Exercise 1
Walk to the mouth of Sullivan’s Creek in autumn.
Look at the shoreline of Lake Burley Griffin—observe the algae, the shit, the rodents. Look across the lake, taking note of:
The spectrum of ochre, citrine, and amber formed by a cascade of deciduous leaves.
The finesse with which black swans cut through West Lake.
Occasional groups of talkative kayakers.
Return your gaze to the shoreline. Walk back to your room and think about how much you hate it here.
Many of us act as if we were transported to Canberra suddenly and violently, against our wills.
The claim that Canberra is decidedly boring is made frequently, as if in an attempt to reveal the brutality with which we were moved here.
This is the very brutality that drove us to apply to study at ANU, and, as a corollary, accept life in Canberra as a possibility.
The trouble with authoritative commentary is that it must be informed by more than immediate impressions.
Without more than such impressions, those who claim to be endowed with authority amount to nothing but charlatans.
After all, what have you done to support your claims?
How exciting was your life before the invisible hand dropped you here, anyway?
How many of you have found total satisfaction in your comfortably insular Vaucluse routines, or lay claim to Melbourne’s cultural superiority despite living a winter’s day away from the NGV?
How can social monotony be liberating, while the structure of a planned city is stifling?
This is not to suggest that one should not have an opinion about one’s city.
Rather, it is an appeal for a more careful treatment of epistemically modal phrases.
If Canberra is so objectively boring, one’s argument must surely depend on something more compelling than ‘I think’.
Exercise 2
Buy the Routledge edition of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus from Harry Hartog. Skip to the end, and read the shortest proposition:
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence (Wittgenstein, 2001, p. 89).
Interpret this literally, as divorced from the preceding six propositions (tonight’s date won’t care about logical atomism, anyway). Consider this interpretation; consider acting on it.
References
Wittgenstein, L. (2001). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, Trans.). Routledge.
Comments Off on 10 Quotes That Permanently Changed How I Dated Men
The philosopher Charles Mills once famously said that:
When you get right down to it, a lot of philosophy is just white guys jerking off. Either philosophy is not about real issues in the first place but about pseudoproblems; or when it is about real problems, the emphases are in the wrong places…
Is he right? Maybe – but the right kind of theory can, actually, change your life by solving real problems. In Year 10, I stumbled across the work of Judith Butler during a boring English class, discovering and resolving several identity ‘problems’ or troubles of mine.
To spread the joy of having your sense of self shattered by feminist philosophy and queer theory, I’ve collated a series of ten quotes that indelibly altered my perception of myself, the guys I date, and why I date them — alternating between long and short quotes for those of you with the attention span of a TikTok.
1) On subjection
Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women. It unites act with word, construction with expression, perception with enforcement, myth with reality. Man fucks woman; subject verb object.
– Catherine Mackinnon, “Method and Politics”, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 124.
2) On sexuality as language
Sexualities are like languages: they are complex systems of communication and reproduction of life. As languages, sexualities are historical constructs with common genealogies and biocultural inscriptions. Like languages, sexualities can be learned. Multiple languages can be spoken. As is often the case within monolingualism, one sexuality is imposed on us in childhood, and it takes on the character of a naturalized desire. We are trained into sexual monolingualism. It is the language that we are unable to perceive as a social artifact, the one that we understand without being able to fully hear its accent and melody. We entered that sexuality through the medical and legal acts of gender assignment; through education and punishment; through reading and writing; through image consumption, mimicry, and repetition; through pain and pleasure.
– Paul Preciado, “Introduction”, Countersexual Manifesto (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2000, 2018), tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn, 8.
3) On being gay in a straight world
The homosexual identity, …is a systematic accident produced by the heterosexual machinery; in the interest of the stability of nature-producing practices, it is stigmatized as unnatural, abnormal, and abject.
– Paul Preciado, “Countersexual Society”, Countersexual Manifesto (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2000, 2018), tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn, 28.
4) On being gay in a gay world
Again and again, I was astonished to learn from gay friends of hot spots in notorious toilets at the diner, the bus terminal, or, Minerva help us, the Yale library. What gives? Women, straight or gay, do not make a lifestyle of offering themselves without cost to random strangers in sleazy public settings. At last, I saw it. Gay men are guardians of the masculine impulse. To have anonymous sex in a dark alleyway is to pay homage to the dream of male freedom. The unknown stranger is a wandering pagan god. The altar, as in prehistory, is anywhere you kneel. Similarly, straight men who visit prostitutes are valiantly striving to keep sex free from emotion, duty, family — in other words, from society, religion, and procreative Mother Nature.
— Camille Paglia, “Homosexuality at the Fin de Siecle”, Sex, Art, and American Culture (London: Viking, 1992)
5) On inequality as gender
Stopped as an attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the form of gender; moving as a relation between people, it takes the form of sexuality. Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization of inequality between men and women.
– Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 6–7.
6) On homophobia
…violence enacted against sexed subjects—women, lesbians, gay men, to name a few—[can be taken] as the violent enforcement of a category violently constructed. In other words, sexual crimes against these bodies effectively reduce them to their “sex,” thereby reaffirming and enforcing the reduction of the category itself. Because discourse is not restricted to writing or speaking, but is also social action, even violent social action, we ought also to understand rape, sexual violence, “queer-bashing” as the category of sex in action.
– Judith Butler, Footnote 26, Notes to Chapter 3, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990, 1999), 212.
