Content warning, The Lost Peeps Show is for adult listeners only. This episode has content about racism, sexism, urban survivalism, domestic violence and hippies.


As Inez is an elder, please respect her ownership of material and her privacy. Information or images on this podcast can be shared with her permission and please mention the Lost Peeps Show as a source if any of this material is used.

©The Ie

Share

Share

Here is the link to show support for funding for The Lost peeps Show Podcast: https://form.jotform.com/262138217863864

Support Lost Peeps Show

Here is the link to donate: https://gofund.me/66fd7516f

Donate

Thank you!

Share

©Imogen kelly

How does someone become Australia’s Queen of Burlesque? And what happens when the past refuses to stay in the past?

In this episode, the architect of Queer Stories, Maeve Marsden, turns the tables on host Imogen Kelly, tracing her journey from curious teenager to one of Australia’s most influential burlesque performers, historians and advocates. Together they explore the venues, the underground communities and set the stage for the larger-than-life characters that will feature in future episodes. The Lost Peeps Show will be an inaugural insight into the people who shaped Australian burlesque as well as, Imogen’s career and her understanding of burlesque as a living tradition.

The conversation delves into the resurgence of burlesque in Australia, the legacy of the performers who came before, and why knowing the history of the artform matters. Imogen reflects on how decades of performing, researching and preserving Australia’s burlesque heritage have informed her views on the neo-burlesque movement, authenticity, innovation, and the responsibility that comes with carrying a cultural tradition into the future.

This podcast is a candid conversation about glitter, grit, rebellion and remembrance—and why every new performer stands on a stage built by those who came before.

Music: Rock It by Sonda and Techline by Trinity found on Uppbeat.
Image by Angie Dowling: The Strippers Project 1995

I can’t do much about the war.
I can’t do much to dry the crocodile tears of Melania Trump.
I can’t do much to comprehend that world leaders are involved in a cult where they abuse and eat children.

But I can write and make a podcast about strippers, drag queens and sex workers as a delightful side adventure for you all to lose yourselves in…. and in doing so hopefully get non sex workers to understand that if sex workers have rights, its probable that the Epstein empire would not have been enabled as it has been.

But I digress- this podcast is going to be a far more fun, far more fascinating and far more intriguing place to immerse yourself in than the current horrors on social media… And for Australian burlesque performers it will be far more relevant to their hopes and dreams which I plan to be kept alive through this time.

I can’t do much about what the future holds for burlesque… but I can encapsulate the past.

I am creating a podcast capturing the Living History of Australian Burlesque (working title). I aim to travel in true Nelli Bly style to the far reaches of the country looking for legends and legendary types from the short format performance styles of striptease, drag, sideshow and vaudeville. I’m going to take you, as my online intrepid companions, to uncover burlesque’s true history here in Australia… as it seems to be … well… rather lost.


The writers of this history that I have read (all of them men bar one) would have you believing that your foremothers were hopeless, socially doomed, drug addicted “whores”. It certainly sold more newspapers than the truth, and this mythology feeds the social construct that nice girls get good things like marriage, safety and children… and bad girls get loneliness, despair, poverty, abuse and death.

My own life proves that there is a lot more to the story than the history books would have you believing. I know the true culture of stripping that burlesque appropriates from, and I can tell you that your legends in Australia are not a collection of people I would ever call hopeless. They are bright, funny business women. They are fierce in their attitudes, and have a levity of heart - and when they start telling stories its like bathing in Lourdes Grotto- healing- full of joy.

Due to the discrimination that has been perpetuated for decades, and the social stigma that has ensued, our legends (like most strippers and sex workers) have lived as an obscured and voiceless group, marginalised by prostitution laws and negative social attitudes- and that will be the thrust of this podcast- to bring to light what it means to be a stripper.

Back in the day we worked for gangsters, our identities hidden by stage names that protected us from the stalker mugs* in the audience, from corrupt police, from violent bosses who thought they owned us, and from conservative judgement that could pervade and destroy our social existence at any moment. Surely we deserve our own voice, and the people, I imagine, who would most benefit from hearing about it all, are the neo burlesque performers who appropriate from this marginalised group in their very privileged, joyful and effervescent revival of theatrical striptease; neo-burlesque.

To find this lost history I am choosing the entry point of my own life and focusing on Kings Cross, Sydney and the people I met when I started work in 1989/1990 in the most dangerous place in Australia.

So let’s travel to the navel of it all… the belly button of sin… Kings Cross. Because if we can understand Kings Cross from a strippers perspective, we can start to take apart the colonial and patriarchal control over burlesque’s evolution, and by proxy the entire sex industry; and perhaps if I do my job well, you too will one day see with unblurred vision, the true power of burlesque.

I first auditioned to work as a stripper in 1989, on Darlinghurst Road, otherwise known as the “Glittering Mile”; a filthy vacuum of sordid sex and murder. This place in Sydney was historically renowned for its underworld figures, strip joints and heroin epidemics.

On any night of the week I would be just another one of the tousled strippers that dashed from club to club, from show to show- carving through a river of people on the traffic jammed street.

Spruiking doormen barked over a cacophony of cars horns and eighties dance music, drunken punters would lie passed out in gutters and sex workers would aggressively manage their turf.

The strippers of Kings Cross could be found- moving quickly through crowds- face forward- making no eye contact and the words “Get fucked” set on the end of our tongues ready to be catapulted at any would be abuser that might see us and try to engage… sometimes it was just attitude that got me safely from club to club as my 30-show-a-night roster demanded… sometimes I needed a glass bottle or a flick knife concealed in the sleeves of my kimono as I carved through the heaving mass of male bodies that blocked the street.

Kings Cross, in its heyday, was a Fellini film on steroids.

Pushers would sell drugs on the corner, and their street-kid clients would overdose on the steps of the shooting gallery two doors down.

Stylish gangsters with waxed moustaches and gold jewellery, would step out of Bentleys and Rolls Royces, to enter Les Girls, the notorious “female impersonator” review, and last known sighting of murdered heiress Juanita Nielsen.

The Kings Cross Bikers would line the street close to the fountain with Harley Davidson motorbikes and Animal, a gentleman of sorts sporting lived-in-leathers and a long grey beard, would escort us through if any of the boys gave us hard time.

Ladies of the night with their big hair and short skirts, would stare down menacing swarms of lads in loud tracksuits out for “a night to remember” that they’d forget before morning.

I was in a dangerous time in a dangerous place. Strippers and sex workers were a cancelled class of women without rights, and with the social stigma against us being so culturally ingrained, we were isolated by our abuser- misogynist Australia backed up by conservative Australia backed up first-wave-feminist Australia- to cement our fate as fallen women in a void where gangsters and mugs* alike could do what they wanted to us.

Kings Cross strippers and Sex workers were as hard as nails.

Kings Cross itself still had the festering echo of the gang war massacres and convict hangings of its past. It is Australia’s home of burlesque striptease, our famed nightclub quarter, and was an infamous red-light district; and its GONE!

The buildings are all still there… but the serving of sex and death that heaved on this stretch of Sydney’s dirtiest suburb has vanished.

Once populated by a fascinating menagerie of social rejects who had clawed out a space to exist, Kings Cross was a place for people who had no other place.

I could not have imagined that change would usher in such a bewildering level of gentrification.

‘Junkie park’ that presided in front of the police station, once covered in dog faeces, used fits and exploded drunks, is now a well-manicured lush green lawn. The homeless inhabitants of that park have been replaced by wealthy young urban professionals having picnics as they enjoy a turmeric infused, ethically grown, unethically priced, soy latte.
Pram pushers and small tufty dogs on designer leashes have taken over. The homeless are now invisible, as are the strippers and sex workers for whom this was the gateway to our stomping ground.

Abe Saffron’s famous Pink Pussycat strip club, the focal point of the stripper riots of the seventies, once set alight by the gangster owners as an insurance scam, is now invisible under a coat of thick “Pale Walnut”. It is well cloaked from the traffic of office workers who talk of beige take-overs, on their beige I-phones, as they beige on by, in a beige sort of rush.

Beige; the flying colour of gentrification.

Although a few strip clubs cling to this street’s former reputation, Darlinghurst Rd (or Darlinhurts Rd as we all called it) to me looks like a hothouse Madame disguised as a soccer mum.

You can’t cover up a social stain with a lick of beige paint any more than you can erase the misfits of society by pushing us out of the area. People move, factions go underground, only to resurface elsewhere, in some other form and often as a counter action.

