2018 irresponsible cat owners road trip part 2

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2018 irresponsible cat owners road trip instalment 1

Alison and I each own half a cat. The same cat. Such a good arrangement, until you decide to go on holiday together. My work was being a shit about accommodating my recovering shoulder, Alison was in the midst of a year off work, and over a bottle of wine, we hatched a plan to jump in the car and run away up the centre. We jettisoned Mishka and our meagre efforts at responsibility to the arms of Greg and drove north, muttering about how we perhaps needed to recruit a third comother.

It was in Adelaide that I first realised that this was to be an educational holiday. Alison had filled her weekend in Adelaide with galleries. I had filled mine with hot dates. But we did both go to the Art Gallery of South Australia on the Sunday before we left and I was treated to an explanation of modern curatorial practice and lessons in art interpretation. Over the years of travelling with Douglas, Lou and Clive, I have picked up quite a lot of knowledge about birds. I expect I will have picked up a few tips about art by the end of this one. I’m not sure what wisdom I share with my fellow travellers on these journeys in return.

Our drive to the centre was fuelled by coffee and conversation. Sex, art, the environment, more sex, relationships, travels, history, even more sex. Everything meaningful there is to talk about except climbing. Fortunately for Alison, I can diversify. The trip was all fun and laughter until the first morning camping. I got up and started my well practiced morning tea ritual. Then it hit me that I had been doing that with Douglas for over 6 years. He is not a morning person, so it was always me by myself, putting water on and looking around at the morning light, early birds and probably grumbling to myself about the cold. Certainly I was complaining about the cold this time. Then I’d crawl back into the tent with tea for both of us. It was just enough of a memory to bring back those of the many road trips we had done together, and then the thought that maybe he would never be doing this again. Fortunately, Alison was up to distract me with more talk about sex before I got too miserable.

Past Port Augusta, we enter the land that white people failed to tame, and cultivated land is behind us. The desert is constantly harsh, but also varied and beautiful. Its harshness has helped it to retain most of its original form in the face of wannabe farmers. Unfortunately, its harshness hasn’t fended off a smattering of cattle stations, pest animals and weeds and the medium sized mammals of this area are all but gone.

Our deep and meaningful conversation brought us safely into Coober Pedy where we’d decided to go the cultural experience and booked an underground room. It was a cell. Twin beds in a windowless hole in the ground with a fluorescent light. We decided heading out for the other cultural experience of an underground bar was critical at this point. We ordered drinks, chatted up the bar maid, put money in the juke box – the only thing missing was a game of pool. We talked about sex instead.

Leaving the literal and figurative hole of Coober Pedy behind, the landscape is a moonscape. The slag piles are almost continuous. It’s just holes and mounds. No remnant bush. Does any of it get repaired? How is it that mining that completely destroys the land around the town get celebrated like it is? 

110 kilometres per hour is starting to feel pretty slow. People overtake us like we are standing still. We overtake RV after RV. One is called the Crusader. Why would you brand your RV after a series of religious wars? Are they going after the infidel in the Territory? Are we the infidel? We pass the territory border and cheer as we speed up to 130. We move onto psychology, food, music, comedy and what’s that other subject again? Oh yeah, sex. We get inspired to make micro videos. I realise I’ve barely done my shoulder exercises at all and work out a car physio program. I could market it to Dave. Just before Yulara, we randomly pick a side road and find ourselves the perfect camp first go and pour wine to watch the sunset on Uluru.

Uluru is one of those Australian icons we all grew up with and somehow, Alison and I had gotten through 95 years between us without seeing it. Of course, it is 435km away from Alice Springs, which is already in the middle of nowhere. It’s really quite a long way from all the other things in the Centre. Despite that isolation, it is packed. Another party seeking bush camping tell us the campground in town in full. We drive up to the park, mostly staring at the rock and going gaga. I thought was making an entertaining video of how many variations of “fuck, look at that” Alison came up with, but turns out I lack basic videography skills. It was off when I thought it was on, and I got a lovely 5 minutes of the foot well when I thought I’d turned it off. Just as we were completely entranced by the rock, we see the giant traditional indigenous faux blimp. For a moment it doesn’t quite sink in, because it is so incongruous. Who thought they’d paint a bloody great big white balloon, put it on a tether and get people to pay to go up in it??? Then we come around a corner and to a standstill. Queueing to get in to the park took nearly an hour.