7) On sexuality as aesthetics
Sexuality is defined here as a political and yet sometimes unconscious aesthetics of the body and its pleasure.
– Paul Preciado, “Introduction”, Countersexual Manifesto (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2000, 2018), tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn, 8.
8) On sexualisation
Feminism has no theory of the state. It has a theory of power: sexuality is gendered as gender is sexualized. Male and female are created through the erotization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex and the distinctively feminist account of gender inequality.
– Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence”, Signs, vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1983), 635.
9) On love
The urge toward love, pushed to its limit, is an urge toward death.
– George Bataille, “The Link Between Taboos And Death”, L’Erotisme, or, Death and Sensuality: a Study of Eroticism and the Taboo (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957; New York: Walker and Company, 1962), 42.
10) On cruising
Cruising carves out intimacies in public space in the same way poetry carves out intimacies in public discourse; and cruising is also itself a kind of discourse, with codes that have to be secret in plain sight, legible to those in the know but able to pass beneath general notice, like one of Wyatt’s sonnets. Both poetry and cruising have a structure that is essentially epiphanic, offering the sudden, often ecstatic revelation of a meaning that emerges from the inchoate stuff of quotidian life.
— Garth Greenwell, “How I Fell In Love With The Beautiful Art Of Cruising”, Buzzfeed (April 5, 2016).
And… who said novels can’t be philosophical, too? Here’s one of my favourite quotes from my favourite character from my favourite novel, Gone Girl…
Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times. Unconditional love is an undisciplined love, and as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous.
– Amy Dunne, in Gillian Flynn, “Ten Months, Two Weeks, Six Days After the Return”, Gone Girl, (New York, Crown, 2012), 454.
Love. It may very well be the only reason that people do anything at all! In an attempt to be loved, and for the sake of loving others, people twist themselves and their lives into all sorts of shapes. That the question ‘What Is Love?’ has never failed to receive answers — though those answers have been varied — isn’t all that surprising. From the grandiose poetry of Shakespeare to good morning texts, love has never gone without a language to speak in, nor people to be spoken by.
So, in what language is love spoken here at the ANU? In the language of ANUCrushes of course! And if we want to understand what it means to love, and how to become better lovers in the future, I believe we need to look both to the past and the present.
The ancient Greeks (in all their wisdom) didn’t just have one word for love, they had eight. For example, there was Agape for selfless, universal love; Storge for familial love; and above all, Eros, for romantic, passionate love.
And yet, despite all their fancy words, even the Greeks failed to capture love’s essence.
Plato, for example, ever the contrarian, decided that love couldn’t possibly be beautiful. According to Plato, love is forever out of reach, forever elusive and an eternal search for something we will never really have no matter how much we want it. #ANUCrushes32721 captures Plato’s love here: “Sometimes I wish I’d never met her ’cause of how much I hurt when she pushes me away, but then she pulls me back in, and I just want it not to end.”
And so, whether he wished it or not, Plato may have been the first in a long line of those who proclaimed love too risky, too unpredictable, and far too messy to be worth the trouble that accompanied it. Frowning upon romantic poetry, sidelining human emotion, taking the romance out of life and replacing it with ‘reason’, Plato unknowingly invented the very ‘reason’ that philosophers have had such a hard time getting lucky.
But, to be fair to our friends with comically large brains, love isn’t all sunshine and roses. As #ANUCrushes32525 laments, “Why must grief be the price of love? … Is the hurt and pain that follows love ever worth it? … Why must you tear apart my heart, my being?” Maybe love really is far too painful, to the point where the means simply cannot justify the ends. Maybe it really would be wiser to focus on other things, like, you know, the divine, or numbers, or your GPA or something?
Those of us struck by Cupid’s arrow know otherwise. Enter the untimely rebels — those daring souls who argued that love, no matter how messy, how chaotic, how dangerous, was ultimately still something worth fighting for. They were the champions of love, who defended Eros to their dying breath.
Take, for instance, Spinoza. While his definition of love in his masterpiece, The Ethics, is as dry as Lake Eyre — “pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause,” — above all he was concerned with self-determined love. Passionate love, grounded in mutual respect and personal freedom and in all honesty, the type of love that we all look for in our own lives. Which is what #ANUCrushes32538 captures so well when they write: “I know they are the one, and I think they do too. … She is so cute, I enjoy who I am when I am around her. I feel… complete!”
And then there is Sappho, who wrote of love’s intensity, its emotional depth and its power to overwhelm and embolden the human spirit. To Sappho, love is not merely affectionate and tender, but profound and elemental, capable of shaking the very foundation of the world. Love has often incarnated wills of resistance and revolution for no sake but its own, leading people like #ANUCrushes32683’s writer to pledge to “change the world to be with you and make you happy again.”
And let’s not forget Nietzsche, who, in The Gay Science, argued that true love demands our full attention and puts us in such a position where “the whole rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, and worthless.” For Nietzsche, doing anything less than loving would render life itself meaningless. Perhaps such an outlook is reflected most concretely in #ANUCrushes32549: “I’ve been thinking for weeks and I figured that I’d rather live the best present moment with you by my side than doing nothing and staying in the void.”
So, where does our little excursion through history bring us? Right back to the start.
Whether drinking with Socrates or glancing at someone across Uni Ave, love remains as perplexing as ever. It can feel beautiful, fulfilling and forever, and yet fall to pieces all the same. The heart can burn so hot it turns to ash, it can beat so hard it shatters, it can stop altogether, but even still, people never stop falling in love.
