patted it with her forefinger. Blood.

Divine Retribution. That’s what it must be. He hadn’t pardoned her, how could she have expected Him to? Alice bit her lip so hard that it hurt. She should face Papa. She should run away. Alice took one-eared Rabbit off the shelf, pulled him into her arms and squeezed.

Simone is in her final semester of a BA, majoring in Politics and Media and Communications. An aspiring primary school teacher, her passions include creative writing and feminism. Michelle Simpson-Hay

SONNET 1.3 (Your sweet nothings and gold rings don’t mean a thing to me) Hayley Franklin I thought you liked the way my hair fell down And touched my skin like rain after drought. In love’s deep pool I dreamt that we might drown ‘Cause with a golden ring you had me caught. I thought you liked the flare of my short skirt That skimmed horizons far and touched the sun. You told me that just one dance wouldn’t hurt And with one final bow it seemed you’d won. But when the dark pulled my hem down to force Me home and hide me there, I found that you Had left your coat, car keys and Trojan horse Behind. I drove your shuddering Mustang to Our lost love’s pool and drowned your horse right there. I kept your coat though ‘cause it suits my hair.

Hayley is a 20-year-old creative writing student from Melbourne. She likes to make films, write poems and sleep late while her obese cat slowly crushes her.

TW: depression, self-harm, surgical procedures

UNEXPECTING Caitlin McGregor

’m not into post-coital cuddling. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to one-night-stands, that’s not part of the deal. So I extricate myself from the arms of the sleeping person in my bed, grab the bourbon bottle that I keep in my bedside table, and sit on the sill of the open window of my college room with my legs dangling in the night air, two storeys up from the footpath on Royal Parade. In two years from now, I’ll be diagnosed with dysthymia – a type of chronic depression – along with ‘major depressive episodes’. I don’t know any of the technical jargon yet, but I do already know that I’ve been depressed for a long time. A few years ago, after a handful of fruitless attempts at counselling, I started to self-medicate with alcohol. But now I’ve moved away from my hometown and am finally finding my feet, I feel myself getting better. My high school years are just starting to blur into tangled memories of self-hatred, self-harm, bitterness and anger and now that I’ve finally moved to Melbourne, I’m going to box all that shit up and never look at it again. I’ve known for years that this is what I wanted. Maybe not to have semi-strangers drooling on my pillowcase while I run out of whiskey, exactly, but in a way I guess it’s pretty representative of the student life I’d coveted. Meeting different things, doing different people. I think of some people from my high school who are already engaged, pregnant, buying houses, and I’m amazed that anyone would ever want to be tied down like that. The idea of ever getting married or having children is ridiculous to me. How could cooking family dinners and wiping shit off bums be worth sacrificing the luxury of spontaneity, the excitement of not knowing what was going to happen next? I drink the last of the American Honey and climb slowly back through the window, gripping the window frame tightly; for all my nonchalant leg swinging, I’m deathly afraid of heights. “I haven’t had my period for about eight weeks.” Mum looked at me over our cheese and ciders with her eyebrows raised, and I grinned and shrugged. “It’ll be right. It’s never been regular.” I put the jar of capers I’d been eating out of onto the table and changed the subject. After a few minutes I reached for the capers again, and was astonished to see that the jar was empty. 52

“Oh, gross, look,” I said to Mum. “I’ve eaten a whole jar of capers.” Part of being pregnant for the first time is going to an antenatal breastfeeding information session, which is nurse speak for ‘boob class’. You sit in a semi-circle with other big-bellied women and are given a creepy doll, a lecture, and one of those squishy boob balls that adolescent boys buy each other from novelty stores. All the other mums-to-be held their dolls and third boobs confidently and said strange things I didn’t understand, like “jussbordahows” and “hubbeekenchangethenappieshaha”. I zoned in and out of conversations that either bored me or went over my head, trying to focus on where to put my plastic baby’s lower arm while I pushed the boob ball into its mouth. I felt like a girl playing with a doll in a room of fully-grown proper mothers. I half-expected someone to come in and tell me, “Put those down! You’re not supposed to be playing with those. This isn’t even your class, you’re supposed to be at your Anthropology tute!” But no one did. I left feeling small, inadequate and a little bit ridiculous. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone at college that I was pregnant. Alone in my room, I cried into endless bags of salt and vinegar chips and tried to convince Dylan Moran of the depths of my depression by refusing to laugh at YouTube videos of his stand-up routines. But when I was back in the throng of college life, my performance was Oscar-worthy. I cracked as many bad jokes as ever. People believed my vague ‘healthrelated’ reasons for giving up alcohol. I remember dropping character only once: a girl at my dinner table went on a passionate and lengthy rant about how “getting pregnant at this age would be like literally the worst thing ever! It would screw you up for life unless you got rid of it!” The irony appealed to my black humour. Once I got my breath back, I tried to explain away my convulsions of laughter, but I think everyone at the table was still a little mystified. That semester, our college was performing Pygmalion. The wildness and free-spirited nature of Eliza Doolittle had always appealed to me. I had auditioned (prepregnancy), and got the part. As rehearsals wore on, my costumes kept having to be altered. I was growing out of Eliza Doolittle’s clothes.

