Women's Honi: Week 9, Semester 2, 2025

The University of Sydney Women’s Collective presents

Women’s HONI

Week 9, Semester 2, 2025

Algerian Resistance Behind the Veil

Imane Lattab Analysis, Page 12

Don’t Knock Up

Dr Miniature Malekpour Feature, Page 6

When Rage Becomes Routine

Emily Bentancort Perspective, Page 14

Acknowledgement of Country

The Women’s Collective acknowledges that we exist on the stolen land of the Gadigal people. Sovereignty was never ceded, and this always was and always will be Aboriginal Land.

We honour and respect the knowledge and strength of First Nations Elders, warriors and matriarchs, who have suffered and persevered under colonialism for 237 years. Our activism must reject liberal feminist ideals and embrace decolonisation, justice and land back. We recognise the devastation that the colonial patriarchy has wreaked on First Nations women, and the disproportionate rates of femicide, domestic violence,

medical mistreatment, deaths in custody and child removals, and know that justice for First Nations people must go beyond a mere land acknowledgement.

We must work to decolonise how we think, unlearn the colonial structures that have allowed settlers to benefit at the expense of First Nations people and country. Pay the rent, give to mutual aid, show up to rallies.

Always was, always will be.

Editors

Women in Incarceration

Weapons of War

Femicide and Patriarchal Terrorism

Women in Algeria

Sexual Violence on Campus

Misogyny in Music

Poetry

SRC Pages

Puzzles

Comedy

Hello, and thank you for picking up this year’s edition of Women’s Honi!

We are so proud of all of our wonderful writers, editors and artists for their incredible contributions. Pulling together a publication of this scale truly takes a village, and we are so grateful for the dedication, intelligence and humour our team has brought to this paper.

Our aim with this edition was to bring together a variety of pieces that would inspire reflection and conversation on a breadth of Feminist topics. Pieces range from an investigation into the state of women’s prisons in Australia, to critiques of USyd’s sexual misconduct reporting system, analysis of the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war in Sudan, deconstructions of our failing health system, and examinations of ecofeminism. We hope this edition inspires conversation, reflection and critique, and most importantly, continues to spotlight Feminist issues which are so often neglected in activist work.

The publication of this edition also coincides with two years since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. For two years now we have watched through our screens as Israel has systematically murdered, displaced and starved the Palestinian people, whilst our governments have not only watched on, but actively funded and abetted the genocide. Now more than ever, free Palestine.

In love and rage,

Martha and Ellie

Companion piece, Sisi Orvad

I remember once being on the bus when I was freshly 18, alone in this bustling city after having moved on my own. I was being harassed by a man, asking personal questions and touching me when I had explicitly told him not to multiple times. I was frozen, scared, unsure of how to defend myself.

I think I owe my life to the woman who noticed and stood between us. I had never seen or spoken to her before. We made small talk until my stop, then she blocked him from following me off.

Hands are a symbol of action and communication. In this piece ‘Hold On’, I wanted to explore the quiet, subtle connection between women in public spaces. The silent moments on public transport that scream solidarity and strength in numbers. In troubling times such as these, the importance of holding on, solidarity, and protection of our fellow women is insurmountable. Protest, protect, and organise. We are stronger and louder together.

Martha Barlow, Emily Bentancort, Avin Dabiri, Felicity Errington, Audrey Hawkins, Saskia Morgan, Kiah Nanavati, Jenna Rees, Ellie Robertson, Jessica

Louise Smith, Ananya Thirumalai

Front Cover

Sisi Orvan

Sophie Bagster, Martha Barlow, Emily Bentancort, Cate Chapman, Avin Dabiri, Felicity Errington, Audrey Hawkins, Isla Hook, Imane Lattab, Dr Miniature Malekpour, Saskia Morgan, Kiah Nanavati, Jenna Rees, Ellie Robertson, Imogen Sabey, Jessica Louise Smith, Ananya Thirumalai, Jasmine Virk, Indiana Jade Zezovski

Artists

Saskia Morgan, Jo Staas, Ananya Thiruamalai, Isidora Vasiljevic

Back Cover

Vieve Carnsew

What is WoCo?

The Women’s Collective (WoCo) is an autonomous feminist organising space open to women and gender minorities. Our feminism is centred around fighting patriarchal structures and gendered forms of oppression, especially where these intersect with capitalism, colonialism, racism, and queerphobia. We organise around issues including ending rape on campus, abolishing the colleges, reproductive justice, First Nations justice, and Palestinian liberation.

This year we made 2 publications, ran a ‘cool down’ station at the Invasion Day Rally, organised a counter-rally for the Day of the Unborn Child, fought with “Abortion Abolitionists” on campus, advocated for better visibility of the sexual misconduct reporting system, hosted an Abolish the Colleges forum, and ran our annual ‘Reclaim + Resist’ week, a week of feminist action and education.

Keen to get involved? Follow us at @usydwoco on Instagram.

Resources

The University Sexual Misconduct Reporting System

The University has a reporting system that allows you to make either a disclosure or complaint of sexual misconduct if it has occurred at or in connection with the University, including at an event or residential college. The Sexual Misconduct & Inappropriate Behaviour Online Reporting Form will connect you with the Safer Communities Office who will work to provide support, such as counselling, health services and emergency accommodation.

Reporting an incident will not affect your enrolment, academic status or visa status.

Students and staff can find the reporting system by searching “report sexual misconduct USyd.” Mandarin speaking staff and interpreters are available on request.

The National Student Ombudsman

The National Student Ombudsman is a national body through which students can escalate complaints about sexual harassment, assault and violence, via an online form, over the phone during working hours, in writing, or in-person.

The Ombudsman also has the power to investigate Higher Education Providers who are failing to respond to sexual and gender based violence.

Students can find the Ombudsman by searching “national student ombusman”, and selecting “make a complaint.”

Counselling / key services

Safer Communities Office | Provide free counselling and support for people who have experienced sexual violence, bullying and domestic violence. Email safer-communities. officer@sydney.edu.au or call 02 8627 6808 to make an aoppointment.

USyd SRC caseworkers | Help with tenancy, financial, academic issues. Fill out the caseworker form on the SRC website under ‘SRC Help’ or go to bit.ly/contact-a-caseworker

USyd SRC Solicitors | Free legal advice, representation and referrals for USyd students. Call 02 9660 5222, Monday to Friday 9am5pm.

USyd Student Counselling Services | A counselling service provided by the University of Sydney. They offer 1-6 free sessions to students in person or via telehealth. Email student.counselling@sydney.edu.au or fill out the online registration form.

Health services

NSW Health Sexual Assault Services | List online of 54 other sexual assault clinics across NSW for people not around Camperdown, all open 24/7.

RPA Hospital Sexual Assault Clinic | Daytime Phone: 9515 9040 | After Hours Phone: 9515 6111 | 16 Marsden Street Camperdown | A variety of medical and other services including unlimited free counselling services, forensics kits and STI testing.

The Gender Centre | (02) 9569 2366 | Marrickville | Provides services such as counselling, accommodation, outreach, and support for trans and gender diverse people in NSW.

First Nations resources

Wirringa Baiya Aboriginal Women’s Legal Service | 1800 686 587 | Provides legal advice and support for a range of issues, including domestic, sexual, and family violence, to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, children, and youth.

13YARN | 13 92 76 | A confidential crisis hotline run by and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Hotlines

Full Stop Australia: NSW Sexual Violence Centre | 1800 424 017 | Provides 24/7 telephone and online crisis counselling for anyone in Australia who has experienced or is at risk of sexual assault, family or domestic violence and their non offending supporters. Has a free telephone interpreting service available upon request.

Safer Communities Confidential Helpline | (02) 8627 6808

NSW Sexual Violence Helpline: 1800 424 017

Domestic Violence Impact Line: 1800 943 539

LGBTIQ+ Violence Service: 1800 497 212 Lifeline | 24/7 suicide prevention crisis support hotline for anyone experiencing a personal or mental health crisis. Call 13 11 14

1800 RESPECT | 1800 737 732 | 24/7 service with counsellors that supports everyone impacted by domestic, family and sexual violence

Snap protest at Central on 1st October to free the Sumud Flotilla

Imogen Sabey reports.

On Wednesday 1st October, students and members of the public gathered at Central Grand Concourse to protest against attacks on the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) sailing to Gaza with food and aid supplies.

Protesters were gathered in a fenced-off area of the concourse, with over a dozen police officers patrolling the perimeter.

The protest began with Yasmin Johnson (SAlt) acknowledging Country and condemning the Albanese government for their complicity in genocide and Israel’s bombing and attacks on the GSF.

The first speaker, a representative of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) said “Our workers have taken significant industrial action in defence of people around the world, and the Palestinian cause is no different.”

He read out a statement from the International Transport Federation (ITF): “International law is clear. The people of Gaza must have unimpeded access to relief. The ITF strongly condemns the recent drone attacks on the GSF… these acts are a direct assault on international law and maritime safety.”

The next speaker, Jasmine Al Rawi (SAlt) spoke about the importance of continuing to resist government crackdowns on protests. “You know you’re on the right side of history when our government has tried every trick in the book to stop our movement for justice… We will not

accept anything less than Palestinian liberation and that is what the flotilla activists are fighting for.”

Shovan Bhattarai (SAlt) added “Right now, the eyes of the world are on Gaza and the GSF. The whole world is watching.”

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi conveyed her gratitude for the activists present at the rally, saying “Thank you for showing up for Palestine again and again. You are the courage of this country. You are the conscience of this country. You are the moral compass of this country.” She condemned Donald Trump and Keir Starmer for their recently unveiled plan to govern Gaza, as well as the Albanese government.

Faruqi highlighted the necessity of continuous protests to fight against complicit governments. “We can’t stop our protests for even a single day.” She called the GSF activists “the best of humanity. They carry with them heart, human decency and hope.”

Zach Schofield, from climate activist group Rising Tide, spoke about the ongoing contributions of Australia to the genocide, making reference to coal shipments from Newcastle to Israel. He spoke about NSW Premier Chris Minns being personally congratulated by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, and addressed the police officers directly: “Your premier was congratulated by the president of a genocidal state for his unwavering support of genocide.”

The next speaker was Luke Mesterovic (Grassroots), who asked “Why is [the flotilla] being attacked? Fear. This is an attempt to drive fear into the heart of anyone who denies what is taking place right now, and let’s be clear, it is a genocide.

“We cannot get complacent. We cannot get scared. When we’re silent, they win.”

Eddie Stephenson (SAlt, Macquarie University) said “The GSF is the conscience of the world. It is a litmus test for people in power. Whatever happens to them is a test of every government, every politician… It is a beacon of steadfastness, perseverance and hope.”

The protest contingent then marched out onto the street, running across the road. They were followed by police before gathering at the base of Central Station, with police forming a barricade that prevented them from going further. The protesters vowed that if the flotilla was intercepted by Israel, as they expected it would be, then they would return in another snap protest on Friday 3rd October.

In the morning of Wednesday 2nd October, Israel did intercept the flotilla, and arrested and kidnapped activists on board, including Greta Thunberg. Students For Palestine subsequently announced a snap protest to be held on 2nd October at 5:30, at Sydney Town Hall.

UOW Safe and Respectful Communities service under review, students express outrage

Jenna Rees reports.

In mid-September, staff at the University of Wollongong (UOW) received an email detailing plans to cut the Safe and Respectful Communities (SARC) service. SARC is a space on the UOW campus for students to report and access support for incidents of sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence, family violence, bullying, harassment, and discrimination.

SARC has been responsible for promoting the safety and dignity of students at UOW, and it is the only dedicated place at UOW for students to safely turn if they experience violence or harassment.

In response, the Wollongong Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA) has created the SAVE SARC campaign. The SAVE SARC campaign states that cutting SARC is a “steady erosion of student and staff wellbeing in favour of short-term cost-cutting and corporate priorities.”

A post on the SAVE SARC Instagram stated that “the dismantling of SARC is not just a restructuring choice; it is a direct and reckless attack on the rights, safety, and futures of everyone in the UOW community.”

Without SARC, WUSA said it is “leaving students with nowhere safe to turn. Survivors of violence and harassment will lose the only dedicated space on campus designed to protect and support them.”

WUSA warned that there will be “no safe room to walk into”, “no specialist staff trained to respond,” and there is “no assurance that those facing abuse, discrimination, or trauma will be heard, let alone helped.”

WUSA explained that “this is not a neutral budget decision. It is a reckless attack on student safety”, adding that it is “a betrayal of the university’s duty of care.”

The campaign gave five ways for students, staff, and the public to help:

- To submit feedback via the student feedback portal of the UOW website;

- Lodge a complaint with the National Student Ombudsman;

- If they are a student, contact Max Lu directly expressing their concerns around the dissolution of SARC;

- Contact the Federal Minister of Education, Jason Clare, and local MP Alison Byrnes to alert them of the situation;

- Join the rally on 16th October in solidarity with SARC.

The SAVE SARC campaign is planning a rally outside Max Lu’s student forum in Building 20 at UOW on Thursday 16th October, in solidarity with SARC.

The Women’s Collective (WoCo) at USyd stated they are “horrified to hear that this week, the University of Wollongong announced plans to completely axe its Safe and Respective Communities office.”

WoCo said that “cutting these services massively endangers survivors when they are at their most vulnerable” and “USyd WoCo stands in solidarity with the SAVE SARC campaign and with all victim survivors.” The USyd WoCo is currently organising a cross-university contingent to show up on 16th October to protest the abolishment of SARC.

The Illawarra Women’s Health Centre also supported the fight to protect SARC. Sally Stevenson, the Executive Director of Illawarra Women’s Health Centre, said that “UOW has a precious asset with the SARC team that, from the perspective of victim-survivors and community

organisations such as ours, it can’t afford to lose.”

A spokesperson for the University of Wollongong said that the “draft change proposal for Safe and Respectful communities is not aimed at cost savings or staff reductions, and no services will be disestablished.

“Instead, the proposal redesigns the way services are delivered to provide a more cohesive, consistent and improved experience for our staff and students, reflecting our commitment to building a more strategic, inclusive and responsive University.”

The spokesperson went on to say that a “proposal has been developed in a context of significant national reforms, including the newly introduced codes for preventing and responding to gender-based violence, the establishment of a National Student Ombudsman and strengthened national requirements for managing psychosocial hazards,” and that “UOW is committed to robustly meeting these new government requirements.”

The new proposal has “been shaped by preliminary consultations, including feedback from staff, students, union representatives, and subject matter experts.”

The spokesperson said that “UOW will continue a transparent consultation process…to ensure services are meeting their needs.

“Two focus groups are planned for students in the coming weeks, and staff directly impacted by the proposals will be invited to provide further feedback to help shape the final outcome.”

The spokesperson ended by saying that the “proposals are drafts and will evolve as consultations continue.” The consultation period is open until 28th October, and “no final decisions have been made.”

NSW police charged with assault of Hannah Thomas

Imogen Sabey reports.

A NSW police officer, whose identity has not been publicised, was charged with assault on 23rd September over the arrest of former Greens candidate Hannah Thomas.

Thomas was arrested in June at a pro-Palestine protest outside SEC Plating, a weapons manufacturing company. Thomas, alongside four others, was protesting the manufacturing of F-35 fighter jet components, allegedly supplied to Israel to use in its ongoing bombardment of Gaza.

SEC Plating denies that it supplies F35 parts to Israel.

While being placed under arrest by a 33-year-old male senior constable, Thomas sustained severe eye injuries that threatened her vision in her right eye.

Thomas was charged for participating in an ‘unauthorised’ protest, but these charges were dropped in early September and Thomas was awarded $22,000 in legal costs. The officer involved has since been issued a court attendance for assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Peter O’Brien, Thomas’ lawyer, commented “It was of real and stark

concern that the immediate response by the leadership of NSW Police in the immediate aftermath of Ms Thomas’ injury being sustained was that officers had done nothing wrong, despite clear and objective evidence to the contrary.

“The senseless violence and ruthless conduct of police towards this small group of peaceful protesters, including Ms Thomas is a sharp indictment on the way in which government and police are manoeuvring to criminalise and suppress protest and dissent in this state: this is of significant concern for all interested in the preservation of democracy in NSW.”

David Mejia-Canales, Senior Lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, said “NSW has some of the most restrictive anti-protest laws in the country, which have set the tone for heavy-handed, violent policing and the repressive treatment of peaceful protesters.

“The broad discretion [of NSW Police] to control and restrict peaceful protests [has] serious impacts on people’s safety.”

NSW Police have stated that the officer’s employment status is “under review”.

The officer is due to face Bankstown Local Court on 18th November.

Class

action on strip searches sees over $90,000 in damages awarded

On 30th September, a judgement was handed down by the Supreme Court regarding a class action on unlawful strip searches. The lead plaintiff, Raya Meredith, was awarded $93,000.

The class action was led by law firm Slater & Gordon (S&G) and Redfern Legal Centre. S&G Senior Associate in Class Actions William Zerno commented “This landmark case is the largest class action to have been brought against any police force in Australian history.

“Justice Dina Yehia found the training, education and supervision provided by NSW police to officers conducting searches was wholly inadequate.

“The implications of these findings alone will likely render thousands of police strip searches of young people at music festivals to be unlawful. It is also likely to have implications for the lawfulness of strip searches conducted outside of a festival setting.”

The class action was brought forward by Meredith and launched by S&G in July 2022 on behalf of people who had been strip-searched at music festivals between 2016–2022.

Over 3,000 people who had been stripsearched at festivals during this period

Imogen Sabey reports.

registered to be represented in the class action.

Samantha Lee, Supervising Solicitor at Redfern Legal Centre said “The case sends a clear message to NSW Police –hands off young people and children’s bodies.

“You can no longer ask a young person to take off all their clothes, stand naked in front of strangers with firearms, and make them squat and cough on the suspicion of minor drug possession.”

In a press release following the decision, Meredith stated “ I am but one of many whose unfortunate experience at the hands of NSW law enforcement will haunt.

“I can say with absolute honesty that I am glad it’s over. It’s been harrowing and traumatising, yet at the same time I am incredibly proud of myself and my bravery, and the bravery of those whose voices back my own with their stories and experiences.

“Now I would like to see justice for all in the class action. NSW police have admitted fault by me and now need to take ownership for the wrongdoings to the rest of the class. I sincerely hope that this case brings an end to the practice of unlawful strip searches.”

Disgraced USyd law student and failed candidate for Balmain flops on late night television after featuring Islamophobic guest

Victor Zhang reports.

Sky News has finally axed Freya Fires Up after six episodes, hosted by conservative commentator and former USyd student Freya Leach, after significant backlash against an episode featuring an Islamophobic guest.

In the episode, aired on 21st September, the guest launched into an offensive diatribe against Muslims. This prompted a producer to pull the guest off air one minute into his appearance and for Leach to state “I’ve just been told we have to apologise for what was just aired.”

The guest has stated online that his intent with his work is “to inflict maximum damage on Islam”. On the show, his shirt was adorned with bacon rashers.

Leach issued a full apology on The Late Debate on Monday, 22nd September.

A spokesperson for Sky admitted editorial failure in a statement to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 22nd September.

Leach came into the public spotlight in 2022 when she leaked a criminal law exam to the Sydney Morning Herald, forcing an entire cohort to resit the exam. Leach stated her belief that a fictitious character in the exam paper sharing her first name was a deliberate character assassination by the law faculty.

The fictitious character in question kills a left-wing victim, has unprotected sex while HIV-positive, and is subsequently defenestrated.

Students in the same cohort told Honi that it was “farcical that a major examination has been derailed by the ego of a single student”.

Leach ran in the 2023 NSW state election as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Balmain. She ultimately lost against Greens candidate Kobi Shetty.

Leach received 19.1 per cent of the primary vote, suffering a 0.9 per cent swing against her.

Leach is the director of youth policy for the Menzies Research Centre, a Liberal partyaligned think tank.

The 22-year-old has impressively paralleled Ross Cameron’s career trajectory. Cameron was a Liberal politician turned Sky News host, sacked by Sky for making racist remarks on air. Leach remains employed by Sky and has apologised for her guest’s racist remarks.

Don’t Knock Up:

Rape, Drugs, and Coercion in NSW

Women’s Prisons

Rape and sexual violence in prisons. We’ve seen it before on TV, in movies, in books, or while doomscrolling through the internet. We’re conditioned to believe it only looks one of two ways: male prisoners assaulting each other, or a male correctional officer exploiting a female inmate. The reality is far messier. Inside women’s prisons, sexual violence often collides with the drug economy. Yet unless you work in corrections, or you’ve had the misfortune of being incarcerated yourself, the common belief remains: it doesn’t happen much. But when it does… it really fucking does.

In 2022, former New South Wales correctional officer Wayne Gregory Astill was convicted on 27 charges, including aggravated sexual assault, for abusing at least 14 women at Dillwynia Correctional Centre. He was sentenced to a maximum of 23 years. His predation wasn’t a secret. It was so notorious that inmates made up songs about him sleeping with prisoners. Officers tried to sound the alarm. Six reports were filed. None were investigated until years later, long after management had buried them. One of his victims has since settled with the NSW government for an undisclosed sum. More recently, a former NSW prison guard was convicted of raping a colleague in 2019 and another woman in 2021. The second woman was another correctional officer.

But what about the cases that never make the papers? The ones that never show up in court filings or press releases? One woman, who spent three years at Kempsey for tax fraud, told me:

“We hear about juvenile rapes, we hear about the screws assaulting women, but people forget it’s not only male-onfemale. In the laundry, when we wash the boys’ clothes, we see things no one wants to talk about. The sheets, the blood, the shit, we’ve gotten used to it. That’s normal. But no one talks about when women assault other women. Why is that silence so deep?”

In 2022, at the Mid-North Coast Correctional Centre in Kempsey, a female inmate known as ‘L’ was brutally raped by four women, with several others accused of orchestrating the attack. Two of the assailants are said to have taken plea deals; the outcomes of the others remain unclear. No media coverage. No civil

action. No public record.

The assault unfolded inside W2-B, one of Kempsey’s claustrophobic, coffinshaped houses that squeeze eight women into a suffocating space. For the attack to happen, women from outside the unit had to slip past surveillance and break the unwritten ‘house code’ of sisterhood. Most inmates looked away. Some quite literally sunbathed outside.

Earlier that day, the victim had been working in the laundry room. Those who stayed behind at W2-B set the trap as they played five-hundred, while others working in the laundry lured L in under the guise of friendship.

“Yeah, don’t go in there.”

Rachel, an inmate who lived in the house but was at work at the time of the planning, recalled the scene:

“That’s what one of the girls said to me when I came back home. She was sunbathing outside with another girl who had helped plan it. Ironically, she already knew what was happening inside but was acting nonchalant. At first, I thought it was just a fight, something minor. But I ignored her and went in anyway. That’s when I saw the victim come out of the room.

At muster, she did the unthinkable. She stepped out of line and told officers she had just been raped.”

In prison, the unspoken code collides directly with women’s needs for safety, dignity, and healing. When someone warns you “don’t go in there,” your first thought isn’t rape. In a carceral setting, one assumes it’s drugs, a punch-on, or a score being settled — nothing sexual, or sexually violent. You don’t imagine three women pinning another to the ground while a fourth pulls on a glove and forces her hand inside, searching for contraband.

“An army of officers stormed the section. The main officer, a well-known name at Kempsey, marched straight to the unit where it had happened. All the girls were locked in the living room while they sealed off the corridor, where the bedrooms are. Then Detectives arrived with their brown paper bags, scouring for evidence.

“They didn’t find what they were looking for. But one of the girls, whose room it happened in, later found the condom the attackers had used. She threw it away.”

Flash forward to 2025 and one of the rapists, Ursula, the same inmate who carried out the digital penetration of L, took part in another gang-rape at Dillwynia. The second victim was the girl who had warned Rachel not to go inside that day. This incident we nt unreported.

“That’s what happens. It’s just part of the Gaol cycle. If the other inmates so much as sniff that you’re tied up with drugs, or even if they just imagine it, which they usually do in their paranoid state, they’ll decide the other girl is holding out on them. And

if you don’t cough up? Most of the time there’s nothing to cough up. Fuck, there were even times correctional staff swore I was hiding a phone inside me. That rumour stuck around for years. You do not want to be known as someone carrying contraband. It always ends badly.”

These incidents expose the gap between the legal fiction of prison control and the lived reality of carceral neglect. Prisons are imagined as tightly regulated environments, yet the truth is that they are volatile ecosystems where violence thrives in the blind spots of authority.

NSW case law has recognised that prison authorities stand in a special relationship with inmates under their care. In State of New South Wales v Napier, his Honour, Mason P said:

“The control vested in a prison authority is the basis of a special relationship which extends to a duty to take reasonable care to prevent harm stemming from the unlawful activities of third parties.”

Alarmingly, Australia has no equivalent to the US Prison Rape Elimination Act 2003, no law that compels prisons to report, prevent, or independently monitor sexual assault. In the United States, the Act is sweeping: it tracks sexual violence across every level of the corrections system, funds programs and research, and sets national standards enforced by a commission. It covers everything, federal and state prisons, jails, police lockups, juvenile detention, private facilities, even community-based residential programs. Here in Australia, prisons operate in a legal black hole. Rape exists on paper, but in practice it’s invisible, ignored, and often punished if ever reported.

In a system where most women are already survivors of domestic or sexual violence, how are they meant to survive when the walls around them reproduce the same patterns of abuse they tried to escape?

According to some female inmates, rapes that have occured outside prison walls are expected to remain unreported inside, ‘to be dealt with on the streets.’ The problem is that not everyone inside is a seasoned criminal with connections to call on.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés once wrote about women’s instinctual power in her influential work, Women Who Run With the Wolves (1992), but in prison, this power, combined with prison code, works differently. Estés describes the ‘wild woman’ archetype as a figure bound by instinct, intuition, and initiation, the raw forces that protect, guide, and renew the female self. In her reading of the Bluebeard story, the predator is not just a man, but an inner and cultural force that blinds women to danger until they rediscover their instincts.

Those instincts are doomed to fail in a setting as hostile as a women’s prison, or are most often than not crushed by the carceral code. In Kempsey, the victim — lured and betrayed — stood alone while others sunbathed outside, bound by fear, by silence, by the prison’s ‘first rule’.

Estés warns that when women lose their instinctual awareness, they risk falling prey to predators, whether literal or systemic.

Any of the operating principles of prisons, whether official or enforced by inmates, stand in direct conflict with the needs of sexual assault survivors, as well as with women’s broader health, wellbeing, and treatment needs. I spoke with Stevie, who was ostracised by much of the prison population after reporting her ex-partner to police while incarcerated.

She told me:

“I was in for domestic violence. But I was one of those misidentification cases. After my sentence was set aside on release, I had time to process what had actually happened to me. Inside, I remembered things I had deeply suppressed because of my PTSD, and for the first time, I spoke up. I gave a statement to police about the sexual violence my ex-partner committed against me. That was hard. But what cut deeper was the silence that followed. The girls I thought were my sisters turned away from me. They turned away because I talked to the police about something that had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with anyone else inside, except me. That’s when I realised: the illusion of sisterhood. Does sisterhood even exist in a place like hell?

The weaponisation of rape is neither new nor surprising; it is a grim constant tied to men, greed, and the pursuit of power. Radical feminist theory provides a sharp lens for confronting sexual violence in prisons. Brownmiller’s Against Our Will (1975) shattered the myth of rape as passion, framing it instead as a tool of power, patriarchy’s blunt instrument of control. Kelly’s Surviving Sexual Violence (1988) expanded the lens, emphasising a continuum of harm and the political act of claiming survival over victimhood.

Inside women’s prisons, these theories are brutally confirmed. Compliance becomes currency, trust is bartered and betrayed, and control seeps through every crack like mould, through fear, deprivation, and silence. In a system that practices symbolic double-jeopardy, where it allows illicit economies to flourish, there are cracks everywhere, more drugs are circulating in prison than a Tuesday-night ‘dial-a-dealer’ session on the outside.

In NSW, the numbers tell a stark story. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s 2022 report, The Health of People in Australia’s Prisons, shows that two-thirds of men and three-quarters of women in prison had used illicit drugs regularly in the year before incarceration. The system preys on the vulnerable, many encountering the criminal justice system for the first time, leaving them exposed, coerced, and set up to fail. In the same report, it was found that almost two in five dischargees (37 per cent) reported using illicit drugs while incarcerated. Among First Nations dischargees, 41 per cent reported substance use, compared to 35 per cent of non-Indigenous dischargees.

Dr Miniature Malekpour investigates.

Content warning: Graphic depictions of sexual violence and police brutality.

While prison opportunities for drug use are more limited than in the community, substances such as buprenorphine, methadone ‘doubles,’ contraband methamphetamine, and heroin often become transactional currency. Coerced sexual compliance can accompany this trade: for some, submission is a strategy to manage withdrawal; for others, refusal invites violence. In this system, sexual access functions as currency no less than cigarettes or instant noodles, with systemic deprivation and coercion disproportionately impacting First Nations women.

One former inmate recounts:

“I remember being on remand in Mulawa, waiting for my hearing. I was only supposed to be there a few days, so I kept to myself. But that’s the thing with gaol, you can keep to yourself and still get dragged into whatever’s going on. There was this old-schooler, basically an aunty figure, an OG with her MIN starting with 1. She was pimping out one girl for drugs. I’m not even sure the girl fully understood what was happening, but if she didn’t do what the OG said and work off the debt for the drugs, she would probably get jumped by the other girls in the same mob. People outside think coercion only happens between guards and inmates, have y’all not watched Orange is the New Black?”

This testimony illustrates how sexual violence in prison is never simply individual or incidental; it is trenched in systemic hierarchies, scarcity, and social power dynamics. The frameworks developed to analyse sexual violence in war provide a useful lens for understanding the mechanics of coercion in carceral settings: essentialist pressures of hyper-masculinity and dominance, structural vulnerabilities imposed by marginalisation and scarcity, and identity-based transactions where compliance and resistance shape social hierarchies.

But all old school rules are thrown out the window, women are turning on women.

“There are some women in there, not all, but a few, they just hustle. That’s their life, inside and out. Hustling, all the time. And if they can get some sexual pleasure out of it, why not, the two come together there, sex and drugs, drugs and sex. And some of them, we knew they were flirting with the guards, and a couple would exchange favours.”

Research increasingly recognises that many women, in attempting to escape victimisation such as fleeing abusive homes, engage in behaviours deemed deviant or criminal, which in turn increases their risk of further victimisation, particularly sexual abuse. Callie Marie-Rennison, in Feminist Theory in the Context of Sexual Violence, highlights the victim-offender overlap, showing how prior experiences of physical and sexual abuse can influence later offending. Studies consistently find that both adult and juvenile female offenders report higher rates of prior abuse than non-offenders. This cycle, often described as the ‘criminalising of girls’ survival,’ sheds light on the lived

experiences of female inmates and the structural forces shaping their entry into the criminal justice system.

A 2014 report commissioned by Corrective Services NSW, Women as Offenders, Women as Victims, confirms that women in prison experience high rates of sexual victimisation across their lives, often beginning in childhood and accompanied by other forms of interpersonal violence. Indigenous women, who are disproportionately represented in NSW’s female prison population, face even higher rates of abuse. According to Richters in 2008, a study of 199 women behind NSW bars showed that nearly six in ten had been coerced or terrified into sexual acts, and more than half never told a soul or sought help.

“We heard about a young man who was sodomised in a gaol toilet. Years ago, he begged, offered money, tried to resist, and still it happened. They held him against the wall, penetrated him, and left him there to cry alone, hours in the shower, stripped down and broken. In women’s gaols, it’s never just one girl. You see it in whispers, in the way the drugs move, in the way control slides through every corridor.”

Most women entering prison arrive already broken by violence, yet the system greets them not with care but with stripsearches, dry cells, and suspicion. While their numbers may be smaller than men’s, women are classified as ‘high needs’ for good reason, higher rates of trauma, fractured mental health, addiction, unemployment, and educational neglect. They are the ones most in need of healing, yet they are delivered straight into a machinery that deepens their wounds. Worse still, the prison environment normalises practices that are degrading and often re-traumatising.

As noted previously, the Commissioner of Corrective Services has a duty of care; yet repeated failures, such as those at Dillwynia and Kempsey, reveal a pattern of institutional negligence that may well breach Australia’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the universal instrument, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

As Easteal, Covington, and Bloom have noted, strip-searches in carceral settings are often sexually abusive and deeply triggering. One inmate recalls:

“It definitely felt like I was being sexually abused. I was standing there, and yes, they follow certain procedures so the female isn’t completely naked for long. But after I had taken everything off, they told me to undo my hair and move it around at the end. I felt like I was put on show.”

Then there are the problematic, and inhumane practices of dry-cells. These cells are designed so that suspected contraband is eventually expelled, through urine, faeces, or vomit, while the victimsurvivor is confined with only a mattress on the floor and the bare minimum of items. In the 2024 Inhumane Treatment

in Dry Cells, Review Report by the Office of the Custodial Inspector Tasmania, it describes the approach and objective of the ‘dry-cell’: In a dry cell, a person is first asked to hand over any hidden items. Refusal, or suspicion can land them inside, turning it into a tense game of ‘cat and mouse.’ They remain confined until waste is passed and searched for contraband, often with nothing found, before being returned to their unit.

But what happens when a young woman has her period and is denied sanitary products because of the ‘dry-cell’ policy? One female inmate, who was recently incarcerated at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre for minor drug offences, explained:

“Yeah, it happened to our mate. They suspected her of holding gear, so they chucked her in a dry-cell. This is at one of the smaller gaols too. She was on her period, blood everywhere. The boys who cleaned it later told us. Poor girl. God knows how she must have felt.”

Australia, already lagging behind much of the world in guaranteeing a bill of rights for its citizens, continues to ignore carceral rights under international human rights law. Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises “the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”

Access to menstrual hygiene products is fundamental to menstrual health, and by extension to overall health. Denying women this access risks infection, reproductive harm, and psychological distress. Similarly, Articles 1 and 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) affirm that “everyone is entitled to dignity and an adequate standard of living.”

As one inmate explained:

“The entire system is a contradiction. On one hand, we have free, unlimited access to pads. On the other hand, they make us take out our tampons, remove our bloody pads, most often the sniffer dogs can smell the menstrual blood, and that’s why they search us. And they don’t do it discreetly; they make sure we know they are the ones in control.”

In NSW prisons, these types of searches are frequently conducted by the Special Operations Group (SOG), colloquially known as ‘turtles.’ Equipped with tactical vests and weapons, the turtles are deployed to manage inmates deemed ‘high risk’ or non-compliant. Yet, their involvement in searches often escalates trauma rather than ensuring safety. Former inmates describe these interventions as aggressive and intimidating, with little regard for privacy or dignity. Women report being forced to remove clothing and sanitary products under the watch of heavily armed officers, creating fear and coercion instead of protection.

“The screws are tolerable compared to this bunch. They are brutal. You back chat to one of them, they don’t follow any rules; they will pick you up and body slam you

to the ground. We have seen it take place, time and time again, and they don’t face any repercussions. Hell, some of them even feel you up under the ‘guise’ of serving and protecting. But to serve and protect who?”

This blurring of power and exchange underscores the danger of disclosure. Sexual violence in prison functions less as opportunism and more as a strategy of control. Judith, who served five years for manslaughter and spent time at Dillwynia and Wellington Correctional Centres, recalled her induction:

“On my first day, the SAPO officer pointed to the intercom on the wall. ‘See this? This is the knock-up button. Don’t ever press it. It’ll cause you more problems than it will help.’ I know he meant well, warning me about the informal rules of gaol, but no wonder women are too scared to buzz up.”

That is the unspoken law of prison: you don’t break it, not if someone’s overdosing, not if someone’s dying, and definitely not if someone’s being gang-raped.

“You don’t come out reformed; you come out colder than you went in. It stains the soul, and that, in a way, is exactly what the system expects: it fuels the ongoing cycle of incarceration. Most importantly, this is how generational trauma is perpetuated. While abolitionists, reformers, and carceral feminists often frame the world in binaries—angels versus demons, police versus criminals, blue versus green, the lived reality is one of blurred lines, hypocrisy, and contradiction.”

While prison abolition offers a radical critique of systemic oppression, the reality of sexual violence behind bars complicates its promise. Critiques of carceral feminism face a difficult balance, systemic reform is needed, but abolition alone removes the flawed oversight that provides the only legal recourse for addressing crime. Without accountability, offenders may return to the community unchecked, leaving survivors exposed. In prisons, where women arrive already broken by abuse, addiction, and neglect, transformative frameworks must reckon with protecting the most vulnerable while challenging the systems that perpetuate harm.

And when a sisterhood fractures over drugs, when women turn on each other for just one bump, one fleeting escape — the finger of fault should not be pointed at the prison walls. The real issue is the drugs themselves, and the criminalisation of them. Society says that these women are criminals, but the architects of that judgment are the men in suits, the legislators, the policy-makers deciding what can be punished and what can’t.

Until we, as a society, claw our way out of this allegory of a cave and mirage of sanctioned violence, we will remain complicit and condemned to repeat the relentless cycle of generational trauma.

Art by Jo Staas

Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War

Martha Barlow analyses.

Content warning: this article contains discussions of graphic sexual violence and violence against women.

In early September, a video of Qisma Ali Omar, a Sudanese woman from Central Darfur began circulating the internet. In the video, Qisma has been strung from a tree by her arms with her feet bound, being slowly tortured to death whilst an RSF soldier looks on. She is one of the 6.7 million women in Sudan estimated to be at risk of sexual violence, starvation and death — and yet one of the only ones to be recongised by the world.

In 2019, the Sudanese Revolution and overthrow of dictator Al-Bashir heralded a new age for the Sudanese people.

Women, such as activist Alaa Salah were at the forefront of this change — organising protests, pickets, and demanding their right to representation and participation in this new democratic society.

However, this new age never arrived. In April 2023, war broke out between the two groups making up the Transitional Government: the Sudanese Armed Forces, and the Rapid Support Forces. The latter group is largely composed of the Janjaweed militias, the group responsible for perpetrating the Darfur Genocide and the Khartoum Massacre in 2019 against pro-democracy protestors.

In the last two years, the conflict has plunged Sudan into the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with over 150,000 people killed and 12 million displaced. The RSF, accused of the most brutal crimes against Sudanese civilians, is primarily funded by the UAE. In return for Sudanese gold, the UAE has provided the RSF with weapons,

drones and medical aid to wounded soldiers. Much of this fighting has occurred in the Darfur region of Western Sudan, targeting the non-Arab Massilit, Zaghawa and Fur populations.

One of the most salient and horrific aspects of this crisis is the rates of sexual violence. Whilst it is difficult to ascertain precise numbers, institutions such as the UN and Human Rights Watch have acknowledged that rape is being employed as a weapon of war; that as these groups raze through villages committing massacres and mass amounts of internal displacement, rape is not incidental or opportunistic, but a deliberate tactic to dehumanise, torture and humiliate civilians.

This is not the first time sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war in Sudan. During the Darfur Genocide from 2003-2005, it is conservatively estimated that 10,000 women were raped. Rape was included amongst the ICC’s war crime charges against Al-Bashir and other key perpetrators, with the ICC prosecutor stating that “rape is an integral part of the pattern of destruction that the Government of the Sudan is inflicting upon the target groups in Darfur.”

Studies written in the wake of the Darfur Genocide began to chart the effectiveness of mass rape as a weapon against civilians — explaining it as a reward or spoil of war, a way to boost to morale, a form of punishment, and a means of inciting revenge. It is both bloodthirsty and strategic. Today in Sudan we see reports of women being violently gang raped, cut and mutilated, and being abducted as sex slaves. Militants often rape women whilst forcing their families to watch or participate, with the shame and stigma around sexual assault leading to women being abandoned by their families.

Rape is used to stoke fear and tear apart communities; to aid displacement by forcing people to flee in advance of an enemy attack, and creating a greater inability and reluctance to return home.

One report noted that the RSF will frequently kill men and boys but leave victims alive, so that they will spread the story of what happened into the towns they flee to.

Human rights scholars Gingerich and Leaning further emphasise the role of rape in ethnicallybased conflicts and genocides, as a means of dehumanizing and replacing local populations. During the Darfur genocide it was reported that the Janjaweed militias would tell the women they assaulted that their children born of the rape would be “free babies”, as they viewed the local ethnic groups as slaves. As well as inflicting shame, fear and trauma, sexual assault was used as a means of ethnic cleansing by “purifying” bloodlines.

Victims of rape face unwanted pregnancies, high rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, lifelong PTSD, and physical injuries. In a country where rates of female genital mutilation are already so high, the consequences of rape can include opening unhealed wounds, tearing open scar tissue and increased risk of infection. These consequences are felt even more acutely felt in a country where health and support systems

have been decimated. In 2024 there was a 288% increase in demand for sex and gender-based violence support services; meanwhile 80% of Sudan’s hospitals are non operational. A report released by the UN in September 2024 predicted that 1.63 million girls and women were in need of healthcare, while 160,000 women were pregnant, and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women were malnourished. Meanwhile, humanitarian aid efforts in Sudan are severely underfunded; for example, a UN-led response plan for Sudanese refugees in Chad received only 30 per cent of its necessary funding in 2024.

Yet despite these horrors, global conversation and outrage for the Sudanese people is almost unheard of.

When advocating for the visibility of genocide, it is important not to engage in “whataboutism” — however, what we can do is examine why we tend to ignore certain crises, and confront the inescapably racialised nature of those whom we deem worthy of our time and attention.

It can be partly understood as an ongoing legacy of colonisation — a desensitisation to the violence and political upheaval from the very nations that caused it, due to the benefits our society has reaped from the exploitation of Sudan and other African countries. Journalist Shola Lawal labels political disengagement with conflict across Africa as “donor fatigue”; a disinterest from the international community in conflicts that present little strategic interest or political advantage. This sentiment clearly manifests itself in society more broadly, where crises like the one in Sudan tend to evoke at best a sense of helpless sympathy, and at worst, total apathy. The attention and coverage reflects a view that black and brown lives are simply expendable; the Sudanese people are victims of a tragic, but ultimately inevitable conflict that “the West” has no hope of helping.

Yet — we can help. We’ve seen from the global movement for Gaza that ending genocide requires more than just attention and donations, but sustained, intense political pressure in the form of genuine aid programs and strategic sanctions and boycotts on the United Arab Emirates and other nations funding the conflict.

We can stay awake, stay informed, and refuse to let the genocide of Sudanese people be pushed into the shadows.

Ananya Thirumalai dedicatesthisdancetodevadasis.

A Dance of Dispossession

On a polished stage in Madras, Rukmini Devi Arundale’s Bharatanatyam was met with reverent applause, hailed as the revival of a timeless tradition. Yet this revival exposes how cultural legitimacy is produced through caste and respectability politics. While the spotlight crowned Arundale a cultural saviour, the women who had carried this form for centuries were being pushed into the shadows. Devadasis — dancers, singers, ritual specialists — were actively criminalised under law, denounced by reformers like Muthulakshmi Reddy, and pathologised through the colonial gaze.

The same gestures that once summoned gods were recoded as obscene; the same bodies that had sustained temples for generations were reclassified as shameful. In their place, women with neither the lineage, nor the stigma, were elevated as guardians of ‘respectable’ culture. As Dalit feminist thinkers remind us, to call Bharatanatyam ‘classical’ is to misrecognise its history: its rebirth emerged not through preservation but through dispossession.

Its survival was bought at the price of silence.

Before abolition, the dance we now call Bharatanatyam lived another life. It was Sadir then: an institution of the temple economy, inseparable from ritual, devotion, and survival. For the devadasis who danced it, Sadir collapsed the boundary of worship and desire, holding both as sacred. The tilt of the head, the curve of the wrist, the gaze of longing all operated as ritualised gestures that mediated the divine. To dance was simultaneously prayer, livelihood, and memory. It was art embedded in labour, lineage, and love.

Sadir was carried by hereditary dancer-musician communities, such as the Isai Vellalar (non-Brahmin/Other Backwards Castes [OBC]), and some Dalit groups. The artistry of Dalit and OBCs maintained the temple economy. For them, dance functioned as a practice that rendered the sacred tangible thorough everyday labour. Their world fused the spiritual with the material, showing that devotion was inseparable from survival. Only later, when Sadir was renamed Bharatnatyam and recast as ‘classical,’ was the form claimed to be detached from caste, from labour, and from the women whose bodies first gave it breath.

Colonialism struck this world with the blunt force of Victorian morality. Within the idiom of Sadir, the ‘erotic’ articulated a pathway to the sacred: the body functioned as a vessel for devotion and intimacy with the divine. To the British, however, ‘eroticism’ signified only sexual excess, proof of what they deemed immoral. Indian elites, eager to present Hindu culture as respectable under colonial scrutiny, reproduced this disdain. In the nationalist imagination, the temple woman was refigured as a stain: her body reframed as corruption, her dance as embarrassment to be erased. By the 1930s and 40s, this discourse crystallised into law. Abolition acts criminalised dedication, dismantled temple patronage, and inscribed communities with colonial stigma that outlasted the statute books.

Yet abolition functioned as reinvention. In the hands of Rukmini Devi Arundale, a Brahmin woman shaped by Theosophy and nationalist pride, Sadir was reconstituted as Bharatnatyam. Its ‘erotic’ centre was systematically excised, gestures of longing re-scripted as metaphors of piety, and the form recalibrated for a rising middle class eager for an art that appeared dignified.

What had once been ritual for the temple became spectacle for the stage.

What had been embodied for centuries by Dalit and OBC women was now sanctified through Brahmin women’s bodies. Revival was hailed as preservation, but what it preserved was an illusion, an art shorn of the very women who had given it life.

But what of the women themselves, once the foundation of the temple world? Abolition promised emancipation yet delivered only dispossession. With dedications outlawed, devadasi communities lost not only their livelihoods but also the dignity attached to ritual service. Patronage collapsed, and with it any claim to honour; legislative ‘freedom’ was rebranded as immortality. Dalit and

OBC families who had sustained music and choreography across generations now confronted poverty and stigma, their names erased from the history they had made — their bodies erased for obscenity. This was the violence of respectability: an art crowned as ‘classical’ at the precise moment its creators were cast out of view.

This paradox — sacred in one body, obscene in another — reveals the disciplinary force of caste and class. Respectability was determined by the caste of the dancer. Nationalist pride intensified the divide: to present Hindu culture as pure, the women who sustained it had to be erased. Even many feminist reformers, intent on abolishing the ‘exploitative’ dedication of girls, overlooked that abolition simultaneously dismantled livelihoods. In pursuing purity and protection, they reproduced caste’s logic: offering a salvation that, for those left behind, materialised as ruin.

To remember Bharatnatyam’s history is to confront the dispossession that underwrote its ‘classical’ status. Dalit feminist voices emphasise that the form’s elevation cannot be disentangled from the maginalisation of the women who created it: the devadasis erased from stages, museums, and curricula so that art could appear detached from caste. Behind today’s polished lines lies an absence in which the very women who sustained the form are preserved only as caricatures or not at all. This absence is the precondition of the dance’s respectability. To insist on its purity is to obscure the impurity of its origins; to celebrate without reckoning is to consecrate privilege while disciplining performers into silence.

A feminist, decolonial politics of memory begins here: by rejecting neutrality, by naming those

Confronting

Patriarchal Terrorism

Ellie Robertson analyses gender-based violence in Australia.

In recent years, rates of women and gender-diverse people being killed by domestic and sexual violence have risen drastically. Violence rates per week have almost doubled from 2023 to 2024. This crisis has intensified concerns for women’s safety across Australia and revealed gaps in how society has reacted to the increase of gender-based violence (GBV), and what the government has implemented to assist in improving the circumstances.

‘Patriarchal terrorism’ has been used in academia to describe violence that is embedded in the patriarchy. The key concern of this type of ‘terrorism’ is the idea that men are justified in using control or dominance over women and gender diverse people through use of violence — including sexual, physical, emotional, and economic. Operating both in broader social structures and in private domestic settings, the range of patriarchal violence is wide. It can range from intimate partner violence (IPV) to the use of sexual violence by terrorist and state-sponsored terror organisations as an act of oppression. GBV is often overlooked in conversations of terrorism and security, particularly by mainstream media and the government.

In the limited instances when we do describe GBV as terrorism, it is treated as one aspect of violence inflicted by recognised terrorist groups; for example, the Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan. However, globally, there are many instances of mass violence against women which are, or could accurately be, labelled as terrorism, though they are not labelled as such because they are driven by gendered, rather than religious, ideology and perpetrated by groups society does not label as terrorists. For example, instances of sexual violence used against Palestinian prisoners by the Israeli state, acts of mass suicide by women in Sudan due to fears of sexual violence and torture, and female genital mutilation (FGM) across 17 countries in Africa.

Patriarchal terrorism and how it presents in Australia is frequently neglected and undermined. Whilst terror in Australia isn’t as outwardly violent as the examples above, it is concerningly and commonly unreported due to it generally manifesting in domestic settings. Between 2022 and 2023, one woman was killed every 11 days by domestic homicide across Australia. This saw a dramatic increase in 2024, with the rate almost doubling to two women killed per week.

Researchers have studied the roles of media and government representatives, and how the portrayal of patriarchal violence by these institutions alters the framework of societal views on issues such as domestic violence, sexual violence, and femicide. For example, in a study about representation of domestic homicide in newspapers, it was discovered that 74 per cent of the articles used were not

in Australia

explicitly labelled as incidents of domestic violence, even though they legally were. The frameworks of the coverage of domestic homicide were found to often treat instances in isolation rather than discussing the wider societal implications. Treating this violence epidemic as an isolated issue further allows people to ignore the continuum of GBV; these violent acts — such as IPV, rape, and femicide — are an interconnected result of extreme misogyny and systemic domination.

The way we treat GBV, and the terminology we use, is crucial to the way society and governments treat the issue at hand. Rooted in collective societal values of misogyny, the language used to portray patriarchal violence in the media is the foundational problem that minimises the impacts of violence. Ideological issues in narratives pushed by the mass media, such as direct and indirect victim blaming, promote a level of tolerance, normalisation, and allowance for these ideologies and violence to continue. The demonisation of victim-survivors has been a consistent issue in the media and in authoritarian politics.

It needs to be recognised that the term ‘terrorism’ is disproportionately applied towards people of colour (POC) to push a false narrative that this type of violence — isolated terrorist attacks — is exclusively widespread, systemic, and deeply ideological across racial and ethnic communities. The instances of terror attacks that we usually see aren’t depicted by the media as single, rogue actions, but are seen as a confirmation of extreme ideologies infiltrating society. Even though this is certainly the reality of patriarchal violence, gendered motives and the pattern of GBV is never discussed, whilst race is dissected endlessly. GBV is deeply laced in the societal roots of misogyny, domination, and control — just like the racialised narratives of terrorism claim.

So why is it that we don’t refer to these continuous acts of violence as a form of terrorism?

A clear illustration of this in relation to patriarchal violence in Australia was the coverage of the Bondi Stabbings in April 2024. When the news was first announced, the media immediately said that the perpetrator was a Muslim man, based on unsupported assumptions. Soon after, it was found that it was a white man who had targeted women based on his misogynistic values. The news then shifted to characterise it as a lone incident committed by a man with severe mental illness. In a podcast by The Guardian, political editor Karen Middleton, states “[the legal definition of terrorism under Australian law] is in section 100.1 of the Criminal Code, and it lays out quite a detailed definition. It’s got lots of elements to it but the three key elements are relating to advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.” Former Police

Commissioner of NSW Karen Webb announced that the attack was specifically targeting women, with the exception of the one man who was killed trying to help victims. The Bondi Attacks attracted significant debate due to the police claiming that it was “not a terrorist act”, even though it was an attack based on a political ideology.

Over the last decade, there have been a few changes in legislation about tackling the epidemic of patriarchal violence. In May 2024, the Australian Government’s budget for 2024 to 2025 was released. This report stated that over five years, the government would dedicate $925.2 million into providing victim-survivors with support to leave relationships that reflect domestic violence. This will be established in financial support for leaving an abusive relationship, but will also have connections to other forms of support services. One of the main problems with this implementation of this is that it is only beneficial for up to 12 weeks. This leaves victim-survivors vulnerable to a continuation of instability with regards to financial issues. Economic abuse has been found to be prevalent in 99 per cent of cases of IPV. Financial assistance from outside sources would either allow victim-survivors to leave their abusive environment but fundamentally only cover the initial “leaving” costs, or depending on circumstance even enhance that abuse further.

There has been a commitment for $3.4 billion invested for the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032, as a long term focus on targeting the root cause of patriarchal violence. Though this funding commitment is a relatively large sum, there are concerns of it not being enough to fully cover more than the crisis intervention. This includes things like emergency housing, legal funds, and mental health support. The National Plan has dedicated funds to push a supposed “whole-of-society” change, however there is a major lack of specificity on how the government and other private and public institutions involved will implement this. Australia’s total 2024 to 2025 budget came to approximately $650 billion. The $3.4 billion that is going towards the National Plan is around 0.5 per cent of the total budget; as of 2024, 51 per cent of Australia’s population is female. This percentage of the budget is a miniscule amount to be investing into over half the population.

Discerning patriarchal violence as a form of terrorism would begin the process of taking actual, sustainable measures that tackle the undercover extremity of GBV in Australia. By focusing not just on support for victims after they have experienced violence, but actually implementing this “wholeof-society” approach, we would target patriarchal violence at the root. In the 2024 to 2025 budget, the Australian Government assigned $56.6 billion towards defence and national security, a significantly higher amount than anything dedicated to GBV or women’s health. Once patriarchal terrorism is a recognised problem by both media and politicians, there will be a collective attitude shift in the seriousness and publicity of GBV.

Women and gender diverse people are forcibly existing in a constant state of vigilance, constantly being aware of the horror stories that may arise if they don’t. The narrative of GBV needs to expand to be included in discussions of security and terrorism. The seriousness of GBV in Australia is increasing at rapid speed, and the instillation of fear in entire communities is becoming formidable. We need to actively recognise GBV as a form of ongoing terrorism, not only to acknowledge the severity of misogynistic violence, but also to see a significant shift in the way our government treats GBV and women.

Mother, Virgin, Seductress:

THE ECOLOGICAL PERILS OF FEMINISING NATURE

Gaia, the Earthmother, an inexorable force, sweeping verdant locks over a nascent earth and imbuing everything with light and colour. We see her in the dimpled valleys and the silhouettes carved into bark. She is everywhere, tangible and alive. Yet — we begin to notice a dark twisting of her softness into a weakness, her beauty into a danger. When gentle, she becomes a young girl to be helplessly exploited; when wild, she becomes a woman to be tamed and overcome; when motherly, she becomes an older woman, weak, and from her womb humans spring to turn on her. We watch the feminisation of nature take an ugly turn: she is corrupted and turned against herself. Fuel mines and oil bladders and smokestacks sprout in the festering patriarchal ambiguities that pool in between her many shifting bodies. Nature, as a female, is devalued.

In literature, culture, philosophy and politics, is essential to consider the ramifications of a feminisation – and as a result, a patriarchal – perception of nature.

Val Plumwood’s work on ecofeminism and ecosophy argue that feminising nature as a ‘resource-provider’ supersedes its complexity, justifies a conquest of the environment and parallels women’s oppression.

While it is instinctively human to put a box around concepts difficult to comprehend, these boxes are innately influential and dangerous. The way we conceive of nature and categorise it, culturally, has clear ramifications on our ecological practices.

So, the question remains – how can we understand Nature as a society, in literature and art and conversation, in a way that doesn’t categorise, undermine, corrupt and sacrifice?

If we turned to Romanticism as an attempt to solve this attempt at categorisation, we would find an idealised distancing from nature. In both Romantic art and literature, the ideal principle is one of “unity”. But look at Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog – man experiencing complete dominion over nature, faintly veiled as awe for its sublimity – or Wordsworth’s Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey – in which the narrator, a “worshipper of Nature”, gazes over a landscape framed by “plots of cottage-ground”, silently tainted by human influence. Here, the act of idealised observation incites “elevated thoughts” (in other words, anthropocentric thoughts), like “Knowing that Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her”, all framed by a stark spatial distancing from the natural world. One can only admire from afar; and in “romantic empiricism” (discovery through observation), a line is inherently drawn between human and nature. Unity is corrupt.

nature with unity: as a ubiquitous, historically-weighted and continual encompassing, a collection and web of processes and organisms that are strong and powerful and untameable, but concurrently fragile, and contingent on intervention and degradation. In cultural conversation, we can work to close the ‘idealised distance’ towards nature by teaching without feminine connotations, removing feminine imagery from advertising and popular symbols depicting nature, and striving to level gender responsibility for upholding positive ecological practices – because when patriarchal norms are woven into our culture, feminising nature will implicitly induce climate apathy and passivity from men. Politically, we can observe the knowledge systems of Indigenous cultures, resisting culture/nature and masculine/feminine dualisms to view land as kin without gender, and propagate climate consciousness and action. We can look to the unity and connection of Country and the attitudes of reciprocity, community and sustainability that are inherent to First Nations communities’ ‘systems’ view of the land.

In philosophy, there sits a constant and discomforting paradox of “unknowable truths”. Wittgenstein instructs us: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” De Beauvoir asserts that individuals exist in a state of ambiguity, as both subject and object, both free and determined.

The consequences of philosophy on the practice of power over land are seen in Locke’s theory of property (that one can acquire ownership of resources by subjecting them to their own labour) being catastrophically fundamental to the colonial doctrine of terra nullius and the dispossession of Indigenous custodians globally. Lovelock’s and Margulis’ Gaia Hypothesis of the 1970s perpetuated the feminine image of “Mother Earth” as a self-healing, forgiving organism, implying a kind of maternal grace that has worked to fuel climate change denial, perpetuate passivity towards tipping points and reinforce exploitative practices. Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature and

My humble opinion? We can break free of idealised distance and hierarchical conceptions being overlaid on nature. This applies to anthropomorphising, patriarchal and anthropocentric assumptions we might hold about nature, working to dissolve these dualisms concurrently:

Nature ≠ Woman Woman ≠ Other Nature ≠Other

Cate Chapman de-romanticises. Read full article online.

In our writing and literature, we must strive to view

Half

As humans, we must learn to stomach our hubris and become comfortable with this paradox. We must take Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith”. Can we set it as a challenge for ourselves to confront the tendency to feminise, and instead experience without attempting to confine the boundless fruitful perplexities of nature? Can we resist the inherent patriarchal urge to categorise, dominate, exploit and expect ecological forgiveness? Can we leave nature as something incomprehensible, something to be imbued with and encompassed by?

Let’s take comfort in the inconceivable. We are at the mercy of nature; we wouldn’t exist without it. We live within nature, subsist on nature, and we must nurture in return.

tHe Population, Half tHe Data: Women as Confounding Variables in ScienCe

It would be redundant to inform female readers on the medical discrimination we face. I’ve heard countless horror stories, from gastrointestinal diseases dismissed as eating disorders, to hysterectomies denied because a woman is of childbearing age. We’re sick of it. But a lesser known fact is that women’s medicine often fails before it reaches the doctor’s office — all because women are drastically underrepresented in clinical trials, leading to centuries of scientific stagnation and preventable deaths.

When it comes to pharmaceuticals, America’s international Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calls the shots. It is apparent that the FDA’s decision to exclude women with “childbearing potential” from early phase clinical trials in 1977 had drastic global consequences. This policy was a proactive response to the thalidomide crisis, a morning sickness drug, which caused miscarriages and severe birth defects. Shockingly, thalidomide was never tested in pregnant or female-specific models, a critical omission noted by Dr Frances Oldham Kelsey, an FDA reviewer who rejected the drug’s application to hit the American market. Instead of learning from the mistakes that affected 10,000 infants world-wide, the FDA doubled down on the very issue which caused the tragedy. This exclusionary policy is often cited as the genesis of discrimination

against women in clinical trials.

Their decision had significant implications for public health. It restricted women’s access to medicine during the HIV epidemic, limited cardiovascular research by overlooking female-specific presentations of various diseases, and even shaped the development of serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Early clinical trials underrepresented women, delaying recognition of sex-specific dosing, metabolism, and appropriate safety profiles. The persistent gaps in literature for women’s research are no doubt a reflection of this exclusion.

In 1986, the National Institute of Health (NIH) reversed the FDA’s decision by encouraging the inclusion of women in government-funded clinical research. Low compliance of this guideline led to the formation of the Office of Research in Women’s Health and a Revitalization Act in 1993, which legally mandated the inclusion of women and minorities in clinical research. Finally, in 2016, the NIH required all researchers to treat sex as a biological variable, even in preclinical and cellular research.

On the surface, things look better. FDA trial snapshots show that wome made up 56 per cent of participants in 2018 and 72 per cent in 2019. However, the data was subject to bias as most drugs approved

in that time period were for postpartum depression, breast cancer, and iron deficiency, skewing the data to include a larger female population. A systematic review of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and psychiatric trials (2016-2019) found that women made up only 43 per cent of industry-funded studies and 38 per cent of government-funded ones. Further, during COVID-19, fewer than 4 per cent of vaccination clinical trials actively recruited women, including pregnant or lactating women, despite their obvious vulnerability. Even with the advancements made, women are still at a clinical disadvantage.

This problem extends to basic science. For decades female animals were excluded from research because their hormonal cycles were deemed too complex. In neuroscience, male rodents outnumbered females six to one. This bias led to drugs like zolpidem (Ambien) entering the market without recognising that it lingers longer in women’s bodies, causing decades of overdoses. Evidently, treatments designed for the “default” male body can be less effective or outright dangerous for women, especially considering that women are 50-75 per cent more likely to experience adverse drug reactions. This gap deepens for marginalised communities: women of colour, transgender people, rural communities, and low-SES groups all

remain vastly underrepresented.

We must reject the idea that women are “confounding variables” — that their biology skews data sets and ruins trials. Hormones are no more disruptive to data than any other physiological system. Trials must recruit women in sufficient numbers, analyse outcomes by sex and intersectional identities, in addition to including pregnant and lactating women whenever ethically possible. True equity in science means moving beyond token female representation to embrace diversity across sex, gender, race and class. But how do we do this?

We need to push for accountability. Ask your doctor whether a treatment has been studied in women like you. Inquire on whether your medication had any adverse interactions with your method of contraception or hormones. And importantly, support the journals and funding agencies which do enforce diverse sex and race specific reporting. By enforcing these standards on the medical industry, we can push for development in women’s health.

It is time to insist that science values every body — that it must innovate and adapt our understanding of women’s health.

The history of French rule in Algeria is scarred by brutality and calamitous violence. Unlike its other colonies, Algeria was considered a French province from 1848 until her liberation in 1962. The settlercolonial state would quash the self-determination of the majority Muslim indigenous population. The intentional suppression of Islamic expression accompanied by state-sponsored immigration of European settlers was imperative for establishing a so-called “French Algeria”.

Consequently, the 132-year colonial conquest would be defined by the discrimination, displacement and dehumanisation of native Algerians, with the aggressive enforcement of European dominance in the region bringing a most bloody revolution. Algeria would secure her freedom, though not until her soil was soaked with the blood of 1.5 million indigenous lives. The revolution was not only enacted by men but also women, who both assumed active roles alongside each other. While European women were deified as emblems of female liberation, Algerian women were engaging in armed struggle, despite systemic suppression of their autonomy. Their actions were revolutionary and a testament to the Algerian people’s unyielding yearning for their land.

In order to understand the representation and treatment of Algerian women, we must critically examine the hierarchies that exist between colonisers and the colonised – especially when their relationships are preceded by centuries of distorted representations of the latter. Edward Said defines this system of institutional knowledge and power over South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) in his book Orientalism. The diverse populations across this region were compartmentalised using uni-dimensional, racist and eurocentric representations–creating the “Muslim Arab” caricature. In pursuing Algeria, the French believed themselves to be adequately prepared to face its “otherness” with this knowledge in its arsenal.

Edward Said stresses how early Western encounters with the Islamic world forever shaped their perceptions of the entire region, what they called the ‘Near Orient’. “If the mind must suddenly deal with what it takes to be a radically new form of life — as Islam appeared to Europe in the early middle ages — the response on the whole is conservative and defensive.” Born out of fear and hostility, Islam was perpetually portrayed as the rival faith of European Christianity. Thus, an ‘intellectual’ tradition would ensue that involved Islam’s bastardisation and depiction as blasphemous, fanatical and antithetical. The goal

“Dévoilez-vouz!”

Algerian Resistance Behind the Veil

was simple; create an unfalsifiable definition of Islam that affirmed its inferiority, and by extension, Arab inferiority. If the immorality and violence of a religion or society could be substantiated, then so too could its people. “Not for nothing did Islam come to symbolise terror, devastation, the demonic, hordes of hated barbarians.”

Christendom’s superiority persisted in the post-enlightenment period of Orientalist studies. To the Romantics, the Arab world was shrouded in mysticism. It was desirable and sensual, hidden and vulnerable, submissive yet untamed. The ‘inferior Orient’ was feminised into some passive, seductive temptress. Nevertheless, the Arab world remained a figment of the European imagination–created, possessed and dominated by the masculine West.

The feminine, sensual and sinful Arab world would be characterised by its most notable feature: the veiled woman.

She perfectly encapsulates the spiritual mystique and distant “otherness” of the region. That distance excites and frustrates the European, whose impatient gaze sweeps over her veil and finds that her concealment limits his capacity to realise his Oriental fantasies.

The Muslim Algerian woman cloaked in her white veil doesn’t allow herself to be captured by his colonial gaze, which frustrates him deeply. “The whiteness of the veil becomes the symbolic equivalent of blindness” (Alloula, The Colonial Harem). His brushstrokes falter, his camera lens blurs. For the very first time, he is met with resistance.

The sexualisation of women’s bodies served as deliberate degradation. Eroticised photography of Algerian women – without their veils and in staged undress – was commercially distributed, serving as a threat against their bodily autonomy. France also staged dozens of public “unveiling ceremonies” across the country in a desperate attempt to showcase the successful “liberating” of the native population from their backward values. The ultimate form of violation and humiliation was the weaponisation of sexual violence

against women, often times occuring in the presence of their families. It was a deliberate and revolting strategy to defile the sacredness of women’s bodies, fracture kinship and terrorise the resistance into submission.

In reality, the women proved themselves to be instrumental to the success of militant resistance across Algeria. On the battlefield, women were involved in executing urban guerrilla warfare in disguise as European settlers or the smuggling of weapons beneath their garments. The very same system that worked to degrade the Algerian woman into oblivion had been turned against the coloniser. Their approach to resistance and struggle for liberation was underpinned by not just a unifying national identity but a firm “attitude of counter-assimilation” to the dominant hegemonic culture.

Women’s liberation cannot be a uniform transition so long as the intersections of patriarchy, racism, colonialism and class exist. When feminist discourse regarding women’s liberation in regions like Algeria are accompanied by rigid assumptions of the hijab, we still centre the European, colonial male gaze. It all goes back to dichotomisation and relative authority. If physical modesty is always oppressive and a violation of bodily autonomy, then is not covering up always empowering? Furthermore, when modesty is a highly valued cultural norm, is it morally justified for the “liberated” to forcibly free them from their own values?

Where indigenous people are concerned, centering their own cultural values and knowledge systems is a necessity in the process to liberation—which includes women’s liberation. In the words of Fanon, “The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him.”

Discussions around veiling and modesty, like all contentious topics,

must be approached with nuance and sensitivity. I believe there is a way to preserve the heterogeneity of the hijab and acknowledge how its perception is both culturally and historically bound. The hijab should not be instinctually mocked or condemned when it has historically been a symbol of resistance and resilience for many muslim women around the world. It is not erasure but resistance; not passivity but survival. It tethers me to my homeland –to memory, to history and to liberation.

To me, my hijab means dignity and defiance in the face of oppression.

[1] The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

[2] Orientalism by Edward W. Said

[3] The Colonial Harem by Malek Alloula

[4] A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon

Imane Lattab unveils history.

is at your cervix.

Evoca: Mending the Women’s Healthcare Gap

The last time I went to the Emergency Room, I writhed in pain against creaking plastic chairs for 14 hours, terrified my IUD had perforated. Tear-stained and nauseous at the thought of surgery, I waited until the small hours of the morning to be told it was only a burst ovarian cyst. They gave me a painkiller, offered an unnecessary replacement of my brand-new IUD, and allowed me to go home with cyst remnants still floating inside me. That was it.

My story is far from unusual: across GP clinics, specialist offices, and in emergency rooms, these patterns repeat — symptoms minimised, pain normalised, and answers deferred. Too often, women are told their suffering is just ‘part of being a woman’, given reductionary one-size-fits-all advice about anxiety, weight, or birth control. Women are constantly left searching for that affirming moment when their struggles are taken seriously.

This moment of affirmation is at the heart of Evoca and Dr Wadhwani’s work. When I sat down with her, she traced how Evoca has carved out its place within Australia women’s healthcare landscape.

In 2015, Dr Wadhwani left the grey backdrop of Middlesbrough, UK, for Sydney’s sun-washed beaches, where she saw two gaps within women’s healthcare: poor health literacy and sub-par primary care. Determined to change that, she opened her first women’s health clinic in Maroubra in 2018. By 2022, her vision had grown into Evoca Women’s Health, Australia’s first national network of GP-led women’s health clinics, supported by allied health partners.

As Wadhwani describes it, Evoca’s model is designed to bridge the gap between GPs and specialists by offering “holistic, evidence-based” care across every stage of a woman’s life. Their handpicked GPs must provide cervical screenings, fit contraceptive implants, and provide antenatal care, which Wadhwani described as the “backbone of comprehensive women’s health.” Beyond that, each GP is required to be competent in at least half of Evoca’s wider service list — spanning areas from menopause to endometriosis — and must commit to ongoing education in women’s health.

But how does this holistic model work in practice?

Wadhwani pointed to a 28-year-old patient whose story is universally familiar. The patient had endured heavy, debilitating periods since her teens, but family and doctors normalised her struggles. By the time she saw Evoca, sex was painful, her relationship was strained, and pregnancy

felt out of reach. After seeing Evoca, she was diagnosed with endometriosis and received a plan: Mirena IUD, pelvic physio, diet changes, a fertility check, and pain-management. Within two months, her mental health and relationship improved, her pain dropped to only a few days per month, and she felt in control of her future.

Her story shows what’s possible when care is taken seriously. But, for every woman who has found answers, countless others remain stuck in waiting-room limbo, dismissed or misdiagnosed. The bigger question is: can one model of care shift an entire system that has sidelined women’s concerns for generations?

The question isn’t just theoretical, it’s one the federal government has been grappling with too.

In March 2025, Treasurer Jim Chalmers declared women’s health “not a boutique issue or a question of special interest” but a “national priority.” The accompanying Women’s Budget Statement pledged $793 million over five years for initiatives ranging from endometriosis research to improving access to reproductive care. This funding signals long-overdue recognition, but no budget line can erase decades of women being told to grin and bear it.

As Wadhwani put it, “Women’s health issues have been normalised by communities, society, culture, and by the health profession itself.” We’ve all been complicit, shrugging off pain, accepting medical delays, and letting a broken system set the terms of our care.

That neglect, inflamed by medical misogyny and chronic under-investment in women’s health research, has left scars that reach beyond the physical body.

Women living with pain are “much less likely to work, and those that do are more likely to work part-time,” and it’s indicative of how women are conditioned to think their reproductive suffering isn’t a good enough ‘excuse’ for leave.

These patterns aren’t just cultural expectations but a ubiquitous reality of words falling on GPs’ deaf ears.

For Wadhwani, this problem isn’t just cultural but structural: “Being a GP means being a jack of all trades, so we can’t be masters at all components of medicine.” Specialists drill down into narrow fields, while GPs are left without the same in-depth training or the evidence base to manage complex women’s health issues.

Although the framework for GPs with a Special Interest (GPwSI) has existed in Australia since 2000, Wadhwani highlights how it has never been widely adopted. She proposes that greater government investment in women’s health education and care delivery is essential to close the chasm for GPs in this space. Without measures like this, women will continue to leave GP consultations feeling unheard.

But changing the system also means dismantling the myths that keep it broken. The misconception she’s most eager to challenge is the idea that hormonal contraception is just a “band-aid” for women’s health. “Hormonal contraceptives are effective treatments for many gynaecological issues and are certainly not bandaids,” she explained. “The issue isn’t the treatment; it’s the lack of explanation [before it’s prescribed].”

Many women share that frustration, feeling dismissed as they’re handed the pill without the underlying causes of their symptoms being investigated. Once those causes are understood, birth control can be life-changing.