Here at ANU, love takes more than one form: be it a casual hookup, an unrequited crush, or a sweet gesture from a significant other. At this university, and perhaps on this Earth, there is no one way to love someone correctly, nor a proper way to be loved. Love doesn’t have to be forever, nor does it have to be never — though I do believe that it has to be kind.
Ultimately, I think Socrates put it best when he said:
“Human nature can find no better helper than love.”
Comments Off on Review: How to Date Men When You Hate Men
Fair warning: if you’ve come here in search of some profound insight into the matters of the heart, I apologise. I’m just an 18-year-old girl with uncommendable dating experience, who is also severely prone to falling into a pit of crippling anxiety at the mere sight of a text from a guy (it takes me five hours and a solid brainstorming session with three other friends to respond to a simple “Hey” followed by a series of sleepless nights). So, for the sake of honesty, I’ll admit I don’t know shit.
Perhaps now you can also see how a ‘self-help’ book called How To Date Men When You Hate Men would entice someone like me. To be clear, neither I nor the author hate men, we just hate the troubles we’ve to endure to date them and the patriarchal bit of it all.
For a long time, it was a running joke in my friend group that this book held the key to fixing our love lives. Armed with foolproof strategies to sail through the treacherous waters of dating a guy, we’d be unstoppable! So here I was, embarking on this transcendental journey, flipping through the pages of the book like a madwoman and hoping to finally learn the art of dating men just in time for Valentine’s Day. No more being lonely and miserable, I had declared!
By the first chapter, bitter disappointment had settled in. I had fallen prey to clickbait. The book was (unfortunately) neither misandrist propaganda nor, as the author herself admits, a proper “how to” book.
It hypes you up in the beginning, and you, naïve little you, are convinced that you’re about to read something so earth-shatteringly revolutionary that you will single-handedly end patriarchy and the systemic sexism prevalent in our society. But you’ll soon realise this is just a patronising version of your girls’ group chat.
‘It’s not that there are “good men” versus “bad men” (though there are some obvious monsters): all men have received this coding. They aren’t born evil, they’re born into an evil system! It just didn’t sound as catchy to name the book How to Date Men When They Are Born into and Brainwashed by an Evil System That Mightily Oppresses Women.’
The author, Blythe Roberson, is an American comedian and humour writer, who has previously written for publications like The New Yorker and The Onion. As expected, you can sense the immaculate sarcasm and wit right off the bat. Unexpectedly, though, it quickly falls flat.
Throughout the book, Roberson makes various attempts to put modern dating problems in a comedic and engaging light. Sadly she misses the mark almost every single time. Roberson fills the book with quirky little displays of her hilarity, but because the book is so inconclusive everything she writes becomes almost irrelevant due to the lack of direction. The snarky comments that probably would’ve gotten her a good laugh in a different format soon turn annoying (looking at the 125, 689, 871 Trump jokes).
This humour severely lacks purpose. Roberson describes the book as ‘made up of so many opinions all clumped together that they just might have congealed into some sort of worldview’, taking a step further to boldly call it a ‘comedy philosophy book’. I like to call it the ‘Roberson’s Attempt at Turning Her Journal Therapy Journey Commercial’ book. It truly does seem like she was advised by her therapist to try to pen down her feelings, and she thought, well, why not turn this into a book and make some money out of it?
Her personal reflections and all the bottled-up frustration she harbours towards dating finally find the light of day in these pages. She talks so extensively about patriarchy and its impact on modern dating that you wonder if you really are about to read a social philosophy book, but she doesn’t explore this problem with any depth or nuance and you’re just left pondering. The book ends up being a collection of Roberson’s dating expeditions. So, while I yearn to learn more about the nitty gritties of Roberson’s ‘intersectional-socialist-matriarchal revolution’, I find myself learning the superficialities of Roberson’s date with some film student named Luke instead.
While the first half of the book might irk you, to give Roberson due credit, the second half does get better.
‘And so: you, right now, are a full tree. You don’t need to be in love to count as a human. Look—you already ARE a human, existing!’
Even though it’s cliché big sister advice and I know at this point we’re all tired of listening to the ‘you can only be loved if you love yourself first’ crap, it is undeniably true, and Roberson’s take on it is, dare I say, quite refreshing! She preaches against overthinking by emphasising that ultimately people will always do what their heart desires and so, if they are talking to you, it is because they want to! Probably nothing you haven’t heard before, but it’s the unwavering conviction with which Roberson almost commands the reader to stop over-analysing every little thing that almost has me convinced every guy is in love with me.
Okay, I don’t actually hate How To Date Men When You Hate Men. I know by now I might’ve convinced you otherwise, but genuinely, my only qualm with this book is that it shouldn’t have been a book. The way Roberson describes her dating mishaps and all the valuable lessons she’s gleaned from dating guys all these years make for solid entertainment. Not for a book. But, perhaps, as the set for her Netflix special. Oh, what wasted potential the book has. It’s relatable and charming, with seamlessly woven humour, while also targeting the idiosyncrasies of modern society. It could have been a 10/10 comedy show.
For me, the true measure of a book lies in the emotion it evokes. Often, over time, plots and character arcs get buried and decay with memory, but the emotions etched in the heart stand the test of time. The brain forgets, but the heart remembers. And while this book did have moments of Roberson’s glittering wit, it failed to leave an imprint. All I’d remember five years later would be the riveting title.
