fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

I would like my children, nieces and nephews, godchildren, grandchildren and all young people with dreams to be able to participate in a political system that demonstrably represents the population. At a basic level that would mean a political system that has a minimum of 50% of its participants, from voters to parliamentarians, being women. I would like my daughters, nieces, goddaughters, granddaughters and all future women to take political power and shape it in their image, not ask for political participation and have to change it to fit them. I think the voting women of Australia have a five year window to take political power and shape it in their image so the women growing up now have one less battle to fight in the future. The women growing up now will have to face a world in the merciless grip of climate change. If we have not secured 50% presence of women in all areas of social, economic and political power, women will have no voice in how they and their children survi...

It's an inconvenient truth that our current economic, political and legal systems don't even acknowledge that the majority of us exist. That’s because we currently live with systems created by old rich white dudes about 300 years ago, and in Australia up until 1962, positions of power in those systems were not open to: Indigenous populations Women Anyone who was not able-bodied Non-Europeans Non-cisgender males Non-heterosexual males Men under a certain threshold of wealth/employment/education Here are some dates for reference: Renaissance ideas on the individual had taken over Europe by the 17th Century Parliamentary Democracy (British Edition): 1707 Industrial Revolution: 1760 Universal Male Suffrage (Britain): starts 1791 , full by 1928 Non-Indigenous Male Suffrage (Australia): 1855 Non-Indigenous Female Suffrage (Australia): 1902 Suffrage for Indigenous Australians: 1962 In truth, access to positions of power in Australia for anyone excluded before 1962 has...

To build a political movement there must be a large population without a voice, mentorship and training for candidates, and voters that have access to the candidates to articulate their specific needs. Australia has three major political parties, each backed by their own training and voting block: the Australian Greens have the Environmental and Activist movements, Labor has the Unions and the Liberal Party has the business sector. Unfortunately the Labor and Liberal models are the Boys Club in Australia, and while the Australian Greens have a very different internal model of democracy, they participate in a parliamentary model that was created by the Boys Club, and they do not have the numbers to change the system – yet. Australian Politics: The Boys Club Our political system simply cannot cope with diversity of candidates - and that is the fault of the system, not the fault of diversity. Diversity is ever-present and requires systems to improve, not retreat. Systems are just...

Rosie Batty and Natasha Stott-Despoya were on Q&A tonight discussing Domestic Violence . They were outnumbered, ironically, by the male panelists. Anyone reading the crime reports in newspapers around Australia today would find sordid tales of people throwing themselves at other people’s fists and sober drivers inconveniently getting in the way of drunk or speeding drivers. We all read about people who work hard to buy houses to fill with possessions only to selflessly let other people destroy or steal them. There is the inevitable roundup of people staying in relationships only to be injured or killed by their partners and, of course, those terrible reports of children who seduce adults. Apologies, my mistake! I seem to be getting the relative culpability of perpetrators and victims mixed up. I am especially confused because we seem to have two ways of reporting crime and violence. When we report crime, we have crimes in which the criminal is named, and crimes in which the v...

Whether it’s called chick-lit or mommy porn , narratives written for women are treated with grave disrespect by the publishing industry and the wider public, especially erotica. Erotica written exclusively for women is rare, and when it exists it’s pink-i-fied, covered in vanilla and perceived to be much harder to create than it actually is; a Red Velvet Cake if you will. Erotica written for men is Victoria Sponge of course; totally vanilla, lots of cream, the tiniest smear of delicious red jam. Heterosexual male erotica is so mainstream prizes could be given out at Rural Fetes for the best out of an array made from a completely standard recipe. In a world of written and visual erotica that does not care to cater for our desires nor our gaze, women are adept at sustaining a sexual imagination by living off erotic crumbs that fall from the table of male-centric literature. In fact, everyone whose sexual practice is not that of a heterosexual male is trying to live off erotic crumbs...

Published online: WAToday The Sydney Morning Herald The Age Brisbane Times The Canberra Times I'm on the train and the person across from me is reading That Book ; the religiously repressed treatise on misogyny packaged as a risqué rebellious romance with ropes. In that moment I manage to subjugate the urge to evangelise safe, sane, consensual orgasm techniques to them, a stranger on the train. But if you wanted to play the lead role of Stranger On The Train, maybe we could see where this takes us? Much has been written by practitioners, participants and detractors about the sexual practice called BDSM, as explored in Fifty Shades of Grey . I have been an avid reader of such discussions. After all, train-riding missionaries who urge strangers to "branch out from missionary" need to keep up with the literature. I have found it interesting that most critiques of the portrayal of BDSM in the book have preserved the idea that BDSM is "alternative" or ...

Y’know what? I fucking love my fellow leftie feminist greenies. I do. Some are my peers or my mentors and some are the people younger than me who inspire me. Whether they tweet, write letters, wave signs at protests, run not-for-profit advocacy groups, mount plays or get arrested, I fucking love their style. It’s charming to be around them virtually and in person, and they make me super happy. As for those who aren’t my people, I’m sure they’re perfectly nice when I’m not around. I’d rather not harsh my buzz by testing that theory, however. There are some complete knobheads, of course, who think they deserve to live in their parents' world and are scared shitless that they won’t. The future is going to be an amazing enema for them, and even the bible says that time waits for no one, not even constipated conservative larvae. And then there are the hardcore neo-cons who are chewing the scenery because they can’t impose their parents' parents' world on me and my people. ...

Inspired by the discovery of Normal Moments in Art History With No Murder and with paintings provided by Ariel , I have created a little tribute to some of the Murderous Ladies of Western Art History. Best moment: Representing my School at Debating Future Plans: Winning more Debates what is for dinner? did you buy the shampoo I like? how could you leave the house in that? Your mum’s kinda quiet … Now just get that back to the bench and I’ll get everything else. Start prepping it for the stock, but pluck all the hair. Gary hates hair in stock and I want to win this challenge. I tried one bell, then three bells, but she just kept bringing them back. She loves playing with them, I guess. It’s in her nature. And she does keep them out of the house as well, so that's good. He told me I was spending too much time on Pinterest. He told me he wanted me to spend more time with him. I split the diff. he was crying and begging mine too! anyway, he was crying and I felt the tears ...

Are you feeling a little confused about Australian Politics right now? Do you keep on trying to reconcile what the Government says with what the Government does?

 Perhaps the part of you that prides itself in common sense and “telling it like it is” seems to be reacting quite strongly to what the Government does, but the part of you that tries to apply some of the ideas you had to learn throughout your life is reacting very strongly to what the Government says? Perhaps your reptile brain keeps tapping your education on the shoulder and muttering "something is going on mate, they are not doing what they say they are doing!" The 1% are not stupid, they just want you to think they are Those who currently run our Government do believe in the climate science and they know the water and energy conflicts are rolling across the world and are heading for Australia. They didn’t get to their position without intelligence, a survival instinct and an eye for future conditions that ...

One thing I like very much about being a historian who has treated her own writing as a historical record, is that I can assess just how well I process the world as I pass through it. I used to think that the careful archiving of my diaries, journals, blogs and emails was an affectation, a wish to leave a historical record of my thoughts to future historians. It turns out that the use of that archive was going to be more personal, and the application of its lessons more contemporary, than I ever anticipated. My history degree was supposed to stay history, but it didn’t. Today I completed another step in this journey of history into reality by finally getting around to watching Zeitgeist . The thing I find most interesting about Zeitgeist was the familiarity of the material; my historical and political studies sit exactly parallel to the thrust of the arguments in Zeitgeist , so I was comfortable with the broad ideas and the conclusions from them. All of the conclusions can b...

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...