Ok, so seeing Australian icons isn’t really my usual sort of holiday. But if we were ever going to see them, we were going to have to join the show, and here we are. The rock is, however, mindblowing. The colours, the textures, the features and contours, it just screams at me to touch it. Yes, I am a rock obsessive. We start the walk around it at a cracking pace with the plan to leave the hoards behind. It doesn’t work because we just catch up with more. I suppose it’s good that so many people are doing a 10km walk, but, I like my peace and quiet. We dodge bikes and sedgeways. I drool over some epic offwith corners. Steep pocketed walls. Roof cracks. Flared chimneys. Even the slabs are calling out to me, and we all know what I think of slabs. Am I ill from rockclimbing withdrawal syndrome? But the rock is featured almost like turtle back, and even though the amazing curving ridges and domes are slabs, they are stunning lines. Alison learns that I can’t diversify from climbing that much.

The other problem of Australian icons is Australian tourists. We arrive back at camp to find another party have moved in. They are ok, actually, if you try not to be too biased against certain sorts of Australians. They are friendly, polite and quiet, and we tried to ignore the incessant firewood collection and stories of destruction wrecked in the process. Or the insistence on climbing Uluru. When the indigenous people politely ask you not to do it, don’t they feel incredibly rude traipsing up that travesty of a fence line? The next lot turn up and try and blast on up the hill. They don’t make it, chuck a tanty and head cross country to get back down. Group 3 also goes the random drive across the bush as if their 4wd gives them a right to go anywhere. Over the hill, we can hear yelling and swearing from another camp. In the morning, these guys crank a generator then hoon around in their dirt bikes. Another lot settle in further back down the road, yell at their kids and put on some doof doof. It’s the sort of population that remind you why we have to regulate camping.

Kata Tjuta is a breath of wilderness in comparison to Uluru.  The track becomes rugged quite rapidly, and most people only make it to the first lookout. By the time we were walking up Valley of the Winds, we saw only the odd other party. And it is stunning. Conglomerate domes rise around you and you actually walking in and amongst them, gain height and lookout over the landscape. It’s a much more engaging walk than the one around Uluru. Besides, I love conglomerate. It’s faceclimbing without reach problems. The mishmash of pebbles and holes mean that there is always something higher to stand on, something I can reach. Blank rock doesn’t really exist in conglomerate. As I fondle the rock and blether to Alison about the joys of conglomerate, she is again realising I am a little single minded.

Driving again, it’s plastic surgery, body hair, geology. We still come back to sex. We decide we should make a pod cast. Surely we should share our witty banter with everyone? Moving onto King’s Canyon, we analyse Greg’s dance mix on my ipod. It’s a review of extremes, either omg yes, or omg, what were you thinking, Greg? Religion, ice cream and spoons. In particular, what flavour ice cream would Alison be and what sort of spoon is she looking for? If you are starting to wonder if we are going insane with each other’s company, let me correct you that this is, infact, a meeting of genius minds.

Walking up King’s Canyon, some middle aged father tries to entice his son along by imagining there’s a pole dancer at the end. We may have made some loud inappropriate comments about hot young male strippers as we walked on. Sexist males aside, King’s Canyon is lovely, but the walk is all too short. It is rife with birds and holly grevilia flowering, and red rock completely different again to Kata Tjuta and Uluru. In Kathleen Springs, we are inspired to write a children’s book by the language on the interpretive signs. They seem to be aimed at 8 year olds. “A kangaroo or emu can feed many people”.  Our book is a sex education manual for kangaroos and emus when their parents have fed many people. It’s not delirium, OK, we are fine.