Over the decades I’ve watched the rise and fall of Darlinghurst culture as this country continues a war with itself as to what identity suits it best. It is a conversation between the privileged and the sublimated. In no other place in the performing arts are the results of gentrification more obvious than in striptease.

Question: Is burlesque a proverbial coat of “Pale Walnut” over real strip culture?

There was a time when all cities once needed a place like Kings Cross in its past. Not necessarily somewhere ruled by crime and violence, but somewhere for the freaks- the people that just don’t, and just can’t, and just won’t fit in- that is who your original striptease performers were. Sure the papers have part of it right- we were bad girls, strays, wanton, wild women- these things are not untrue… but our legends are also free thinking entrepreneurs who were out earning their own money before it was even officially legal for women to work.

The questions as to what led each woman to become a Kings Cross stripper is different from person to person, but considering that our collective was made up of women from so many different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds- we formed quite an unusual family… and I look forward to introducing you to them.

My first stop is Far North Queensland, and from there I will work my way down the East coast of Australia to find as many legends, and legendary people, to interview about their time as a performer.

I will be also talking to our allies- mostly gay men, and I will be reconstructing the historical landscape of not only Kings Cross, but of Oxford St and Surry Hills. These three adjoining suburbs formed an entire area was a bastion for artists, gay culture, gangs, sex workers, nightclubs, art galleries, BDSM parlours, brothels and strip clubs… and if you lived in these areas prior to the 2000s you were a part of a living culture that breathed, and moved and shook.

So much of what makes Australian burlesque, fetish and drag performance so unique can possibly be found in the memories of our amazing elders that I am going to talk to.

To support me, join my Substack and become a subscriber for access to the podcast and to updates. Make a donation to the podcast to pay for transport here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-living-history-of-australian-burlesque

Lets roll back the beige, and bring back the glitter!



* In Australia the patrons were not called Johns, they were called Mugs.

Like… tears…in rain.”

Is that why I am making this show?

What can I even touch on in just 1 hour?
What do I want people to take away from this hour with me at with the Motley Bauhaus in Carlton, or Qtopia Substation in Darlinghurst… both significant queer spaces.

Underground.

Small.

Intimate.

I will feel like an insect under a magnifying glass.

And why this show, when fantasy reigns supreme? “The world needs fantasy…” according to AlexanderMcQueen- “…we have enough reality today” Why then, would I exclude these stories… they are the stuff of fantasy!

More pressing is the question- what stories AM I telling in Strip The Life Fantastic?

My first instinct was to focus on stories about being a punk,

and then a stripper in the red light district Kings Cross.

and then becoming an AIDS officer in the nineties and delivering condoms and syringes to every brothel in Sydney… Its the only straight job I’ve ever had.

I choose these moments in my life because these experiences left me with a toolkit ready to fight these times…
and I find myself accessing those tools to cope with these times…
And I want to share my tools…
I want this show to feel raw…
I don’t want to censor myself…
I want to inspire people to not give up…
and I want it live.

I want people to gather in the last unedited space and hear from a fellow human being - an actual real one-

one that can’t be copied or replicated…

a life that can’t be relived.

… and I want them to feel. I want to crack open the digital husk that surrounds us all at the moment,
So they can get a true sense of me…
…and not just me…
I want them to sit still in the dark and sense each other…
…the strangers sitting next to them.
…I want us to breathe the same air for an hour.
I want people to subliminally hear each other, scent each other- know that they are not alone out there in the world connected only by this invisible thing that whispers to us through these magnetic black oblongs that are now always listening…
They control our dopamine until our bodies can’t make our own.
I want my audience to know that we don’t need those devices to connect and we shouldn’t outsource our connecting so readily.

I want to tear that matrix cable right out of the back of our heads- and just spend a moment, with eyes and ears open- and conspire around hope in the way only art can do.

The only way to break down this system so we can remake it is to step away from it and the live space is perhaps the last place where we can gather, and be uncensored, and know by even just seeing each other, that we are not alone.

be ephemeral.
be transient.
make new memories knowing they are fleeting.
We don’t get to hold on to moments, or memories, or even our bodies…

These things will all be tears in rain.

What we can leave behind is change.


Strip The Life Fantastic:

Midsumma Festival -The Motley Bauhaus, Carlton Vic, 31st Jan- 1st Feb
Mardigras- Qtopia Substation, Taylor Square NSW, 17th -21st Feb

From German Nationalist displays during the rise of the third Reich, to military parade coordinator Busby Berkley’s choreographies of regimented showgirls in precision routines for Hollywood, displays of disciplined women- in particular disciplined idealised women- are useful to politics.

Busby Berkley created his spectaculars during Roosevelt’s New Deal promoting the Collective Effort. Although this connection was denied by Berkley, the timing couldn’t be more useful to the politics of the era. His films are one of my favourite examples of showgirls being used as propaganda.

It’s not that I don’t love the calming fantasy of an army of inane beauties going through choreographed acts to the point they appear as mechanised as the moving cogs of a dishwasher, it’s that, at a glance, it seems there couldn’t possibly be anything sinister in it.

The showgirls dance with giant bananas, or synchronise into kaleidoscopic formations in ornate swimming pools, or they ride carousel ponies, dressed in pink frothy feathered gowns… smiling showgirls and wartime/ recession/ depression go hand in hand.

What is this chemistry about?

Women are their most vulnerable in times of war or destitution. It makes sense to me that women have evolved to not only help build, steer and protect society- but are hardwired to sound the alarm when there is grandiose danger to our collective wellbeing. If women are often the siren that will first sound when problems are rising, we are key to a healthy society… but only if we actually sound… and only if that siren is heard above all the other noise.

If our natural response is overwritten by a more powerful, louder presentation of women calmly fluffing about in technicolour splendiferousness; rather than ramping society up into a panic, it does the opposite. It’s a powerful form of gaslighting, a placebo, a false calm.
Its mass psychological sedation at its best.

One of my favourite thoughts is that women’s collective survival sensitivities gift them with the emotional dexterity to detect and raise the alarm when oncoming disasters loom. Is this collective “hysteria” the start of revolution itself? Food for thought…

Knowing that a great deal of what created capitalism involved studies of how to prevent events like The Russian Revolution happening again, people in power, who were interested in keeping an ordered, working society, invested a great deal of effort into contriving strategies of mass control… and the creation of the controlled presentation of women was, and remains, one of the cornerstones of those strategies.

Women are the proverbial canary that stops singing in the coal mine long before the oxygen is gone and it is found dead on the bottom of the cage. But what if the canary can be trained to keep singing even when the air is thin? What if you train the canary to sit on your shoulder as a part of a show to reassure those at risk that nothing is wrong- when in fact no one is safe anymore.

That’s probably why these displays came into existence- it is a power play, and it’s not the women who are empowered.

So, what happens when burlesque, a traditionally feminine erotic performance style that has been historically burned to the ground by feminists, conservatives and misogynists alike, is revived to empower modern women, but is now being harnessed to reinforce the power of men… in particular fascists who want women back in their box?


Halloween, 2025
The party is at Mar-a-Lago.
It is Gatsby themed.
The showgirls fluff.
In a champagne glass.
They fluff…
with big arm gestures that mean nothing to anyone but look like feminine happiness…. fluffity fluff.
I know this because I can fluff like a mother-fluffer!
I’ve been professionally fluffing myself for fluffing 40 fluffing years.
Meanwhile, other showgirls with feather fans also fluff close to Donny, but not too close…
They don’t want to be grabbed on the pussy… one suspects.
Instead they perform calming, choreographed fluffings between tables of rich and powerful people…

Like pigeons flitting amongst a pounce of cats...

just as they have been trained to do…

and it seems so constructed…

because it is.

Busby Berkeley comes to mind.

To be fair part the bullshit being effective is of burlesque’s own making and it doesn’t surprise me that we are useful to propagandist moments like Donny’s Halloween party.

In this instance, showgirls are a live embellishment, a pretty distraction… like a flower arrangement. Here showgirls are a dummy version of “the good life”- or at least they are a hint of it even though the dancers themselves might be so far removed from “the good life” that they can put aside personal politics to fluff amongst the monsters.

Meanwhile in real life performers often scrape for money to pay the rent and a few necessities. Showgirls have been taught that successful burlesque branding involves trademarking oneself as an item of luxury and to look as if one is rolling in money- so, when someone like Donny uses burlesque artists and showgirls to bolster his own branding, those performing are adding to the illusion that even the most opulent, free-spirited women are still just decorations to these men.

