Tapioca Age
My grandfather was born in Malaya, a first-generation ethnic Chinese immigrant. Gong-gong’s temperament – quiet and minimalist – fits a man of his humble background, but his eagerness for adventure is exceptional. His extensive travels grant him a remarkably inquisitive palate that is rare amo
The Shakedown of Pornhub
In writing about Shakedown, Leilah Weinraub’s 2018 documentary feature, I am at a disadvantage. It is difficult to translate into words the dreamy visuals and experimental narrative that follows the queer women who performed in the Los Angeles black-lesbian strip club from which the film gets its
A Brief Cultural History of the Cane Toad
Yesterday, I took out the kitchen compost. As I flung it into the bin, there, sitting on the rubbish, was a big fat cane toad. Revulsion flowed through me — and then, just as quickly, nostalgia. Is there a more Australian sight? Shocked, I reeled back: when did my mind transmute Australia’s most
No-one’s Little Girl
“This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. Now form a band.” So reads the infamous illustration in Sniffin’ Glue. Punk came crashing into the UK in about 1976 and brought liberation for all, if by ‘liberation’ we mean commercial success, and if by ‘all’ we mean white men. The
Fallen Women
CW: references to sexual assault. The seductress, the prostitute, the murderess: these are but a few symbols which the Fallen Woman has taken throughout history – symbols which have reduced the women in question to unrelatable imitations, unreflective of lived experiences. The ways in which
Queer Manifestos
I was late at night, I was bored, and a stack of unread books was calling me. Among these was Breanne Fahs’ Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution. As a queer woman, I immediately flipped to Fahs’ carefully curated section on queer manifestos. Instead of the more modern manifestos
The Scam of the Morning Routine
What does a Successful Person do in the morning? The answer, it would seem, if you read enough articles about the CEOs of fashionable start-ups, is a lot: they get up at 5:45am, drink a glass of ice-cold lemon water, run a marathon, take some grateful breaths in the shower, and still find time to [&
Bedtime Stories
“Sometimes I think I deserve bad things because I’m a bad person,” a girl murmurs to an ex-boyfriend. She is digitised and sports beautiful bangs, a puzzle of pixels dancing across the nation’s laptop screens three weeks into lockdown. But the tragedy of it rings true: falling in love with
Aesthetic Unease
Tom Collister was twenty years old when he was sentenced to two and a half years at HMP Camp Hill, a sentence cut short by his suicide in 2010. Before the government shut it down, the prison was was infamous for its incompetency and nicknamed ‘Concentration Camp Hill’ by its inmates. Human rig