That evening, I look up from writing this to find a dingo sniffing at Alison’s water bottle a metre in front of me. It’s a bit like camping in bear country in the US and Canada, where there are warning signs everywhere, but after a while of not seeing them, you become complacent. Then you turn around cooking dinner one day and a bear is helping itself to your loaf of bread beside you.  I nearly jumped out of the chair, but the dingo just pottered along. In search of a baby I guess. There have been a lot of bad taste dingo and baby jokes so far. I’ll try not to offend you with them.

The rim walk at Kings Canyon turned out to be one of the best touristy walks I have done. I am a complete offtrack walking snob. I love being away from other people, the process of navigating and exploring, discovering magical places. One of the reasons the rim walk is so good is because it provides magical places and exploring that you don’t expect when you leave the car park. The country above the rim is stunning, convoluted with micros gorges and mini peaks, it explores the upper canyon and provides stunning views of the surrounding country. Then when you get back to the car park, Parks NT provides free wifi for you to post your photos on facebook. I guess it’s effective promotion. There is no mobile reception for hundreds of kilometres in any direction.

The road to Hermansburg from here is soft 4wd, but it’s the first 4wding Alison has taken her new car on. I get told off for calling it an SUV. She even threatened to leave me on the side of the road if I called it an SUV again. It’s an AWD wagon. I suppose SUVs are only what rich Melbournites drop their kids at school in.

The road isn’t really 4wd. I could get the little red car across it, but it has some major corrugations. The road looked like grade 3 rapids at times there. Vibration therapy we called it. You know those infomercials trying to sell you those things you put your feet on whilst watching TV and it miraculously vibrates away tonnes of fat? We lost like 5 kg each on that road.

The road into Palm Valley is delightful in comparison. Alison got to cross her first river beds (we didn’t need a snorkel), in fact, you basically drive down the Finke River at times. And at the end, we have a beautiful campsite on the Finke and it has not-hot showers and free gas cookers. For $6.60 per person. The Victorian government should have a chat with the NT government. We walked the last 5 km into the Valley as there was really no convincing the not-SUV that it was a high clearance 4wd. It turns out that walking is barely slower than 4wding. We jumped in and out of the river bed as we went whenever it looked more appealing than the road. The rock around the valley is soft, dark red sandstone, forming landscape almost reminiscent of Utah towers. Maybe an older version of them. Cabbage palms and cycads line the creek bed. It’s gorgeous, but it’s becoming incredibly windy. Our tents were sails when we pitched them, I nearly took off with mine as a paraglider and only held it down with double pegs and rocks in the soft sand. Worse than rigging on a glacier. The red dust has infiltrated Alison’s tent when we get back to camp. It’s fine enough to get through the no see um mesh of her tent inner and a red powder was layered over everything.

Alison is nothing if not enthusiastic and the next day we pack up, go for a 2k walk to the lookout, drive to Hermansberg, get fuel and shopping, faff on the internet, go to the historical precinct where I feel terribly like a voyeuristic white person, I get more art lessons, then we find they have real coffee and strudel. Lunch consisted of coffee, cheezels and strudel. I’m discovering all these things Alison has a weakness for that I would never have expected. She’s also a terrible influence on my drinking. We’re on holiday, she tells me.  We do more internetting, drive to Albert Namatjira’s house then drive over to Redbank Gorge, set up camp, pack for the walk up Mt Sonder tomorrow and Alison still wants to walk up to the gorge. Are you exhausted yet? I was. We compromise with driving up to the gorge and just doing the 2.4k from there. Alison admits it was a little more work than she was expecting, but late afternoon turns out to be a great time to walk up the gorge as everybody was on the way out and we had the place to ourselves. Us and the duckies. Or maybe they were grebes. I needed a Douglas to help me out. Birds make me miss Douglas. Whenever a cool bird event happens, my first urge is to tell Douglas about it. And of course, he has the bird app. It was like a thrid person in our relationship. Without the bird app, I have no hope of identifying anything.

As we headed into the West Macdonnells, Gosse Bluff arises as another massive red monolith. This region really knows how to produce big red rocks. The roads are windy for the first time in 1000s of kilometres. Apache comes on the stereo. We have been pulling out all the clichés. Treaty took us into uluru. Beds are Burning into Kata Tjuta. But the titty bar music is my favourite. Dusty Springfield got us started on the trip, and she makes a regular reappearence.

