Solidarity is not passive. It’s not as easy as calling yourself an ally and wearing a safety pin on your lapel so other people will know you’re a Good Person. Solidarity is standing up to the racist guy on the train who hassles the woman in a headscarf.

At this conference the plenary speaker was cloaked in impressive accolades: a Professor from the UK, a translator of and collaborator with a renowned French theorist, and the author of sixteen books. Most of his work looks at cultural fields, the ways these are created, and the dynamics within them. It looked like it would be an interesting talk. It wasn’t.

This year’s Stella Count is bleak. The statistics from The Monthly are broadly representative of the count’s wider findings: 65 per cent of authors reviewed were male, and just 5 per cent of published book reviews were men reviewing women authors (whereas 30 per cent were women reviewers covering male authors). The magazine published six times as many long reviews of books by men as it did books by women.

The lives of many women I have known in my own life and countless others would have been greatly improved if real Italian men with real names had behaved in more satisfyingly nuanced ways, making the work of authors like Ferrante (and Morante) truly seem like lazy social satires. Now, I find myself despairing at the plausibility of Claudio Gatti and Roberto Napoletano, and how well they could fit within Ferrante’s cycle, with their needy, greedy, narrow worldview, and their belief that they are naturally entitled to a woman’s life.

In this reading of history, prior to the sexual revolution and the availability of the pill, every woman would have as many children as their body could handle because they had no access to reliable birth control. All women had children, except for those who physically couldn’t.

Most of the debates about Muslim women’s modes of dress have rested on their ability to conform to narrow ideas of what being Australian looks like or means. Such debates merely lead to the dead ends of assimilation and exclusion. In light of that, it is worth reflecting on the history of the burkini and its importance as a cultural signifier.

But I’d argue that literary sexism (in subject, setting, and theme) maintains a particularly tenacious grip here because of our exceedingly masculinised history, as identified by Marilyn Lake, and its connection to nation-building – a tradition forged in polar opposition to Britain and its feminine associations, including, of course, its rich literary heritage of women writers. And yet, despite the seemingly intractable bias our ‘macho’ history exerts on questions of literary merit, I hope I am not being too optimistic in reading a heartening shift in recently shortlisted books by women.

This is the story of three white men who lost their jobs. SBS sports reporter Scott McIntyre, for a series of critical tweets on Anzac Day; British lawyer Clive O’Connell, for a tirade captured on video against fans of the Liverpool football club, and people from Liverpool generally; Sydney hotel supervisor Michael Nolan, for posting abuse on the Facebook page of feminist writer Clementine Ford. One of these things, of course, is not like the others.

The first time JK Rowling was mistaken for a male author, she barely had to try at all. One wonders how her time spent in the publishing industry contributed not only to her choice of a male nom de plume but to the attitudes espoused in the early works of ‘Robert Galbraith’. There is an element, at least in the first two Galbraith books, that greatly assists in masking the author’s gender: the simmering undercurrent of the protagonist’s sexism.

An adult psychosis in this reading of Bond is not, as it is often represented, a florid display of hallucinations and delusions. The psychotic episode is actually the last ditch attempt to cure oneself of a psychosis, to come up with a master narrative: it was always the fault of the CIA; I am a mighty wizard who can speak to Jesus; television communicates mystical truths to me. Or in Bond’s case: Nothing was my fault; I have been manipulated by an all-seeing secret organisation whose tentacles are everywhere.

Most of the responses to the Cardiff petition follow a familiar liberal template for discussion on bans and boycotts. Whether the topic is Germaine Greer’s misogyny towards trans women, Chris Brown’s history of partner violence, Geert Wilders’ denial of the Holocaust, the Sydney Biennale’s links with the detention industry or Israeli universities’ role in the occupation of Palestine, it’s a template that pits vilification against free speech, asking: what is bad enough to justify a ban or boycott? What do you have to say or do to deserve silencing?

All my life, I’ve been a pretend man. I thought I was a person, like the other seven billion people on the planet, and although I’ve always been aware that being a person of a female persuasion is sometimes tricky, I also thought that my sex was irrelevant to my personhood, especially if I wasn’t personally present to affirm it.

Arguing that asking someone if they want to have sex with you lacks dignity is akin to arguing that we are all entitled to each other’s bodies at all times as long as the other person looks at us in a particular way. Bodies are personal, and women’s bodies in particular need to be reconceptualised as something other than public property.

But simply stating an event is inclusive does not automatically make it so. The phrase ‘pussy power’ promotes the idea that having a vagina is synonymous with being a woman. This is problematic on two levels: it excludes those women who do not have a vagina from the category of women; it also erases the gender identity of trans men and non-binary people who have vaginas by insisting that they are women. This is cis-sexism. Apart from the important reality that associating vaginas with womanhood can trigger dysphoria for some trans people, trans women, like other trans people, face the constant negation of their gender identities.

Readers were told that Leo’s Armenian mother, Ruzan Badalyan, and her family had abandoned him at birth and Forrest was no longer welcome in their home because he wanted to keep his son. Donors were asked to contribute money so Forrest could return and raise Leo in New Zealand, where he would be better accepted and have a higher quality of life. But amidst the wall-to-wall media coverage, pictures of Forrest and Leo, and updates on the generosity of people in many different countries, there was one glaring omission: Badalyan herself.

Because the player’s protagonist character is male, players interact with the simulated world as a man. Women in the game insult the protagonist’s appearance, and men either threaten to attack him, or make sexist jokes and comments expecting his support. This is where the problems of the game begin, but it’s also the start of their solution. GTA VI needs a female protagonist. But what sort of character could she be?