“But Caitlin, why didn’t you just have an abortion?” The news of my pregnancy had finally whispered its way through college. One of my more blunt friends had asked the question that I’m sure many others wanted to: why on earth was an outspokenly pro-choice feminist willingly carrying a five-month-old foetus around in her belly? I didn’t know how to answer that question then. I didn’t know how to explain that when the pregnancy test went positive, even as I’d collapsed, struggling to breathe through the shock and terror, I also had an immediate gut feeling that this was something I wanted to do. That this was going to be a little person I wanted to meet, an adventure I wanted to have. I didn’t know then how to justify making such a huge decision based on nothing but a gut feeling. But now I know that there are some decisions so big, you can’t possibly base them on anything else. When my obstetrician said, “Pass me the scissors, I’m going to do an episiotomy,” I remembered what it meant even through the haze of pethidine and exhaustion of nearly 22 hours labour. “Holy shit, Mum,” I’d called out over my laptop months earlier. “Some people get their vaginas cut open so the baby can fit through!” Mum said something darkly flippant, which is often her way of brushing off serious conversations, and somehow I’d still managed 53

to hold onto enough of my won’t-happen-to-me invincibility complex to be able to laugh. It was lucky that Oscar was only a couple of days old when the midwife cheerfully asked if I’d had an “epizzy”; he was the only throwable thing within my reach, and if I’d suffered a few more weeks of sleepless nights I reckon I would have considered throwing him at her. You can’t nickname 50 million stitches and the inability to sit down. The thing about parenting and boxed-up depression is that they’re incompatible. Every time I saw a nappy ad on TV during the first months of Oscar’s life, I wanted to write furious letters to Huggies. Why were all the mothers and babies wearing immaculate pastels and cooing at each other over relaxing background music? In reality, loving a baby is a brutal experience. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, but it didn’t gently whisk my breath away. It knocked it out of me by force, and the weight of the responsibility made me question everything I believed and was. I was exhausted, my nipples were cracked, and every time I had to defecate it felt like giving birth all over again. I wasn’t in the mood for soul searching. But it seemed like I didn’t have a choice; my mind made the executive decision that it was time for a spring clean, and started dredging up all sorts of emotions and memories that I didn’t know how to deal with. Kitty Chrystal

(“Caitlin? This bottle of pressurised anger? What do you want done with that?” “I don’t know, just put it back, don’t open - ah, Jesus.”) I was living with my parents and siblings, all of us trying to figure out how to manage me being a daughter, a sister and a mother all under the same roof. Aside from the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing, I would never have got any sleep if I was living on my own; for the first six months of Oscar’s life, I attached a pump to my breasts every three hours because Oscar couldn’t breastfeed, and I wanted him to get the health benefits of breastmilk. I needed Mum’s help, but often resented my lack of independence and saw it as evidence that I wasn’t a good enough mother. Due to the stress, the atmosphere between my parents and I was often tense. I was having panic attacks with Oscar in my arms at 2am. Once he was finally asleep in his cot I would collapse, doubled over with emotional pain that seemed physical. By the time Oscar was nine months old, we had bonded really well; he and I were very close. So close that I couldn’t bear to let him cry, even if the alternative was carrying him around all night. I needed help with his sleeping routine, and I felt that if I could get that sorted out my mental health would pick up again. We went to sleep school. It’s not that different from boob class, I guess, except this time it’s a circle of crazed, sleep-deprived mothers and you stay for a week instead of just for the afternoon. On the second day of sleep school, I had a breakdown. It’s rare for me to cry in front of strangers, but I lost control of my emotions and wept into the awful reheated pasta bake I was supposed to be eating for dinner. “Do you think that maybe your expectations were a little high, Caitlin? He was never going to be sleeping through by the second day.” I shook my head at the sleep school lady. “It’s not about expecting anything. I’m like this all the time! I’m so tired! I never sleep! I! Never! Sleep!” The sleep school lady sent me to their resident psychologist, who referred me to a psychiatrist closer to home. About five months later, I was diagnosed with depression and finally started to get proper treatment. I have burnt the pasta sauce. I can’t find my phone. And now, Oscar has pooed all over the carpet. “Oscar,” I say through clenched teeth to the poopcovered one-year-old, “I am not cut out for this.” He laughs, and I instantly feel a little sheepish that he saw the funny side before I did. Before I had Oscar, I always thought of life with children as beige. A boring mixture of vomit, faeces and relentless routine. Life with Oscar is a lot of

things, but it’s definitely not beige. He’s grown into a mischievous one-year-old with a precocious sense of humour and a sultana addiction, and is a fantastic little companion. And, like most children, he has a contagious worldview. Dirt is no longer just for walking on, it’s for playing in. The supermarket aisle is for dancing, not for shopping. And my bank card isn’t just for purchasing groceries; it’s also a piece of plastic you can offer to strangers in return for laughter and momentary friendship. Sometimes this worldview leads to fun, other times it just leads to being dirty/embarrassed/at risk of having my bank card stolen. But I’m very rarely bored. But the real beige-eliminator is that I love Oscar more than I love myself. Because of that, every emotion is more intense, every decision has more weight, and not a day slips by without making itself felt. I clean up the poop and salvage most of the pasta sauce. I push Oscar’s highchair out into our little yard, and we eat and watch the sky turn pink. It’s our first meal in our own place. I’m scurrying down Royal Parade with an armful of books and a cold coffee that keeps sloshing out of its cup and onto my shirt sleeve. It’s my first day back at uni after my year of ‘maternity leave’, and I’m late to my first tute. En route from the tram stop to the university, I pass the college where I lived in my first year. Late as I am, I can’t resist pausing for a minute to look up at one of the windows on the second floor. It’s someone else’s room now, but there’s a bourbon-sipping ghost sitting up there swinging her legs and gripping the window pane. I’m tempted to call out and warn her – your life is about to veer way off course! Put that bourbon down! Find a good therapist now! You have to start preparing to be a good mother! I don’t call out, though. Mostly because the ghost is just a figment of my memory and I’d be unnecessarily disrupting the peace. But also because, though many of my beliefs have been stretched and altered in the last two years, I still believe that life is more exciting when you don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Caitlin studies Creative Writing and literature. She writes poetry, short fiction and memoir, and has been published in The Lifted Brow and Scum Mag. She tweets erratically at @caitlinmcgregor 54

A LOVE LETTER TO MY BEST FRIEND Alice Boér-Endacott

used to think that being an adult meant having all the answers. I used to think that being an adult meant that I was in control of my destiny. I used to think that being an adult was something that I wanted. But as I have hurtled ever closer to adulthood, I am terrified. I have known for some time now that adulthood is the space between understanding you don’t have the answers and managing anyway. It is the acceptance that we can only ever control so much. It is the recognition that having fun isn’t all there is to life. I do not feel old, but my friends are old. I do not feel in control, but people tell me I manage everything so effortlessly. I feel like I am still young, but when I speak with people who are younger than me, I am not one of them. But I don’t feel like an adult. The inexorable march of time ages us all, and it terrifies me. I have so much time left on this earth, and so little. I am trapped in a space of desperation, desperate to mean something, to do something of worth, to imbue my life with meaning, but I don’t know what that meaning is. All I hope is that I’ll know it when I find it. I feel as though my youth has passed me by, is passing me by. That the iron cage of adulthood will truncate my impulsivity, my freedom, my choices. My friends, my lover, tell me that one day soon, we will not be able to travel the world on a whim. And if this is adulthood, I don’t want it. Adulthood is this multifaceted way of being; of being responsible, of being cool, calm and collected, of being static. I do not want that. It is terrifying to imagine that when everything is falling down, I won’t 55

be allowed to crumble; I will have to pretend that everything is alright. It is terrifying to imagine that my life will be constructed to limit who I am and where I go. But to be a child is just as frightening. I can still remember the years of my adolescence, when the world would be falling down around me. When I see it now, I know that the world keeps going, even if he doesn’t love you back, or she inexplicably spurns you. I revel in my strength, in the fact that I survived those years. I would not relive them for anything. I do not want to go back to thinking that I knew everything; it closed off my mind to so much. I do not want to be young, but I do not want to be old. I am not old, but I remember the world as it was rather than as it is. I am not old, but I have known my best friend for more than half my life. I am not old, but when I talk with her, we know that we have changed so much from the children we once were, and we are proud of who we have become, and the way we still love each other, still understand each other. If adulthood is understanding and truly appreciating the beauty of this friendship, this near life-long connection with another person, then perhaps it is not as terrifying as I thought.

Since before she could construct a compound sentence, Alice has always loved writing. She is currently studying her Master’s while also writing incessantly. She hopes to be a full-time author when she grows up. Whenever that happens. Chanel Phan

TW: femicide, sexual assault, sexual harassment

GIRL LOOK UP Mishma Kumar Girl, I am neither wise nor knowledgeable But here are a few tips for surviving the wilds of India as a female: One Do not look past your shoelaces, If you do, you will be sharply reminded that parts of your body Are not copyrighted. Two If a man ‘brushes’ past you offensively, Remember your dignity expires at 21:30 Do not forget, To be grateful that worse did not happen. Three Stop looking so feminine! Hide your breasts and your hips They might remind the world of Your female disadvantage. Four When you catch them leering, Do not say a thing. After all public property does not talk back. You are only eye candy! You are only here to satisfy a need. Don’t assume your use extends past the way the move of your hips Can make a man taste the fruit of Eden Or the parting of your womanhood, Secure his fiefdom.