So, final remarks. Firstly, nobody really knows what love is. Some days it’s peeling an orange, while other days even taking a bullet might not be enough. All we know is that love is cataclysmic in the most beautiful ways and sadly, no book will ever have the answer to all your questions. You just have to wing it, as frightening as that might be.
Secondly, don’t read this book. You probably won’t read it til the end (unless you’ve thought it’d be cool to review it for Valentine’s). I recommend spending that time hating some other aspect of your life.
Lastly, if you do plan on spending Valentine’s alone, all sad and pathetic (like me), remember that it’s just a day. A Wednesday too, literally nothing special. The human experience will have us all being melancholic the rest of the year, even those cringy people in love (I’m just jealous). Go get yourself an ice cream and be a hater for a day.
I grew up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, a place not many ANU students are from. Looking back on high school there, even though it wasn’t the best period in my life, it made me feel like I somewhat belonged. There was always a new club for me to join and I had a great group of friends, who never made me feel isolated for the things I found interesting. Maybe it was because of all those American college movies I had watched growing up, and all those YouTube videos I had watched in anticipation, but I believed that university would be the place where I became more confident and grew into myself. I assumed university would make me feel like I completely belonged.
I had two weeks of the ‘University experience’ before COVID-19 hit, but it was nothing like I expected. That first week of uni, I remember printing out my resume and immediately applying for every job in sight. I assumed every student was doing the same. I was sorely mistaken.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, only 40% of people in tertiary education are working part-time. I was surprised when I found out that some students at ANU have never had to work, and will not have to work throughout their entire degree, to take care of themselves. This made me feel like an imposter at ANU, acutely out of place at such a prestigious university.
My first tutorial at ANU also made me feel like I was out of place. The way tutors speak is something that still perplexes me to this day. I felt like I was sitting in a Master’s program for International Relations, not my first ever uni class. I believe lots of ANU students have felt this, as I often see it plastered all over ANU Confessions. Some lecturers do not know how to teach and they can often make the course feel inaccessible. It became even more difficult over COVID-19 when everything was online; it was even harder to learn. For example, I took a French Introduction course, thinking it would be a pretty simple class. I had taken a little French in high school and thought I would have an advantage, – I was wrong. The lecturer attempted to teach a whole year of high school French in a few weeks!
There seems to be a pervasive expectation at ANU that University is our only priority, and ANU continually fails to take into account the complex and busy lives of its students. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2017 – 2018, 15% of people ages 18-24 had experienced high levels of psychological distress. With the impact of COVID-19, I know that this would have increased. As a student who works part-time and suffers from psychological distress, I can attest that the help provided by ANU is minuscule. Because of this, it is so easy to feel like you do not belong, or feel out of place. That first year of university impacted how I saw myself. The thing about imposter syndrome is, everything you feel about yourself is tipped on its head. The way you perceive yourself and the people around you is completely different. You internalise it and feel like you are the only one feeling this way – as if you are the only person who is in the wrong place.
Imposter syndrome also makes you feel like you are in a constant race to keep up, and ANU reinforces that toxic narrative.
Have you ever noticed that most tutorials seem to be during the middle of the day, making it difficult to work and study at the same time? Some lecturers, even after COVID-19, still expect students to go to their lectures in-person and you may even lose participation points if you do not attend. I do not have time to go to a three-hour lecture on a Monday morning, especially when it’s a day I work. ANU perpetuates the pressure to keep up with your peers, you need to graduate when everyone else graduates, you need to get HDs, and you need to be prefect, mentally and physically
When you break them down, though, none of these goals make sense. When it comes to graduating ‘on time’, people change their degrees, I know, shocking! When you do that, you often end up extending the time you need to study before graduating. Many people also do fewer courses to work or take care of their mental health, which also extends their degrees. It feels like to finish your degree perfectly in three or four years would mean that you didn’t work, and never had a mental breakdown, ever!
Moving on to pressure to get all D’s or HDs, not all courses are the same, also shocking! Unless you have done the course already, you do not know what to expect. Your tutor might be a harsh marker and maybe the last exam is really hard for no reason. When you take a look again at these societal expectations that make everyone feel like they are doing something wrong, you realise that they do not make any sense. Many students take time off here and there, many students are working multiple jobs to afford to stay in Canberra and many students are simply trying to pass their courses and survive.
The one thing imposter syndrome has taught me was that it is easy to idealise everyone around you and look down on yourself, what is more difficult is to treat yourself with kindness and remember that this path in life is your own and no one else’s. Tertiary systems also need to look at every student as an individual and provide more financial and mental resources. While I do not believe that uni will ever get easier, especially if ANU continues to forget about the welfare of their students, I do believe that the communities students have created, such as ANU Confessions and ANU Schmidtposting will continue to bring us comfort, so we never fully feel alone.
Aphrodite’s body, born of foam, and risen from a scallop shell, speaks in echoes of sea-salted flesh, sensuality, fertility, desire. She is the namesake of aphrodisiacs, those foods professing to be of sexually stimulant quality.
Bridging the most basic of instincts – food and fornication – aphrodisiacs have long played an important part in the continuation of our species. And thanks to the miracle that is modern agriculture and refrigeration, ambergris aside, these remedies are readily available year-round.
But do these foods stand up to their potential? Have we diluted their potency with GMOs and factory farming? Were the Ancient Greeks really onto something, or were they simply horned up from poppy juice and legalised sex work?
A requisite Adonis appointed as my lab partner, I committed an afternoon and an evening to investigate these pressing concerns. To intuitively eat my way through the aphrodisiac almanac. For science, of course.