Beyond broader health mythologies, Wadhwani admits work within Evoca is far from done. “We are working on improving our delivery of sexual and reproductive health services through telehealth,” she candidly stated, “[we’re] currently slightly limited by technology but trying to navigate this.” Another goal is integrating women’s health-specific psychology, a field still emerging in Australia, with only a handful of dedicated clinics like Affinity Psychology, Monash’s HER Centre, and Pynk Health. For women outside these hubs, telehealth offers a lifeline, but access is inconsistent at best.

Access barriers extend beyond technology. Evoca sits under ForHealth, a GP network with almost 100 clinics nationwide — including in regional areas — but fewer than half have dedicated women’s clinics, and those are concentrated in metro areas. For a younger service still scaling, the gap is understandable, but this uneven access means women in more rural areas either choose between hours of travel or relying on a GP without women’s-health-specific training. Wadhwani stated she is tackling this gap by encouraging ForHealth doctors to train in women’s health so they can expand locally, even when a dedicated Evoca clinic doesn’t exist yet.

Access isn’t only uneven by location; it’s also shaped by inclusion. Evoca works closely with Equality Health and runs clinician education programs designed to make identity-sensitive care a baseline. Wadhwani notes that

the greatest barrier for LGBTQIA+ people is often “a fear of being judged, or not being understood,” with misconceptions about identity, sexuality, or background determining whether a consultation feels safe or not.

Affordability is another pressure point. Evoca’s website notes it’s a largely private-billing service, with bulk-billing available in some circumstances. Wadhwani explained clinics adopt “the right billing model for the community they serve”: most operate as mixed-billing, some fully bulk-billing, and clinicians can use discretion based on patient needs. She added that to provide their fully supported multidisciplinary teams — like those in endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics — funding is essential for nurse training, equipment, and infrastructure.

That tension sits at the heart of women’s health: Medicare rebates don’t come close to covering the cost of multidisciplinary care, leaving providers like Evoca to plug the gap with private billing, and women shoulder the fees. As RACGP President Dr Michael Wright bluntly put it, “medical misogyny is embedded in Medicare,” for years, the system paid doctors $222 for vasectomies but only $77 for IUD insertion. In practice, this means men’s procedures were reimbursed almost three times more generously, making vasectomies easier to bulk-bill — easing costs for both clinics and patients — while women were left with higher out-of-pocket costs for essential reproductive care. For many, that gap doesn’t just mean bigger bills; it means forgoing contraceptive care, delaying scans, and missing follow-up appointments.

Evoca can’t dismantle these inequalities alone, especially when the unbalance is rooted in systemic failures, but its model can help chip away at them.

Wadhwani left me with two final remarks. First, her five-year vision for Evoca is for it to become the go-to for all non-surgical women’s health needs. And second, for all Honi readers: advocate for yourself, change practitioners if you’re not being heard, and don’t ignore symptoms that affect your quality of life.

When I visited Evoca, what struck me was how different it is to feel listened to: my concerns treated as if they mattered, and finally being given options that— after eight years of fumbling in the medical dare — could offer me answers. My experience has been good so far, but in a system where geography, cost, and stigma still decide who gets care, I know that makes it rare.

You deserve to be listened to.

Content Warning: mentions of gendered violence, sexual assault and harassment

It has taken years of advocating for universities to finally address sexual misconduct on campuses and take responsibility for their own students’ well-being.

Yet, the rage that I have is still inconsolable, because when I hear about sexual misconduct incidents on campus continually being downplayed and universities failing to publicise them to their broader university community, I have a sickening feeling of familiarity. Now, both fortunately and very unfortunately, I had the recent experience of witnessing sexual misconduct on campus, and I will be comparing what the University of Sydney (USyd) said they would do and what they actually did.

USyd released an annual report on sexual misconduct in 2024, detailing how the university has responded towards sexual misconduct reports. In 2024, 231 reports of sexual misconduct were received, including both on and off-campus incidents. Out of these 2024 reports, only 2 resulted in disciplinary action against the perpetrator. This excludes the large vast majority of victim-survivors who don’t report sexual misconduct.

The first thing to note is USyd’s recent addition for special considerations. There is now a new reason to apply for special consideration, labelled as “Experience of Inappropriate and Unwanted Behaviour.” By selecting this option, it will trigger an automatic alert for Student Wellbeing to reach out to the affected student. While this doesn’t prevent sexual misconduct, this is a shift towards acknowledging that sexual misconduct impacts all areas, and it is the university’s responsibility to support within the academic capacity. It’s bittersweet that sexual assault is so common that the Safer Communities Office and Special Considerations team has essentially created a whole new category solely for it.

When Rage becomes Routine

Investigating USyd’s response to sexual misconduct on campus

The report also states that USyd has launched an “institutional approach” to the prevention of and response to sexual misconduct.

One practical initiative is “to partner with survivors, NGOs, government and community organisations to co-design and evaluate the effectiveness of prevention programs.” This was an essential initiative. By establishing a partnership with The Survivor Hub and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA), it ensures that victim-survivors are being listened to, and provided with priority sexual assault counselling sessions.

Another initiative was to “promote accountability, transparency and continuous improvement through reporting.” However, when it comes to ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’, USyd’s approach is inconsistent with their actual response towards the sexual misconduct incident in the Wentworth Building earlier in September.

On 11th September, I was forced to confront a man who was photographing women on the toilet inside the cubicles. The women who were subject to this non-consensual act were two female students and one female staff member.

Newtown Police Detective Prue McIntyre said that although campus security has a close relationship with the police, they were shocked to hear the incident first from The Daily Telegraph. The incident was reported to the Level 5 Wellbeing Office at around 12pm. The Daily Telegraph released its article at 4pm.

In response to the media, a USyd spokesperson said that they would provide sexual misconduct support for any students who were subject to Thursday’s incident. But that’s not entirely accurate. The two students who came

with me to the Wellbeing Office received no support. Despite the female students’ offers to provide their contact details for the report, the Wellbeing officer rejected this and said: “That won’t be needed.”

When we report a crime on campus, we expect the university to respond urgently and to contact the police. We expect USyd to promote accountability and transparency on sexual misconduct as they said they would. Instead, it was myself, the USyd Women’s Collective, and The Daily Telegraph that reacted. The failure to publicise this incident to the wider community and the failure to contact the police urgently leads to the question of whether this was an attempt at protecting USyd’s reputation over student safety. It scares me to admit that I don’t have the answer to this question.

Overall, there have been improvements when it comes to responding to sexual misconduct. The collaboration with victim-survivors, health professionals and modifying the reasons for Special Considerations highlights that. But how many more years must we advocate for our own safety? When sexual misconduct happens on campus, students expect protection and transparency. Instead, USyd’s response raises questions about whether reputation is being placed above safety.

This article contains sensitive content. If you’re familiar with what I have mentioned, please seek support. The Survivor Hub, a survivor-led support group that embodies empowerment and empathy. NSW Victim Services, a government victim support scheme that provides assistance to survivors of violent crimes. Their website is victimsservices.justice.nsw.gov.au. You can also call 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), 13YARN (13 92 76) or Lifeline (13 11 14).

She Tends, She Fights: The Roots of Environmental Action in Australia

Across the dusty plains of Western Australia, the reef-fringed coastlines of Queensland and the ancient rainforests of Tasmania, a quiet revolution is taking place and the insurgent beings, women — from Indigenous Elders to high school students, marine biologists to permaculture growers — are at the front lines of a movement rooted in care, community, and conviction. It’s not about shouting the loudest or leading the biggest protest. It’s about changing how we relate to land, to each other and most of all, care for the planet we all share.

This surge of women-led environmental action often echoes the principles of ecofeminism — a philosophy that sees deep connections between how we treat the Earth and how we treat one another. It doesn’t claim women are the only voices for nature, but rather recognises that those historically pushed to the margins — women, especially Indigenous and rural women that are often the ones closest to the front lines of environmental care. At its heart, ecofeminism is less about labels and more about lived values: tending instead of taking, restoring instead of extracting, and imagining systems where compassion and sustainability outweigh control and profit.

Women in Australia have long played vital roles in caring for Country, whether through traditional Indigenous knowledge systems or contemporary environmental science. For many First Nations women, land is not a resource, but kin — something to be respected, understood, and healed. Their environmental work often combines cultural preservation with ecological care.

protection of sacred lands. Their leadership isn’t loud or performative; it’s grounded in generations of stewardship and storytelling, to make a difference and have a voice for all those who have been silenced: women whose knowledge was dismissed, communities displaced from Country, languages erased, and traditions ignored in the name of development. They carry those quiet histories forward, turning them into a force for change.

Outside Indigenous communities, women are increasingly taking action at a grassroots level. They organise local beach cleanups, run sustainable co-ops, lead educational workshops on climate literacy, and form neighbourhood resilience groups during bushfire season. Many of them don’t call themselves ecofeminists, they’re simply just women that care for what truly makes Earth what she is. May it be children, land, animals — it all comes down to inter-connectedness.

While women have long been involved in environmental issues as well as activism, recent years have seen a visible surge in leadership. Teenage activists like Australia’s Jean Hinchliffe, a co-organiser of the School Strike 4 Climate, represent a new generation who are articulate, tech-savvy, and unwilling to accept climate silence.

Behind the scenes, women scientists are doing equally important work — researching coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, monitoring emissions, and pushing for renewable energy transitions. They face challenges, of course. Women in environmental science and policy often encounter underrepresentation in leadership roles and lack of recognition.

Their message is clear and they preach it loud:

environmentalism is not just about polar bears and ice caps. It’s about food security, mental health, displaced communities, and the right to live safely on a stable planet. It’s deeply personal, and deeply local.

At its core, ecofeminism doesn’t claim that women are naturally closer to nature. Rather, it challenges the structures that treat both women and the Earth as things to be used rather than respected. They both are suffering, they’re screaming but the ones that can hear it, are the ones that are fighting for it to be heard louder.

In the Australian context, this often translates to opposition to large-scale extractive projects, not just for their environmental harm, but for how they impact communities, especially rural and Indigenous women. On islands like Groote Eylandt, where manganese mining has long disrupted cultural practices and access to Country, or Bathurst and Melville Islands (Tiwi Islands), where proposed gas developments threaten sacred sites and marine ecosystems, women are standing firm. Their resistance is not only environmental; it is cultural, personal, and deeply tied to identity and place.

It doesn’t mean every woman must be an environmentalist, or that every man is the problem. It means recognising the importance of care and equality, in all its forms is as vital to the fight for a livable future.

Of course, it’s not all harmony and progress — it’s a slow rhythm. Many women on the front lines of environmental activism face burnout, online harassment, and systemic obstacles. Some, like Dr. Vanessa Turner, an Indigenous marine scientist, have received waves of abuse on social media for speaking out against coastal developments impacting sea countries

and labelled “radical” or “anti-progress” for defending sacred waters. Indigenous women are often expected to advocate for the country while still carrying the weight of structural inequality, racism, and community trauma. The frontiers they fight stretch far beyond the bush: they lie in boardrooms, inboxes, and community halls, where access to funding, resources, and decision-making tables remains anything but equal.

There’s also the challenge of balancing passion with practicality. Many women juggle activism with caregiving responsibilities, full-time work, or studies. Yet their persistence speaks to a deeper truth: that environmental care is not a luxury or a side project — it’s a form of survival.

What do these women seek? Not just policy shifts–though those are seeds worth planting–but a deeper transformation of how we see the world. They imagine an Earth not as a resource to be conquered, but as a companion to be cherished. In their vision, care is not a weakness, but a radical act. Nurturing is resistance. Empathy, a form of strength.

Above all, they want to leave behind more than just survival — they want to leave behind beauty, justice, and breath for every living thing.

In the face of rising tides and shrinking time, women across Australia are doing more than resisting — they’re reimagining. With quiet persistence and deep-rooted care, they are tending to communities, landscapes, and futures that others have overlooked. Their work isn’t just about protest, but about planting something better in its place. In their hands, the future isn’t just a fight, it’s a garden being grown.

Elders like Aunty Pat Ockwell in Victoria and Dr Anne Poelina in Western Australia are powerful voices advocating for water justice and the

Kiah Nanavati echoes the calls of Mother Earth.

Erased

Avin Dabiri exposes the divine double standard.

Divinity

Spirituality. Faith. Holiness. All words and experiences that we’d expect to belong to everyone — transcending the lines of humanity across centuries. But history tells a different story, where they have not been shared equally among humanity — but claimed and legitimised, exclusively by men.

Persistent across generations, men have consistently been reflected in their spirituality as legitimised prophets, sages, and spokespeople of God. Their experiences canonised, their visions sanctified in scripture, and their authority enshrined in institutions. While spiritual women who have encountered the divine are re-branded as ‘mad’, ‘dangerous’, or simply forgotten. This paradox has travelled with us through centuries, embedding itself not only in our cultural imagination today but in the very structures of religious institutions, where women continue to be systematically excluded from positions of authority.

By tracing this pattern across time and exploring the variety of its manifestations, we can see how patriarchal narratives continue to define who is deemed credible in matters of the spirit. From Jesus to Moses, from Moses to Mohammad, the most recognised religious figures of monotheism were men — immortalised as spokespeople of God. Granted, there are several female prophets in Judaism and Christianity — but how many of us can recall them? Even in traditions that teach God’s sovereignty as universal, women’s indispensable contributions are forgotten, diminished, and reduced to footnotes of the story.

And the reason for this dismissal is primarily evident because faith has always existed as a powerful instrument of control that operates at the deepest layers of meaning-making. It shapes law, morality, family, and the intimate rhythms of daily life. By monopolising spiritual legitimacy and restricting women’s credibility in these matters, patriarchal systems have for centuries denied them authority in every sphere. Restricting women’s control over family life, politics, culture — all under the guise of divine order.

executed on charges that often combined piety, poverty, and nonconformity. The ‘Witch’ became a cultural shorthand for dangerous female spirituality, and by extension, it became a means to enforce control over women. Specifically, women who were too independent, too knowing, and too close to unseen forces.

And this archetype of ‘the Witch’ did not fade with the flames of the Salem Witch Trials or the end of inquisitorial courts. Instead, it migrated into literature and media, where it has remained one of the most enduring images of female spirituality. Yet this image is no celebration. Cultural stereotypes most commonly depict witches as old, haggard and evil: a grotesque warning against women who dare to claim spiritual power. In the place of prophets and saints, women were left with a caricature; their spirituality reduced to a figure meant to systematically discourage them from exploring spirituality.

In the 21st century, outside of core religious traditions, we see women who continue to seek meaning through contemporary spiritual practices: crystals, angel numbers, tarot cards, astrology, and more. But again, these rituals, which are framed as intimate acts of self-connection, are trivialised and dismissed in the cultural mainstream as frivolous or unserious. A continuation of the long history of belittling women’s engagement with the divine.

