Cultural Studies DECRA fellow UniMelb. Co-author Queer Theory Now. She/Her, bisexual, pro trans! Views my own, not the University’s ✨Another world is possible✨
I've been working on a professional website that links to all of my academic and non-academic writing (even my published poetry if you can stand it!). It features profiles on my grad students, info/links to all my projects, and more! Check it out:
Crazy how if you (apparently) have high levels of testosterone TERFs will call you a man but if you’re like okay then I’ll take some more and be a man they’re like NO YOU’RE NOT
I’m listening to Judith Butler’s talk from the British Library this morning and this is their comment on pronouns: “I do feel like the youth gave me ‘they’ and I thought it was a beautiful gift…cool great, feels exactly right…Does that mean I disavow my alliance to women? No!”
Had an emergency c section this week in a public hospital, spent a few days in recovery just as “code brown” activated in Victoria. Despite what’s happening the level of care was *exceptional*. Key takeaway: raise health worker wages, fund public health - it’s a precious system
Some say you should never wear large earrings when you give a talk because it implies you want to distract the audience. If you want to wear large earrings but not be thought an idiot, why not distract the audience from their femmephobic critique with this very fine banana hat
Absolutely no one is going to mess with you in this baby. NO ONE would dare make a comment rather than ask a question at your next conference presentation if you don this outfit
In case you didn’t know, today’s right wing/TERF/nazi/evangelical transphobic playbook is an almost exact repeat of the homophobia of the 1970s. Same ideas, same kinds of leaders. There was an anti-gay Posie Parker called Anita Bryant. Exact same garbage about saving kids
I don’t know who needs to hear this but it’s possible to love your job and feel extremely grateful for it, AND to be critical of the excess labour demands, exploitation, bad bosses, and institutional problems entangled with it
My girlfriend gave me some sage advice last night: “Life’s too short to read twitter threads about how we’re not going to get a permanent job in academia”
“Language is a living thing…we need to have some humility and also some joy in experimentation. And maybe just let people live. Because you know what, it’s hard. And if we find something that makes it better and it’s not hurting anyone, then great”
Trying to understand why so many middle aged cis men and women are seriously OBSESSED with trans people. This tiny percentage of the population who almost certainly have no impact on their lives. Why. Why why why
Happening right now in Arts West at UniMelb — the Acting Provost has told students that they have until 2:30pm to leave: “If you are not out of the building within an hour, the university will have to make decisions that will seriously escalate the tension”
Mahmoud received a scholarship study anywhere in the world, and he chose the University of Melbourne. Devastatingly, he was killed by Israel's genocide last week.
Uni Melb's Gaza solidarity encampment renames Arts West to Mahmoud’s Hall.
So a senior academic at my university has launched this website where you can "anonymously" send in stories of trans women harming cis women (she refers to trans women as men throughout). How can we stop this nonsense 😫
All this hate directed at universities. Where do people imagine the epidemiologists train? The scientists developing vaccines? The policy experts? The journalists? Not to mention many of the writers and producers and cultural critics keeping us entertained in lockdown??
If the University’s aim was to make the crowd go away they have failed — it has doubled with a huge amount of supporters now outside as well as inside. Police just spotted outside the library on their way over
Happening right now in Arts West at UniMelb — the Acting Provost has told students that they have until 2:30pm to leave: “If you are not out of the building within an hour, the university will have to make decisions that will seriously escalate the tension”
Thinking of all the creatives who are speaking out despite punishment from cultural institutions right now. You can censor all the art you like but resistance is creative, creativity is resistance
University of Melbourne this morning. Students and staff walking freely and easily through Mahmoud’s Hall: it’s the University that has made the call to cancel classes
Sure only five “weeks” under Melbourne lockdown so far... Unless you were in a hotspot suburb that locked early... And were really cautious so barely saw anyone during the short unlocked period... So haven’t seen most of your friends or family since mid March... (so, five months)
Really dismayed by
@HadleyFreeman
’s column in today’s
@guardian
so going to unpack a few of the claims made here and the (not good) implications for feminism
My university surveying me about things that would help me work better at home. Me: secure work for everyone and no more mass casualisation; adequately supporting PhD students; actually accounting for increased workloads in the virtual campus and no further increases to workload
If we're going to have a proper feminist movement in the wake of the Roe v Wade decision people need to stop obsessing about genitals and get real about bodily autonomy as a key demand
Can universities please stop kidding themselves that the underfunded uni psych services, dodgy corporate wellbeing programs, and videos encouraging staff to “take care of yourselves” do anything to ameliorate the emotional toll of restructures and redundancies
The best thing universities could do on RUOK day is reverse their job cuts decisions, reinstate everyone who has lost their job since March, and give an additional year of funding to current PhDs. Aka help the material conditions of staff livelihood, not just promote mindfulness
Absolutely hating the media coverage of the Rugg/Ryan case that suggest it’s simply about Ryan expecting Rugg would work more than Rugg was prepared to. The documents reveal the realities of care work were routinely dismissed by Ryan. For example, these excerpts:
Upset and angry to report that vitriolic transphobic stickers have been plastered in women’s bathrooms across Arts buildings on campus today, alleging trans women are predators - this is what happens when hate speech is given free rein as “free speech”
University of Melbourne, the largest richest uni announcing almost 1 in 10 ongoing jobs to go, on top of the thousands of casual and contract jobs already lost. Tell me again why the govt is silent on the tertiary sector 🤔