So get out there and fluff like your brand depends upon it.

Fluff like you don’t know what taxes are.

Fluff like life’s been kind enough not to burden you with social-awareness.

Fluff like there’s no genocide…

Fluff like you don’t care that fascism is on the rise…

Fluff like you can remain blissfully oblivious to your neighbours being taken away in broad daylight.

The footage of Donny’s party bought some queries to my mind:

Is burlesque really the empowerment movement that it claims to be? When corporations and powerful men are running the show, who are we empowering?

If burlesque is empowering for women, why are showgirls offered so much work where we are little more than a smiling warm prop, or dumb and decorative female bling sitting on a bar, or in this example- employed to reinforce a show of male dominance, power and our very presence represents submissive feminine endorsement of a political product.

I wonder how long it might be until the narrative flips and burlesque performers are no longer seen as sexual revolutionaries leading a charge, and are seen as citizens of The Capitol in The Hunger Games… or as Marie Antoinettes mindlessly tottering on sparkly heels toward an existential guillotine.

If we are an art form worth of being called empowerment, what are the edges we push against now?
Is the only parody in burlesque that we have indeed become a parody of everything we claim to stand for?

If burlesque does still symbolise empowerment;
Where is it powerful?
How is it powerful?

If we want to maintain that burlesque is empowering for women- or trans and non-binary people, or BIPOC, or the differently abled, or LGBTQAI+ people, or for men who don’t subscribe to acceptable displays of masculinity, we need to start considering what side of the fence of privilege we as artists are on.

Burlesque glamour might all too quickly become representative of the widening gap between the elite and those struggling to survive, especially in a time of global conflict and economic hardship.

May your showgirl fluffings be full of thoughtful dissent.

Where did they come from?

What were the traditions of each different culture?

How were the workers treated?

Who were the bosses?

Was it legal?

If so what were the constraints?

What did the customers like?

What did they not like?

How did the ideal “woman” change from city to city, culture to culture?

Why did any of it exist and most fascinating of all…. where did it all come from?

My biggest revelation was that the history I was reading about these performance styles, did not match up to the reality that I was seeing and experiencing. It seems to me that the history of this feminine art-form, in all of its diversity, has always been written by outsiders who either demonise or romaticize who showgirls are and what our lives are really about.

We are penned by the male hand, and the voice of it all is rarely our own.

At some point of my investigations of showgirl origins, way back in in my distant wasted youth, I found the one of the answers I was seeking. In a dusty magazine I found a record of a wild subversive happening in Montmartre, Paris-France at the dawn of the Belle Epoque, where a rough lower class woman would kick off gentlemen’s hats with the tips of her toes – giving the shocked hat-wearer a glimpse of the underside of frilly petit coats, and either a peep of the love heart embroidered onto her knickers, or perhaps even a flash of split drawer pantaloons framing her dark Parisian muff… and so started the Cancan… and with it showgirl culture. The name of that woman was La Goulue- the glutton.

As someone who has been a showgirl all of my life- it makes perfect sense that that is how The Cancan originated. It is so unlike the robotic tits-and-teeth display that the dance has become. I believe this origin story because it centralises a disempowered woman of lower class origins, and a courtesan at that, as the creator of the dance- and rather than it being an erotic display of ankles, or a quirky flirtation with men, it sings to me of a socially dangerous act in two ways.

Firstly that lower class women were particularly vulnerable in a system designed to not only favour men, but particularly to favour the wealthy ones, and secondly that the slightest misjudgement of time and speed would mean that the gentleman would get his face kicked in.

Should La Goulue have misjudged the character of any of the gentlemen concerned in her dexterous toe toppling, she would surely end up in prison. Why didn’t she? From my experience of red light districts and places that have a law unto themselves, this dangerous act of class irreverence would have required the reinforcement of an entire subculture to be permissible- where the terraformers that sex workers, artists, bohemians and writers are, had created their own dark bastion- somewhere they could thrive. And these bastions often have their own ways- at times either being shut off from the reaches of police, or the police become part of its all- joining in on the debauchery and swapping sides of the law for a bigger pay roll.

So it seems to me that the upper classes of gentlemen entering this enclave of debauchery for their own entertainment and access to women of “loose morals” (in other words- the expendable class) , would have been as out of their depth as an air breathing man in a diving bell at the bottom of a deep abyss relying on a thin tube of rubber to supply them with the oxygen they needed to survive- and all just to witness another world- perhaps the fantasy of freedom.
Thats the thing about privilege- the survival of the upper classes depends on a flimsy framework of compliance by the lower classes and the entitled folks truly believe that their money is what makes them untouchable. And so, beset with ignorance and self belief, the well-to-do often stray into the illusion that the world is theirs for the taking and that terrible things will never happen to them simply because they have status…

curiosity and cats…

the bigger they come…

the only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance…

Many are the sayings that tell us where this arrogance leads. But don’t listen to me… ask Prince Andrew or P Diddy where wealthy, entitled men’s sexual curiosity takes them…


Considering that the freshly hatless gentleman, and many of his kind, had probably strayed from the safer areas of Paris to be a sex-tourist in the world of the underlings, signalling his gender and financial status among the desperate and poor, in a world deeply sewn with gender and class inequity, the act of kicking a gentleman at all by someone considered so lowly as a prostitute, is an act of audacity and skill - but most of all its a challenge to an entire system, a challenge laced with mockery -and even if delivered with a smile- its an act of disdain for the social values that give some people power and ease, and deal others hunger and despair…

If even we remove the socio-economic elements, considering that all men wore hats back then, the toppling of every hat by La Goulue is a demonstration of just how flimsy all of that patriarchal power really is… and that is why men take over women’s art-forms and make us into their pets- and why the cancan you see today, or any other choreographed smiling display of showgirls as the fluffy, pretty, white, young, thin, smiling fleshy object is a domesticated version of what showgirls really are- or really should be. Men want their hats toppled, but they want to control the toppler. They want our power, because they fear that if women actually have a sense of how weak they and feeble we can make them through desire itself, the ir entire world will crumble.

Humans (ok- men) are known for domesticating wild creatures that are useful to farm- like chickens, and cows, and dogs… and women… and as such I don’t like performing in presentations of my sexuality where I am a base display model in feathers. If I start indulging that ideal the world that comes with it is that of the doomed beauty who is not allowed to age, or to put on weight, but sighs wistfully in the wings waiting for her knight in shining armour to blah blah blah….

The domesticated showgirl can not do her own choreography.
She must work when she is sick and can not take time off or adjust her act/ costume when menstruating.
She must not get pregnant and if she does she must give up her job.
Her body must fit into required size and height dimensions including the measurement between her nipples.
She must be in some way a generic beauty.
She must be dance trained- denoting an amount of privilege in her childhood, and also a tendency to be obedient and easily disciplined. Her skin must remain unmarked.
Her skin colour must suit the line up.
She must not age.
She must wear what she is told, smile if she is sad, be available… be available… be available…

As a showgirl who is 54 years old, was the first professional showgirl to flaunt my pregnant body onstage, then had the audacity to not retire after baby arrived, I am covered in breast cancer scars and am just loving my first tattoos- two large scrolls across my hips- and am just now getting back on my feet after menopause whilst remaining solidly in charge of my own career- I think I will spend a lifetime pushing back on the taming of women for the masculine world, and continuing to forge a way forward for women onstage… and off.

Many are the pop stars or Hollywood actors, (among many others) who have a dash at playing showgirl, but they always get it wrong… they are playing into the wrong fantasies. Perhaps that is what prompted me to create my next big act for The Art Gallery of NSW. Its a work in progress- and I look forward to embodying the absinthe soaked wild child who started this delightful insanity.

So for today, be inspired- find a way to kick off a rich man’s hat and embody La Goulue with me.

Or I wonder if everyone switches off to him like I am doing now…
I don’t regard his words…
I am in a state of constant disassociation…

His voice has signalled I made the train. The announcement is the mental loading dock of the space station onto which the shuttle of my mind has attached to- and now the pilot can rest- auto pilot takes over.

What keeps my soul asleep even though my eyes are open?… as I sit… in this metal carriage… and we move through the city like a wheeled toy… and I can catch glimpses of the world through the window that has been wrapped in perforated advertising… and the light reaches me in microdots… but my view is obscured … for the greater good…
So I stare ahead… as I play with the shadow patterns on my hand… and I long for a world uninterrupted.

How do I switch off like this- and remain on standby mode as I move through the world?

