Relearning: Sex Work During COVID-19
by Queenie Bon-Bon This is the year we were taught en masse to wash our hands. We needed charts and songs and sponsored ads on our phones to tell us we must wet our hands with water, apply enough soap to cover one's hands and rub our hands together. Twenty seconds and...
Putting Pain on the Public Record: Kylie Maslen’s Show Me Where It Hurts
by Kaitlyn Blythe The last five years have seen a surge in memoirs by women examining their lives through the lens of societal marginalisation, thrusting experiences usually dismissed or ignored into the public eye. The marginalised experience is made undeniable...
Publish and Perish: Gendered Precarity, Productivity and University Leadership in COVID19
By Briony Lipton 'It is important we all continue the upward trajectory, including at this time when we prioritise the needs of our researchers as well as the health and safety of our community' the university email reads. Just one message among many emails received...
Games, Dames and Shrinking Pains
By Gabriella Lowgren One of my earliest memories is of playing video games. I was sitting on my stepfather’s knee as we played Diablo 2, him on offense and me on potions. His character whirled around the screen, we had decided to play the Barbarian because I was...
Bound By String
By Yen Eriksen The first time my dad explained to me that old people shrink it blew my mind. To me, this idea was such an unfair fate to thrust upon those who had already lived so much. Everything about old age seemed cruel to me as a kid. Why was it that people who...
Big Girlboss Energy: On the Commodification of Feminism
By Eda Gunaydin I can’t seem to call myself a feminist anymore, although it used to be a hill I was willing to die on. But it is a hill. Having failed to develop a political consciousness until I entered university, it seemed correct to organise around what I observed...
What’s the Point of Performativity?
By Roj Amedi There are two conversations being had in response to our current moment of global pandemics, entrenched racial injustice and ecological collapse. On one side is a growing push to change the way our societies function ― a call to interrogate the...
Redemptive Endings
By Lee Kofman By nature, I am a confessional writer. The more difficult, dramatic, my life is – the better I actually fare. Artistically that is. And yet, it has taken me twenty years to dare to tell one of my most transformative stories, the one which prompted me to...
Parenting in a Pandemic
By CB Mako (Content warning: domestic violence) When March 2020 arrived, we realised that we had survived another summer. We got our first sigh of relief after the scorching start to a new decade, when Naarm was covered in a dense blanket...
A Journal of Solitude: Living Alone During COVID-19
By Vanessa Giron When I first read The Waves by Virginia Woolf, I found myself clinging to one idyllic moment: 'How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on...
Freelancing With a Disability During COVID-19
By Carly Findlay From loss of income and delaying the publication of Growing Up Disabled in Australia, to grieving for the arts sector and connecting with friends, to fear about access and care for disabled people, my time in isolation has been full of anxiety, but...
As Feminist As It Gets: Mothers Who Advocate For Their Children
By Gisela Ervin-Ward Turn to the mother next to you and ask her if her view of feminism and the practicalities of living a feminist life changed after she had children. Go on. I’ll give you a minute. So, how did that go? Whether the mother you spoke to gave you a mute...