The Sydney Feminists

As I’ve written previously ( click here ), the laws surrounding sexual consent in NSW have a patchy grey area. In NSW, when someone is on trial for sexual assault, the crown has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the complainant did not consent. NSW laws are structured in a way that puts the onus of proof on the victim: the victim must prove they did not give consent. The best practice example of consent laws in Australia is said to be either Tasmania or Victoria, wherein (according to Anthony Whealy QC, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of NSW): “the crown must prove that the complainant gave free agreement to sexual intercourse taking place ... and the judge is asked to direct the jury that if the complaint said or did nothing at the time of the sexual intercourse, that means she did not give her free agreement.” As I’ve stated previously, this change switches the focus from the complainant to the accused. In this case, instead of focusing on the ways the complainant ...

Trigger Warning: The following piece is a personal account and includes mentions of assault, self-harm and trauma. Sociologist Michael Kimmel says “feminism expects a man to be ethical, emotionally present and accountable to his values in his actions with women – as well as other men.  Feminism loves men enough to expect them to act more honourably and actually believes them capable of doing so”. If you feel let down by this statement, I don’t blame you.  If you feel your experiences preclude you from maintaining faith that men can be and are capable of being “ethical, emotionally present and accountable”, you are not alone. ______________ I want to tell you one particular story of mine, one I am just now gaining the courage to talk about.  I was in a toxic and abusive relationship for over four years.  Even though I identify as a survivor, I am also struggling to effectively apportion responsibility and blame, to put back together my self-esteem, and learn...

Andrew Nolch is the man arrested for defacing Eurydice Dixon’s memorial. This caused a lot of pain, and a lot of anger. And Nolch has told The Age  that he defaced the memorial as a sort of protest, in his words: “I was upset, and I want to make this clear, this was not a personal attack at all...this was purely an attack on feminism, on mainstream media for hijacking a vaccine-causing issue and turning it into a men are bad, women’s rights issue” As the autism vaccine “theory” has been debunked so many times it’s been turned into a meme, I’m just going to focus on Notch’s anti-feminist angle, and the idea that he was angry about how men are being portrayed in the media. His statement made me wonder which type of feminism Nolch was attacking. Was it liberal feminism? Eco-feminism? Radical feminism? I mean, these can have differing aims, sometimes at odds with one another (see: the feminist discourse around porn) so I wonder which he was protesting?  Ok, I know I’...

I’m writing this for Eurydice Dixon, who was raped and murdered by a man as she walked home from a comedy gig, but I’m also writing this for all of us.  Eurydice Dixon struck a chord with us, especially women I think, because she could have been any of us. We can all relate to her. Even though she is, devastatingly, the thirtieth Australian woman murdered this year according to Destroy the Joint , Eurydice’s story is absolutely universal. We’ve all had to get home alone, maybe not from a gig, but from a bar or friend’s house or even just from work, at some point. And if not all of us, then the vast majority, have felt the powerlessness of being harassed or intimidated by a man. Most of us can recall feeling scared the harassment we’ve endured might’ve escalated. I have a six-minute walk from my closest train station to my door, and I have been harassed on the way home. In the space of six minutes. Multiple times. I think we relate to Eurydice so strongly, because most, if not al...

    Irene Bedard is one of the most famous and respected Native Americans working in Hollywood today. Her career spans nearly twenty-five years and ranges from acting to producing credits. She is probably best known as the voice behind the title character of Disney’s 1995 animation Pocahontas . The movie broke new ground for the studio but was also not received well for its representation of Native Americans and its historical inaccuracies. Bedard also heads a production company dedicated to "bringing positive, inspirational stories from Indian Country to the world". Born in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 22 nd , 1967, Bedard had her film acting debut in the mid-1990s. Besides Pocahontas , she has featured in Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee (1994), Into the West (2005) and small parts in other films and television series. Bedard regularly plays Native American characters. She received a Golden Globe nomination in 1995. She reprised her Disney Princess in it...

You’ve probably heard the news about safe access zones and you’re probably as thrilled as I am with the result. This will be brief, but I’ve been waiting a long time to have good news in regards to reproductive health for women so allow me to indulge. Public Health Amendment (Safe Access to Reproductive Health Clinics) Bill 2018 passed. It passed. We did it. We took another step towards equality, towards respecting women, to improving safe medical care for women and a step away from patriarchal control. Credit: Twitter @PennySharpemlc So thank you to the ministers who listened to the women and people who needed this bill. And thank you to everyone who campaigned for this, or for the as yet unpassed End12/ decriminalisation of abortion over the past few years. What does this bill actually mean? This bill will establish 150m “safe access zones” around abortion clinics. Within the 150m it will be illegal to intimidate, harass or film people accessing the clinic. The bill a...

The distribution of women and men in executive positions in the Banking Industry is unequal, as with many high earning positions. The recent Banking Royal Commission has uncovered dirt from major banks; speculation says women are the source of the problem. As quoted in an Australian Newspaper article a previous board member for a logistics company, Chris Corrigan, stated that the AMP board executive Catherine Brenner (who resigned) was only in that position due to her gender, implying that her company’s mistake was entirely hers. Essentially, recent revelations have pointed the finger at gender quotas (ensuring that executive positions are to have a certain percentage of women) and the women who are elected into these positions are underqualified. This sort of misinformation has a detrimental effect on all industries in terms of promoting women.  Simply, gender quotas are a target distribution of all genders for a certain workplace or position. Gender quotas (also all othe...