Five Let me warn you now, You will be expected to know you are the selfish one. Every time you scream They will remind you That YOU are the selfish one. How dare you not think of your mother Your father, your brother and uncle? At least they did not drown you in a tub of milk! Do not forget! You owe them your life. But in the midst of all the surrender I want you to remember that your beauty was not lost When God stitched you in your motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s womb And I know all the misogyny must have you believing the contrary But your arms were never meant to bear the burden of your femininity Girl, Your eyes so young were never meant to gaze upon a man at eleven Let alone please him

Sophie Sun

Girl, The years have taught you that your chin belongs to your chest But girl your crown is falling Look up! Look up and see the world is bowing Your strength extends past the chains That are surrounding you Rise up! Rise up to each new day anointing you With the love of one billion just like you DO NOT FORGET! You hold the power of life in the depths of your being Girl, Look up. I know this talk is taunting you And that there is evil in this world that cannot be stopped by faith or poetry But do not lose hope on the back of misogyny The shackles they bind you with Can. Be. Broken. Girl, look up. Look up so they see strength and ferocity tattooed on your cheeks They will not break you today Let them stare Every day out of those 52 weeks, let them stare They will NEVER stamp out the essence that is you Or your mystique.

HERB Dalia Gala A drowse soothes the heart, when troubled pounds, Hitting iron bars of the cage - mistaken ribs, the scaffold of exhausts. The smell of herbs  in the dark, a paralysis signpost, hidden under the eyelids of non-yesterday scenes. A stubborn wait for a future’s warm hand,  damp with a sweat of promises, whispered into the voiceless space full of fading stars; the deceased with his eyes wide open,  staring at a frozen knife. But the hand, cut off long ago, does not come – still trembling with its bloody fingers in the gutter full of abstraction.  Hope impassively applies a dressing  on a cold stump,  Hail Mary patting tiredly. A moth, herald of emptiness, brushes the cheek.  Her sticky hairs harbinger the death of long forgotten. The time has come for her, to go and find the freedom from what they were all afraid of, hour by hour.

Dalia is an exchange student from the University of Glasgow majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology. She is interested in cells and travelling. She wants to learn to play banjoline. 59

FLYING SOLO A Woman’s Guide to the World Eliza Colgrave

he ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ experience. A journey during which you find yourself. The philosophical awakening of a lifetime. Thirty days of drunken one-night stands and greasy hangover cures. Call it what you may, travelling solo for a month is an experience and a half, and an adventure I highly recommend you embark upon. Like many a lone traveller, I did not end up on the other side of the world without a familiar face in sight intentionally. But my partner couldn’t afford the trip, and a mate I was meant to meet up with had taken ill and was unfit to travel. The latter I discovered the day I arrived in Iceland (yes, I really did go to the other side of the earth). Needless to say, my first few hours overseas were quite miserable. Tears were shed, phone calls were made to proclaim my desperate desire to return home already, and everything just seemed shit. I certainly made a good first impression on all the other travellers in the hostel dining room. I was the Scandinavian-looking red-headed bandicoot-eyed Australian blubber-face: a strange and rare species no doubt, and out of her natural habitat. But I had signed myself up for a month in the land of fire and ice, so I eventually decided I should probably have a proper go at this travelling alone thing before I gave up. Thank the Nordic gods I didn’t retire so easily, because I can now confidently say that this independent Icelandic investigation was the best accidental undertaking in my life thus far. To those of you curious or doubtful of the truth I speak, I present to you these observations: 1. You never have to say how amazing something is. You can just sit/stand there and appreciate the glorious sights in silence. If anything, this allows you to properly absorb what you’re seeing. In the end, passers-by exclaiming, “Oh my god”, “That’s amazing”, “C’est très beau”, and so on really gave me the shits like never before, as I had come to realise just how much more beautiful this crazy planet we live on is when appreciated in silence. 60

2. You can do whatever you want and whenever you want, with no fellow travellers holding you back with their differing desires and wishes. Spontaneity and fulfilment of all my travel goals in Iceland was so much easier to achieve alone, and such things can make or break a holiday. Even if you don’t know what to do with your time, you don’t need a friend to take control and proclaim, “Let’s do x”. Instead we have these wonderful places named ‘tourist information centres’, and Google never failed to answer the question, “What can you do in Reykjavik?” The most useful resource though was undoubtedly the wisdom of the locals. Many a time they sent me on a spontaneous adventure off the beaten touristy paths. Half the time they even offered me lifts to these places, or personally guided tours, which brings me to my next point. 3. Free lifts are so easily obtained when you only need a seat for one. This is especially valuable in Iceland, where hitchhiking (and just everything in general, including being female) is super safe. I could have hitchhiked the whole way around Iceland if I hadn’t parted with money for bus fares so easily, or if I’d had more guts. But when a lift was offered, I took it, and many a place and person I discovered as a result. 4. When things go amiss (which they will, guaranteed), being without a mate to freak out with is of little disadvantage. In fact, it probably helps! It’s far easier to fit one person into a change of plans induced by misfortune (e.g. needing a bed at 11:30pm in a small town in the middle of nowhere during peak tourism season) than it is four. 5. The rumours are true, everyone: when you travel by yourself you’re more likely to make new friends, and new friends you will make a lot of. People seem to love approaching those left on their own and inviting them on their adventures. And though I thought my kind was rare, I met a lot of others on their own and eager for some company. My list of international Facebook

