fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

I used to cry so seldom I would read ‘Bridge to Terabithia' each year to induce a minute or two of cathartic crying, but in the last years that has changed. Now all I have to do is catch a sentence in a news item about a particular section of humans on this earth and I will be crying and fighting for breath so fast I won’t have time to notice I’ve disintegrated. I’ll just be doubled over in shock, and usually the rest of the day is spent trying to avoid reading any further reportage. Rather esoterically the trigger that sets me off is the application of a certain legal philosophy known as the ‘state of exception’, which will mean nothing to people who haven’t had the dubious pleasure of studying the terrible beauty of Roman Law or reading the work of its fanboys ... I mean, the legal jurists who write on Roman Law. Only yesterday I attended an exceptionally dry lecture on the medieval concepts of heresy, and in the Q&A the lecturer did remind us that Western Law is based...

The words chosen for the didactic panels in an exhibition set the ideological framework through which the visitor absorbs knowledge as they progress. Didactic texts are interpretive/educational texts related to an exhibition, usually written by exhibition curators, that are displayed on panels on exhibition gallery walls or as part of art object labels. Didactic panels orient exhibition-goers to a particular topic or theme. I recently attended Treasure Ships: Art in the Age of Spices in which a disturbingly retrograde word/idea was used in the didactic panels in one specific part of the exhibition. That word/idea was 'discover', and it is generally acknowledged now that the West did not 'discover' any other continent or culture. Each continent and culture existed independent of the West setting eyes on it, and the moment that Europeans first encountered other continents or cultures is now called 'first contact'. Unfortunately, the curators of Treasure Ship...

Dragons. It was a cool, fine day in Perth. I was out swimming at Inglewood. Suddenly a black cloud covered the sun. Everyone looked up and saw a big green dragon. I looked up and saw a yellow belly coming towards me with its black claws ready to grab. I thought that since dragons like pretty ladies, he was going to take Sarah or Astrid. He stopped and said in a kind, dragonlike way, "Which one of you knows the funniest jokes?" Sarah and Astrid pointed to me. The claw came down and scooped me up and flew up. One minute I was in my bathers, the next minute I was in a long, silky, purple skirt and a wide green silk blouse. I had green shoes. My hair was dry, permed and held back with an Amethyst and Emerald tiara. I asked the dragon where we were going and he answered, "I am taking you to my land where the King can't laugh." He sighed then continued, "We tried every funny joke we knew but they just made him sad or angry. I set out to find a person who knew t...

Here are two practical and useful lectures about climate change for those of us who take the time to discuss such things with other people. These talks have given me some incredibly quotable ideas, and I have used the arguments in Carmen Lawrence's talk for five years now to understand this issue. How to win a fight about the budget: How economic modelling is used to circumvent democracy and shut down debate A public lecture by Richard Denniss, Chief Economist, The Australia Institute The Federal Budget and much economic discussion is based on economic modelling. People who use economic models want you to think that modelling is boring. The last thing they want you to do is to pay attention. Economic models claim an amazing degree of precision and this is used by the people who commission them to build a case for their preferred policies and projects. The recent Intergenerational Report (IGR) used modelling to scare the public into accepting that we can never afford to t...

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 ...