The Sydney Feminists

This report ( link here ) by Juliet Watson (Lecturer, Urban Housing and Homelessness, RMIT University) for the Conversation is about Melbourne women experiencing homelessness and the gendered violence they experience. In relation to sex-for-rent situations, Watson uses the term “survival sex” in her article, a description that might be new to some; let’s break it down. "Lack of money, welfare support and social capital meant, for some, their only resource was to exchange sex for somewhere to stay." ( link here ) Survival sex is a term used to describe a person engaging in/trading sexual acts out of desperate need. To be clear: this is not sex trafficking, but to push it under the sex work umbrella obscures the dynamics underpinning it. I believe it is its own category. While sex for survival is a choice a person, usually women, makes, it is not chosen for empowerment. Sometimes people have limited options, and this can make those people vulnerable to exploitation. ...

I want to talk about boobs. Specifically, I want to talk about the climate around breast appearance that has allowed cut price breast augmentations performed by cosmetic surgeons to be marketed to women receiving Centrelink payments. When I talk about climate in this sense, what I mean is that though we each have our own individual perception of our environment, these perceptions culminate and create a climate of shared norms and expectations of how we should look and act. This climate is ever changing and in turn influences us, our decisions and behaviours. This is admittedly a tricky line to tread, because I don’t want to tell anyone their choices are not their own, or that they didn’t make them alone. An example of how this works: When Kylie Jenner, among other celebrities, got lip fillers they introduced a trend towards younger (usually white) women getting lip fillers; this trend altered the climate around expectations of physical appearance, especially in regards to lips, a...