The Sydney Feminists

Two Thursday’s ago, I sat on a bus after a long day at work and I openly cried.  I didn’t give one single f*ck who saw me.  It would be a safe bet to think my marshmallow eyes were in some way the result of my outrage at the floodgates recently opened by mainstream media reporting on the abuse of women by men in power.  In October 2017, the news of Harvey Weinstein ’s behaviour broke and there was a proliferation of the #metoo hashtags popping up in status updates and newsfeeds across all social media platforms. Men  did some fantastic white-knighting, coming to the defence of women through the lens of their fatherhood, as if our humanity is predicated on our position as someone’s daughter.  If I read another man say he, qua Dad, feels for all these poor, abused women because he has daughters, I might pop each eyeball out, slowly, and consume them, with a nice chianti.  But this is not why I was crying.  Despite the rock that still ...

The New York Times and writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published an iconic article about Harvey Weinstein. The article opened up a floodgate of sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations, shining light into some of the darkest corners of the entertainment industry. I'm not going to go over the article, other than to say Weinstein is an entitled, predatory man who held a position of power which he happily exploited for decades. Weinstein was shamed. Weinstein was fired from the company he helped create. There were consequences for his actions. He did release an apology statement, but he was not sorry for his actions, only sorry they had consequences.  The fallout of the article has an emerging narrative; men who've worked with Weinstein are shocked and disgusted. Some women echo this reaction. But most women are just disgusted, not shocked. They know this sort of exploitation exists in Hollywood, and not just a few are sharing their own sexual harassment storie...

Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland are two of the most famous actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Besides talent, they stand out from their contemporaries because they filed lawsuits against Warner Bros. Pictures. Both were contracted to the studio in the 1930s and were unhappy. Among many other actors of the time, Davis and Havilland were exploited by the studio but chose to take a stand in hopes of voiding their contracts. In a Hollywood contract, actors were expected to follow a strict set of rules – on a film set and in life – and had to make any movie they were given whether they wanted to or not. A studio essentially owned an actor. Bette Davis was born on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her father left when she was young and she, and her sister Barbara, were raised by their mother. Davis showed an interest in acting from an early age and starred in High School plays. She had a successful Broadway career before making the transition to Hollywood. In 1931, Da...

  Accessing an abortion in Australia is  a  complicated thing, a nd it shouldn't be.  Abortion is a medical procedure. Children by Choice state  an estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in abortion.  1 in 4. Abortion is the most common medical procedure for Australian women. For something so commonplace, access to it is incredibly difficult, and varies wildly depending on where you live. In South Australia. for example, abortion is legal. As long as two doctors have agreed that the pregnancy would be harmful to the women's health or if the child is at risk, and you have the procedure performed in an approved medical facility. In South Australia, in an approved medical facility, surgical abortion is free. In New South Wales, like Queensland, abortion sits snug in our criminal code, accessible through a legal loophole for women. We have to prove the abortion is to protect our mental or physical health, or that we can't afford to have a baby. It the...

  Hollywood quickly adapted once it realised the power A-list stars held over box office revenue. Within the first two decades of American cinema, a well-oiled machine known as the Star System had been created. Producers and Hollywood Executives would find an actor and mould their personality and talent into a product that could be sold and marketed. If someone wanted to “make it big”, they needed to adhere to a strict set of rules and guidelines. The stress took its toll on many. Some turned to drugs, some turned to wild partying and others became self-destructive. Studios put up huge sums of money to pay off journalists and media outlets not to run stories that could be damaging to their star’s image, such as Rock Hudson’s coming out as a homosexual. Women had little control over their personal lives and their bodies were forever the subject of scrutiny. The Early Years The first silent films had no credits and the public didn’t know actors’ names. Audiences star...

Something was awry. And not just the fact that I was being hospitalised for my levels of emotional distress. This new psychiatrist was altogether too interested in me. He started stroking one hand with the other, a suggestive movement which recalled to me the letter I’d sent the mental health staff which included a reference to an orgasm-free masturbation session I’d had which had gotten me thinking about the deeper reasons behind me being hospitalised. No stranger to sexual predators, I offered him my complete silence, and a defiant stare. I let him know, nonverbally, that I knew what he was up to, and I was not going to fall for his trap. It worked. He was fuming by the time he ended the session with me. I relaxed a bit, but not much. For a mentally vulnerable 22 year old woman, the ward was a place full of menace. Some of that was from the patients (like the man who addressed all the females of the ward by the c word, volubly, and who made to harm one of the female nur...

A sexually submissive feminist activist sheds light on why being a sub doesn't conflict with being a bad ass feminista. (An abridged version of this piece was published in Cosmopolitan Magazine on Monday 4th of September, 2017.) Discliamer: The views in this piece reflect the opinion of the author. Feminism is diverse and there are many differing opinions on this subject. Q. There’s a common viewpoint that you can’t be a feminist and submissive as it goes against everything feminism is about. Can a person be a feminist and a submissive? Yes I've heard these comments on many occasions before, expressed by both men and women who when they learn of my sexual submissiveness in conversation after also knowing I'm a strong feminist activist, tell me things like "that's an oxymoron" or "you can't be a feminist and submissive. That's just being a hypocrite”, or even “how does that work?”  But you most certainly can be both an impassioned and ...