Social Commentary
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Race and Representation in Popular Culture – What Black Panther Teaches Us
Representation of race in popular culture is, like many aspects of media consumption, a point of social contention. Marvel’s recently-released Black Panther provides a brilliant entry point for considering some key points about the issue. And having had the chance to watch Black Panther in cinemas last week, I felt inspired to talk about it. As a white woman, what do we mean when we say representation? Does it matter? If so, why, and what can we do about it? [DISCLAIMER: I thought this movie was brilliant. You’ll probably read that a few more times in the post. While I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, just be aware that…
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What is Friendship?
I’ve been thinking about this particular question—and all that answering it means—quite a bit recently. In part, this is probably because I’m so far away from home, and my closest friends live about twenty-four hours worth of travel away, on the other side of the world… Nothing will make you appreciate truth friendship, compassion, and patience, like distance will. That’s the good bit. The less good bit is that, in part, this post has been born because I’ve also had a number of interactions recently that have left me with a sour taste in my mouth, and the desire to reassert what ‘friendship’ means to me, in terms of my…
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Why We Need to Be ‘Political’ Now
Happy Monday everyone, I can hear the cheers, the crowd’s going wild because—yes!—after far too long, the interminable Quiet on the Australian Front is being broken by a blog post: huzzah! So welcome back to another iteration of Deep Monday everyone. Now, this today’s thoughts were prompted by a Facebook post shared by fantasy writer Isobelle Carmody over the weekend which really resonated with me (the link is here, if you’d like to take a look at it). Then, of course, I didn’t save it, so while trying to figure out where I saw it, I headed to faithful Google, and happened to stumble across this article too, which is…
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Same Sex Marriage in Australia
Welcome back to Deep Mondays everyone! Now, it seems kind of ridiculous that this even qualifies to be a Deep Monday post, because it’s a remarkably simple concept. Currently, Australia—as one of the only western nations in the world in which same sex marriage (SSM) is not legal—is organising a postal ballot in order to have people vote on whether they want to legalise SSM. The reason that this shouldn’t actually qualify as a ‘Deep Monday’ post is because the answer seems—to me, and to a lot of other people—incredibly simple. In fact, that’s part of what makes writing this blog post kind of difficult, because when the solution to…
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Do Autistic Children Belong in Mainstream Classrooms?
Welcome! Welcome one and all to another Deep Monday post! If you’re not an Australian, you’re probably reading the title of this blog post and are a bit confused about where this is coming from. On the other hand, if you’re an Aussie, you’re probably unfortunate enough to know exactly who Senator Pauline Hanson is; and if that’s the case, then you’ve likely heard precisely what Senator Hanson thinks about the integration of children with autism into mainstream schools. I’ll admit that it’s a weird way to start the week, but hey, what are Deep Mondays for?! So we’re going to talk about this! Before we get onto the meat…
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Society Needs to Do Better: Informing, Protecting and Saving Women
Hello Everyone! So strap yourselves in for a return to Deep Mondays (I do recognise that today is Tuesday, but this post was intended for Monday, it just got held up a little!). I wanted to put together a blog post about something that has been preying on me a little recently, and part of the reason why I wanted to put this together was precisely that sometimes, as a writer, it is so easy to feel something, to want to do something, even to write something, and then to let it fall by the wayside. Sometimes, following through is hard. But, that being said, I felt strongly enough about this…
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Owing a Debt That Can Never be Repaid: Anzac Day 2017
Today in Australia (and thus in my heart) is Anzac Day. As James and I returned from Oklahoma City late last night, I read a news article reporting the defacing of a north Melbourne RSL’s war memorial. Vandals had used red spray paint to scrawl ‘War is Murder’ and anarchy symbols across it. On today of all days, I wanted to use this platform to share some thoughts about what perpetuates the idea that such actions are permissible. At it’s very fundamentals, I disagree with war. If we remove everything else from the equation, and present the bare facts of warfare, the idea of two groups of people killing one…
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Finding Ourselves
For those who don’t know, I used to write on another blog. I started it in 2014 post-Afghanistan, when I was ensconced in a new city, in a new world, in a new self defined by confusion and pain and loss; I started it as a way to try and heal myself through a medium that I instinctively knew I belonged to, and that belonged to me. But the truths I found that year, that I fought and bled for in the depths of my soul, are no less true for the passage of time and the healing of those wounds. They still resonate with the parts of me that…
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Social Media Constructions: Figuring Out What Works for You
So, it’s time for a heavy Monday post. Rather than becoming self-explanatory, it seems to me like the subject of this post is one that is only becoming more pertinent to us all as time goes by, and our world is increasingly digitised. So buckle in, I’m about to get kinda deep here. It seems sometimes that the universe (read: social media) is full of information on what we should and shouldn’t be doing: personally and professionally, physically and mentally… There’s a never-ending list of how we should be, and therefore ways in which we fall short, or don’t conform, or aren’t good enough. Maybe that’s a little cynical, but…
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Cognitive Dissonance: Our Brains and Our Beliefs
So, this blog post has been on my ‘to write’ list for some serious time now… As James and I are currently making our way through the southern US states, I thought I might as well chuck it in the post line-up (since I finally got myself sorted out and actually wrote it!). It’s a concept that I learnt about last year in my introductory psychology courses, and it just struck me as such a common and inherently human problem that I had to put some thoughts down about it. Cognitive Dissonance is defined by Merriam Webster (online) as: psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. Basically,…