friends has now become quite extensive. Starting the adventure on your own does not translate to being condemned to your own company for the whole duration. 6. Having said that, being stuck with your own company isn’t the psychological torture you may think it is. If you’ll pardon the cliché, I really did learn a thing or two about myself whilst gazing off mountain tops and wading in hot springs. I wouldn’t say I ‘found myself ’, whatever the hell that means, but some serious self-reflection happened and things were learnt. 7. It doesn’t have to be dangerous travelling by yourself, even if you’re a woman. Unfortunately there are those countries where the risk is higher, but it is not impossible to find places where travelling alone is very safe. For example, Iceland just won the international award for being the safest country in the world. They have a crime rate close to zero, you have 24 hours of sunlight to make you feel safer in the summer, the women there are typically so strong and independent the men don’t know what to do with themselves, and nearly all the fellow solo travellers I met were women who shared an equally positive disposition towards the country.

8. You learn for yourself that absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Even if you don’t have a lover or three eagerly awaiting your return, there are plenty of other loves that will grow stronger. An unexpected one for me was the love for my home country. It’s funny how it took a month on the other side of the globe and other foreigners telling me how amazing my homeland was for me to realise how lucky I am to live in a country as beautiful as Australia. My next adventure will definitely be travelling around Australia, having now recognised how little I’ve seen of it, and how much it has to offer. So there you have it, dear readers. Your motivation need not be limited to these eight reasons, but they are hopefully enough of a kickstarter to send you on your own solo quests around the world.

Eliza has nearly survived her Bachelor of Biomedicine. After a career in research/ education/mainstreaming polyamory, she will retire to a self-sustaining farm with her 12 children (because screw society).

THE PERVERTED ‘P’ WORD Taylor Mitas

very month I get my period. My strangled stomach struggles through its crippling cramps, as if someone were squeezing it against a lemon juicer. My legs ache as if thousands of knives were piercing through the raw tissue of their flesh. I cry incessantly for no apparent reason, accidentally consuming a block of chocolate within a day. And just to ensure that everyone is aware of my bodily situation, two black circles form fashionable rings around my eyes. Every 28 days it strikes: the agony ensues for a prelude of three days, continuing for a week, and concludes with a two day finale. Contributing to approximately 144 days of my year, it is a normal occurrence in my life. But after my recent doctor’s appointment, I was left questioning whether I am the only one who encounters this symphony of physiological tragedy. Do other people not experience a grumpy exchange between their disobedient ovaries and feisty fallopian tubes? The foreplay of this monthly celebration was plaguing me again (hooray for stomach cramps!), yet this time it was too much to bear. My insides were an angry mess, roaring with female fury! Like the tremors of a seismic earthquake, my tummy cramps were causing ripple effects within my body, up my back and down my legs. Walking was only possible if I simultaneously rocked and cuddled my abdomen. Tired of struggling through this merciless battle with my body, I sought medical intervention. As I entered the doctor’s room, I quickly realised that this was an office that belonged to a man. The potent stench of musky aftershave attempted to conceal the thick scent of body odour that permeated the room and a dark grey suit jacket was propped neatly over the domineering leather armchair. I sat in the small, plastic patient’s chair, staring at a medical licence proudly hung against the wall, when a deep voice called my name. 62

‘...the sound of the word placed a sickening taste upon his palate.’