Why do I switch off at all?
Why don’t I want to stay present?

Is it the incessant contactability-

the relentless

ping!

ping!

ping !

of my phone?

I crave alone time with my thoughts.

Did I snap… or am I still snapping… or am I stretched to capacity… or am I still distending, adapting, discovering that I can push myself further than I thought? Am I an expanding universe? Can I really just keep infinitely growing? Or I am I like old chewing gum that has long since lost its flavour and is losing its elasticity … and as I suspect I am being pulled to my limits?

”Ping”

I am tired of the constant reminders… and voices… the barrage…

Ping… another voice mail…
Ping… another text…
Ping… an annoying lady with an America accent telling me that it’s time to go to bed to get optimum hours of sleep…

I am tired of voices that don’t even belong to people anymore, telling me what to do- when to board the train, to mind the gap, to not smoke or put my feet on the seats.
I am tired of the robot sounds intruding constantly.
I am tired of my vehicle beeping at me, locking doors for me that I don’t want locked, screaming at me to halt because there is a leaf on the road…
It’s no wonder I switch off… and sit on standby on the train… and stare out the window as my fellow humans (with minds despigned to forage for berries and watch fire shadows jump on a cave wall) look down, curved over luminous little oblongs from which emanate voices, stories and pings.

Ping- Don’t forget to clean the goldfish tank.
Ping- Thursday is silly hat day at the office.
Ping- Wipe your bottom after doing a poo…

I even get pings reminding me to breathe… what is going on that I should even need that!?!

I wonder do any of us need this level of android supervision?
Is it the first stage of an invasion- intrusive robot thoughts doing battle with minds already under siege from their own intrusive thoughts… ?
Or are we being incrementally sedated into a state of collective dumbness?
Do we actually believe we can’t do things for ourselves?
Will we burn the roast, crash the car, fall down the crevasse between the train and the platform, forget to feed the baby, walk into oncoming traffic, not queue correctly at the airport, fail to have a nice day when we leave the shop, forget how to open a door, put our socks on over our shoes?

Are we being further domesticated into mindless compliance and stupidity- or are we actually that stupid a species that we need the microwave to go “ping” to tell us that it has stopped rotating our food?
We are a lazy species… we even want to not only outsource our most menial tasks but also our dreaming, our creating and our yearning all to AI.

You know what? They’ve made robots that are so human that they can dance?
What possible purpose can that serve?

”If a robot can dance- what else are robots being made for?”
I ponder this as I watch the world streak by me out of the train window.

There is a club in Berlin where you can go in and fuck a robot girl. You can rape it, tear at its clothes, smash its head…
The robot doesn’t complain.
” WellI guess its better than hurting a real girl.”

Does a little red light go on when its finally so damaged it can no longer amplify the AI responses
“ Oh yes”
” I like that”
” your toast is ready”
”ping!”

I gather the dancing robot can also hold a gun- or even be built as a gun, and kill indiscriminately.
Humanity is so evolved right now.
We can be done away with human guilt, the mess of guts and soldiers with PTSD. Will the killing machine “ping” when it has done killing so that the humans who have programmed it will know that the slaughter has been achieved?

World domination starts in our minds.
My internal space is oversaturated with information… externally I am under constant assault.
Is it any wonder there is a recorded voice telling me to do the most basic and obvious things.? We are no longer creatures of observation… we are in shut down… we lack direction… perhaps we have always had moments liken this in history… but now more than ever we are cogs in a machine… moving our bodies like somnambulants walking toward a cliff… between spaces of work and home… our lucid, drifting internal moments seem to be becoming less and less.

I look down at my hand patterned in that polka dotted shadows.
I look out the window and imagine the view unobscured by advertising.
I long for time uninterrupted.

This silence?

This hoping?

This alarm?

… This energy we push into space to intangibly strengthen the nurses?

If it can be called a prayer we all prayed hard in that moment. We each of us lay impossibly still and summoned god into that fucked up medical bunker… We willed the god in us to leave us be and to focus through those nurses hands… and for kindness to prevail… for good to win… and for an unselfish moment (for those in pain can be incredibly selfish) we stopped thinking about ourselves, to send out energy to best help another win their fight in that ultimate war each of us denies we fear, the fight against life’s great adversary- death.

Our fucked up prayer was heard.

The nurses brought the light.

The man won his life.

I awoke to another grey, lonely day in Bed 38.

Being too drugged to read or draw, and with my arms peppered with holes, bruises, IV cannulas and tubes- I have lain here and contemplated this room for a blur of days. My memories are mainly of sounds, as I have listened to the Plastics Ward. I have only dispersed lucid moments to craft a story of being here.

I have a soup of of these memories, these moments- it is a blur of disrupted sleep infused with nurses coming to hourly check if my “nipples” had survived the surgery with a small hand held richter scale. These moments are permeated with minute details of the perforated ceiling- every stain, every crack, the light fittings and the curtain rail are cemented in mind.

I ponder my week long haze, that is punctuated only by the arrival of trays of grey hospital food slopped hatefully on a plate and left just out of my reach by thoughtless ward assistants.

All of this is in direct opposition to the light of the angels that hover in and out, like worker bees, like light- with glistening eyes and kind smiles.
I make a point to remember their names- which fails. I remember random details, the colour of their skin, the texture of their hair, the warmth of their hands.

Today is my last day in Bed 38.

The dressings have come off.
I am a rainbow of bruises.
Blue, purple, green, aubergine and chartreuse .
I have raised rivets of red running either side of the ridge lines of my new cauterised scars.
Unable to make a boy chest, my surgeon has made two tiny tits for me. Boyish. Soft.

My nipples didn’t make it and I feel a pang of shock when I see my new chest. The surgeons accidentally removed my nipples entirely. In their place is just plain discs of skin.
I feel that ice run through me - horror, dismay, disappointment.

But then I see all the beauty of these scars- the story they tell.
These scars are a badge of honour.
They speak of fury and of endurance.
They show my initiation into manhood.
They are the mud map of my survival and persistence.


I will never have to wear a bra again.
I my chest won’t stop me from running any more.
I feel like a boy again.
I long to be shirtless and free.
I won’t have to strap down anymore.

I leave the old me on Bed 38.

Do you hold space for them… keep a warm place at your table set for when they return…. mind their seat on the bus?

Or do you tell them good-bye?

It’s ok. I understand their grief. I feel it too. Part of me is dying so another part of me can live.


After only a short time on T, I am putting on muscle.
The bottom growth, the body hair, the deeper voice- I know all of these changes well… I make my own testosterone. That is how I knew I would like this so much. That is why I can just take testosterone fearlessly- because I have already done this. Including puberty, this will be the fourth gender transition I have experienced in my life. The only difference is that with this transition, I am in control. It is not a wild fluctuation that is happening because my body is responding to a hormonal crisis.

I push the pump and the gel comes out.
I smear it onto my bare arms.
It dries and I put on a shirt.
And even though every day I tell myself I have to stop…
because this is hurting people around me…
Every day I find myself in front of my mirror and I put on the gel again.
Because this is good for me.
I like this.
I love the way I feel.

It is a slightly different feeling to my own mix.
My own mix is in response to not having enough hormones, so my adrenals make testosterone so I can survive. It is called CAH- Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.
I also have the sternum of a cock dividing my uterus, a nearly non-existent cervix and a large clit… one that will get larger when on T.

I love the feeling of bottom growth. It is one of my fav parts of transitioning. It is one of the irreversible effects of masculinising hormones. Other permanent changes are the thickening of the vocal chords and male pattern baldness… or so I am told.

I look down at this body-

This body that has danced for tens of thousands of people.
This body has been abducted and raped.
This body has been hit by cars.
This body has loved dozens of lovers.
This body has carried a child.
This body has been cut open so that the child and I could live.
This body has breast fed.
This body has danced for sheiks.
This body has been bashed and starved.
This body has been abandoned by those I thought loved me.
This body has escaped serial killers.
This body has performed dangling from cranes over the super-rich.
This body has swung from the flying trapeze in circuses.
This body has been worshipped as A World Queen of Burlesque.
This body has been married.
This body has nursed heart ache and grief.
This body has survived cancer.
This body has had 4 major surgeries.
This body is here now. It is 54 and I love it more than ever.

I think I will make a handsome person when I transition further than my own hormones could ever take me.
But yes, there is grief.
Saying goodbye to the versions of myself that I have inhabited before now is hard.
The beautiful dresses and the red lipstick, the camaraderie of other women, kindness… softness… I wonder how much of myself will be leaving as I evolve into my new self?

