Recently, thanks to celebrities Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow, women’s removal or non-removal of pubic hair has become a flashy item in the news and is all over the internet. Details and articles are…
From jokes to rape, there have been nearly 60,000 posts by women recounting their experiences of sexism and sexist violence since journalist and feminist Laura Bates launched her Everyday Sexism project…
Next month the Country Women’s Association (CWA) of New South Wales will vote whether or not to put one of their most valuable assets, their Potts Point headquarters, up for sale. The prospect of the sale…
Until the end of the 2014 Biennale of Sydney in June, Chinese performance artist Yingmei Duan will live in a small forest built inside the Art Gallery of NSW. Visitors – as they have since the start of…
Two performance artists in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) – the UK’s Bryony Kimmings and American Adrienne Truscott – have a certain flavour of humour: it’s the knowing, self-deprecating…
In 1978, the cover of Patti Smith’s album Easter was sufficiently shocking and mystifying to many people that some US record stores, especially in the south, according to Smith, refused to display it…
Feminists: we’re always complaining about something aren’t we? Sign my online petition, withdraw this, that and the other, retweet this, boycott that, and don’t even bring a Nestle product into the office…
Tonight ABC2 airs I am a Girl. Rebecca Barry’s documentary introduces us to six young women from around the world. They hail from Cambodia, Cameroon, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, the USA and Australia…
Hidden amongst the more high-profile reforms in the newly published Criminal Justice and Courts Bill 2014 is a proposal to extend the law on extreme pornography. This law, first enacted in 2008, criminalises…
I’d written a piece for the ABC about “Our Schapelle”. As is often my approach it was largely a think piece. Not a condemnation, not a defence, it was simply some observations – some talking points – about…
Earlier this week, New Zealand singer Ella Yelich-O'Connor – AKA Lorde – won two Grammys, including best song for the sleeper hit Royals and – almost – topped Triple J’s Hottest 100 (her song Royals came…
In the 20 years I have worked on issues around the night-time economy, I’ve seen sex workers treated in wildly varying ways: greeted with humane understanding and mild curiosity by residents’ groups, and…
Economics has been heavily criticised for being unnecessarily complex, unresponsive to criticism, and unable to predict and respond to major financial crises. Recently, we have seen calls for a broader…
Since her tongue-poking and “twerk”-filled performance at the American Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus has been the subject of intense media discussion. This has only magnified in the past week, after…
Earlier this year, Byron Bay mayor Simon Richardson announced that he wants his council to pass a motion recognising same-sex marriage and to set up a “love park”. That the theme of the park is love rather…
In a room full of feminists, there was hardly a sympathetic word in the room for prime minister Julia Gillard on Tuesday night. Earlier that day, the prime minister had launched Women for Gillard with…
Iceland has taken a critical step to ban online pornography – and if successful it will be the first Western industrial nation to do so. According to Icelandic interior minister Ogmundur Jonasson, the…
Without really knowing what he was saying, Alan Jones was right – we are “destroying the joint”. Any dispassionate assessment of the state of “the joint”, both the corner we occupy and the planet as a…
Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade (410 U.S. 113 (1973)), which found that Texas State law prohibiting abortion was unconstitutional. The landmark decision…
It would be truly wonderful to live in the world inhabited solely by proponents of porn. In this apparently post-capitalist world, where sexual freedoms abound, there is no need to worry about violence…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne