fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Trust me, they know the climate science Let’s imagine for a moment that the 1% of Australia, with their university degrees, access to the best climate science and neoliberal think tank papers and their dominance in politics, were acting in rational self-interest. They know that the water and energy wars are coming and they have a country with unique assets: No land borders Renewable energy resources Space and minerals Industries that specialise in extracting minerals Industries that can be turned to R&D and manufacturing An education system to get citizens to the point of carrying out necessary R&D And a politically apathetic population that believes whatever the politicians tell them through monopolised and crippled information outlets. To be honest, if I were a conservative politician in Australia (and the way I was brought up, I may as well be), this is what I would do to ensure my political and social survival: I would claim the government didn’t believe i...

I was tagged by Kristen , a real writer, who wants me to play with other blogs! It's been a long time since I've stepped into the blogosphere to be sociable, but it's nice to be back. 1. What am I working on now? I don’t ‘work’ on pieces of writing, they work on me! My writing comes to me in moments of extreme emotion, although lately I have been trying out a few new concepts that I keep hearing are fashionable with ‘serious’ writers like: Writing daily
 Writing to deadlines
 Writing to word limits
 Writing in a theme My writing is not something that can be tamed, alas. So I resign myself to deadlines that make a whooshing sound as they pass (I love you Douglas) and irresponsibly late nights finishing two thousand words that won’t let me sleep otherwise

! I write idealist political commentary, self-consciously literary travelogues and outraged feminist tracts here on my blog I write comedic Fringe plays that need to be translated from my rather overworked j...

I would like to write about the intellectual, political and social dishonesty of the national conversation that the current Australian Government insists on imposing on the Australian public.

 To do this, I would like to start with exploring the basic philosophical problems with our current discussion about the various actions the current Australian Government has implemented relating to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Now, I take the view that the current Australian Government decided to manufacture a scuffle around 18C in order to distract the Australian public from more important matters that they do not want scrutinised. The current Australian Government makes announcements that destabilise the news cycle, and these announcements come in two forms: 1. An outrageous suggestion designed to let opponents react with scorn and satire, but neither suggestion nor satire achieves anything but noise, and a false sense of protest for those who did not vote for this cur...

This is a beautiful collection of correspondence surrounding the article my Nan wrote in 1963 for the Journal of Agriculture's Farm and Home section, which you can read below. I feel the letters speak for themselves! THE LITTLE ONES AT HOME by Johanna Bowen Journal of Agriculture, Farm and Home Many adults look upon the play of the tiny child as merely a way of passing the time and of keeping him out of the way between meals and bed. To the little one, however, playing is living. It is all-important and very, very real. Above all it is the beginning of the child’s education. Correspondence between Alwyn and Johanna All thanks to my fabulous Aunt Felicity for her discovery of the correspondence to do with the article, and transcribing all the letters. COPY of handwritten letter “ASHBY” Gingin Sept, 30th [1963] Dear Mrs Bowen, Thank you for your letter (of last October!) to the “Journal of Agriculture” with ideas for the “Farm and Home” section. As you say, there are...

This article, written by my Nan, was published by Department of Agriculture WA’s Journal of Agriculture in July 1964 for the “Farm and Home” series. My Nan trained as a Kindergarten Teacher in the very early days of Kindergarten in WA and at the age of 23 she was in charge of a cutting-edge Kindergarten in North Perth. In an interesting side note, she was also a Voice Actor for the radio plays on the ABC during that time; my Nan is way cool, and a person who always brings out imagination and stories from the people she meets. As with her writing on Women’s Liberation , I find this article fascinating for its practical love and respect for children and their play, and the respect for the incredibly important educational role of parents in the home with young children. As is consistent with the way I was brought up, this educational role is about the parent being the educator and guide, not simply the provider of education from other people and sources. My Mum and her mother...

My Nan and Papa were great storytellers and their children are preserving their writing and sending it out to their grandchildren to read. Mostly the stories are anecdotes from real life and stories told to their children. This piece of writing from my Nan about Women’s Liberation was a surprise inclusion, but I was particularly glad to read it, because it was a testimony to the daily hard work, from my grandmother’s generation onward, of women intent on social and political reform. If you want to see exactly how my Nan embodied the ideas in the writing below when imparting her own practical advice for women educating children in the home, here is her article for the Journal of Agriculture . Even more interesting is the correspondence between my Nan and Mrs Alwyn Scott of the Journal of Agriculture . These thoughts on Women's Liberation also show that while extraordinary strides have been made in attitudes towards women since my Nan wrote this piece, there is still a long w...

I think my friends and I live in a bubble of being confident in change for universal progress rather than complacency for unfair profit Frustrated Voter, well, me actually This year I was given no choice in the political leaders, the political policies, the political candidates or the media coverage I had to endure for the Federal Election. Everything was given to me by the Boys Club . I, for one, am no longer interested in the political leaders endorsed by the Boys Club , the political policies created by a room full of alumni of the Boys Club , the candidates who are created and approved by having to work through the ranks of the Boys Club to get pre-selection and the media coverage that assumes that we all love the Boys Club and their ideas and their methods. It's boring, and at the moment I have no way to vote outside the Boys Club . I was once told that the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So if I wish to see political...

EDITED: Edited for correct and current use of language on 9 March 2015, thanks to the followers and admins at One Billon Rising Australia . The most important thing to acknowledge is that even when trying to argue that we think about sex in an unhealthy manner, I used words that encouraged the same unhealthy attitude. It's all around us, this language that judges only one person in the multi-person act of sex. The second thing to acknowledge is that eighteen months of reading a lot of women's writing from all over the world, and eighteen months of a lot of experience with and thinking about sex, does tend to change a woman! For example, my first mainstream publication, all about sexual practice, that you can read right here . I had a very illuminating conversation a few weeks ago with a friend in which we discussed a character in a play. The character was a prostitute sex worker and the action for her character in the narrative revolved around her picking up a client i...

Sometimes my cultural gag reflex is an angry one, one that leaves me heaving and a little teary . Sometimes my cultural gag reflex is a frustrated one, leaving me saying either too many words , not enough words , or incompletely thought out words. But mostly my cultural gag reflex is a bored one ; because as a woman the items offered for my cultural intake can be very boring indeed. I would like to present a short survey of my thoughts as I watch a standard film or theatre offering that does not meet or barely meets the minimum of the Bechdel Test . The Bechdel Test asks if there is two named female characters in the script that talk to each other for a minute about something other than men. Examples of scripts that fail the Bechdel Test fill our cinemas, our stages and other areas of our popular culture * , and that means I am bored an awful lot, alas. The first thing that happens with the standard non-Bechdel compliant script is that when I meet the first female character I want...

When I didn’t know the lyrics and hadn’t seen the video clip, I really loved listening to Blurred Lines . I only heard it on the radio in the office and, due to actually working and sitting some distance from the radio, all I could hear was the bubblegum pop and Pharrell’s hoot. And then came the day that I watched the video clip, read the lyrics and my now robust cultural gag reflex kicked in; who is this Thickehead for whom respect and consent is a blurred line? And why is every sentiment in his song and video achingly retrograde and yet somehow so mainstream? I love to listen and dance to Rap and Hip Hop. I bought my first CD because of Pony , my second for Ooh La La and for close on fifteen years I have suppressed my cultural gag reflex at the lyrics of the Rap and Hip Hop songs I like, especially when I was singing along. It takes a special kind of socialized Stockholm Syndrome to actually sing along to the kind of dehumanising words that these genres encourage for describing...