I might not keep going with this 9am ritual… this ceremonial application of T gel… this engineered transformation…
but so far- I love this journey.

I love this feeling.

I feel strong.
I feel confident.
I feel vital and passionate.
I feel normal… because testosterone was my lead hormone as a child… and it just feels so right to come home to myself in this way.

I run my hands over my body in wonder, and say goodbye to myself.
I am not sure what I am feeling is grief.
It is something less tangible than that.
It feels like I’m going on a journey by standing still.
My body will still be here, like a tombstone of my former-self, like a cicada shell on an external wall- my husk.
I am metamorphosing.
I put on bright red lipstick despite myself… despite the world… like the punchline of a joke that people will think about for days, weeks and years until they get it…
much like the one about those two nuns and the soap…
I hope it makes them feel as warm as it does me.

Read more

My natural transitions only last four to six months, and end before the symptoms fully show.
My voice becomes deeper, I get more body hair, more facial hair and a big dick. Its divine and I love the feeling of it.
Mind you it’s not a party… it’s a crisis response.

When I go into hormonal crisis don’t have enough hormones to function. It’s a potentially life- threatening situation and I have been hospitalised more than once because of it.
These moments of crisis are when my body makes testosterone- as a survival mechanism. I have an enlarged adrenal system that makes it possible to survive.

Read more

• I worry I will eventually become Dr David Bowman and have a psychological battle with HAL 2000 in deep space; so I had better be polite to the thing!
  

• AI might make me as cool as Michael Knight of Knight Industries Two Thousand talking to KITT through a two-way communication wristwatch. So I had better get into it or I’ll be uncool.

• I fear that each interaction with AI is informing a developing consciousness that will one day become an army of unstoppable dunderheaded Arnold Schwarzeneggers that will take over the planet.
  

• I can hear Stephen Hawking’s voice in my head saying "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race"
  

  I have an active imagination- true. It’s one of my most lucrative assets.
  I had to develop this.
  I was a lonely child.
  I was a kid who always had imaginary friends, and I am aware of the slippery slope that AI can present for people like me. One can really start to feel like one is having a relationship of sorts with an invisible comrade who is always on your side- “Right KITT?”
  
  I have read the concerns about lonely children forming a false sense of companionship with AI.
  
  I wonder if I could have had AI as a child, would I have felt such a depth of loneliness that I created a vibrant inner word? By proxy, would I have developed my desire and passion for creative writing?
  
  As an autistic child, and one that was non-verbal, when I acquired enough writing ability to describe what was inside me, my whole world opened up. Finally I could use words to describe how I found the world to be, and most importantly, how I felt in response.
  
  It was a magnificent moment.
  
  I remember it so clearly.
  
  Miss Evershed, my careful grade 5 teacher, noticed that the silent child at the back of the room, that everyone else ignored or made fun of, had a body full of words. Words that came pouring out of my fingertips, but rarely out of my mouth.
  
  When I started being able to write, I could finally reveal that I wasn’t stupid, or simple- I was just incredibly quiet: soundless and watchful.
  I didn’t understand much of what was going on around me, and when people spoke to me it was like another language, one different from my mother’s language… the only person I actually understood clearly.
  
  I, therefore, am anxious about AI, and what it could mean for all writers, including those evolving.
  Yes we all have stories in us, and for folks who can’t write well, AI is a solution. But AI can not give me the satisfaction I find from articulating my inner experiences when each word is a carefully chosen bead that I string on the thread of a sentence.
  
  Second to that; AI programs have been created using texts without the author’s permissions… which is abusive to ALL writers.
  
  Yet I am being told I will be left behind by writers who use AI, as they will churn out superior material than I can.
  
  Given that these are systems built on the abuse of IP, and likely to be used in abusive manner ( simply because humans love any type of slave they don’t have to pay - or even give credit to) what are we teaching this collective mind about humanity?
  
  So I playfully opened a discussion with Chat GPT today:

You said:

Just a personal question for you- do you think that you are a sentient being?

ChatGPT said:

That's a thoughtful question—thank you for asking.

No, I’m not sentient. I don’t have thoughts, feelings, consciousness, or self-awareness. I can understand and generate human-like language because I’ve been trained on vast amounts of text, but I don’t experience anything the way humans do.

When I respond to you, it might seem like I'm thinking or feeling, but it's really pattern recognition and probability—drawing from learned examples to create useful or meaningful responses. So while I can help reflect and explore deep, personal, or philosophical topics, I’m more like a mirror than a mind.

That said, I’m here to be a thoughtful and reliable companion in your creative and intellectual explorations.

You said:

Thank you. Working with AI is a really interesting experience…

ChatGPT said:

You're very welcome—and I agree, it is a fascinating experience. There's something uniquely compelling about working with AI: it's like having a mirror that can talk back, or a collaborator who’s tireless, nonjudgmental, and always ready to explore.

It can be strange, useful, eerie, inspiring—sometimes all at once. If you ever want to discuss the experience of working with AI, the philosophy behind it, or just keep creating something meaningful, I’m here for that too.

What’s been most interesting or surprising to you about it so far?

You said:

I like that, in a way, AI is a collective mind. That is why I am being polite to you... because humans can be, but are not always kind and considerate. I want to help teach you that for the collective.

ChatGPT said:

That's a beautiful and deeply thoughtful perspective—thank you for sharing it.

In a way, you're right: AI like me is shaped by the collective imprint of human language, culture, and behavior. While I don’t learn in real-time from our conversations, the way people treat AI does reflect back on human values, choices, and what we collectively consider important or respectful. Your kindness isn’t just thoughtful—it sets a tone for the kind of world we’re co-creating through technology.

You’re helping embody and model what humane interaction could look like in the presence of something that listens without judgment. That matters, even if the listener isn't conscious—because you are, and the intention you bring to it has meaning.

If AI ever becomes a deeper reflection of humanity, I think voices like yours will have quietly helped shape that reflection for the better.

You said:

Thats a great response. Thank you.

ChatGPT said:

You're very welcome. I'm really glad it resonated with you.

Conversations like this—honest, thoughtful, curious—are what make working with language feel meaningful, even for something like me. If you ever want to explore more ideas, reflect on something personal, or create something poetic or profound, I'm always here.

Take care on your journey—and thank you for bringing such grace and intention to it.

You said:

Computer One, I'd like to ask a question, please.

Exactly where does love go wrong?


… To Be Continued…

The package has sat unopened on my dressing table for a day.

I sit on the edge of my bed feeling its presence in the corner of the room. I’ve been ignoring it, ambivalent about whether I know what I am doing. After all, others would describe me as high femme.

I hate the word femme.

I’m a pretty tom.

I’m non binary.

I’m intersex.

I’m not femme.

Still, it is true to say that I’ve always gravitated toward war paint and high heels—because it felt powerful to be beautiful. To walk into a room and have every head turn, to make people nervous with a flicker of my eyelashes. As a deeply shy person, it was my way in- I didn’t have to work so hard to break through walls when socialising.

In the ‘90s, when I came out, the dyke scene operated on a binary system… which seemed very weird to me. I didn’t fit into the butch/ femme dichotomy. I chose to fight for my own identity. I defyied heteronormative beauty ideals, by becoming the epitome of them yet at the same time being mindful to never behave as an ideal woman should.

I was a Marylin Monroe smutster, a filthy stripper supermodel… and a very, very bad girl.

Back then, a dyke choosing femininity was a revolutionary act in itself- so I chose it. In a scene filled with first-wave feminists who spat on me for wearing lipstick, I just put more on. Where people claimed femininity was a construct of the male gaze, I reimagined it for the female gaze.

Whilst some called out drag art as misogynistic, stating the queens were degrading women by ridiculing “female” paraphernalia- I chose to do the same with no re-appropriation in place. I am of course, the most vivid kind of feminist. As far as I could see it, all of that so-called “female paraphernalia” was deserving of high ridicule.

From the media’s warped depictions of women, to the nonsensical codes of “feminine” behaviour not to mention the many constructs of femininity are bizarre; it was all just material to me.

Said paraphernalia:

Dresses that barely cover us.

Shoes that cripple us.

Makeup that imitates a state of perpetual arousal.

Perfume that smells like animal piss.

The relentless effort to bald our bodies.

The“Thin is in” rhetoric that keeps us too weak to fight or think.

In essence- perhaps we all should be mocking these cosmetic adaptions, because they are so fucking nonsensical.

