Transgender is in the zeitgeist recently. From an acclaimed episode of Four Corners on the ABC to transgender woman Captain Catherine McGregor’s appearance on Q&A to Human Rights commissioner Tim Wilson’s piece on The Drum about how ‘it’s time for the transgender talk, Australia,’ the visibility of transgender people has never been higher in Australia – a positive development for an oft-maligned community. Or so it would seem.
Solidarity, that most fundamental principle of progressive movements, seems in short supply these days. Even as the aftershocks of the economic crisis – or perhaps the signs of the earthquake to come – reverberate, it is the exploitation of division that defines political discourses across the globe.
The feminist literary critic Lillian Robinson has argued that the mere questioning of received cultural tradition on behalf of women will tend to result in accusations of relativism and the politicisation of aesthetics. Yet in many areas of the arts, a widespread ignorance of women as leaders and visionaries persists.
How can people who come from such young cultures comprehend the sophistication of a continuous culture that goes back more than sixty thousand years?
In 2015 the prize will be awarded to the best short story (limit of 3000 words) by an Indigenous writer who is 30 years or younger at the closing date of the competition.
When you write a book about the technologies of today that are building the future, and hear that a Marxist science-fiction writer is going to review it, one is liable to get a little nervous.
Journalism is invasive. Reporting is often built on conflict and rare drama. Sometimes – rarely – journalism challenges our perceptions of society, government and ourselves.
I agree with John Morrissey when he writes that ‘fear and hysteria’ characterize much in public discourse around Islam. Indeed, it’s hard to see how anything but fear and hysteria would make a ‘debate’ about Islam and Muslims necessary – the word itself has now become a shibboleth for a quasi-racist fear mongering.
Australians should be well positioned to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.