When I wake up in Redbank Gorge, it’s cold, but the nights have all been pretty cold and I begin my morning tea making ritual. The water freezes as it hits the bottom of the pan. I go to refill my water bottle from the large container and discover the tap is frozen over. Alison stays in bed in disbelief that I can survive out here. I entice her out of bed by making coffee, but we quickly retire to the car in the hope that body heat and steam might warm the space up. 

It’s still cold when we start up Mt Sonder. You can tell that when I do the whole climb in my thermal, jumper and leg warmers. We bump into people coming down who had started walking at 3 am in order to catch the sunrise from the summit. And here we were complaining about the cold this morning. The wind along the ridge was icy, and the ridge undulated along for 5 km. The walk back was already looking very long. Alison started having olfactory hallucinations. She swore she could smell lamb chops. She though it was altitude. I thought it was fatigue. The ridge ends in a sudden drop off with stunning views and following the natural instinct of short people everywhere to reach the highest position, I climb up onto the cairn on the summit to get the best viewpoint. When we got back to camp and Alison updated her journal of what we had done since leaving Natimuk, she thought perhaps we really had done a lot and maybe a rest was in order.

After Glen Helen, Ormiston Gorge, Ellery Big Hole (which is effectively an outdoor swimming pool for families), we have Tourist Fatigue. Tourist Infrastructure Fatigue. I feel like a bit of a grump, but there is really only so much of this tourist stuff I can do. This really is the family road trip itinery that we are on. Even more so than the grey nomads. We are rare amongst the families, and even rarer amongst the serious 4wds and camper trailers. We could count the amount of other people in cars and tents we’ve seen on one hand. Families yelling at their children are getting tedious. Alison suggested we could put on some music. I thought about that for a moment and ask if I could put Too Drunk Too Fuck on really loud? She wouldn’t let me.

Fortunately, when we go to do the Ormiston Pound loop, there is no one else there. It is also a varied and beautiful walk. We were expecting to just slog up and over the ridge, across the flat of the pound and back through a short gorge. It turns out to be a delightful climb up valleys and ridges to a stunning view over the pound, the flat walk in the pound only brief, with multiple crossings of the creek and into the gorge, with 2.5k of boulder hopping and 300m walls. It’s pretty good really. Only when we got to the carpark end did we encounter the tedious hoards. Of course, the up side of the tedious hoards and infrastructure is coffee. There is a café at the gorge car park. So we had coffee and cake and settled in for a leisurely afternoon.

Since leaving Natimuk 2 weeks ago, we have driven 4000km. Walked 100km. Moved camp 9 times. Taken 347, 680, 201 photos (give or take) and a few less silly videos. Had precisely 0 hot showers since Adelaide, no phone reception for 10 days and have no wine left. We are tired. Hell, we even have a bit of Gorge Fatigue. Because after 20 or so gorges, they start to be a little anticlimactic. Tomorrow morning, we are making a beeline directly for a café in Alice. Good coffee and hot breakfast and finding ourselves a hotel to spoil ourselves with for the weekend. And maybe some hot dates. Because one thing we haven’t fatigued from is talking about sex. Then we will try and find ourselves some real wilderness and head further north.

I am a failed TV snob. Watching Dear White People and Nanette.

I am a TV snob. Not as in snobby about what I watch on TV, as in so snobby, I just won’t watch TV. I don’t have one, and I can’t remember the last time I went to the cinema.

Despite this snobbishness, this month I have been overwhelmed by not one, but two things on TV. Spurred on by cold weather, shoulder surgery and the increasing difficulty in downloading stuff from the internet, I signed up to a free month of Netflix. I’m a little embarrassed about that. Not only am I admitting to watching TV, I signed up to an online streaming service. But, having put aside my shame, I discovered Dear White People and learnt that I can binge TV watch just as well as I can binge read. You know when you really should go to bed, but you just can’t put the book down? As a child, did you find yourself reading under the covers with a torch after you were supposed to be asleep? (Hi Mum! I’m sure you knew I did that. I doubt I really got away with anything I thought I’d gotten away with in my childhood).   This was me with Dear White People. Netflix just continues on with the next episode without even going through the credits, so before I had even had time to guiltily reflect on if I should really go to bed, the next episode had started and I was hooked. 2 entire series in 4 days. Not bad for a TV denialist.

What was so captivating about it? Well, everything. It’s clever, political, funny, moving, quirky, queer and sexy. Each episode shows a different perspective on the events, whilst also developing the story a little further. So it grows and grabs you in multiple directions. It explores the diversity of experiences, responses and behaviour of the students, refusing the idea that there is one black experience. And they are beautiful. Stunningly beautiful people. Do people that beautiful really exist? I’m sure I haven’t met any. Am I fetishizing black people? Actually, Gabrielle was hot too.  Go watch it. Just make sure you’ve got some time to get caught up in it.

Then there was Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette. Holy fuck. How does anyone write something like this? How do you rehearse it? How do you perform it, again and again and again? It’s incredibly personal, and incredibly brave. Plus it’s funny, clever, political, heartbreaking and repeatedly side swipes you out of the blue. Just watch it. A thousand other people have probably told you that already.

Of course, the world being as it is, somehow there are angry men (and the odd woman also strangely angry on behalf of the straight men)  still commenting on her performance as sexist, manhating, not funny etc etc.  For example, some of the comments of this review https://dailyreview.com.au/nanette-review-hannah-gadsbys-brilliant-netflix-special-going-set-fire-internet/75701/.  What is so hard about just listening? She is telling stories of her experience. Her feelings. Her pain. And whilst she is doing so, she is pointing the stick of her humour firmly at straight men. Then contextualising it in how straight men have been telling women to put up with their behaviour by “lightening up”, “it’s just a joke” for years. They never see the problem in their behaviour; it was women’s response to it.  The stick is in the other hand in this performance. She is not using it to perpetuate entrenched oppression. She is using it to reveal another tool of that oppression. To the men who can hear her through the challenge of that medium, congratulations. To those who can’t, well, my expectations of you were low enough already. Thanks for confirming them.

What are Malcolm's aspirations for a comfortable end of life?

Today Malcolm Turnbull tell us that aged care workers should aspire to a better job. Now, I’m a registered nurse in a public aged care facility. I am pretty bloody well paid. I love my job, and I have no aspirations to do something else. But I know that all of the personal care workers beneath me get paid crap. Many of them have done the job for 30-40 years. They are absolutely dedicated to their work.

Did Malcolm perhaps wonder if maybe we should pay the people caring for our elderly a little bit better instead? Who does he think might do the rather important and incredibly challenging job that they do if they all just aspired to a better job? It’s like he’s taken the ridiculous idea of trickle down economics and applied it upside down to an essential service.

Aged care seems to regularly come in for a hiding. A few years ago, there was a meme going around that our prisoners were better treated than our elderly. Now, I don’t think we should mistreat prisoners. Hell, I don’t think we should lock up most offenders at all. But it was a preposterous slur on the dedicated care that many facilities and the staff working there provide to our elderly. Many of our personal care workers are given responsibility way beyond what their training and remuneration really accounts for. And they do the best job they can because they are devoted to doing so, with staff to resident ratios that are frequently marginal.

Many nurses also begrudge aged care. Throughout my course, student nurses were focused on all the “exciting” areas of nursing. Acute care, emergency departments, theatre. Aged care is the lowest of the low. I think it’s massively underrated. A good aged care nurse is a project manager, a mini-VMO and a counsellor as well as a nurse.  We have the opportunity to really know our residents and their families. We have the opportunity to make the remainder of their lives as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. We have the opportunity to make their deaths as good as possible.

Most of us will grow old. If we end up requiring care, do we want our carers to be respected and rewarded for the work they do? Or just using it as a fill in to a “better” job?  If all carers were just using it as a bridge to “better” work, how would they develop the experience and skills to provide high quality care?