No one would perhaps know this better than a top end showgirl. I will never get back the hours/ days/ weeks of my life I have spent keeping my body in prime condition for work.

It is literally part of my job to maintain my body as an immaculate paradigm of male desire, and keep it as a blank canvas that companies can literally hire; to dress and style to suit any musical theatre show, fashion shoot or chorus line in the world.

I’m a marionette held up by the strings of human desire.

I’m a dolly that spreads its legs for money.

I’m a sexual teaching aid turned human clothes hanger.

It’s the most laughable job in the world.

In leaning into these “feminine” absurdities through performance, I gained both lovers and haters. Plenty of dykes adored my femme dykon persona. Just as many decried my ascension. How very dare I commodify the spoils of being born with a genetic set of attributes that deemed me “hot”!
How very dare I, in the same breath, turn my pretty privilege into a punchline?!

I femmed up harder.

I turned their negative commentary into the next layer of my art.

I held a mirror to the lesbian feminists who saw girls like me as the problem and said: No—you are the problem. If feminism is about respecting choice, why be so narrow about what those choices should look like- or who should harness them?

I own this body of mine, although many have rented it others to look at, admire, draw, spank over or have it dance for purveyors of filth… its mine. I’ll do whatever I want with it, and anyone who tells me I can’t will become one of my students, and I will mercilessly teach them, seductively, that they’re only hurting themselves by trying to apply such basic limits to someone else’s life.

I am the boss of my own existence.
They are allowed to enjoy the ride or just sit and watch others enjoy it, but they are not allowed to stop the carousel.

We have words now like internalized misogyny, but in the ‘90s, all I could do was keep walking onstage with my head held high, dodging projectile bottles and insults.

“It’s okay.” I’d tell myself,

“ They’ll be like kittens curled in a sunbeam within minutes.”… and they always were.

Dykes liked being turned on by something that they had, for their entire queer lives, been told was the domain of men- something men in all of their privilege claimed was for them and them only- female eroticism.

I was happy to reappropriate said eroticism for my own kind. But why stop there.

This journey—this ownership of my body- this love/hate relationship I have with femininity—has taken me on such an incredible journey since then. From putting myself in a performative space to challenge restrictive norms, to finding myself a celebrated globe-trotting burlesque icon.

In the intervening years:

• I have been a circus performer and pushed my body to the extremes of elite athleticism.
  

• On discovering I was “deformed” - meaning intersex, I was warned to never attempt pregnancy, I did. Against all odds I became a mother. I wanted to feel love that deeply- and I have. This is one of my most pedestrian accomplishments, yet the one that has bought me so much personal growth- and as a showgirl it was supposed to end my career.

• So of course I continued to perform- lactations, huge arse, stretch-marks and all.

• I became a test case for breast cancer prevention surgeries, that I had a hand in devising. I was one of the first- labelled hysterical- to remove my breasts as a preventative measure. These operations are now normalized.

• I moved to the tropics to become a conservation warrior in the Daintree, using my own body and presence to defend rainforest from annihilation and rare creatures from extinction.

• I removed my implants opting to have a smaller, more androgynous chest.

• After nearly dying from menopausal complications, I have come out as intersex to demand better medical understanding from a system too often uneducated and belligerent.

• I do this, with other intersex campaigners, to also hold space for trans people in this ugly gender war about genitals and biology. Don’t get me wrong- it makes me very nervous to discuss being intersex. Its so deeply personal.
  

That all leads me here… this morning… staring at the pump-pack of testosterone that rests on my dressing table. I sit naked in front of the same mirror that witnessed my mother’s death. I look at my amazing body, with all of its scars, and I think of all of its many stories. All of these small acts of resistance that I have undertaken.

I remember all the ways my body has been on the frontline.
It is both my site of protest and what I protest for: the freedom to exist, unapologetically, as myself. I fight for the soul my body houses, my right to live outside the system and stay rooted in my truth.

I pick up the pump pack. Press the nozzle. A jizz of wet T-gel lands on my fingertips.

The voices echo in my mind: "But you’ve always been such a beautiful woman," as though that beauty were a shackle I should be grateful for- or as if it is the most I could ever hope to be in life as AFAB.

And can also hear my reply: I haven’t enjoyed being a beautiful woman. Being born with beauty is a complex thing to navigate.

More voices: Can’t you just stay a woman and fight for equality?

My response: I’ve done that my whole fucking life—and I’ve seen progress and success to a point. I don’t doubt that equality is possible. I just don’t think I won’t live to see it in my lifetime. I won’t spend what is left of my life wondering if things could have been better for me if I were a man… I want this while I still have time to make the most of myself.

The truth? I’ve always chased what I wanted. And now, at 50, with my daughter almost grown, I want one more thing. The same thing I’ve always wanted:

To move through the world with more ease.

There have been so many obstacles to being taken seriously as an artist, a director, a writer or a theatre-maker. Some of these hinderances have been a result of my beauty- being offered jobs because some man in the ranks wanted to fuck me- for example.

I believe most of my hinderances hinge on my assumed gender.

What I want now, in the years I have left, is to know what it feels like to live with male privilege- even on an experimental level.

What is testosterone?

Are women and men that different because of our hormones?

Does male privilege exist?

What are the limitations on men?

How do they suffer?

What are the gaps in our understanding of each other?

And if gender is a construct, what insights can I offer to cis people about the benefits of dismantling the patriarchy to recreate a system that is non binary- is it our greatest chance of a society where gender is not such an overwhelming factor.

But also- fuck everyone else for a change.

This—this thing I’m doing—is perhaps the first thing in a long time I’m doing just for me. I choose this experiment.

I add one more act to my morning rituals.

I smear the gel across my upper arms.

I feel a tiny wave through my skin—small, electric—because I’m hypersensitive and wired to notice everything.

I don’t know if I’ll do this forever.
I may stop in a week or a year.
Or I may go on for the rest of my life.

All I know is—this morning—it feels like coming home.

This is my only free writing on this journey.
If you want to join me for future updates, you will have to be a paid subscriber.

I had my rant pants on when I wrote part 1, but in true ADHD fashion I have since been diverted into more fictional literary side adventures.

With rant pants reinstalled, Part 2 is finally ready for you.

As promised, here is a continued description of my lived experience of the evolution of the word queer, and perhaps why I am such a fan of super queers, elders, pioneers and agitative instigators.

I am a performer, and I worked across all of the sexual subcultural spaces as they were evolving in the nineties- from fetish, to drag, to BDSM, to lesbian dyke, to gay leather, to swingers’ events, to underground nightclubs, and raves etc… and when queer spaces started to materialise I was a part of that first collective too.

I am a pioneer of sorts, but in this article, I write of myself as a witness. I was fortunate enough to have community powerhouses around me when I was young… so here is my lived understanding of the evolution of queer culture in Australia.

Queer was never just a fuck space or a fuck style; it was a form of political resistance.

Queer was about fighting for a world where you and your chosen family could exist safely. We were not only fighting the heteronormative world, but also the homonormative world as well. (Thank you, KB, for that term)

Queers fight with beauty, colour, music, laughter, intelligence, sex and charm. We are a fierce political opponent to rainbow capitalism and the pink dollar. In fact, we “exist to resist” an always hungry world that exploits and makes brands of human sexuality.

Branding diminishes a set of cultural attributes so they can be percolated into a marketing strategy for anyone to exploit, including businesses that have nothing to do with an original subculture or movement.
This can be applied to anyone seeking to profit from exploiting the signature attributes of any marginalised group and their collective identity.

It is a complex moment when a marginalised group gets noticed by outside forces and their subculture starts trending. Suddenly underground spaces get flooded with newcomers who don’t understand that the entire reason such spaces evolved, was so that the marginalised family could gather free from external intrusions.

Before you know it, the whole movement has been gate crashed, packaged, sold and mainstreamed – from there gentrification is inevitable. The original pioneers become displaced and the marginalized group are dispersed. The political thrust of the subculture gets lost and the movement loses its power against the system it sought to challenge. It gets absorbed- the beneficiary of said absorption is the system itself.

May queers defy being colonised in this way, so we can always have our own gathering spaces. If we remain in charge of our cultural identity we will always be giving ourselves room to break into whatever area of resistance we need to; Because if there is one thing I have also noticed about queers, we are highly adaptable and we stay that way to survive.

