2021 Grace Tame, founder of the Let Her Speak campaign, is named Australian of the Year for her activism in changing Tasmanian sexual assault laws. Brittany Higgins speaks about her alleged sexual assault in Parliament House at the hands of a male staffer. Chanel Contos begins a petition exposing the toxic rape culture within Australia’s private school system, sparking a national conversation about consent education. These women set the climate for the March 4 Justice, which calls for safer laws, accountability, and harsher punishments for gendered violence. Our Prime Minister’s response to the march? The women of Australia are lucky not to have their protests met with bullets. We hear Scott Morrison say that he has to use his perspective as a father of daughters in order to believe and empathise with victims of rape. Evidently, a toxic rape culture does not affect men in positions of power.
Now I hope that the 2022 election ushers in a very different demographic driven towards change. I hope to see more First Nations Peoples, more women of colour, more migrants, and more people with disabilities in political spaces. I hope that our government opens its ears to society’s demands for change. I am tired of white men taking no one seriously but themselves, but then again, why would they? We are asking men who have never been oppressed to empathise with those who often experience intersectional oppression of race, gender, disability, or income. We need people in leadership who have lived experiences, not just connections and an Arts/Law degree. My biggest hope for this new year is that people will not have to be homeless, dying, sexually assaulted or dead before they are finally listened to.
SOCIETY & CULTURE
Throughout all of this, we are facing COVID-19. The massive toll on our health system highlights visible gaps in aged care and the unique challenges for immunocompromised individuals. We’ve had to contend with a virus in an era where fake news travels six times faster than real news,2 and algorithms enable echo chambers to thrive. As such, the anti-vax movement has succeeded to the point where 50% of ICU patients in NSW are from the 5% of unvaccinated in our state.3
Hamad, R., 2019. White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color. Melbourne University Publishing. 2 The Social Dilemma. 2020. [film] Directed by J. Orlowski. Netflix. 1
NSW Covid-19 update: the 5% of population who are unvaccinated make up 50% of ICU patients
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