But just as when Malcolm was carrying on about penalty rates, he doesn’t care if we are looking after our society’s elderly at 3am, and he doesn’t care if we have appropriately skilled and remunerated staff. That’s not his world. Unfortunately for him, he’s got 20 odd years on me, so it will actually be his world a lot sooner then he might like to think.

A vindication of the rights of women to have a drink, a rant and be safe to do so (a short extension on Mary Wollstonecraft)

Just the other day, I was reading a tweet by a prominent Australian feminist asking, where are the changes since the #metoo movement? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised that there aren’t any.  Women have been saying this shit for years. #metoo was another request for women to not be listened to, yet again. To put their history, experiences and traumas out in the public sphere, where, yet again, people ignored them, disbelieved them and even abused them. All women know this shit happens. 100% of the women I know have been sexually harassed. A scarily large number of them have been abused and assaulted. This is no revelation.

And so, it is again, no revelation, that yet another woman has been assaulted and killed by a man. The surprising thing about it was that it was by a stranger in a public place. This morning I discovered that Ambulance Victoria attends a domestic violence incident every 7 minutes. Every 7 minutes. Even if I round down to allow for the approximately 2% of domestic violence victims who are men and assume there is only 1 victim per call out, that’s 8 women and/or children getting urgent medical treatment as a result of domestic violence per hour. 192 per day. 1344 per week. In Victoria alone. Need I continue? Imagine the cases where the woman was unable to call for treatment. Or she was too afraid to. Embarrassed to. Or because the abuse did not cause serious physical injuries. This time. Or she didn’t feel it was worth bothering emergency services yet again. She’s survived before, she’ll survive this time. Until the time she doesn’t. If you aren’t nearly crying at the thought of it, you must be yet another person who is not really listening.

I’m not even talking about those rates of sexual harassment, which is so insidious that women just expect it. Or assault by strangers. Or even casual acquaintances or dates. They happen. It’s preposterous that they happen, but the numbers of violence by close family members are shocking enough. Who needs more stats than that to want to do something about it?

Because this is no revelation to women, and particularly to women working with domestic violence, it is also no surprise to read Jenna Price calling for something more to be done. Something more than words. https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/for-eurydices-sake-we-need-to-do-more-than-go-to-vigils-20180618-h11i5k.html  And of course, more needs to be done. But am I alone in feeling well, how the fuck can women be expected to do more? Is it just me feeling bloody exhausted from speaking up about this shit all the time? Women are the majority of people speaking out and working in these fields. What can we do to really change something so entrenched in or society that no one acknowledges it even when it results in male behaviour that occurs in such volumes, is spoken about so much, shapes the lives and behaviour of women around the world and people still deny exists? Can we fuck off with the liberal individualist approach and admit this is not a few rogue individuals? Because if it was, well, they really get around.

Women more patient then me today (like Jenna above, and Clementine Ford here: https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/the-not-all-men-excuse-is-absurd-20180618-p4zm94.html) have included constructive lists of things that could lead to change. Eventually. Things that seem like basic things that have overlooked the world so far. And maybe that’s where I just become pissed off at the world. Should we have to educate our government? Grown men? How can we educate our young people when the adults of the world behave as they do?

Don’t tell me we have no need for feminism. Don’t tell me I’m a man hater. Don’t tell me I’m reading too much into the cold harsh reality. Don’t tell me #notallmen. Try “I’m horrified that this happens, I’m so sorry to hear about your experiences, I don’t want to passively participate in this, what can I do to change it?”. Look. Listen. Feel. Get in touch with the cold hard reality, even though it is confronting. Think and act. Maybe you’ll have a bit more energy for the fight than I have today.

What am I left doing about it? I’ve opened a bottle of red called the Stubborn Patriarch (thanks Alison!). It seemed appropriate. I put on some feminist punk and let off some steam on the internet. Tomorrow, as every other day, I will continue to live as I always do, challenging ideas, assumptions and behaviours inherent in a patriarchal society. Sighing for the gazillionth time that I still have to stand up and speak out about this shit. But in the meanwhile, tonight I am enjoying a drink, a rant and agreeing with Oh Bondage, Up Yours. And unlike many women in the world, I am safe to do so.