OYSTERS
An eyebrow-raisingly suggestive offering on any menu, there is a covenant formed in the ritual of ordering oysters. A pact unspoken but known by all.
Oh-so-casually, it is thrown in as an apparent afterthought – “Oh, and a dozen oysters as well. Yep, the natural ones, thanks.”
You pretend not to nervously sweat, and the waiter pretends not to knowingly glance at your companion. Everyone else in earshot, or joining you at the table, smiles wanly and pretends they aren’t being assaulted by depraved intrusive thoughts.
Faced with open pools of slippery seawater, even the physical act strikes a nerve. Tipping your head back, pushing past a choking spasm, maintaining coy composure.
An oyster requires you to take it whole, to devour an entire life in one greedy swallow. For optimal freshness, it is still alive when you suck it from the shell.
It’s the obvious choice, but obvious for a reason. An oyster is voyeuristic.
FIGS
More than flavour, there are aesthetic, textural elements to the fig. It is more about the mythology, the build-up, than the finish. Downy and supple, the skin gives way to insides like burst capillaries, rosy and blooming.
Some say that Eve’s forbidden fruit was actually a fig. Does that alone not tempt you – to taste that which destroyed the innocence of man?
Which is to say: it tastes okay. Kind of a combination of honey and dirt.
PISTACHIOS
This one is more about edging than anything else. It’s thinking that you’ve just about got the damn shell open, but in reality, you’re far from it.
Maybe you’ll never quite get that teasing seam to open. Maybe you’ll never feel that sweet release. But the thought keeps you going at it for a good long while.
POMEGRANATE
Everyone seems to have a trick to harvesting the seeds from one of these things until it gets down to the doing. And then it’s just you and the pomegranate and the kitchen tools are discarded in favour of fingers and there’s claret and pith everywhere and it’s dramatic and frenzied and savage. An exercise in delayed gratification.
A lot of these foods lend themselves more to being eaten with our hands, without barrier, skin on skin. Seeds leaking from the pomegranate beg to be plucked, and pushed into a breathless mouth. The juice, known only to the onlooker, aches to be brushed away. Hands guiding hands, towards satiation, towards satisfaction.
DARK CHOCOLATE
Like sex, this is a flavour that gets better with age. The cheap, saccharine stuff that you binged on when you were younger just doesn’t taste as good. Eating dark chocolate feels adult. It feels like needs being met, like dessert with a side benefit of antioxidants, like missionary with a side benefit of orgasm.
STRAWBERRIES
When up against the heavies, like oysters, pomegranates, or wine, strawberries come off a bit cliche. Why be Serena van der Woodsen and Dan Humprey when you could be Persephone and Hades?
STRAWBERRIES IN WINE
Now we’re talking.
STRAWBERRIES AND POMEGRANATE SEEDS IN WINE
The night has unravelled. It’s started to become more Dionysian than Aphrodisiac.
STRAWBERRIES AND POMEGRANATE SEEDS AND BITS OF FIG SEED IN INCREASINGLY CLOUDY WINE
Don’t be foul.
ASPARAGUS
If you’ve resorted to asparagus as a turn-on, you should probably be looking for a more serious solution to your problem.
Acceptable only as a sex-related foodstuff when served alongside toast and poached eggs the morning after.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 5 ‘Cum As You Are’
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Sometimes traipsing around Canberra I feel haunted by an unreal ghost. The spectre is an unknowable woman, but one whose presence I feel like a current of electricity always.
The ghost’s name is Kate, and she attended the ANU in 1984. She lived raucously and radiantly, testing limits of appropriateness, in existential opposition to ‘The Man’. She bleached her hair to a frizzy and discoloured bird’s nest, wore exclusively second-hand clothes and was most often accompanied by a misbehaved and clumsily oversized dalmation.
Beyond graduation, Kate had an equally remarkable and passionate life. She eventually had a daughter, who now attends the same ANU, and who lives in perpetual wistfulness about this version of her mother whom she will never meet. I’ve heard many stories centring Kate as protagonist. Through these histories, I know her to be bold and outrageous and someone I think I would’ve liked to befriend.
On the day I was born Kate became Mum. She describes the transition as cataclysmic –suddenly she looked down at the crying, clawing lump of purple flesh in her arms, and knew that this infant was the most precious thing in the world. Where Kate was irresponsible and chaotic, Mum was completely dedicated to the lives and wellbeing of her children. She says the best thing she ever did in her life was her children and they are her proudest accomplishment. The loss of Kate was worth the gain of Rose and Natalie, according to Mum.
I describe Mum’s devotion to me and my sister as selfless in the sense that she sacrificed parts of herself to be our mother. The pressure placed on mothers to deprioritise aspects of their life, like their career, friendships and hobbies, is too frequently dismissed as part and parcel of motherhood. Motherhood is sacrifice – to be a ‘good’ mother you must sacrifice. Mum first, self second. My Mum is selfless in the sense that upon my birth Mum took precedence over Kate.
Whether brainwashed by hormones or not, Mum was completely enraptured with my infant self, and gladly devoted herself to motherhood. I am so indebted to her for her wholehearted commitment to this identity. My childhood was one smothered with love and gentleness. My mother let me try every sport, musical instrument or obscure hobby that I became interested in on a whim, despite my tendency to give up immediately. She came to every school assembly and cheered for me and my participation awards.
