Progressive culture since 1954
While it would be absurd to claim that women haven’t ever traditionally existed on cyber landscapes, their experiences are often filtered through a masculine lens, or deemed to serve a masculine function. In turn, a woman sharing a photograph of herself in a lavender bikini isn’t just a photo of a woman in a lavender bikini. Her intentions are redundant, her authorship stale and meaningless.
Doctor Henry Peak, my grandpa, was a complicated and difficult man. As a result, when he died in 2006 there were a lot of conflicting emotions on the part of his immediate family: his five children (David, Patrick, Samuel, Megan and Jonathon), his ex-wife and mother of their children (Diane), his daughter-in-law (Elizabeth) and son-in-law (another Patrick), his ex daughters-in-law (Susan, Adelina, Katelin) and his brother (Paul).
The fallout from the ‘Gamergate’ movement and its call for naive ‘objectivity’ has led to a reductionist approach in many gamer circles, whereby gamers try to focus exclusively on game mechanics in the hopes of ending the ‘politicisation’ of the hobby, which they say has impaired the quality of modern games and critical appraisals. But almost all games are inherently political, and refusing to acknowledge it doesn’t change their subtext or reality.
As time went on, and I remained out of a job, I turned on email alerts, began checking my profile daily, and then twice daily. Soon enough I was spending hours each day trawling the site. I had time – I was anxious and broke. In my desperation, LinkedIn seemed to hold the answers, if only I looked long and hard enough.
It was with much interest to me, on a sticky December day, when the Christmas carols had just started to play on the radio and most of us were thinking about spending time with family during the holidays, that Premier Daniel Andrews announced the Victorian Government would prepare a bill to legalise assisted dying to Parliament in the second half of 2017. Originally opposed to euthanasia, the Premier told reporters that the death of his father had given him time to reflect and reassess his views.
And then I read the fine print.