Baby, you can't drive my car: the arrest of women's right activists in Saudi Arabia.

Just yesterday, I was having a rant about how we are nowhere near the end of feminism. Only the day before, I was in tears about the Irish referendum. Today I am in tears for the women of Saudi Arabia and how we in the west can get caught up in how good we have it. People are talking about the end of feminism, whilst women are getting locked up for asking for the right to drive. Drive. A car. Not really a radical concept, is it? Imagine living in a society where your home is invaded, you are arrested, put in solitary confinement and face the death penalty for asking for something as simple as being able to drive. I don't even think about being able to drive as a basic human right. It's just so taken for granted. But this is a country so restricting the movement of women that they can't go out alone, drive, be seen with men outside of their family ... it's inconceivable really. But it is real.

These women are charged with treason and conspiracy against the state. All they are asking for is freedom of movement, independence and autonomy (women are under the guardianship of male family members) and to form refuges from domestic violence. Treason, huh?  Violation of "religious and national values". Is your head reeling yet? It bloody well should be.

A few years ago, I had a rant about the death penalty. I'm completely against the death penalty. I think once the state starts deciding when people deserve to die, other people will follow suit and justify deciding when people deserve to die. Countries with the death penalty have higher rates of violence because it demonstrates a social acceptance of violence.

However, in Australia, most people (and the government) only decide to get all up in arms about the death penalty when Australians are facing it. These women are facing the death penalty for feminist activism. They are going to be killed by the state for asking for some small portion of the rights and freedoms that we enjoy in Australia everyday. Some of these women are in their 60s and 70s. They have been fighting this shit since the 80s. I have been fighting for women's rights since not long after, but I have never faced arrest, torture and execution for it. I cannot imagine what it would be like living in a country where standing up for things I take for granted here would result in arrest, torture or execution.

Have we reached the peak of feminism because Beyonce announced she was a feminist? Fuck no. Are we about to see an end to the need for feminism? Fuck no. Anyone who spouts this needs to have a good look outside of their comfortable little bubble. I know it's hard. It horrifies me every time. But at least we are lucky enough not to be living it. And we can do these women the honour of continuing the fight even when it is not about our own lives anymore.

Haven't we been hearing about post-feminism for years?

This article: https://medium.com/@badasswomen/last-wave-of-feminism-7d707afa47a0 brings out the cynical middleaged feminist in me.

Haven't we been hearing about post-feminism for years? I figure people are either ridiculously optimistic, or blind. Think about the driving forces between each so called wave of feminism. In the 1800s, relatively privileged women fought (and suffered) for suffrage and the right to own property. Whilst women theoretically have the right to vote or represent the people around the world now (except in some religious institutions!), there are still massive barriers to participation including freedom of movement, access to transport, cultural norms discouraging or preventing participation, education, literacy, socioeconomic issues and so on. Women remain massively underrepresented in politics and other powerful institutions worldwide. And whilst those of us in the developed world benefit from improved property rights, there remain many places where legislation or societal norms restrict women's right to ownership, and hence their capacity for independence and their safety. Even here, older women remain the fastest growing population of homeless and we see increasing feminisation of poverty. Does that make you think that something more might need to be done?

Let's wander on to the 70s. A combination of radical and liberal feminist ideas took hold. Reproductive rights, the unspoken experiences of women, safety and equality became the bandwagons. I'm not going to say we haven't made a lot of progress, but really - America is going backward on access to contraception and abortion, birth and unsafe abortions are major causes of maternal death and injury in the developing world, the world is full of people telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies, attacking women and judging women for their sexuality.  I'm afraid the personal remains political.

The whole liberal feminist ideology fitted in nicely with the mainstream existing ideology, so it took hold fairly well. And why not? It certainly benefits the capitalist system to have extra workers, especially workers who remain responsible for the majority of unpaid work in our society as well. It's a double bonus for conservative society really. But we still have the wage gap, the glass ceiling, the infuriating "how can you combine work and motherhood" conversations, workplace sexual harassment and discrimination. Sorry, it seems like even this most palatable aspect of feminism seems to have a bunch of work cut out for it.