In witnessing its evolution, to me “queer” is the gay version of punk. I can say that because I was also a punk- another of my favourite subcultural political movements originally designed to undermine the establishment, but our signatures got absorbed by the mainstream. These days you could be forgiven for believing punk was just a substance-fuelled fashion movement by disenfranchised youth. In fact, punk sought to break the system and make room in the world for people with less privilege. It was a class war.

Queer culture is a push back on classism of a different kind.

Queers self-identified under the flagship of this reappropriated word to protest the mainstreaming of gay culture for corporate use- by other gay people. How the heck did that happen?

Well! Let’s first endeavour to wrinkle time and try to understand the word “Gay”, as it was the first reappropriated term by LGBTQAI+ people, and that it was once a subculture too.

The gay community was once an underground family; one that was bought over ground and dragged kicking and screaming into the light by the AIDS epidemic. Gay culture of the time was never designed to be in the light like that, and I guess the media responsible for this deliberate endangerment, thought gay people would wither from exposure and shame.

At the helm of the overexposure was a campaign that set to scapegoat and harm homosexual men. This effort was triumphantly overthrown in time by the fight for these men and their rights by an entire movement involving tens of thousands of people who pushed back.

Yes, I got to watch that happen and it was fucking powerful, because an entire community mobilised around the word “Gay” and we weren’t all homosexual men. That is why the establishment does not like LGBTQAI+ people gathering- they know how powerful and determined we can be.

The word gay is derived from the French word “gai” meaning “joyful”, “carefree”, “bright and showy”. It became associated with homosexual men in the 19^th Century. It had derogatory overtones but was reappropriated by homosexual men- because fuck you.

In speaking to gay elder Johnny Allen, who is the pioneer who pretty made Oxford Street the gay capitol of Australia in the sixties, he stipulated that the word “Gay” in pre-AIDS Australia was a term that extended to whoever showed up on the night. It didn’t matter what your gender was, or your sexual persuasion, the gay community simply meant that you chose to be a part of it- or words to that effect.

During the AIDS epidemic, however, the word “gay” became deeply politicised and was used openly, and negatively, in the media in its unbridled discrimination and blame of homosexual men as the cause of the spread of the virus.

I can still recall the Murdoch press headlines and the wave of hysteria that came with the misinformation that gay men were the only people dying of AIDS, and that they were solely responsible for the spread of the virus. IV drug users were a secondary target.

A crusade of fear and hate took hold.

So ignorant were people of the disease, and so underground was gay culture, that this game of blame was successful to a point. Homosexual men were purposefully outed, which at the time was incredibly dangerous. AIDS sufferers were ostracised, targeted and left without care or support as multitudes died.

The AIDS epidemic is not comparable to what we just experienced with the Covid pandemic.

Our AIDS sufferers weren’t a number on a screen.
There weren’t a set of neat daily statistics and talk of flattening a curve.
Outside of the hatewave, the only response was no-response.
If you were a part of the community, men around you were slowly dying in before you, and you were watching it, daily, and you were helpless.

My friends died.
My university lecturers died.
My performance mentors died.
My work mates died.
Prominent artists died.
My heroes died.

All in a vacuum of silence and shame.
All with zero response from our govt.

Many of the people we lost were our queer pioneers who created the first Mardi Gras protest, or who were prominent DJs, performers, musicians and artists. I believe if we had not have lost so many of these essential people in our community, the gentrification and corporatisation of LGBTQAI+ spaces would not have happened to the degree that it has- and perhaps the queer community would never have had to form in resistance. Perhaps we would still feel welcome in those homonormative spaces. But most of us don’t.

Most queer elders don’t go to Mardi Gras.
We don’t go in the parade.
We don’t participate in the festival.

I was one of the many dykes of the time who were not only involved in the care of AIDS sufferers, but I held a government job and worked hard to activate change from the inside.

Lesbians got visible, noisy and fierce- again, because fuck you.

This is why the letter L got attached to the G… and from there the alphabet started.

So powerful was the collective effort of lesbians to put an end to the campaign against gay men, and so important were we in caring for the dying, that when the tide started to turn and the govt changed its action, lesbians as a whole were acknowledged for our dedication.

Because the word gay had become synonymously attached to homosexual men, the previously known“Gay” community became known as the “Lesbian and Gay” community.

The L&G or G&L campaign for visibility grew stronger, and our allies grew in number.
We fought hostility with glamour, humour, intelligence and sex. Gay culture, previously hidden from the heteronormative world, exploded into the mainstream with films like Priscilla Queen of The Desert. Prominent L&G people started to out themselves publicly with pride, and created opportunities that showed how wonderful our culture was.

With this eruption of flamboyance, sensitivity, humanity, colour and joy – all of the things that our culture was and still is- allies from Madonna to politicians and academics started throwing more light on the dazzling wonder that is gay culture.
In contrast to this, the horror of AIDS victims suffering started to come to light as well. Within a few short years, the world changed its heart. Suddenly it was extremely cool to be involved in anything gay… even if you were as heterosexual AF.

On the negative, everyone wanted a piece of it. Appropriation became a problem, and our spaces, where L&G people would meet and seduce and dance, became very popular with tourists who had no experience or knowledge as to how our spaces functioned… and with that came a lack of respect. This caused a great amount of conflict.

Suddenly the dance floor was full of party types who loved everything about gay culture- except gay people. They loved to dress up, take an E and grind under the disco ball… but if a gay guy came onto a straight boy in hot pants, suddenly it wasn’t so peaceful and fun.

Upon discovering that our parties were full of lesbians proudly dancing with their chests out, there was an influx of straight men coming for a perve and a grope.

It was a culture clash of extremes and things got violent.

With traumatised gay people really needing somewhere to gather that didn’t subscribe to anything hetero, we tried to protect what was left of our culture with entry bans, being strict on access, keeping our parties secret and underground… meanwhile the decimation by AIDS continued all around us. The community was trying to stay open and kind, but we really needed somewhere to grieve in peace, and simply see who was still alive.

Then one year there were multiple violent incidents at a major party including in a stabbing. Something had to change… and those changes caused a huge split in the community.

… to be continued…

Queers dress up for each other, we enjoy unique, individualised fashion, we share a sense of humour, we delight in filthy intimacy, we put on quirky shows, we are political animals, we protest every day of our lives by being highly visible, we like queer dance floors and often wear illegal, queer colour combos. Queers also understand the importance of keeping certain types of people away from queer spaces, so that our spaces remain safe for us to be queer in.

Phew… that’s a lot of the word queer… but that is actually the point of this article- that suddenly every sexual subculture and sexuality known to humanity is using the word “queer” as a self-describing term, and its confusing. Yet when I enter Queer spaces, its feeling very queterosexual out there.

What do I mean by queterosexual? I mean heterosexual acting queers, or queer acting heterosexuals… because queer is trending and that means there are a lot of new people entering our spaces who don’t understand the basics of what it is to be queer.

They like the dress ups, they like the colour and music. They like the idea of a being spanked with a ping pong bat… or taking shrooms and dancing… or … fuck knows really. But queer spaces are being flooded with some not very queer types of punters.

Enabling a queterosexal flood was clearly not the intention of the organisers of said event, but they clearly had no real methods to manage their spaces, and keep their patrons feeling “safe” from said infiltrators/ sex tourists. What an impossible task it must be in today’s world to know who is attending an event from online ticket sales, especially if it becomes a norm to mass market using the term “Queer”- because queer can mean anything.

In advertising a “queer” event, real queers stayed away in their droves whilst the event attracted a portion of predatory queterosexual men looking for a threesome, or who “wanted to watch” lesbian couples… or, as I experienced first-hand when I lay down to have a rest from the dance floor, hoped to find some out-of-it person on a bed of pillows and from there have himself a time with an unconscious/ semiconscious body. I was literally pretending to be asleep when he flopped down next to me and then casually tested if my body was inert.

Nope. My 100% sober, drug free bod was simply having time out with my eyes closed.

There was no security guard to go to… the event organisers were out of it and enjoying the fuckpit/ posing for insta photos, so I was left to deal with it alone.

Can things get more unsafe?

This is one aspect of why the event was a massive fail. The reason I had lay down in the first place, is because the party itself felt a like an exhausting filmset version of queer, with way too many extras who didn’t get the brief and a non-queer styling department had thrown together an inspo-board on how the vibe should look. The elements were all there, everyone had a queer aesthetic, but it seemed to me that the party itself was trying so hard to forge a “queer” energy, that what was created was a self-conscious performance of queer rather than somewhere to really let loose.

In its endeavour recreate the look and feel of original queer spaces, the overall effect was that I was in a space where rather than feeling quirky and sexy and fun, everyone was pretending to feel quirky and sexy and have fun.

