this week in: what has your government done to you

The politician Steph aspires to be, Penny Wong (queer, Malaysian-Chinese, left, yells in public) cuts Joe Hockey so decisively.

The Coalition party room voted not to allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage. Tony Abbott has suggested it be put to a popular vote, or maybe a referendum, or maybe a plebiscite, terrifyingly demonstrating that some of our federal politicians don’t understand how our political system actually works.

Liberal Senator Eric Abetz suggested that because Dolce and Gabbana had never married, same-sex couples had no need of marriage.


The Prime Minister caught eating a whole raw spring onion whilst on site.

Liz asks: Is it possible that Tony Abbott just likes onions?  Is that a bad thing?  Should we as a nation be food shaming him for his unusual tastes when there are so many other weird and terrible things he does?  Is it just that it’s quite funny to watch someone eat a whole raw onion, French or otherwise?


An Asylum seeker who is married to an Australian PR was removed from her husband (and the centre in Brisbane where she was living, and the school where she was studying to receive her HSC) and is currently in a Darwin detention centre.


The state of Victoria’s new government logo looks like a map of Tasmania.  In every possible sense.


While the eyes of the world are on Ferguson, a Queensland police whistleblower who leaked a video of fellow officers assaulting a chef faces charges.  This forms part of a pattern of the Queensland police failing to investigate accusations of brutality from within its own ranks.


“Absolute revhead” and indistinguishable white man Tony Smith becomes Speaker.

Steph says: I know how white person names work. This man has a fake name.


Someone suggested that Indigenous Australians were making booze out of vegemite and so vegemite should be banned in remote Indigenous communities. Vegemite watch began, but has since been retracted.


The chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security thinks Australia should bomb Syria.

Steph says: no. Also call them Daesh, cos it makes ISIS mad to be delegitimised in this way and cos actual Middle-Eastern people have suggested we do so – the Western media is the only media who calls them ISIS.


Linkspam is a place on earth

We here at No Award have been busy running a convention, but now it’s over and we can dedicate ourselves back to you again.

We have a twitter! It has nothing on it yet because Steph is too hungover to save that photo of a tram onto her phone, apparently, but: No Award the twitter. Stand by for tweets.

Stephanie has had a story published! The Dan Dan Mian of the Apocalypse, in the Review of Australian Fiction, 14:4. $2.99 for 8000 words of climate change Australia dystopia fiction by Steph, and 12000 words of fake magical geek girl by Tansy Rayner Roberts. DO IT.

Here are some links, some of them old. We’ve been busy!

This totally amazing post of oral interviews about Clueless. 

End of the car age: how cities are outgrowing automobiles.

The complete business case for converting street parking into bike lanes.

‘Reclaiming Australia’ from Islam is really about reclaiming whiteness.

At Bluntshovels, ‘wellness’ is not about health.

Masa Vukotic had the right to be in a park alone.

SHARKS: sharing the sea with sharks. An interesting perspective, mostly about Australia’s relationship with sharks, in the New Yorker.

MAPS: The fake places that exist on maps only to catch copycat map makers.

Ben Wilkie, the Clash of Symbols, on the anniversary of the 1967 referendum.

Baltimore’s peace-keeping rollerskaters. ADORABLE.

66th down under feminists carnival

Hello! Welcome to No Award and the 66th edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival! I last hosted the 54th edition over at one of my other eleven million blogs, which means it has been exactly twelve months! I guess November is just the time for me (Steph).

We’ve got some categories here for ease of perusal; and just a note that things without categories only mean they were singular in their category this month, not that we don’t love them! And there are some amazing articles here this month, as there are every month – but just because the month is over don’t think you need to hold back! If you have a comment to make or somewhere to go with the conversation, go for it, even if you’re encountering these bloggers for the first time through the carnival! More chat is great. Thank you to everyone who contributed links – and of course all the great antipodeans writing awesome things.

Next month’s edition is planned for 5 December, 2013: MJ at Kiwiana (inked). Submissions to burningthescript [at] gmail [dot] com for those who can’t access the blog carnival submissions form. Previous carnivals can be found on the blog carnival index page. Please do submit if you think something is relevant to interests, you can submit your own work and/or someone else’s.

On Sex and Sexuality

At A Life Unexamined, Fixed and fluid sexual identities (from an ace perspective).

Claire at Sextracurricular Studies brings us two great posts this month: Mythbusting the Hymen by Claire at Sextracurricular Studies, on virginity and education and the dangers of this myth; and on pornography and sexual culture.

Nausea Nissenbaum presents us with Hot & Hotter: interviews with sex workers’ rights activists.

On Misogyny and support for women

Women need resilience to rise to the top, by Zoe Krupka at New Matilda.

Over at Hoyden About Town, Maybe if we all went barefoot by Mindy, on how ladies buy too many shoes which means they can’t buy houses, amirite.

Sikamikanico writes “I don’t need feminism”: The Women of a Voice for Men (a Voice for Men is a group with a MRA agenda).

In Ministerial responsibility, Ben at CXLI writes on Tony Abbott as the Minister for Women and what this might mean.

Rachel Rayner writes Spare us from idiots, on a particularly gross piece of opinion piece published in the NZ Herald re: women.

“A Dirty Game”: One woman’s retrospective on the UQ elections looks at the reinforcement of patriarchy (and also in harassment) in the UQ elections. Also up at Womynews is a 2013 Reclaim the Night recap.

On Anonymous Hatred

Broken at Fat Heffalump. This is also about fat hate and also a nice story about people being nice.

By Amy Gray, the text of a speech: Reading the Trolls

Things to Read and Watch

Molly Eliza at Womynews reviews Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World, edited by Jane Caro.

Chally reviews About Time, the latest Richard Curtis movie.

Fi at Reading Kills talks about Every Breath, a Melburnian YA murder mystery by Ellie Marney.

Amy Gray has put up the text of an ACMI speech she gave: Enlightenment and the need for unlikable women.

Here at No Award, Liz read The Deep by Tom Taylor (who she later met!!!), an Australian comic about a multiracial family of aquanauts. (I really want to read it)

Media and Representation

At HaT, Today in Fantasy Film Sexism: Disney tries to pat some feminists’ heads, on Frozen, the new Disney film.

I navel-gaze about Chinese dating show If You Are The One (非诚勿扰) and discuss what it means for dating and stereotypes, and why it’s so popular in Australia; and in love me long time ugh help i’m dying I talk about the ongoing representation of South East Asian women in Australian media as other and hypersexual and ugh.

Also at No Award and by me, I have been reviewing the ABC-TV HBO Asia coproduction Serangoon Road, set in Singapore in 1964 and featuring way too many white people (primarily Australians). In my reviews I discuss the show but also colonialism and imperialism and white attitudes in the SEA region in the period.

Stalking, Sexual Assault and the Gilmore Girls is a look at the character of Jess on the show. Includes discussions of sexual assault and rape (and pop culture as vehicle for rape culture).

Fi writes from eighteen to thirty with nothing in between, about the dearth of crime fiction featuring protagonists under thirty.

Scarlett Harris compares Book VS. TV: Stephen King’s Under the Dome. Scarlett also writes in Defence of Sex and the City and The Problem with Sex and the City 2.

On Health (including Mental Health)

Elizabeth at Spilt Milk writes A Good Mother, on motherhood and society and mental health.

Rachel Rayner writes The Cost of It, a beautiful piece about getting an IUD and the situation around it. (Beautiful as in, it’s a poetical and lovely piece of prose)

The Little Pakeha writes Presents well, on living with depression; and Coley Tangerina writes It’s Mental Health Awareness Week.

On Racism, Race, Ethnicity

Te Ika-a-Māui and Te Waipounamu are not second-class names, by Queen of Thorns.

Australian feminists need to talk about race by Kelly Briggs up at the Guardian.

Jennifer at No Place for Sheep presents Immigration Minister Morrison instructs his staff to lie.

On Specific Women

friday feminaust: Nabila Farhat

A Friday Feminist over at HaT: Soul singer Tina Harrod.

Feminists in Fiction: Mulan at a Life Unexamined. (No Award note from your resident Chinese lady: This is a great look at the Disney Mulan but I’d just like to remind everyone that Hua Mulan is considered by many to be an actual figure in history, not just in fiction)

On Julia Gillard in conversation with Anne Summers: Carly Findlay: Julia Gillard in conversation with Anne Summers: “You have a decision to make: you could have a crap rest of your life”, [or you can move on]; Catherine Fox: The Gillard Effect: A role model we are lucky to have; Scarlett Harris: Anne Summers in conversation with Jullia Gillard.

On Marriage

Thoughts on being married by Gaayathri at A Human Story

O Brother, Where Art Thou On Gay Marriage? by Rebecca Shaw.

The logic behind Julia Gillard’s same-sex marriage opposition by Simon Copland at Ausopinion.

Poverty, Classism, Society, and getting a free pass

Poverty is Political by Anjum at Kiwi Stargazer, on the politics of poverty (and the assumption that poverty can be reduced through individual action).