By contrast, televangelists command vast audiences and fortunes, self-styled prophets lead new religious movements, and cult leaders invoke divine sanction to consolidate power. Even in our modern and progressive societies, this concept of spirituality continues to be used as a tool to exert control over women. Where women’s practices are minimised and ridiculed, men’s invocations of spirituality are legitimised, monetised and institutionalised. Far from fading, this gendered paradox continues to reveal less about the sacred itself but rather the power structures that claim to guard it.

From prophets to cult leaders and witches to crystal-wielders, the pattern is clear. Men’s spirituality is sanctified, while women’s is mocked and dismissed. But this embedded history doesn’t have to dictate the present.

In Islam, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, revered as the “Mother of Believers” — stands as one of the most pivotal figures in the faith’s foundation, yet her significance is persistently overshadowed. As the Prophet Mohammad’s first wife and the very first believer in his message, Khadijah not only affirmed his prophetic mission but sustained it. She offered unwavering emotional support and used her considerable wealth and business acumen to protect early Islam adherents, aid the poor and purchase the freedom of enslaved converts. Her faith and sacrifice were so integral that Islam’s prophetic mission may never have taken root without her. And yet, beyond Muslim communities, her role is too often reduced to a footnote — a marginal presence in a story she helped make possible. But her role is often reduced to a footnote; beyond Muslim communities she is only remembered as the Prophet Mohammad’s wife. Despite her groundbreaking contributions to Islam, Khadijah is subject to the subordination of the patriarchy (like many women before and after her). A reflection of how patriarchal structures have historically erased women from positions of spiritual authority.

By the 1600s, we see the archetype of women’s spiritual authority crystallised into the figure of ‘the witch’, where even the potential of spirituality in women is dismissed and villainised. While men who declared visions were canonised as saints or prophets, claimed ‘revelations’ by women were interpreted as hysteria rather than holiness. Across Europe, waves of Witch Trials turned women’s mystical experience into grounds for persecution; thousands were

The belittlement of women’s spirituality has never been about the divine truth — it has been about control.

Because faith touches every layer of human life. Controlling it has meant controlling women’s bodies, voices, and destinies.

Reclaiming who we consider a credible channel of the sacred means refusing to allow outdated archetypes to define us. So, to all the women who feel pulled towards their own forms of faith, ritual or mysticism: do not be afraid to explore it.

Your spirituality is not frivolous. It is meaning, it is connection, and it is power.

My Mother Is Not a Feminist

Anonymous climbs their family tree.

I grew up in a matriarchy. An allwhite, all-conservative matriarchy. I have one mother, one grandmother, and no male role models. I don’t have a father, my one grandfather is long dead, and none of my uncles were around enough to have any effect on my upbringing. My mother was the first in her family to go to university, and my grandmother has always been a personality powerhouse. Both of them are dominating, powerful women, and yet neither of them have a shred of appreciation for the activists and suffragettes who fought their whole lives for the rights that they now enjoy.

My mother adamantly believes that sexism doesn’t exist anymore in Australia. She thinks about the gender pay gap with the same distaste antivaxxers think about autism. To her, it is the choices that women make which lead them to earn less than their male peers, and that’s entirely their fault.

My mother isn’t a feminist. She never has been. I grew up in a privileged environment where it was normal for women to be more powerful than men, usually on the unspoken condition that they were white. My mother and grandmother voted Liberal at every election — excepting Julia Gillard, whom my mother voted for (and later regretted doing so). They inculcated conservative values in me for a long time, and I am still ashamed of myself. Every day, my mother and grandmother would buy a copy of The Australian and nothing else. I was a voracious reader and absorbed right wing swill for years.

In my family’s world, female power looks like a well-off white woman who has never faced systemic injustice. My grandmother was born with the right to vote, and came of age in the 1950s. It has never occurred to her to believe in progressive values, let alone act on them. My mother enjoyed free university immersed in spaces dominated by majority white male law students, not exposed to multiculturalism nor left-wing values at university.

If my mother or my grandmother had been born as people of colour, they would have a very different perspective. If they’d lived in a multicultural community, they’d be less racist (I hope) than they are. If my mother had not had suffrage, education and career prosperity handed to her on a platter, perhaps she could have become the kind of feminist I wish she was, the kind of woman I could look up to without caveats.

The thing is, your family can be politically crackers, but they’re still your family. My mother regularly spouts claims that wouldn’t endure a minute of scrutiny by a clever, leftwing activist, but she is my mother. I cannot educate her because she is the one who taught and raised me, her beliefs are intrinsic to her identity, and I believe her worldview would remain unchanged even if she earned half as much as her male colleagues.

She doesn’t care about intersectional feminism, but she does donate to WorldVision. She doesn’t believe in the gender pay gap, but she does care

for children in the foster system. She doesn’t care about femicide, and I don’t have an excuse for that. It is deeply depressing having to withhold honest conversations with those who matter to you.

I take each of my mother’s views and pick them apart in my head. I still love her, but she does not carry the unquestioned authority that she once

Art by Saskia Morgan

did. I listen to her saying that Israel has the right to self-defence, and I go outside and shout “Free Palestine!” She is no longer integral to my worldview. I hear what she’s saying, and read books that educate me in ways that she can’t. I love her, but I trust myself and other people now.

Wrapped in Plastic: Femicide and the Female Body in Popular Culture

Saskia Morgan haunts the narrative.

I see dead girls… everywhere.

In our film, television, and games, popular culture is imbued with ‘fridged’ women reduced to plot devices that exist solely to motivate male characters. She’s beautiful, she’s tragic, she’s voiceless, she’s what sells. But do these works seek to honestly commemorate women lost to violence, or do they operate to desensitise audiences, reducing their tragedy to the catalyst and props in somebody else’s narrative?

A dead girl’s disappearance or death launches police investigations, moody detective monologues, endless spirals of horror, and conspiracy, serving to become one of pop culture’s most bankable tropes. This trope is ancient;

with Eurydice’s death instigating Orpheus’ journey through Hades’ underworld, Ophelia floating pretty in the stream, and Bluebeard’s wives forever memorialised in his freezer room; dead white girls have always been a narrative engine, silenced across centuries to enact our heroic male protagonists. This extends

These women don’t just disappear; they linger and cling to the storylines we consume, egging on pensive police and peers for action. Invited to her funeral and crying alongside her loved ones, we continue to pry into the lives and secrets of dead and missing women, performing a post-mortem, searching for answers.

These stories remind us that femicide is not simply an ending, it reverberates, shaping whole worlds.

But in making women’s absence the drama, we strip them of personhood, turning them into empty vessels of haunting rather than subjects with agency and autonomy.

There’s a price to this repetition, the shock wears off. As the credits roll time and time again on the voiceless women we enjoy, gender-based violence becomes routine. Se7en, True Detective, Silence of the Lambs and Memories of Murder see the corpses and ritualistic killings of women become clues, with shocking violence becoming trite, and women’s suffering blurring into procedure. Video games perpetuate this adrenaline rush, with Resident Evil and Silent Hill using feminine imperilment as predictable spectacle and challenges for players. The audience gets its adrenaline hit, but outrage dulls into habit.

Music has always been an omnipresent figure in my life. It has been my indie godmother, guiding my articles and tastes. A third parent. My earliest memories are of my Dad blasting bands like Ween, Spacemen 3, PJ Harvey, and even Dickless on road trips. Lullabies before bed were Belle and Sebastian, Dinosaur Jr, and My Bloody Valentine played on an acoustic guitar. I toddled on playgrounds in merch t-shirts of Blondie and David Bowie. Music videos of Nick Cave and The KLF before dinner were the routine.

Bongwater in 1991, taken by Felicity Errington’s father.

My cultural compass of knowledge was founded at gigs in the Leadmill and Riverside during the late 80s and early 90s. This education has translated into my own identity as a gig goer in the Sydney scene — manifesting in articles and interviews with local bands and artists.

Every article is an ode to my parents, a tapestry of distilled taste and references.

The compass also flicks to stories of

The cruelest irony is that women at the center of these stories rarely get to speak for themselves. Missing girls, in particular, such as the schoolgirls from Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, Lynch’s Laura Palmer, and the Lisbon sisters, are shaped by the gossip and grief of others, evidence bags and conspiracy. These characters are subsequently denied their own narration, with their tragedy serving to frame the progression of other characters. Even in Gone Girl’s Amy, who weaponises her disappearance, designs a performance as the perfect missing woman to capture the attention of those around her.

sexism that occurred in my parents’ own scene. An infamous story, Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream had a security guard ask my Mum and her friend to be a part of the band’s groupies. Keeping in mind, they were 19, and Bobby was pushing 30. Primal Scream is a black listed band in our home since 1991. These days, casual sexism is forgotten like treasured rings on my bathroom sink. Waves of feminist movements have flooded our collective consciousness, and it has manifested in denial or at least disbelief. But casual sexism desperately clings onto every surface in every venue, from the bar to the stage. It is a cockroach stuck at the back of the cupboard in the Sydney scene, creeping behind every performance.

Bad interactions with men at gigs are a rite of passage for young women. It is never talked about.

Why ruin a good thing? Aren’t we having so much fun? Aren’t we guys…?

I’m now the same age as my Mum’s unsavoury encounter with Primal Scream’s security team; I can say I have experienced a cascade of casual sexism at gigs during my short tenure. I have been asked if I’m a ‘groupie’ by both barmen and fellow male gig goers. In response, I usually correct them and tell them I’m a journalist. They often leave me with an awkward laugh or a shaky half-apology.

For the uninitiated, ‘groupie’ is a term coined in 1965 for women — often teenage girls — who follow a group or band of

However, resistance exists with Lynch’s prequel Fire Walk With Me revisiting the world of his original series, refusing to glamorise the abuse and death of Laura Palmer, and Life Is Strange reframing the death of Rachel Amber, allowing players to warp time imagine intervention. Yet even resistant texts seem to fetishise female agency, rage and pain, with Promising Young Woman taking odd-pleasure the spectacle of revenge.

The male gaze doesn’t just sexualise women in life, but also aestheticises them in death. From critically acclaimed dramas, to true-crime podcasts, the murdered woman is endlessly repackaged for consumption. This is patriarchy at work. Men play the detectives, killers, saviors. Women play the corpse. It’s a formula so ingrained we barely notice it anymore. When violence against women is everywhere, it starts to feel inevitable, or even the norm offscreen as well.

Felicity Errington is not a groupie.

musicians in the hope of befriending or sleeping with them. The rhetoric concerning ‘groupie’ veers on slut-shaming and platforms people’s own internalised misogyny, but as a cultural phenomenon, it became a well-known trend from Led Zeppelin to the Rolling Stones eras.

The automatic sexualisation of women at a gig is shattering to our collective sense of self. This inherent presumption that women only attend gigs as a form of calculated socialising, rather than a love for music and art, has become deeply ingrained in our social dialectic. It is frustrating and sickening to witness and experience. It clips the wings of our

he’s a groupie.

Even if it is said as a joke, it diseases our brains with acute self-consciousness concerning the friendships we have with male musicians and the relationship I have with my own work.

We exist in a moshpit of sporadic misogyny. I have spoken to several women who are active in the scene about their run-ins with casual sexism. These run-ins exist within a spectrum of overtness that

We can’t exorcise the ghosts of murdered women from our culture, they cling to the stories we love to tell. We can, however, change how we let them speak. We shouldn’t be permissive of the narratives that strip victims of their agency, turning the tragedy of femicide into voyeuristic ambience, clues, and spectacle. This repetition doesn’t just serve to desensitise us, it normalises the idea that women’ s suffering is inevitable- even entertaining. If we are to keep treating their deaths as plot twists, we rehearse the customary script of silence. Maybe if we provide women with the agency, rage, and voice they deserve, perhaps the haunting will finally shift, and our dead girls can finally stop serving narratives other than their own.

finally shift, and our dead girls can finally stop serving narratives other than their own.

all have an air of purposeful exclusion. From men blatantly scoffing at a woman’s knowledge of technical gear to a female drummer repeatedly being asked if she’s the band’s manager or girlfriend. From unsolicited comments on women’s looks to outright being groped. We live and breathe this hellish treatment.

What we are witnessing and experiencing is a symptom of the patriarchy’s infinite suppression of gender equity. Venues are still platforming musicians and bands that have been outwardly sexist and misogynistic toward women. I do not care how exciting or profitable they are; it is exclusionary and harmful.

Amongst the claustrophobia of the moshpit, we can find strength and solace from that compass. I am lucky to have grown up around the sounds of Bongwater, L7, anda Babes in Toyland to finally feel comfortable and resilient in my femininity in an industry that is a regular offender of casual sexism.

Let women enjoy art freely without an immediate perversion of intention.

Art by Saskia Morgan

Maia Toakley in 2025, captured by Felicity Errington.

Girls of Faith

where can we go? out of the blue, ‘let’s run.’

Daughters of the Sun

Avin Dabiri turns her powerlessness into poetry.

On warm afternoons, I spend time with the Sun. I lay down in the park, take in God’s gift.

Feel the grass needles on the hollow of my back, let the wind caress my bare stomach, feel the Sun reach out and cradle me in her embrace. She pulls me deep into her furnace-heart, her rays spilling onto my dark hair, trickling down my bare arms.

I feel peace, but it’s fragile; borrowed. I turn to my side, glance at my phone and my quiet is shattered. All I feel is pain.

towards the Lilacs, and Lavenders that hold us near.

the faith of our world, does not lie with lazarus, nor the fables of jerusalem. our folks, of old and new, are found within the faith of our mothers. those who raised us, on words, love, and wisdom

Confronted with the suffering of the women from distant worlds, women living under the same sky, the same sun who kisses my eyes, brushing my eyelids with gold. But she does not embrace them.

She glares down; burning through their bones, shining on their misfortunes, devouring them in her flames. Her kiss is a sear, her embrace a punishment. I watch these women as pixels in my hand; I see them dying to survive.

Women beaten for unveiling their hair, massacred for the colour of their skin, young girls denied the opportunity to learn, to write, to speak.

Girls my age carrying babies half theirs, robbed of their childhood, silenced in their laughter, footnotes in their own stories. Their worlds burns in my hands, their cries echoing through my soul. I put my phone down, close my eyes, turn back to the sun. Her warmth is soft and silk, her fire burns elsewhere.

Art by Isidora Vasiljevic

Isla Hook is bittersweet.

Artemis

The sun fell, Darkness soon decorating.

And through this eclipse, Time would only be telling.

Girls of Faith

Our fallen facades, now Dance in the moon’s silver light.