Mum is supportive, caring, generous and the most patient and loving person I know. It’s hard to see much of myself in that. I consider that I must be more like Kate, maybe if only for the fact that we both came to the same university, in the same city, through the same years of our lives.
Kate used to sing at Tilley’s in Lyneham, back when it was a lesbian club, while I now order soy lattes from the same venue. Kate had drinks in Union Court with her friends after class, which I do too, and modelled nude for students at the School of Art (another shared profession). She had shitty boyfriends, fought with her parents and sometimes she was reckless just because it was fun. She cycled down University Ave; studied at Chifley and attended classes in AD Hope and Copland. Balancing work and university made her stressed, not that she was particularly studious or dedicated to her work in bars, but she cut loose often and wholeheartedly.
Kate and myself, though we never met, have much in common. While at ANU we both cried in an academic office, both had too much to drink on too many occasions, both failed a course and both found ourselves at times in and out of love and lust. There is a closeness between us which extends beyond the superficialities of two twenty-something women. We feared and hoped for the same things, for ourselves and others, share the same hurts and frustrations.
Kate had the light in the 1980s and she was celestial.
I have the light now and though I think my shine might be dull in comparison to hers, I love my youth. I love coming home at all hours, having spent the night doing whatever with whomever. I love that the only person I have to take care of is myself, and that I can generally get away with only doing that to a passing grade of fifty percent.
When I float through Canberra I wonder if she felt the same freedom. I wonder if she felt the power in her beauty and trappings of youth that I do, or if she would have sneered at my vanity. At my age, like me, she never wanted to be a mother. Like me, she feared the sacrifice of her personhood and the weight of that responsibility. She never imagined losing Kate to Mum and likewise I cannot imagine myself under any other name than Rose. We both could never see ourselves choosing someone else over our own self-absorption and joyful recklessness, and yet one of us did.
The connection I feel to the unknowable Kate is spiritual and I carry her with me through every Canberra moment that we share. It sometimes feels as if I could bump into her at a party at an inner-north share house or sit down next to her in a sociology tutorial. I am enchanted by the woman I’ll never know, simultaneously mythologising and mourning her.
My Mum is brilliant and wild and known for her energy and authenticity. I would never mean to insinuate she became dull when she became Mum. But it’s true that Kate, in a way, died when Rose and Mum were born. It’s not a sad thing but I still long to meet her, the version of my mother who was just like me but brighter.
This distance between mother and daughter is essential of course. Mum says Kate would not have been a good mother and I believe her because I believe I also would make for an appalling and neglectful parent. But at twenty-two years old I would not look to Kate for her maternity. I would look to her in reverence of Mum and all that she sacrificed for me. I would look to her in veneration of youth and its joys. I would look to her and she to me as mother and daughter, seeing each other in ourselves and ourselves in each other.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 5 ‘Cum As You Are’
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Comments Off on How To Have Sex With a Trans Person
The first time I had sex with my partner, my chest was bound with kinesiology tape. It was an inelegant process: I cut the tape to size, covered my nipples with bandaids, layered it across each breast, pulling the flesh sideways and sticking it to my ribcage. I didn’t even notice it was on till we were getting intimate. Then I looked down.
I should take it off. She probably wants to see my boobs. She probably thinks it’s weird.
But I couldn’t. Not without getting into a very unsexy pose and ripping my skin off. So I left it and accepted that I was having sex with a bound chest.
And I loved it. It made me feel really comfortable. The following day I felt a glow of pride – someone had made me feel sexy the way I wanted to be sexy.
When I’d had sex before, I had stripped completely naked. Sure, seeing my breasts and having them be seen freaked me out. I didn’t think I had any other option but to get used to being uncomfortable during sex.
My partner showed me that this wasn’t true.
If you’re cis (not trans), I want you to read this article because maybe, one day, you’ll want to have sex with a trans person. And it can be daunting. It requires communication and understanding of each other. Thankfully, the requirement of an open mind and forgoing of sexual conventions allows an opportunity for really great sex.
FOR CIS PEOPLE
Before the Bedroom
It’s essential to take note of things that may make your partner feel feminine versus masculine. The kind of touch and the type of words you use while intimate can be quite powerful.
For a transmasculine person, this might be holding their arm while walking, sitting on their lap, or using compliments like ‘hot’ or ‘handsome.’ For a transfeminine person, touching their waist, putting your arm around them, and using compliments like ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful.’ This doesn’t mean you are limited to these behaviours – they’re just things that can affirm your partner’s gender.
Using Toys
Whether you’ve used toys during sex before, it’s worth considering what they might mean to your partner. For cis, straight couples, sex toys can be a type of foreplay or a once-in-a-while thing. For trans people, they might mean a lot more. If this is the case, reevaluate your perception of toys. They don’t need to take away from the intimacy of sex, and they don’t mean that either of you are incapable of manually pleasing the other. Try to keep an open mind, and if neither of you is experienced, head to Fyshwick and take a look through the sex shops. You’re bound to find something that makes both of you feel good.
Understanding dysphoria
Dysphoria is the discomfort trans people feel with their assigned gender at birth, ranging from mild unease to extreme distress. It can be a big part of someone’s life or not present at all. Either way, it’s often exacerbated during sex, so it’s vital that you understand the basics of how it works and talk to your partner about their specific experience.
Dysphoria is not static, and levels of dysphoria will fluctuate naturally and in response to triggers. The things that trigger dysphoria may be being misgendered, having certain parts of their body touched, or seeing themselves naked.
