‘Not just a lockdown hobby’: the making of the Renters and Housing Union
An interview with Eirene Tsolidis-Noyce and Zachary Doney, foundational members of the Renters and Housing Union.
Progressive culture since 1954
Killing Eve and the Shadow-Beast
Mainstream archetypes of femininity, while altered by the marketability of white girl-boss feminism, remain bastions of the gender binary. The psyche is divided: in the masculine corner is dark angry strength, in the feminine is soft emotional vulnerability. In contrast, the women in Killing Eve are violent and desiring, in touch with their Shadow-Beast.
Arcade Fire and the performance of vulnerability
Treating insecurity and longing as more authentic than other emotions means giving in to the bleakness of capitalist realism. When I’m depressed, my brain tells me that this is real and my other emotions are fake, but as a friend once reminded me, my depression brain isn’t all that bright.
Culture war and conspiracism as election strategy
For a prime minister whose performance has been such that he needs to force people to shake his hand, the value of a good imaginary hobgoblin is clear. His willingness to stand behind a transphobic bigot over the criticisms of his own party goes only serves to demonstrate the value of culture war and the ‘national safety valve’ to those whose time is up on any other count.
Dear cis people: what we need are comrades, not allies
We need to talk about trans sex and trans identities in schools. We need to not be punished for that demand with the warmed-up homophobic accusation that it means we’re predatory. We used to be trans kids, too. We need more trans voices in the media, and more trans characters in fiction. We need them played by trans actors, and written by trans people. We need to understand the unique benefits the trans experience can offer us on subjects that are unrelated to our genders or our bodies. We need cis people to make space for us.
Why we need to fight for inclusionary zoning in Victoria
It was an unedifying spectacle: the Urban Development Institute of Australia, Housing Industry Association and Property Council banding together to scream blue murder over the Victorian government’s proposal this year to introduce a social housing levy.
I would prefer not to
When my father, Laurie, retired from his job as a high school science and IT teacher, he’d been a teacher for about thirty-five years. He was, I think, a good teacher. ‘I wasn’t super teacher,’ he told me, ‘I wasn’t Eddy Woo, but my students did well and sometimes they bought me a beer years later, I was an ok teacher.’ I liked the fact that he was a schoolteacher, liked that he chose to work at a public school down the road, because his values were my values.