When I was sixteen years old, I was assaulted. I had attended the Williamstown High School formal. It was past midnight, and my friends and I were walking through a dimly lit street towards home. I was shocked and paralysed with fear as a bottle of Carlton Draught smashed against my bare back from the…
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Women enlisted in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are facing routine abuses, including sexual slavery, forced abortions and infanticide. FARC’s female soldiers are reportedly subjected to the sexual whims of commanders and all are given routine contraceptive injections. The Marxist rebel forces lure in girls with the promise of a better quality of…
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**Trigger Warning: Discussion of sexual and emotional abuse** Between the ages of 13 to about 16, I used to watch Law and Order SVU religiously every Thursday night. Recently, on holiday in Italy, I indulged in watching SVU while eating smallgoods and drinking wine with my best friend. I saw an episode in which a…
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Young girls in the West feel pressure to have large breasts, but in the West African nation of Cameroon, girls on the cusp of puberty are having their breasts ironed by family members to stop them developing. Breast ironing has emerged as a result of victim blaming and poor sex education in the country. Unlike…
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So, do you want to hear the good news or the bad news? Well, the good news is that UK feminist campaigner and journalist, Caroline Criado-Perez was successful in her push for the inclusion of women (other than the Queen) on British bank notes, with Jane Austen to feature on the £10 note from…
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Ali Cobby Eckermann was too afraid to cry, and I was too afraid to put down her memoir till I had come to the end and knew that she was going to be okay. This is the extraordinary true story of Eckermann’s upbringing as a child of the stolen generation—taken from her Indigenous family at…
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A San Diego teacher has been fired after a domestic dispute involving her ex-husband occurred at the school she was employed at. Carie Charlesworth, formerly a primary school teacher, was fired for being a ‘liability’ to the safety of students and fellow staff at Holy Trinity School in El Cajon. Charlesworth’s ex-husband has a history…
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Legendary British actor Sir Patrick Stewart has given an impassioned speech about violence against women at Comicpalooza in the US. Audience member Heather Skye thanked Stewart for his recent speech on behalf of British charity Refuge. ‘That speech was really moving to me and it helped me through my own turmoils a little bit,’ Ms…
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In late 1978, Patricia Feenan, her husband, and their two young sons moved to a twenty-five acre farm, just a forty-minute drive from Newcastle. Nestled in the quiet countryside, but close enough to the city that Feenan’s husband could still drive to work, Feenan hoped that the farm would provide an idyllic childhood for her…
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Approximately 35% of women have been involved in emotionally abusive relationships at some point in their lives. We tend to take the philosophy to heart that making mistakes in relationships is part of our evolutionary process of growth. But what’s the difference between mistakes and being emotionally abused? And can we recognise the signs, before…
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**Trigger Warning: Rape, assault and child abuse** I cannot stop the film reel in my head churning out story after story in a dark narrative of abuses. I want to share them, after the murder of Jill Meagher and the PM’s obviously impassioned speech against misogyny, because I feel the tides turning, ever so slowly…
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I was recently asked to speak in a podcast about the book Fifty Shades of Grey and, more generally, porn for women. The specific podcast can be found here: http://www.psycho-babble.net/archives/356 The main things to keep in mind about the book and the brouhaha surrounding it: 1. Take the sexual activity and ‘BDSM contracts’ out of…
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The last ten years have seen a 261% increase in domestic and sexual violence in Australia. In 2009, the total cost to the Australian economy was $13.6 billion. More often than not, domestic and sexual violence sits under the ‘women’s issues’ umbrella, but men have a huge role to play in turning these statistics around….
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