Earlier this month an event in Fitzroy called ‘Pussy Power’ – an all-female DJ line-up – was boycotted by activists who claimed such an event title actively excluded transgender-identified people even though the by-line read ‘gay straight transgender friendly party.’ The event name itself was bold but not overly remarkable considering it was drawing attention to the ‘all femme DJ line-up.’

‘The Holocaust started with words.’ Perhaps Ron Merkel, lead counsel for the nine Aborigines suing Andrew Bolt under the Racial Discrimination Act, would have been better to use a more local example. The policy that allowed the government to ‘assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine’ (the Aborigines Protection Amending Act […]

I am not politically correct. I make the funny with friends about their sexualities, their lifestyles, their cultural stereotypes. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with calling my gay friends ‘poofs’ or ‘faggots’ (this may of course be easier for me to do considering I am one of those pesky gays), making my Indian friends […]

What’s Right? The future of conservatism in Australia Waleed Aly Black Inc. Malcolm Fraser has officially resigned his membership of the Liberal Party, believing that the party has moved too far to the right, claiming it is no longer a liberal party, but a conservative party. Waleed Aly might disagree. In the latest Quarterly Essay, […]

‘Courage’, says Tony Judt in a brilliant and far-reaching interview in the late-March issue of the London Review of Books, ‘is always missing in politicians….[for them] it isn’t a useful attribute.’ Courage is what we get, or need to have when it becomes difficult to say something that could be truthfully said or done, but […]

Last night, at Mungo MacCullum’s Overland lecture, I asked the journalist a question about the language of fear around asylum seekers: the terminology created at the time of the Howard government that has been adopted into common practice by many journalists. Specific examples I gave were language about the rising tide or surge of boat […]