Extremely excited to finally announce that the Swiftposium – an academic conference on Taylor Swift – is happening in Melbourne in February 2024 (organised by a team from seven universities across Aus and NZ!). CFP and abstract submission portal here:
It is actually crazy to me that a Vice Chancellor in Australia can get paid TWICE as much as the Prime Minister, THREE times as much as a Premier, and FOUR times as much as a Chief Medical Officer during a pandemic
Sorry, thread time. The confected debate about trans rights versus “feminism” and “free speech” is getting worse here in Australia. It’s worth looking at how this has played out in the UK over a longer period, and how the media seems intent to import the issue here 1/
The silence from Australian news outlets about Rafah right now is utterly dystopian. Every institutional treatment of Palestine in this country feels like gaslighting on a massive scale
Seen criticism that all the women on
#BacheloretteAU
are femme presenting. I get it’s disappointing that there’s not more of a range of gender expression but reminder: femme is legit and it is radical for people to see feminine women are queer, we have to come out over and over
Looked up all of the MPs (all Liberal) and websites linked on the page as "working to protect women-only spaces". It boggles my mind that there is SO MUCH feminist organising being dedicated to anti-trans stuff, instead of - I dunno - LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS SEXIST WORLD
If you think university job cuts only affect those who lose employment... the university is an ecosystem. Cuts leave a teaching and mentoring gap for undergrad and PhD students, and drive up the workload of those who remain. Not to mention the loss for research, or the economy...
Happening right now in Arts West at UniMelb — the Acting Provost has told students that they have until 2:30pm to leave: “If you are not out of the building within an hour, the university will have to make decisions that will seriously escalate the tension”
Utterly disgraceful to see so many cultural institutions doubling down on being “apolitical”, when there is nothing more political than enforcing silence in a time of genocide
BREAKING: spread the word. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
#MSO
just canceled a musician because he played a piece dedicated to Palestinian journalists killed in
#Gaza
in his previous performance. This is the email they sent to those who wished to attend his upcoming concert
If TERFs cared about women’s rights they’d be fighting for higher pay for women in sport, better parental leave, against increased imprisonment of women, better sexual assault laws, and would know that home is the most unsafe place for women. Nup. Just obsessed with trans women
Really disappointed that Gillard couldn’t engage with the humanity of my question last night. She did not have to implement that policy that *did* cause real harm. And given her record on same sex marriage, refugees... if she’s your feminist icon I really think you can do better
Over the past year in Aus (since the marriage equality postal survey) I’ve heard LGBTIQ advocates say “we can’t mention Safe Schools anymore, it’s too dangerous”. Daniel Andrews just decisively said on
#Insiders
“Safe Schools saves lives”. No need to be cautious to defend this!
Genuinely wondering how self-described “radical feminists” who promote trans-exclusionary ideology are feeling about queen radfem Catharine Mackinnon calling them sloppy, not-feminist, and taking down every single one of their bad faiths arguments with perfect clarity
If I were a Vice Chancellor announcing enormous and fiscally unnecessary job cuts during the first week of teaching and stage 4 lockdown I too would send out a heartfelt video message to all staff about all of the music festivals and events I have been sad to miss recently
BREAKING:
The Albanese Government has just revealed that they have rejected visas for over 7,000 Palestinians from fleeing the genocide in Gaza and only granted visas for 2,900.
More below👇
NTEU members at UniMelb have overwhelmingly voted to support the student encampment and urge the University to disclose its ties to weapons manufacturing. Motions below (support was 98-99% for each one, ~190 members present)
@Umelb4Palestine
I don’t know about you all but I’ve found the best way to deal with pandemic anxiety is simply to wake up and scroll the Internet until my battery hits 1% ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When I was in year one we had to draw our families. I drew my mum but also my dogs, cats and chickens, which I labelled my brothers and sisters. After class my teacher phoned my mum because I "didn't understand the concept of family". Anyway, that's how I became a queer theorist
No one will remember:
- Your fancy title
- How “busy” you were
- How many hours you worked
People will remember:
- The way you utterly cocked up a relatively simple political act and then threw trans and intersex people under the bus for the 2026 census to try and remedy it
Huge crowd gathered for the student press conference at UniMelb “The University has decided that divesting from genocide is not in the National interest”
Students are planning to hold a press conference at Mahmoud’s Hall (formerly Arts West) at 3:30pm UniMelb today if people want to get down and support
@Umelb4Palestine
@NTEUUniMelb
Sending huge solidarity to casuals who are teaching their final classes this week not knowing if this is the last time ever because of the state of the higher ed sector. The grief of possibly losing a generation of teachers and researchers is real
#savehigheredjobs
Happening right now in Arts West at UniMelb — the Acting Provost has told students that they have until 2:30pm to leave: “If you are not out of the building within an hour, the university will have to make decisions that will seriously escalate the tension”
We talk a *lot* on here about how awful higher ed is. The point is we LOVE academia (or what it could be). Teaching enlivens us. We have endless enthusiasm for research. Thinking! Reading! Writing! THAT’S why the denigration of universities by the govt and our VCs hurts so much
My partner
@dylanjmcconnell
has been an energy analyst at
@UniMelb
for a decade, on contracts. Come June he has to leave — the uni has dismantled his Climate and Energy College, and in its place an (unfunded) “Climate Futures” research cluster. He has important things to say 😢
So psyched to say that my DECRA app was successful! And joyous to see
@katrina_hutch
on this list too - my most influential philosophy tutor, without whom I would quite literally not be where I am today (I ran into Katrina on a bus and she encouraged me to apply for honours!!)