Dr Jones shook my hand with a firm and forceful squeeze, suggesting that he was in control of this professional exchange. After releasing my hand, which had reddened from the pressure of his gesture (hands tend to be more sensitive during this time of the month), Dr Jones sank slowly into his chair and dramatically exhaled a deep breath of air. “So what brings you here today?” he asked me. I began to divulge my bodily issues to Dr Jones: “My last few periods have been terribly painful…” He looked disgusted. Unsure of the doctor’s reaction, I continued, “Actually, my whole family gets really bad periods!” His face squirmed. I persisted, “My cramps begin before I start my period…” That face! Again! I came to notice that every time I mentioned the word – brace yourself – ‘period’, Dr Jones responded with repulsion. The mere mention of it turned his face sour. Each time I uttered this harmless word from the tip of my tongue, the doctor sitting before me became ill for an instant: dilated eyes, blushing cheeks, and shortness of breath – the sound of the word placed a sickening taste upon his palate. Dr Jones’ uneasy response led me to suddenly silence my medical account. Had I said something wrong? Maybe I should have used the word ‘menstruate’ instead of ‘period’? Was I listing symptoms of a newfound deadly disease? Quiet suspense fell across the room as I, now a little embarrassed, waited for the doctor to say something. But what Dr Jones said next struck me speechless. “Do you drink a lot of alcohol?” he asked. What did alcohol have to do with my monthly cramps? A little confused, I replied, “Not much, once every few weeks.” Dr Jones looked at me with a disbelieving smile, his corner lip turned slightly upward and his eyes narrowed as if he were aware of some deceiving blanket with which I was attempting to shield my truth. “If you drink too much you can damage your liver, you know,” he stated patronisingly. Was Dr Jones calling me an alcoholic? Was he conflating the monthly pangs that occured every time the river flowed red with liver disease? Sitting in my chair I pondered this for a moment. How was I – a young university student with no medical knowledge – going to challenge a doctor on his medical hypothesis? Beginning my sentence with an awkward laugh to ease the tension, I proceeded, “But Dr Jones… Don’t you think these pains are due to my period? Maybe if I changed the pill I’m on—” Suddenly Dr Jones’ face was panic-stricken again. I had momentarily forgotten about the perverted p word. His eyes, watering with disbelief, looked me up and down with revulsion. Like a ten-year-old schoolboy, Dr Jones was mentally gagging at the thought of the bloody word. I yearned to stoop to his school-kid level of maturity and continually repeat the word to see what frenzied reaction I might initiate. While I would have loved to bring Dr Jones’ nightmares to life, as the dark recesses of his mind drowned in the deep red sea of the vagina, I politely took his referral to have my liver examined, and turned from his humiliating glare. As I left the white walls of Dr Jones’ office, my eyes lingered on a photo of two young schoolgirls that hung above his door. Their pre-pubescent faces smiled unashamedly at me, innocently unaware of the ocean of shame their bodies would soon feel in the presence of their father. Taylor is majoring in Media and Communications and English and Theatre Studies, and is a member of this year’s Wom*n’s Committee. Her political heroes are J-Gils, P. Wong and Beyoncé! 63

DRINK AWAY THE PATRIARCHY Cocktails for the Trials and Triumphs of Feminism Frances Gamble The Suffragette Scarlet O’Hara Nowadays, we know whiskey is not just a ‘man’s drink’, just like fair pay for equal work is not just a ‘male’ phenomenon. This drink is a throwback to simpler times when, amongst all that oppression, women were at least not completely shunned from drinking dark spirits. 45ml Southern Comfort liqueur 45ml cranberry juice 15ml lime juice Mix all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, with ice. Shake well. Strain into a chilled, short glass. The Glass Ceiling French 75 This one was given its original name because drinking it was like shooting a French 75 fuel gun. Therefore, you can rest assured this drink will empower you with the ability to obliterate any and all barriers of sexism and misogyny*. *may or may not be a bit more complicated than that. 30ml gin 15ml lemon juice 2 dashes simple syrup 60ml champagne or sparkling wine Mix the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup together in a cocktail shaker. Shake well. Pour into a champagne flute and top up with champagne. The #notallmen Sparkling Amaretto Sour Sour and fizzling, it’s like that time you matched with that guy on Tinder who told you his favourite song was “Blurred Lines” and then asked you to come over and meet his “pet snake”. Add male tears for a bit of a kick. 45ml amaretto liqueur 30ml simple syrup 30ml fresh lemon and/or lime juice 60ml prosecco Mix amaretto, simple syrup and fresh lemon juice in a cocktail shaker. Shake well. Pour into a glass, top up with prosecco. Can serve with a sugared rim. 64

The Intersectional Long Island Iced Tea Feminism includes a wide range of experiences and voices which need to be heard. This drink’s many alcohols help us celebrate this diversity. 15ml vodka 15ml tequila 15ml white rum 15ml gin 15ml triple sec 15ml lemon juice 30ml coca cola Mix ingredients in a tall glass over plenty of ice, top up with cola.

The Male Privilege Negroni Crisp and bitter, this one is to accompany the jaded feminist in you. 45ml dry gin 20ml Campari 20ml vermouth Mix ingredients together in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice. Shake well. Strain into a martini glass, garnish with lemon peel.

The Third Wave Piña Colada A relaxing holiday drink to help you celebrate Sheila Jeffreys’ retirement. 30ml white rum 30ml dark rum 30ml coconut cream 90ml pineapple juice 1 cup crushed ice Mix ingredients until smooth, serve in a chilled glass and garnish with pineapple leaf or wedge.

Judy’s Punch Tropical summer punch Known for her prowess in smashing the patriarchy, Judy also makes a mean fruit punch. 1.5L pineapple juice 1.5L lemonade 330ml (or 1 1/3 cup) vodka 330ml (or 1 1/3 cup) white rum 7 passionfruit 200g frozen raspberries 2 cups ice cubes Combine all ingredients in a large bowl or jug, add ice just before serving. Serves many feminist killjoys.

