Growing Up Queer in Australia gifts us stories from fifty-three LGBTIQA+ people. And they are gifts: each contributor writes of themselves and their experiences with deep generosity. There are stories of grief and loss, of coming out, of discrimination, of joy and shame, of awkward sex and great sex, of navigating identity, family, community and love. These stories come from a wide range of viewpoints, and from people at varied stages of their own personal journeys.

There’s an emphasis on self-empowerment within contemporary feminism which I think is hugely important. But I also think that the idea of self-empowerment can become tangled up in capitalism’s consumer culture, and social media-driven narcissism, in ways that can warp it into an aggressive individualism. The kind of thinking I’m referring to privileges the ‘right’ to do whatever one wants to do for themselves over anything resembling genuine and thoughtful care for other people.

My son, Oscar, is three. He is articulate and perfectly able to understand plain English, but people are constantly talking about him, in his presence, as if he’s not there. Many of my friends are self-described fierce feminists, who can and do rant indefinitely about the indignity women suffer by being silenced, ignored, objectified and dismissed, and yet they consistently do all of these things to Oscar.