The Left must own its shit and stop defending abusers by Queen of Thorns.

Dreaming of Home, by El Gibbs, on housing in Australia.

Fat Hate

Kevin Hague jumps aboard the fat-hating bandwagon, by Queen of Thorns.

Rebecca Shaw at The King’s Tribune: What do you see?

Abortion

At Idealogically Impure Queen of Thorns writes Teacher abuses position to slut-shame a teenager, gets a slap on the wrist – how moral! and From a prochoice position, changing our abortion laws DOES MATTER (the laws referred to here are NZ laws). Also by Queen of Thorns, 25 ways to be a smug slacktivist antichoice wanker.

Talk about Assault (warnings for discussion of rape, sexual assault, rape apologism, victim blaming, people being jerkfaces)

Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr Jones? by Luddite Journo over at The Hand Mirror.

Chally discusses Sexual assault discourse where the listener is the cautionary tale.

The News with Nipples makes two posts on Mia Freedman’s rape apologism: Ah Mia Freedman, it all makes sense now and Today in what Mia Freedman has done now. And further on Mia (though not really), Ben McKenzie writes re: Mia Freedman et al and their “advice”.

At Hersute, Alcohol is a Misdirection When We Talk About Rape; and at Sikamikanico, Sexual Assault and Alcohol: it’s not common sense, it’s not true, and it’s not helping.

On Bob Jones and related: Gaayathri at A Human Story writes Bob Jones: An advocate for violence against women; One girl’s response to Bob Jones at Rape Crisis Dunedin; Fuck off, Bob Jones: and advertisers? Be warned at Idealogically Impure.

Tangerina reports that Wellington Rape Crisis might have to cut its services again.

And the gold goes to… by ShoniaS at Hoyden About Town (includes warning for discussion of child sexual abuse).

The Little Pakeha writes The vast majority of rapes are committed by shrubbery.

Andie writing at Women’s Agenda: To the unconvinced: the perpetrators of crime are responsible for crime.

Tigtog at HaT with Advising women to prevent their own rapes is not brave or edgy or helpful.

Clementine Ford writes Excused for sexually humiliating a woman at Daily Life.

Misc Stuff

Five Questions to Kelly Briggs is about this week’s Indigenous X tweeter – and if you’re not following the Indigenous X twitter, highly recommend.

freedom, by Stargazer, is about burqas and prejudice.

A letter to my non-black friends by Pheeby at Different Strands, talking about black hair (and what not to do).

Veronica Foale writes My disabled body, my choice, on disability and fertility.

Can HECS debt be privatised? at HaT.

Sarah Burnside at Overland on Helen Razer’s beauty myth (this post is actually from today Nov 1 but I went to school with Sarah and you can’t stop me hahaha)

Why the opal card could be a bad thing by Mindy over at HaT, on the introduction of a new PT smart card in Sydney.

feminist fashion? feminaust fashion?! by MsElouise is a look at whether truly feminist fashion can exist.

Kate Davidson looks at Bikes, sexism and Australia over at Overland.

Permission to geek out – granted, by Fat Heffalump, on women geeks and geeky interests.

At the Washington Post, How British colonialism determined whether your country celebrates Halloween, brings up some interesting notes about Victorianism, colonial social mores, and colonialism.

Are women underselling themselves at maths? A post by Sarah Macdonald at Daily Life

On Stigma and Violence by Gaayathri at A Human Story.

A Public Confession by Morgana Lizzio-Wilson at Womynews.

A poem! Refuge, by Anna Caro.

Yay! See you next time!

Sunday morning links

Today was going to be the day I posted the second part of my Dance Academy piece, but I totally forgot I’d be in Queensland, visiting my family. Instead, have a couple of links:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/02/wrex-in-effect-or-deep-space-and-the-negro-injun-krogan-problem/36200/ – a look at the portrayal of the Krogans in Mass Effect and historical and social parallels.

I link to this not just because it’s interesting, but because I have some thoughts about Krogans and Wrex that I’m saving until I finish, you know, the game.

The Innocence of Australians – last year, an intelligence think tank created a short story award for, basically, Australia’s security fears. This article dissects the results and implications.

Personally, I don’t think fiction is a good vehicle for exploring realistic security concerns, but I guess I’m the only one with an ongoing fear that the planet is going to be sucked into an unexpected black hole that parks itself next to the moon. IT COULD HAPPEN. Anyway, the anthology is as xenophobic as the premise is Orwellian.

Stop, and don’t come back – following on from our post the other week, a howl of outrage at the presence of booth babes at PAX Australia.