Now in her third year, Frances moved away from her home in Perth to study Arts at the University of Melbourne. Her love of cocktails emerged soon after. 65

Chanel Phan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS EDITORS Lillian Ward Allison Ballantyne Lucy Curtis

SUB-EDITORS Anthea Bariamis Laura Cordero Eliza Graves-Brown Yan Zhuang Kitty Chrystal

ARTISTS Lep Beljac Meezaan Dickinson Marley Holloway-Clarke Lucy Hunter Jasmin Isobe Kitty Chrystal Katia Pellicciotta Chanel Phan Grace Reeves Michelle Simpson-Hay Sophie Sun Aïsha Trambas

Judy’s Punch is the magazine of the Wom*n’s Department of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). Judy’s Punch is published by the General Secretary of UMSU, Hana Dalton. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, the Wom*n’s Department, printers or editors. Judy’s Punch is printed by Printgraphics, care of Nigel Quirk. All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators. Photograph on page 5: Women on the march wave their placards at the International Women’s Day march, Melbourne, March 8, 1975 John McKinnon, National Library of Australia ,3510654

CONTENTS Yan Zhuang

Herstory

Brown

Essentially Woman

A Small Relationship

Caitlyn Jenner and the Problem of Assumptions

Women Tackling AFL

Teaching Cinematic Sexism

Pop Vinyl Problems

Mary Ntalianis

Girls on Film

Jaynaya Dwyer

Dear Ol’ Col

Sorcha Buchan

Medieval Manners

The Never-Ending Story

The Invisible Victims

Samantha Lock

Portrait of an Abuser

Yan Zhuang

8 Lies I Told Myself

Hands

Moth

Bathroom Preludes

Slut Shamed

Matilda Brown

Dust

Mishma Kumar

Penance

Sonnet 1.3

Unexpecting

A Love Letter to my Best Friend

Girl Look Up

Herb

Flying Solo

The Perverted ‘P’ Word

Drink Away the Patriarchy

Shameeta Kuhadas Hien Nguyen Brittany Lambert Ayu Astrid Maylinda Danielle Croci Claire White

Zoe Grant Natalie Hardwicke

Erika Lucciola Madeline Gibson Olivia Morcom Isobel D’Cruz Barnes

Simone Pakavakis Hayley Franklin Caitlin McGregor Alice Boér-Endacott Mishma Kumar Dalia Gala Eliza Colgrave Taylor Mitas Frances Gamble 3

HERSTORY A Feminist Flashback Yan Zhuang

UMSU Wom*n’s Department, Lillian Ward

BROWN Shameeta Kuhadas

Shameeta is a Master of Social Policy student with an interest in representation of POC, women and queer people in media. She has a background in Gender Studies and Anthropology.

A誰sha Trambas

ESSENTIALLY WOMAN Talk White Feminism to Me Hien Nguyen

Hien is a person of colour who feels very strongly about intersectional feminism and has intense feelings against White ‘free nipples & hail vaginas’ Feminism™. 10

Lep Beljac

You left me a towel But I left it in Geelong I listen to songs about Pretending, in the car ride home And I think about how unexpected You are, a dream

I don’t know what we’re doing but I drive you home We go the wrong way When we get back we shower, do it I forget what happens after I think maybe your friends come over

2. A Friday We were tired, I saw your new Tattoos, that smell We listened to sad songs And met in bed again I asked you if you hear the trains At night

4. A Tuesday I wait outside on the front couch For you to arrive We make sandwiches, watch a film And do it together Like it is meant to be That way

I hear about things in your past But I don’t know what that means For me, now Lying awake hearing, The InterCitys, V-lines After doing it again

Though you are not all here Pretending, maybe Like me You go to work and develop One hour photos, off a Robin Williams disposable

Hate that it happened I don’t 13

Aïsha Trambas

‘A trans person is first and foremost a human being.’

Ayu is an English and Linguistics major who loves life by hating on it. She is working on building a Judith Butler shrine in her bathroom and plans to change the world one word at a time.

TW: sexual harassment

WOMEN TACKLING AFL Danielle Croci

Danielle is in her final semester of a BA (Politics and History). She writes for Lip Magazine and plans to write her Honours thesis on women in AFL. 17

Grace Reeves

TEACHING CINEMATIC SEXISM Claire White

Lucy Hunter

POP VINYL PROBLEMS Mary Ntalianis

Mary is an Arts student and an intersectional feminist. She likes flavoured vodka and the Pusheen sticker set. Mary also contributes at Farrago and Maggie Journal. Grace Reeves

Jaynaya Dwyer

‘... it is a rare delight to witness a narrative driven by two girls’ intense and unwavering commitment to their friendship.’

TW: sexual harassment

DEAR OL’ COL Sorcha Buchan

MEDIEVAL MANNERS Zoe Grant

Zoe is a PhD student at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. She has been a feminist since age 14 when she first saw Amanda Palmer’s hairy legs.