How about the 90s? Apparently I am a third wave feminist, but no one actually told me. The 90s brought into the conversation ideas about how other axes of oppression intersect with sexism, which is great - a long overdue consideration of layers of privilege, but also jumped back into the individualist focus. Postmodern ideas developed in this era remain completely remote to most of the population, who still argue about "natural" characteristics of men and women. The reclaiming of "femininity" can be useful when we use it to subvert societal norms, to participate in the reconstruction of meaning, but overall, there was a reactive response to the radicalism of the 70s and 80s and claiming it was possible to be a "real woman", "feminine" and feminist.  Feminist punk and the radical femme look challenged the concept of femininity in spectacular ways. The "I shave my legs and wear make up for me" crew, not so much. Individualism took back the power of working together, claimed business as usual could go hand in hand with feminism and reinforced the neoliberalist ideas that one's situation is all the fault of the individual, not their context. Individualism is kinda contrasting to intersectionality really.

Finally, we get to what someone has called the fourth wave. Mostly, it seems to be defined by being online. But once you look past that, it all looks pretty familiar. What are we organising around online? Freedom from sexual harassment, rape, domestic violence and workplace discrimination, the pay gap, political representation, reproductive freedom. Haven't we heard this before? There's some popularism in feminism, but how feminist is this popularism anyway? The royal wedding isn't a giant leap forward for feminism or black rights. It's an irrelevant incident in the lives of some rich and famous people that also perpetuates the problematic institutions of marriage and monarchy. When some person claims they are feminist, please look first at their actions.

Whilst it is claimed that the online movement has spread the word of feminism more broadly than ever before, it has also spread misogyny and hate. MRAs, incels, antiabortionists and conservative groups equally use the internet. Women have a history of organising together. This is not new. Sure, the internet can be a useful tool. But it's easy to be a keyboard warrior.  And similarly easy for the people threatened by their loss of privilege to yell back. There is an incredible amount of abuse of women on line, and the form and context of that abuse reflects the use of sexism to keep women in their place. This shit has not changed character, it has just changed format.

The #metoo movement was not a revelation. All women know sexual harassment and assault exists. We have be talking about it since, oh, maybe the dark ages. If anyone was not aware, it was because they weren't listening and weren't looking. But as long as we maintain an individualist focus - it's just these bad eggs - and do not challenge the culture that enables these people to justify their behaviour, not much will change. Until the #notallmen saga moves on to recognising how society enables and perpetuates this behaviour, until they stop refusing to listen to women's experiences, until they stop turning to abuse to cover their discomfort, we aren't changing much.

To claim we are on the brink of a post feminist world is to live in a bubble of privilege. Tell that to to the women kidnapped and raped by Boko Harum. To the woman living on the street. To the woman trying to access reproductive services in parts of South America. To the woman being beaten to death by her partner. Only 27 or so of them in Australia so far this year.

Feminism hasn't happened in waves. They haven't passed and been resolved.  It's more like a building tsunami. Here we are, 150 years later still fighting for the same shit. Safety, freedom, reproductive choices, equal opportunity, equal pay, hell, simply to be bloody listened to. Women (or indeed men) in positions of privilege claiming to be feminist isn't a peak of feminism. The peak will be when we don't have to say this shit anymore. When we don't have to fight. Claiming to be feminist shouldn't be a radical thing. To some extent, most people actually are. If you believe women should be treated as people not property, that women have human rights along with men, well, these outrageous notions are feminist. But agreeing with these ideas is just the surface. Underneath that, when people are really willing to look at the ways in which different sorts of oppression are built into our culture, our understanding of the world, our behaviours and attitudes, until we look at how we participate in and perpetuate those oppressions, until we take the very uncomfortable step of acknowledging that we are part of a system built around these things, and that for real change to occur, we need to think outside the neoliberalist box, this wave needs to just get bigger.