feminist news round-up 28.01.16
Backlash after women strip naked at sombre Invasion Day event
Nakkiah Lui, indigenous writer and actor for ABC’s Black Comedy, has slammed a pair of reportedly non-indigenous women for their nude “performance art” piece at an Invasion Day march in Sydney. During a speech by journalist John Pilger, the two women, painted as Australian flags, washed their paint off and then wrapped themselves in an Aboriginal flag. Lui criticised the pair as disrespectful and attention-seeking at an event where people were speaking of their traumatic experiences of colonisation, as well as being surrounded by families and elders.
Women’s league soccer final this weekend
This Sunday, Melbourne City and Sydney FC will be fighting it out to win the W-League championship. However, it was the semi-final between Melbourne City and Brisbane Roar last weekend that had viewers excited. Hailed as a tense game that was forced to go into extra time and then penalties, City player Lisa De Vanna consoled opposition player Angela Beard who missed her spot kick in a touching moment.
All-women session in U.S. Senate after snowstorm
You can’t make this stuff up. After an intense blizzard in Washington D.C. kept people indoors for days, it only seemed to be the women who turned up for work in the Senate. Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski noted that all parliamentarians, floor managers, pages and the presiding officer at work on Tuesday were women. Calling it ‘genuinely fabulous’, she pondered aloud that the event may be testament to the ‘hardiness’ of women.
Woman points out simple fact on Twitter, is attacked
On Monday morning, Australian writer Erin Riley noted that previous Triple J Hottest 100 winners Vance Joy and Chet Faker had both attended St Kevin’s College in Toorak. She concluded that in the history of the Hottest 100, more men from the college had won the poll than women in general, as no solo female artist has ever been voted number one. Chet Faker himself took offence to the tweets, suggesting that Riley was underplaying his ‘hard work’, before deleting the tweets and apologising. The debate that this created is examined in this article by Riley, as well as what what she calls a ‘fundamental misunderstanding’ of privilege.
11-year-old girl sick of reading about white boys and dogs, launches #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign
Marley Dias from New Jersey has launched a campaign to collect 1000 books featuring black female leads by February 1, to provide her and her peers with role model characters to look up to and much needed representation. The books will be catalogued and sent to a children’s book drive in Jamaica, with Dias and her mother also hoping to start a library in Philadelphia.Go girl!
U.S. health panel calls for depression screenings during and post-pregnancy
An influential government-sponsored health panel in the U.S. has recommended that doctors screen patients for depression both during and after pregnancy. This recommendation comes in the wake of new findings that maternal mental illness is more common than previously thought, with many cases of post-partum depression actually beginning during pregnancy.