Imagine if your work sacked so many casuals they didn't know how many in total, and then asked you to take a pay cut (a pay rise you went on strike for two years ago) while asking you to double your workload to teach virtually and then double it again to help fire more casuals
Love to have my name mentioned in the Age today with absolutely no contact from the journalist in advance?! I would like to be excluded from this cat fight narrative please
@theage
The trolley problem but on one track you’ve got the livelihoods of thousands of university staff who won’t find another job in this economy and if you pull the lever you sacrifice shiny new buildings executive pay and surplus
Kind of wild Holly opened her speech at the terf/nazi rally with a “joke” about trans woman Lili Elbe who underwent surgery in Germany in 1930 (who Holly referred to as “he” throughout). Must have been a coincidental transphobic joke and definitely not for the Nazis there huh
The early 1930s nazi attacks on "transsexual" & gender-diverse people in Berlin, particularly those who were living openly with self-ID certificates, was fired up by claiming they were "youth defilers" (i.e. paedos).
2020s nazis & Australian anti-trans activists are in lockstep.
It is an understatement to say that Australian universities need to step up to immediately help address this crisis “Five per cent of PhD students are currently or about to experience homelessness and 11% are skipping meals”
Quite funny to me that being an academic involves being a doctor (but not a real doctor) and a teacher (but not a real teacher) and writing books (but not real books) 😛
I don’t know a nice way to say this but: if you work while you’re on leave it’s scabby and it makes it harder for other people in terms of output expectations. I get that academia never rests but it must be resisted. (Also I struggle with this daily, this is a note to self)
I can’t believe how hard sleep deprivation is when you have a baby, and how so much of your life becomes about sleep and how to get it. So boring and hard! No one warned me!*
*Literally everyone warned me
💉PSA💉 My partner went down to the Royal Exhibition Centre in Melbourne at 5pm today and got a walk in booster shot. Extremely short line, jabbed within 10 mins. Word on the street they are administering to anyone that last had a jab 3 months ago or more. It's open 8am-8pm
FB has informed me I started my PhD exactly eight years ago today(!) finished four years later. Leaving my secure public service job to go write 100,000 words about queer femininity was the best life decision I ever made. PhDs are monsters but they sure can change your life
Many of us at UniMelb are going on an !!! unprecedented !!! week-long strike next week, over stalled enterprise agreement negotiations. If you want to follow the action go to
@NTEUUniMelb
on here, and use
#UniMelbStrikes
to show support
You know what I hate about takes like this (other than being in papers you should boycott)? They totally overlook huge Swift fandoms in places like Indonesia and the Philippines. The critique itself re-centres whiteness rather than looking to actual fans to understand the tension
"Swift’s audience is overwhelmingly white women and girls. She exists in an apolitical world that refuses to engage with the social and political issues around her. If she does, the focus is squarely on the men who wronged her." | Santilla Chingaipe
Summary of the
#BacheloretteAU
:
- Never seen better Bi rep
- I ship Brooke and Jamie Lee 100%
- The hot people are all the women and Konrad
- Are all men carpenters?
- Brooke has eliminated all shame I’ve ever felt just by existing
- Literally the greatest television ever
“You can’t talk about sex or women or feminism on campus anymore” ☹️☹️☹️
Some actual subjects we teach in Gender and Cultural Studies:
- Sex, Gender and Culture
- Feminist Futures
- The Politics of Sex
- Aboriginal Women and Coloniality
- Sociology of Sex
- Thinking Sex
Great to see
#4corners
centring trans people, their families and (mostly) experts on trans healthcare, but I am literally begging journalists to do the barest minimum investigation of the bigotry that groups like Binary Australia openly espouse
This is going to be a can of worms but what are people’s opinions on having only one child? The idea of having another baby one day breaks my brain in terms of how (how?!) does anyone possibly manage that, but on the other hand I was raised an only child and it was so very lonely
Hearing that Scott Morrison swanned about the UK doing family history while fully vaccinated, while so many citizens are stuck overseas and almost no one is vaccinated in Australia, has actually given me a rage blackout
It’s so sad to see Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists being silenced right now — they’ve only got three major articles dedicated to their plights in The Age today 😔
In sum: this article acts to legitimise transphobia. It creates a vision of feminism that is not only anti-trans, it suggests gender should be more regulated, more pathogised, more founded in the “facts” of biology, more essential, more narrow.