Sydney’s underworld has swirled with rumours for the past two weeks that drug trafficker Dave Kelleher had been found dead on a boat but the truth is far more shocking for his former friends.
Month: May 2021
Breastfeeding counsellors accused of bullying for using term ‘mother’ – Kidspot
Breastfeeding counsellors claim to be accused of bullying for using the word ‘mother’.
Source: Breastfeeding counsellors accused of bullying for using term ‘mother’ – Kidspot
More NSW Police officers charged with domestic violence as victims face ongoing problems getting help – ABC News
NSW Police must urgently overhaul the way it deals with perpetrators of domestic violence in its ranks, experts say, with frontline workers claiming the standard practice of police investigating their close colleagues too often means alleged abusers are not being held accountable, putting victims’ safety on the line. Key points: 16 NSW Police officers were charged with domestic violence last year Victims can face significant barriers seeking help and disturbing treatment by police Experts say the force must urgently overhaul the way it handles perpetrators in its ranks
First Male Athlete With Male Documents to Compete in International Women’s Sports Category | Women Are Human
IT — . On 17 May, 2021, it was announced that Valentina Petrillo is set to create a world record as the first, and so far only, male to participate in a female sports competition with male documents.
The software programmer and divorced father, who identifies as a woman and has not undergone cosmetic ‘gender’ surgery, is among the athletes chosen to compete in the European Paralympic Athletics Championship in Poland from June 1 to June 5. Seven athletes, including Petrillo, will compete on the Italian Team for Bydgoszcz 2021 in the women’s category, and 16 in the men’s.
The 47-year-old’s goal is to qualify for the Tokyo 2021 Paralympics.
Before declaring a female identity in 2019, Petrillo competed with other men as Fabrizio, the name that still appears on the athlete’s legal documents. Petrillo won 11 national men’s titles between 2016 and 2018.
Who’s afraid of Cruella de Vil? New stories are humanising female villains of old
The female villain is common, in part, because of the Brothers Grimm.
As the Brothers collected and published fairy tales in the early 19th century, they progressively changed these stories to conform to appropriate morality for children. These alterations included silencing strong female characters and demonising powerful women — ensuring evil behaviour was clearly contrasted with good.
Children’s literature followed suit, with easily understandable divides between the good (and beautiful) and the evil (and ugly). L. Frank Baum’s one-eyed Wicked Witch of the West in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was designated the “bad witch” in sharp contrast to the good witch, and to Dorothy.
Source: Who’s afraid of Cruella de Vil? New stories are humanising female villains of old
Thirteen years after ‘Sorry’, too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are still being removed from their homes
The Apology represented a formal acknowledgement that the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children was based on racist policies that caused unspeakable harm to our communities.
Children were forced off their lands. They were disconnected from their kin, Country, traditional languages and culture.
Today on Sorry Day, 13 years since the Apology, our Elders, families and communities still grieve these losses. And many families are being repeatedly traumatised by contemporary child removal practices. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are nearly 10 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home care.
What the Elders call for resonates with the concept of responsive regulation. This means that regulators — in this case the child protection authority — need to take into account the cultures, behaviours and environments of the people they are regulating.
Principles of responsive regulation and those developed by the Elders offer a counter-balance to the current formalistic approaches of child protection services, such as mandatory reporting, forensic investigations, court hearings, timelines for termination of parental rights, and the adoption of children in care.
Carceral feminism and coercive control: when Indigenous women aren’t seen as ideal victims, witnesses or women
A documentary series aimed to spark national conversation about criminalising coercive control.
Indeed, Hill’s aim to criminalise coercive control is part of a larger national agenda. It was the first priority set for the Queensland government’s recently established Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce.
The taskforce and documentary both call for a carceral solution to coercive control – coercive control refers to systemic domestic violence that operates through a matrix of subtle practices including surveillance, gaslighting, financial control, and fear of potential violence.
This plan for criminalising coercive control has been met with sustained critique from a range of Indigenous women academics, activists and frontline workers. They argue such a solution would result in more Indigenous women being imprisoned than protected.
These concerns are evidenced statistically, by the staggering increases in Indigenous female incarceration. They are also shown clearly in the story of Tamica herself, who was “misidentified” as an offender by the police (which included a female officer).
This has many rightfully questioning the function of Indigenous women’s trauma in narratives constructed by carceral feminists – those who see state institutions such as police and prisons as appropriate solutions to gender based violence.
A key point we raise is the failure of this approach to understand how the state itself perpetrates abuse and coercive control over Indigenous women.
NSW adopts affirmative consent in sexual assault laws. What does this mean?
New South Wales Attorney-General Mark Speakman has announced a suite of reforms to consent law, following a two-and-a-half year review by the Law Reform Commission.
The review was prompted by survivor-advocate Saxon Mullins, who endured two trials and two appeals, only to end up with no legal resolution to her rape case. Since then, Mullins has advocated for affirmative consent.
However, the final report from the commission, released in November last year, failed to recommend this standard. Despite this, Speakman has stood alongside Mullins with the promise of a bill that goes beyond the recommendations of the commission — and will make affirmative consent the law in NSW.
The bill announced today changes that course. Speakman has presented reforms that go beyond the Law Reform Commission’s recommendations and, if enacted, would legislate affirmative consent in NSW.
This is because the bill requires that a person who is seeking to raise the defence of “reasonable belief in consent” must demonstrate what actions they took or what words they spoke to ensure they had consent. A failure to do or say something (that is, to “take steps”) to ascertain consent means that any belief in consent will not be reasonable.
Source: NSW adopts affirmative consent in sexual assault laws. What does this mean?
Mary Beth Edelson obituary | Art | The Guardian
On a boiling hot morning in June 1984, hundreds of women converged on the Museum of Modern Art in New York to protest. MoMA was holding a huge exhibition of recent art and of the 165 artists showing, only 14 were women. The crowd chanted “You don’t have to have a penis to be a genius” and wore suffragette sashes. Among them was the artist Mary Beth Edelson. By that point Edelson, who has died aged 88, had spent 20 years at the forefront of the feminist art movement.
In 1972 she created a collage titled Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper. Riffing on the Leonardo da Vinci painting, she replaced the faces of the disciples with those of female artists, among them Yoko Ono, Louise Bourgeois and Helen Frankenthaler. In the place of Jesus is Georgia O’Keeffe. The work became a poster, widely distributed and iconic to those fighting misogyny in the art world.
Mary Beth Edelson, artist, born 6 February 1933; died 20 April 2021
Gender Dysphoria: Looked after Children. Part 3. U.K. GIDS – @STILLTish. Gender Abolition
Why aren’t child safeguarding organisations expressing concern about how children in Foster Care/Adopted kids are over-represented in Gender Identity Clinics?
The researchers note the high rate of GIDS referrals from Looked after (LAC) and adopted children. They note that LACs make up 0.58% of the general population but 4.9% of GIDs referrals. Adopted children account for another 3.8% of referrals. The data, therefore, illustrates a significant over-representation of these groups in the GIDs patient population.
Another feature of children referred to Gender Identity Services is a higher than expected rate of autistic children. Children who had experienced bullying and were self-harming are also noted. Data from Finland shows extremely high rates of co-morbid psychiatric conditions. A whopping 68% were found to have had prior engagement with psychiatric services for reasons other then their Gender Dysphoria.
Source: Gender Dysphoria: Looked after Children. Part 3. U.K. GIDS – @STILLTish. Gender Abolition