Jasmin Isobe

TW: sexual harassment

THE NEVER-ENDING STORY Natalie Hardwicke

‘I have... realised that weird and inappropriate colleagues will follow me wherever I go.’

TW: domestic violence, sexual assault

THE INVISIBLE VICTIMS Samantha Lock

‘One cannot help but wonder if an awareness campaign amounts to nothing more than lip service...’

*Since the writing of this article the Turnbull Government has announced a $100 million package to fund a Women’s Safety Program

Sophie Sun

TW: domestic violence

PORTRAIT OF AN ABUSER Yan Zhuang

TW: domestic violence

8 LIES I TOLD MYSELF

Erika Lucciola

A誰sha Trambas

TW: domestic violence, sexual assault

Have you ever touched someone And made them cower Or tell you ‘no, stop’ Have their hand pull at yours Or push at your body

I look at her hands Held against her eyes pulling at the tears that come down her face as if they came directly from her internal organs Each one tugging at her insides, agonisingly

Because I may not be able to count On my fingers those girls I know But neither the boys whose hands were Uninvited Against their tense and fearful skin.

Madeline is studying Psychology, practises Buddhism, and aspires to take down the patriarchy. Marley Holloway-Clarke

TW: sexual harassment

MOTH Olivia Morcom Like moths we are drawn to the light. For in light places, The bad things only happen in your mind. The world is not that scary They say.

Look but do not touch And yet something is still touched in the looking. Some private place is violated As the film that separates you From the outside world Is penetrated. Torn.

But for the rest of us The lucky ones We run from streetlight to streetlight In a game of chasey that we pray has no end.

Kitty Chrystal

BATHROOM PRELUDES Isobel D’Cruz Barnes

middle-aged woman sits in a nightie on the ledge of a bathtub, makeup half-done and hands clasped in lap.

SLUT SHAMED Matilda Brown

A creative at heart, Matilda’s appreciation of personal expression is what led her to become passionate about women’s empowerment. Chanel Phan

TW: assault, homicide, human trafficking, sexual assault

DUST Mishma Kumar The weather forecast for Delhi today is 42 degrees and Dust. I grew up with the weather being 42 and sunny, or 42 and windy, I have never had to deal with 42 and dust!

I am always amazed at how often I have to shower, Just to wash off the dust of this city. Even when it rains, The dust remains a constant power, Through the monsoon and through the summer.

Mishma is currently studying while working as a Drug and Alcohol Counsellor. When she isn’t volunteering or coaching tennis, Mishma enjoys inventing healthy recipes and poetry writing.

Michelle Simpson-Hay

PENANCE

Simone Pakavakis

Hayley is a 20-year-old creative writing student from Melbourne. She likes to make films, write poems and sleep late while her obese cat slowly crushes her.

TW: depression, self-harm, surgical procedures

UNEXPECTING Caitlin McGregor

Caitlin studies Creative Writing and literature. She writes poetry, short fiction and memoir, and has been published in The Lifted Brow and Scum Mag. She tweets erratically at @caitlinmcgregor 54

A LOVE LETTER TO MY BEST FRIEND Alice Boér-Endacott

TW: femicide, sexual assault, sexual harassment

Sophie Sun

HERB Dalia Gala A drowse soothes the heart, when troubled pounds, Hitting iron bars of the cage - mistaken ribs, the scaffold of exhausts. The smell of herbs in the dark, a paralysis signpost, hidden under the eyelids of non-yesterday scenes. A stubborn wait for a futureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s warm hand, damp with a sweat of promises, whispered into the voiceless space full of fading stars; the deceased with his eyes wide open, staring at a frozen knife. But the hand, cut off long ago, does not come â&#x20AC;&#x201C; still trembling with its bloody fingers in the gutter full of abstraction. Hope impassively applies a dressing on a cold stump, Hail Mary patting tiredly. A moth, herald of emptiness, brushes the cheek. Her sticky hairs harbinger the death of long forgotten. The time has come for her, to go and find the freedom from what they were all afraid of, hour by hour.

Dalia is an exchange student from the University of Glasgow majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology. She is interested in cells and travelling. She wants to learn to play banjoline. 59

FLYING SOLO A Woman’s Guide to the World Eliza Colgrave

THE PERVERTED ‘P’ WORD Taylor Mitas

‘...the sound of the word placed a sickening taste upon his palate.’

Now in her third year, Frances moved away from her home in Perth to study Arts at the University of Melbourne. Her love of cocktails emerged soon after. 65

Chanel Phan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS EDITORS Lillian Ward Allison Ballantyne Lucy Curtis

SUB-EDITORS Anthea Bariamis Laura Cordero Eliza Graves-Brown Yan Zhuang Kitty Chrystal

ARTISTS Lep Beljac Meezaan Dickinson Marley Holloway-Clarke Lucy Hunter Jasmin Isobe Kitty Chrystal Katia Pellicciotta Chanel Phan Grace Reeves Michelle Simpson-Hay Sophie Sun Aïsha Trambas