Having sex is a vulnerable act. Be kind to your trans partner by being aware that they could feel dysphoric during sex and respecting their boundaries, even if they may seem odd to you.
FOR TRANS PEOPLE
Your trans body is sexy!
I spent so long feeling unsexy. I didn’t want to be sexy as a woman, and I could never be sexy in the way a cis man is. But what makes someone sexy isn’t how well they look like the ideal of a man or a woman. If your partner wants to have sex with you, they find you sexy. Be proud and secure in that.
Unpack your feelings during sex
Investigate why something makes you feel weird or bad during sex. This way, you can learn what your boundaries are. Ask yourself: What precisely is making me uncomfortable? Is it dysphoria, do I not like it, or is it just new? Is this pleasurable for me?
Be specific
Your cis partner may not know what questions to ask or won’t want to ask in case they make you uncomfortable. Before sex, try telling your partner your boundaries, what you like, and what language you are comfortable with using.
Trust yourself & your partner
Don’t keep going along with sex just because you don’t want to offend your partner. Sometimes you get a random wave of dysphoria – you’re always better off stopping rather than pushing through. Doing so strengthens your own self-awareness and the trust you place in your partner.
Be mindful of your partner’s experience
When I didn’t like the way my partner was touching me, I used to just pull away. Feeling dysphoric, I would be too ashamed to say much to her. I didn’t realise that this was making her uncomfortable.
It’s painful to feel like you have triggered someone’s dysphoria during sex – like you’ve failed as a partner. Be mindful of this experience. Explain what you’re feeling, and clarify what you want to do next. If you need a specific touch to stop, a simple;
“Could you not ——, I’m feeling a bit dysphoric” does the trick.
It’s also okay to be urgent and brief. Try;
“Can we take a break” or “we need to stop”
Once you’ve calmed down, explain what happened to your partner and do something together that makes you feel closer – watch a movie or cuddle. Aftercare is important after sex, but it’s even more important after ‘failed’ sex.
This may seem like a lot to remember. But all of these things will develop over time. It may take a little more consideration than ‘traditional’ sex; but I promise, it’s worth it.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 5 ‘Cum As You Are’
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Comments Off on Love Stories: In Conversation with Trent Dalton
Go hug someone you love, ASAP!
On Saturday the 13th of August, I sacrificed an hour of my busy afternoon to the gods of the Canberra Writers Festival. The event? Love Stories: In Conversation with Trent Dalton. The attendee? Me, alone – I had failed to convince any of my friends that this was an event for normal people (I.e., non-bookworms, people who hadn’t read his book and therefore didn’t immediately begin writing a series of letters to all the people they love). Love Stories is Dalton’s most recent book, inspired by his best friend’s mother leaving him her antique typewriter. In honour of her and her life, Dalton took to the busiest corner in Brisbane with a sign saying, “Sentimental writer collecting love stories. Do you have one to share?” The stories he collected and the conversations he had with people, safe to say, had quite an impact on me.
Having attended another Canberra Writers festival event that morning, I was dubious about this one. Although I love, admire and deeply respect Trent Dalton, the morning panelists had made me want to (in order):
become a leader of industry (maybe like a CEO in a male industry type vibe), using her position to pull other women and disadvantaged groups up with her;
pursue journalism (idk, one of the panelists was a journalist and she sounded like a baddie);
hug my parents (and thank them for never telling me women should be seen and not heard);
hug my (dearly departed) grandmother and tell her that while I understood why she was forced to be polite, accepting etc. etc., things had changed, and I wished she hadn’t been so strict on forcing my sister and I to become nice, quiet, polite young women.
The ability of this event to inspire these feelings within me came from the honest and inspiring connections between all the panelists and the discussions of their experiences. I was therefore unsure that the one white man on stage (being interviewed by the wonderful Lisa Miller) would be able to provoke in me the same thought-provoking, inspiring, empowered ideas that the morning event had. And yet, it kinda did??? Maybe even more so?? Weird. The fact that the first event managed to instill so many immediate and forceful feelings within me and yet not be the best event of the day is still disturbing to me.
When he (Mr Dalton, naturally) first came on stage and began speaking, I was a little shocked and offended at the number of times he used the word “like.” Although I study linguistics and am aware that no forms of language are inherently better than any others and I shouldn’t judge people for how they speak and so on and so on, I’ll be honest, it made me cringe. It made him sound (in my humble opinion, speaking with all the authority of an undergraduate university student) rather inarticulate. The opposite of the eloquent, moving speaker I expected him to be.
As the event went on, I began to see how wrong my first impression truly was. Not that Dalton didn’t use the word “like” a lot, he did. And not that he didn’t swear, because he did. Or have a bit of a bogan accent (he definitely did). I just came to see that there was far more to him and his message than his initial appearance led me to believe. And like, I knew this before, but he really made me believe it. Because he appealed not to my head, and my university education, which said, rationally, the first event had been better, but to my heart. And my heart said that any person who could make me, over the course of an hour, want to:
Go and hug every person in my life,
Fall in love (straight away, if possible – anyone interested?)
Cry
Send a message to all the people I’ve lost
Begin saying ‘I love you’ more (maybe even to my tutors? Life is too short)
was someone that I should really take notes from.
