Writing Gender

Evelyn Araluen on the pursuit of Aboriginal literary sovereignty.

Astrid Lorange reflects on what it might take – conceptually and politically – to rewrite gender as a practice of liberation rather than capture.

Roanna Gonsalves in conversation with Jeanine Leane, Astrid Lorange, Evelyn Araluen and Quah Ee Ling. RSVP now.

Jeanine Leane gets under the skin of the diversity and inclusion mythscape in creative writing programs.

Fire dragon feminist Quah Ee Ling dissects the banalization of gender equity and diversity initiatives in academic and corporate spaces – initiatives that often fail to break out of a pernicious binary logic.

Somewhere along the way I realised that what I wanted was to make others feel witnessed. This radically altered my orientation towards the world, and the way I communicated the story of my trauma to others: what I am doing is witnessing, staring, even, slack-jawed, wide-eyed, outraged, and taking notes, and connecting dots, and asking what we are going to do about it, out here, in the world.

It was clear that articulation had real world benefits. Survivor testimony was being taken seriously as a form of resistance and as a tool for informing policy. It was also clear that to be read I would need to relinquish even more privacy and power.

We have our own voices and stories – and we always have and always will – and so we continue presencing our stories and asserting our side of the colonial story, so that our abusers, personal and institutional alike, can no longer control the narrative about us.

Doing everything you can to expunge trans women from women’s sport or from being included in talking about anti-violence against women will never make women’s sport fairer, or decrease violence, or give cis-women one ounce of what they need. Divided we ensure that the real problem, the systemic underfunding and relegation of women’s health, culture and sport remains a secondary concern.

The main counter-manoeuvre is to become the new weather god; to establish a climate in which characters who have not mattered, matter, and are safe, even if they don’t know it…