Like Artemis - armed with her bowsHolding our shield: nighttime’s fierce glare.

I know, this maiden love will Raise me out of my Tartarus.

And away from the scorching sun, My light blinding,

You were found, beneath This silver shadow’s glimmer of shelter

doWhat expectyou of a rotted peach in spring?

Open Me Carefully

Open me carefully, Because I am br ok en.

My mind is the star adrift, And you: its pulling moon.

And while our abomination winds Down to the second, burning circle,

I shall crawl up here, My thoughts spilling on

These tarnished papers, For only you to see...

Flies circle the fruitbowl at night, for there’s mold in the ceiling and the flyscreen has been left ajar.

It’s been warm here in her breast, where the gnats can bury in the speckled, dimpled, bitter flesh of an orange, and in those white hairs that hold the pulp–bury eggs.

What do you expect of a rotted peach in spring?

Shall its small white hairs not sink, and its flesh not brown? Maggots crawl in the sweetest flesh, writhing in discarded sacrine bodies.

Wasps buried in figs, sucking it dry, making homes. It’s foul then, the fruit that was once so juicy.

In fruit carts, the strawberries were once very fresh, pink and new.

So much so that they advertised in swirling handlettering:

“Get them while they’re ripe!” Folks loved them until they saw the bruises and bumps.

Even the beautiful fruit becomes victim to spring, and its heat, and its long fall into summer.

Camelia on the Pavement: For Cherie

Indiana Zezovski dreams.

Camelia on the pavement, Its funny how your mind set changes

Camelia on the pavement, now isn’t that strange?

It’s like a sign or a message from the sky above

It’s like a dream that you’ve been dreaming of

It’s like the crush that you’ve been crushing on

It’s like the hug from the arms of a loved one

It shows you care, and that they’rr always there

Camelia on the pavement,

It’s funny how your mind set changes

Camelia on the pavement, now isn’t that strange?

It’s like a sign or a message from the sky above

It’s like a dream that you’ve been dreaming of

It’s like the lion pose in the Morning sun

It’s like the hug from the arms of a loved one

It’s like the world that you’ve been counting on

Shows its care, and that there always there

Camelia on the pavement, It’s funny how the bad gets better

It’s funny how your mind set changes

King Rosella on the terrace

Camelia on the pavement,

Unnoticed then, But noticed now

And mum’s meets mine in David’s Handmade vase Camelia on the pavement, Now isn’t that strange?

Sophie Bagster decays.

Patchwork Girl

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

T.S Eliot, The Waste Land

The first night I spent in the mausoleum, I cried. Not from the hatred of being dead, essentially, or of being surrounded by the dead, but from the sheer brilliance of its architecture. Here was a structure, encased in bonemarrow marble, held up by the sleek, hairless thighs of Greco-roman pillars. A sanctuary. A floor space no bigger than an elevator, carrying one down into the bowels of the earth where she should rest forever. In peace, in grace. In inglorious beauty, while her body pushes out the last of its nutrients into the pretty extremities. This is where her blunt nails will grow long, long into those posthumous kitty-cat claws, and her greying hair will grow long, long like the hair of an earthen mermaid. She pushes daisies up through the grass, and I can hear her giggle as she does so.

The whole thing, the architecture of decay, simultaneously being the architecture of exquisite beauty, enamoured me beyond measure. How could this be? I cried like a lamb.

The space was to be my studio. Let me fit it with a radio and a few taper candles. I light each one and watch the flame dance as a heady rain blisters the earth outside: rain made from sewing-pins. What else? A toolbox. A pincushion: a four-postered bed draped in velvet, disguised as a metal operating table. Très chic.

I was working on a project. I wasn’t before. Something about the space gestated under my skin and spread to my bloodstream, and it was like, as soon as I spoke it aloud, the incantation was cast and I could no longer keep it in my body. It had to come out. Like a splinter, like a tic. Like a child considering its path of exit from the body of the mother. This was to be my exit wound: my girl. If I could somehow make another me — not me, just the parts of me — from the better parts of others, could I then cheat the knife of that ubiquitous Plasticity Doctor? Homemade. My darling girl.

How could I begin? The scavenging, the looting. Big shovel, big mounds of dirt. The clipping of the wings and stealing of the engagement rings. Some strange limerick. I delighted! They sell for good money, they do — vintage eBay listings — but my magpie-shaped heart loved a jewel or two. My working hands became made of ruby and emerald, black sapphire and earthly diamond. My hands made sounds; my hands made music.

One evening I struck a particularly remarkable kind of corpse. Girl after girl, I disturbed the eternal sleep of, to ponder her tired eyes and purple breasts. By candlelight, they all appeared quite similar until I inspected them limb from

limb, and I found it difficult to define the artifice of the decomposing body from that of a mannequin. Mannequin? Yes, that’s the word.

Smooth girls: no crinkle, no wrinkle, no crease, no fold. No mole, no hair, no droop in figure. Here is the cinched waist, full breasts, tightly tucked vulva, sculpted jaw, and pouting lips — not begging to be kissed, but begging for gestation. Fascinating, so many of them looked arguably just as decadent, maybe more so, from underground. Almost as if to be dead and buried was the real secret to true beauty: to the godless beauty I was trying to mimic. Strange.

I felt a curtain pull itself over the stage of my body. My mausoleum, a walk-in freezer of rounded thighs and big-batty eyelashes, petite painted toes and smaller waists, now appeared to me as a museum of exactly that: imperfect off-cuttings. Cuttings: the breakdown of that etymological fe-male. The roots of something bigger than I had poisoned the burial grounds beneath my feet before my very eyes. What was that? Sex-doll chic. Cosmetic, capitalist enhancements leaking, seeping into the precious grounds of eternal sleep, where they have no right to be.

If to bury the ultimate girl means the destruction of my efforts, my countless nights out in that sewing-pin rain, coming back to the warmth of the mausoleum like a voodoo doll turned to nothing but a decaying dream, then where does that leave me? I find I am alone again, amongst men, amongst the trees, and the graves, and the girls beneath my feet.

I stared back down at this corpse, this mannequin of a cadaver, and I raged. My body filled itself with the white-hot rage of an angel, and the sky threatened to fall right down on top of my head. In the distance I saw the castle of my mausoleum waver like a mirage in a nameless desert, and the next thing I knew I had blood on my hands, and in my hair, and my teeth. Except, it wasn’t blood, but just the remains of that embalming fluid I can never remember the name of. Formaldehyde? The wet specimen of my heart. I dug, I kept digging, and I found plastic and poetry and a metal skeleton where the bone should have been. I hated this woman in front of me, this nameless and ageless goddess of torment, placed here to remind me that I will never be able to play God like God does because of the open wound between my legs.

What was that? Did I say that? Nonsense.

When I come to it, I am waking up cushioned on the likes of a four-postered, and velvet-draped bed disguised as a metal operating table, and I know exactly where I am.

ArtbyAnanyaThirumalai

President

Sexual Violence Officers

The mid-semester break is over (so sad), please mourn its loss by reading my report.

To the joy of the USyd populace, including myself, the SRC election period has drawn to a close. Congratulations to all those who took part. It isn’t an easy thing to do to put yourself forward and ask countless strangers and friends-of-friends to vote for you. It’s looking like the total vote count has increased from last year, which is always good news for the vitality of your undergraduate student union. Don’t worry, though, you aren’t rid of me as President until December 1st, and there’s plenty more work for me to do, particularly in securing the required signatures for the Fair Fares Concession Opal Card petition.

The mid-semester has been all about getting the SRC students’ services and amenities fee (SSAF) applications completed. This admittedly bureaucratic process determines our funding for next year and is hence extremely important. On top of our base funding of $2,657,776, which we are guaranteed to get, I have put

Vice President

Angus Fisher Shovan Bhattarai, Ethan Cao

Welcome back from the mid-sem break! I hope everyone found a moment to rest, reset, and reconnect before we head into the busy second half of semester.

The past few weeks have also been charged with the energy of student democracy, as SRC elections unfolded across campus. It has been heartening to see so many students — domestic and international, actively engaging in the process, debating ideas, and stepping up to lead. A sincere congratulations to all newly elected members of the 98th SRC!

As Vice-President, I come into this role with the perspective of an international student — someone who understands the distinct challenges faced by those studying far from home. Yet my responsibility, and my commitment, is to serve every student at the University of Sydney. Issues such as affordable housing, fair transport concessions, mental health support, and academic equity are not confined to one group; they affect us all. By centring the experiences of those often marginalised, we strengthen advocacy for the entire student body.

During the election period, I worked to ensure that international student

in a few contestable projects that will hopefully be approved by the university. We’re looking to extend our migration and VISA lawyer service into 2026, continue the contract of the excellent new caseworker that started earlier this year, as well as secure more funding for events and outreach so that the SRC can have a presence all year round. This is something I started with the BBQ and stalls on Eastern Avenue and Gadigal Green throughout the year, and I’m hoping it can only grow from there.

Last week, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was intercepted by Israel while attempting to deliver humanitarian aid. Members of the SRC attended snap rallies to stand in solidarity with the brave activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As a student community, our solidarity sends a powerful message that we reject oppression and stand for justice, freedom, and human dignity. We must continue to push for an end to this genocide.

In solidarity,

Angus

concerns were part of the broader conversation — not as separate interests, but as integral to a unified student movement. At the same time, I have been collaborating with other people on the 2025 SSAF funding proposal, where a key priority is FoodHub. Established by the SRC in response to the cost-of-living crisis, FoodHub has become a vital support for many students. This year, we are working jointly with the USU to seek expanded funding, with the aim of extending opening hours and broadening the range of affordable items available for purchase. The message is simple: no student should struggle alone with basic needs.

Initiatives like FoodHub, crosscultural dialogues, and student-led forums will remain priorities, because a strong student union isn’t just about representation; it’s about building belonging.

So let’s continue working together — across backgrounds, degrees, and experiences — to create a campus where every student feels seen, supported, and empowered.

In solidarity, Ethan

The Sexual Violence Officers did not submit a report this week - but they have helped with this edition #women.

Ethnocultural Officers

Dana Kafina

The Ethnocultural Officer did not submit a report this week.

Refugee Rights Officers

Laura Alivio, Ishbel Dunsmore, Sebastian Ranasinghe, Lucas Pierce

The Refugee Rights Officers did not submit a report this week.

International Student Officers

Ethan Cao, Fengxuan (Mary) Liu, Christine Peng, Yuanbo (Bob) Song

The International Student Officers did not submit a report this week.

Ishbel Dunsmore, Saskia Morgan, Grace Street, Lucy Sullivan

Drugs, Alcohol and

Gambling. How to get help if you have a problem

Does your escape from uni and from life’s hardships come in liquid, powder, pill, or even in plastic (credit cards)? Chances are that you’ve already tried something, taken a gamble of some sort, or you may be trying to help someone out of a destructive habit. Our campus community should accept that a person is not defined by what they are addicted to or dabble with. Unfortunately, an escape that involves substance use or gambling can quickly become a trap. If you are between 16-24 years old, you are at greater risk of getting stuck with the consequences of substances use. It’s fair to say that drug-taking is widespread and accessible in the Uni environment (and in the city). But getting help & moderating your participation in it is also accepted and encouraged.

Gambling has also increased given the availability of apps, Australia’s love of sports, and the false hope of solving financial hardship with a big win.

We encourage you to ask for help and offer support for those who’d like to reduce substance dependence. If you’re not ready for others to accompany you, you can explore selfhelp options.

Turning Point Australia offers free online counselling related to drugs, alcohol, and gambling.

We encourage you to ask for help and offer support for those who’d like to reduce substance dependence. If you’re not ready for others to accompany you, you can explore self-help options.

ReachOut offers some alternatives if you’re not ready to give up your usage, but are keen to cut back. For instance, tips on how to drink but not get drunk, or how to party (and get home in one piece).

Gambling has also increased given the availability of apps, Australia’s love of sports, and the false hope of solving financial hardship with a big win. However, gambling is not an investment; it’s designed to make players lose more than they win. Sports betting companies use social media to normalise gambling, and make you feel a like part of the squad…except that you pay the bill for all rounds. Gambling is especially hard to stop as many do it in isolation. Luckily, help is available at Sydney University via Gambleaware Their program considers your beliefs about gambling, treatment goals, other problems such as anxiety, depression & relationship issues. Although substance use and gambling may be encouraged by peers, the SRC Caseworkers can help connect you to support.

Ask Abe

SRC Caseworker Help Q&A Group

Work

Dear Abe,

I’ve just received a letter from the Faculty saying they think I’ve breached academic honesty rules for a group assignment. I didn’t bother reading the whole assignment because I was busy, but I know I didn’t break any rules. Can I get into trouble for someone else’s cheating? Am I going to get kicked out of uni?

Group Work Sucks

Dear Group Work Sucks, The expectation in group work is for you to be acquainted

with the assignment, know its requirements, and collaborate with your peers, contributing equally to the assignment. The Uni’s website has information about academic honesty, with specific reference to group work. If you receive an allegation for breach of academic integrity, it is best to be as honest as possible and explain exactly what happened. You can ask an SRC caseworker to provide feedback to your response before you submit it to the Faculty. The Faculty absolutely cannot kick you out of uni for this.

Cheers, Abe

If you need help and advice from an SRC Caseworker, start an enquiry here. bit.ly/contact-a-caseworker

If you have a clash or if you need a special arrangement (e.g. a different time zone), contact the exams office as soon as possible.

For more information on exams see: sydney.edu.au/students/exams

1 When doubled, LOL

3 Light switch position

5 German abbreviation

7 2001 Spielberg sci-fi film

8 A perfect 4th from ‘do’

9 The planet from which Kal-El hails

12 “The Simpsons” bar

15 Get smaller, as the moon

16 Succulent that soothes sunburns

17 American pop-rock band composed of three sisters

19 OLE passing grade

21 Supranational political and economic union of 27 member states

23 L.A.’s home

24 Coeliac’s dietary requirement

25 F1 World Drivers’ Champion leader

26 Milburn of Laurie Nunn Netflix series

29 Underrated defenisve netball position

30 Wallows collaboration with Remi Wolf and Solomonophonic

1 When tripled, festive greeting

2 “Without” medical prefix

4 2015’s favourite dance move

6 Menstrual product for beginners and veterans alike

9 Non-primates with remarkably humanlike fingerprints

10 Impressionist Pierre

11 Everyone’s favourite diagnostician

12 Air kiss sound

13 Give the impression of being

14 Believer in existence postadoration, queer icon

18 Instruction from a dom or to a dog

20 A lie, a hat, or an oppressive uni scheme

22 Vehicle that’s out of this world

23 Trigonometry function

27 Needed to perform a traditional Latin-American partner dance

28 No clue what the answer is

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