I could tell that everyone around me was affected in the same way. As Trent (calling authors by their last name is so outdated) spoke about his dead best friend’s mother, who bequeathed him the typewriter he used to write the book, the two women in front of me hugged, clearly having also lost someone recently. As he spoke about his mother’s experiences of horrific domestic violence, the audience all around me gasped. When he joked about his former teacher telling him he would one day be the head of an outlaw bikie gang, we laughed. That was the power of this event, and what the first event had, in some way, been missing. Trent speaking so openly and honestly about love, and its importance in all our lives, made us all feel a little closer to the person sitting beside us than we had been when we first sat down. He used love, his experiences of it, and others’ experiences of it to weave the common thread of humanity through every row of that theatre.
I was also deeply impacted when Lisa Miller, the interviewer (or conversation partner I suppose), asked Trent what the whole point of his book was. While most of his responses to questions were rather roundabout, he did directly answer this one in the end. And the simple answer was: love.
He described it as the kitchen scene within his Brisbane home. The environment that you look forward to returning to at the end of the day. The place you tell your loved ones about your stuff-up at work. The place you laugh and hug and cry and get relief from the world at the end of your 8-hour workday. The place you feel safe. And while not everyone has the luck and incredible privilege of having a place like this to return to, many of us do.
And I, on behalf of Trent (and I hope he would approve of this, as I am not sufficiently close to him to ask), would like you to appreciate that extra hard today, or tomorrow, or whenever you are next there. Appreciate the people who make you laugh when you’re on the verge of tears, and who make every problem seem smaller just by sharing it. Appreciate the fact that we, as humans, have the need, the desire, the drive, to create these connections which give our life meaning. And don’t forget that you, too, are part of this ongoing and resilient chain of humanity, and that you deserve a pat on the back for your role in it.
After all, if you go and hug someone, or tell someone you love them, or you, personally, get yourself through a tough period in your life, you are contributing to the loved and lived experiences of others, and of yourself. We are all a little patchwork of the love we have given and received over the course of our lives, something which Trent made me incredibly proud of and grateful for. Thanks, Trent (love you!).
It doesn’t take a statistician to notice that belief in astrology, or the study of celestial objects and their impact on human life, is rising in popularity.
Evidence suggests that when societies are undergoing existential threats or stress, like pandemics, natural disasters, or conflict, they are more likely to turn to scientifically unfounded belief systems. Given the state of the world, this probably isn’t surprising.
This concept is corroborated by Dr Victor Grech, whose studies uncovered a surge of interest towards astrology in the wake of the 2016 American election. Additionally, the rise of astrological predilection is, perhaps as expected, highest amongst women.
As I am just like the other girls, I have a casual interest in astrology. But I have a much greater interest in asking men about astrology. What is even better than that, for me anyway, is going on a date and correctly ‘guessing’ their star sign. Little do they know, it is already listed on their Hinge profile. I have an Aries Venus and a Taurus Mercury, if that explains anything.
Whatever you believe, I don’t ask men their zodiac sign as a means of examining basic compatibility. It isn’t that I am searching for a common interest, nor do I use it as a way to mildly aggravate, however tempting that may be. It is definitely a method of finding out more about my date, but the outcome is not solely based on their reported sign.
I find it to be a useful tool in gauging potential worst qualities.
If interrogations result in a disdainful response, let alone a lecture, I can reasonably rule them out as a love match, or even a casual lover. I’m not searching for someone who is also interested in astrology. However, I am looking for someone who is relaxed enough to indulge all sorts of questions, and open-minded enough not to be immediately judgemental.
It also cannot be left unsaid – the primary reason I ask men about their star sign is to decipher if they are a misogynist or not.
Astrology has been, and remains, an interest that is predominantly enjoyed by women. Often, it is a safe and empowering space for us. It allows individuals to dig deep into areas of their life they may need to work on, work out. Through this, many women use their signs to find their own power. Writing off an interest in astrology as an irrational belief in the paranormal, immediately excludes the aspect of self-development sought after amongst committed believers.
While I couldn’t describe myself like that, it fills a practical function. It is dangerous being a young woman going on dates, even with people I already know. Unfortunately, many women like myself also must rely on surreptitious methods of vetting potential romantic partners.
When I polled women aged between 16 and 25 via Instagram, almost all respondents expressed that they also had negative experiences with men, after discussing astrology.
This isn’t breaking news, with respondents to previous surveys echoing the stories supplied through my Instagram study. In a 2018 Vice article, a male respondent stated that “If you bring that shit up with me, I’ll think you’re a mindless bimbo.” Delightful.
Another 2018 study by I. Andersson, entitled Even the Stars Think That I Am Superior: Personality, Intelligence and Belief in Astrology proposes a link between belief and psyche. Findings divulged a negative correlation between belief in astrology and intelligence, and positively correlated narcissism with belief in astrology [in men]. For me, what is attractive isn’t about disbelief or belief, but rather about acceptance of one another’s beliefs, so long as they are not harmful.
My ideal date isn’t necessarily someone who has even a casual interest in astrology. In fact, I think it is someone relatively apathetic about it, but lets me enjoy my silly little stars while they enjoy their silly little sports. Or whatever it is that they like, that I myself take no interest in.
On the lighter side, in the youth hostel I stayed in while writing this, I quizzed some of my male roommates on their thoughts. Was it a red flag for them, if women ask about their star sign? My Canadian, American and Australian hostel mates all had the same response. Basically, “If you had asked me five years ago, I would have thought you were intellectually inferior, and even lectured you about it, but now I just answer and wait for the analysis”.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to ask the men in the room next door to us, who catcalled us on the way back from the showers, what they might have thought about it all. Something tells me I don’t need their star sign to work out if I want to date them or not.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 4 ‘Alien’
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
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