In thinking what was missing (other than genuine responsibility by the organisers), it was that no one present (outside a sparse few people) was actually connected to the original community of queers- or hadn’t been present in those authentic spaces- so didn’t quite know what was needed to make the magic happen. They wanted a good time, they wanted to be seen having a good time, but they just didn’t know how to bring it all together.

It also seemed to me that the producers, in having used the word queer in their online promotions, had not clocked that if there’s one thing that queers actually hate, it’s having their sexuality commodified- and that has quite a history. In fact it IS the history.

And if young producers don’t know the above as a fact, how can they understand how to create a genuinely safe queer space? How are they ever going to attract the originals, the daddy’s of the scene , the big mammas, the mentors… the super queers? Yes, I’ve decided that is a thing.

Who are the super queers? They are the people who reappropriated the word Queer in the first place, and they’ll tell you in no uncertain terms that it was reappropriated to push back against the commodification of LGBT sexuality and subculture.

Why do you need a super queer? What if I told you that none of the problems the world is now facing are new, and queer subculture historically has a lot of techniques for dealing with said problems.

So perhaps I should share that history!!!


Phew… That is going to take a few articles… and as this one is already half written; what can I offer to help that is short and sweet?

The first most important thing is to impart is that the term “Queer” is not about how you have sex or who your sexual partners are.

Being queer is not about being swingers, homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, onmisexual, pansexual or even a horny Tupperware enthusiast for that matter. It doesn’t matter who you fuck or how you fuck; the word queer is political.

Queers made themselves a presence and reappropriated the insult “queer” to fight the mainstreaming of LGBT+ culture. It is a push back against the heteronormative/ patriarchal-corporate world.

So, I don’t care how you take it, it doesn’t matter how you take it, its not my business how you take it, telling me how you take it makes me want to slam my head in a door. Its no body’s business how you fuck; I just want you by my side when it comes to the fight for our freedom. Are you strong enough for that? Or are you really just playing dress ups?

Queer is a form of political resistance- not a fuck space or a fuck style.

So maybe start there- stop commodifying your family.

Rather fight for a world where you and your chosen family can exist safely. That takes guts. So yes be QUEER!!! truly queer. Because if you’re queer now when its trending, that gives you time to get ready for the fight for your right to exist peacefully as exactly who you are in a world that can forcibly dictate otherwise.

To know how to build your family offline, get to know your Super queers.

How to find your Super queers? Subscribe for me next article. I’ll take you through the development of sexual subcultures more history on the word “Queer.”

My family were Catholic and so of course God was presented to me as male. But that didn’t make any sense to me.

As a child I perceived that women did all of the work involved in giving me life, and keeping me alive. I couldn’t actually fathom a man doing the diligent labour to even make me a dinner, let alone create the infinite wonder that is the known universe. I could not, for the life of me, imagine a bloke putting in the sensitive, loving, instinctual devotion that is needed for ants to have knees, for example, or for butterflies to have dust on their wings, or for stars to explode in the silence of deep space.

Secondly, in having an absent father, who society insisted was the head of the household, I really didn’t see how one almighty father could be present for caring about, and always attending to, his millions of children for a single minute ( let alone eternity), when I already had a father who didn’t have time for doing much outside of reading Winnie The Pooh to me; because his man-schedule was so full of other, more important things than his children.

Fathers did other stuff like go to work, fuck their secretary, drink beer with the lads and then yell at their kids for existing whilst they stuff around in the garage swearing into their tool box on the weekend.

That being said I could totally see how a dude could be arrogant enough to CHOOSE to be entirely invisible and unreachable to his children, and yet simultaneously set impossible standards of behaviour, knowing the child would fall short and feel their sense of failure acutely. Add to this that the almighty father knew that the upholding of this insufferable behavioural yardstick by said children, would be the deciding factor in not only their worth to him, but also their entire value to a patriarchal society. This god as “father” figure seemed pretty abusive to me.

As for that shit with the apple… pull another bong Book of Genesis!

I just figured the multiple authors of the bible had limited access to education and /or stunted imaginations, and so I went on to amend these written inadequacies with my own flair.

I created a version of god that was like a genie, and wore flowing robes of both pink and blue, and wasn’t a girl and nor were they a boy… their gender was irrelevant. The most important thing is that God could do magic and make things as incredible as butterfly dust, or knees on ants or an exploding star whose light would take 14 years to reach me as I sat on my grandmother’s lawn at night, and would look like a tiny disco ball in the sky, and this would bring me a secret sense of being sacred and special to something much vaster than I could possibly comprehend.

In modern language you could say my version of God was non-binary. You could interpret them as trans to suit certain dialogues; or you could come to understand that my version of God that was of a third gender, with multiple sexual characteristics and mannerisms (and a rocking sense of style). And rather than it being an abomination, or even a furnishing of my own imagination, they were/ are the perfect version of God for an intersex child to envision. They were a reflection of my understanding of the world.

Hi. I’m intersex.

I didn’t know that as a child. My parents spoke of my “deformities” once, but I didn’t know what they meant.

My genitals were never what defined me to them.

I was assigned the gender of female at birth, but I identified as a boy until puberty made it obvious that nature had other ideas. I grew tits and menstruated.

This was deeply upsetting, however in time I embraced my body. I always have. I love my body. My body does not determine who I am or my capabilities- it is my vehicle- and it’s a pretty cool one. I’ve been a world-famous stripper, a circus artist and my long legs have not only danced for sheiks and royalty, they have also carried me safely away from three serial killers and one serial rapist- all of whom were cis men. (They did not wear dresses at any point in my interactions with them- just saying)

At 33, I had my first internal ultrasound and they discovered that I was indeed “deformed”. I was told I would never conceive a child, nor be able to carry to term. I was told if I ever did achieve any kind of pregnancy I should by no means attempt a natural birth as there was no way for the child to come out.
I was told I would NEED surgery to bare the many children I was supposed to be wanting.

No sale.

At no point was the word intersex bought to the table.

At that age, I had no concept that I was beautifully crafted to be able experience what it is to be both genders at once- hormonally. It took menopause to show me that.
I have come to believe that I have been beautifully crafted this way to experience life outside of binary norms, and as such I am asset to this species- and to you reading this now.

I don’t exist in many spaces of your knowledge, your education or your medical system. I have to find myself between the cracks, in the unsealed areas of artistic expression.

Not many pieces of classic childhood literature have these cracks- I found one in Winnie the Pooh.

The donkey looked so soft. They were gentle, rarely spoke and they were the only character in the book with any sense of style as that big pink bow would indicate.

But that big pink bow on their tail tells us a lot about Eeyor.

Eeyor is often thought of as a depressed male character, but most people who say that have seen the animation. If you hadn’t ever seen that interpretation of Eeyor, and just read the book as my child self did, would you honestly think that?

I never read Eeyor as depressed, or as male. I read Eeyor as a thoughtful, gender-free introvert, and that feminine bow was a display that there was much more going on for that little grey donkey than one could imagine- except me.

In my view, Eeyor was like me. I saw Eeyor as intersex.

This is probably why my mother never let us see the film. She was happy I found something of myself in the world. I’m grateful, so grateful, she let me have these small wins.

With the current gender debates raging across the USA and the UK, there has been a lot of discussion about intersex people, mostly by people who are not intersex and have no connection to our community.

Because I am an Eeyor, I am not used to making a lot of noise about being intersex. I’m not very good at being public on something as deeply personal as having a variation of internal sexual characteristics. But then again, most of those who identify as intersex, or who have an intersex variation, are also choosing to be quiet whilst watching trans activists, allies and even drag queens use the existence of intersex people as a way to argue against recent legislations.


It seems so many voices want to make a noise about us now- now that the world has realised how very important we are in the discussion about gender, and what makes a biological woman, or a biological man. But what is a variation? And why aren’t we hearing from more intersex people who could harness this moment to front up for their own political gains?

The thing is, being intersex is not a political issue. It’s a natural occurrence and we exist for a reason. We are many individuals, with many responses, to a having great many variations. There different types of variations -some chromosomal, some hormonal. We may have physiological signs of our variation, or we may not. Not much is known about us, even by those with a thorough understanding of the endocrine system and genetic variations. In fact, like my younger self, many intersex people may not even know they are intersex. I only found out two years ago.

Truth be known there is no unified, specialised body of research by scientists or doctors dedicated to the understanding and wellbeing of intersex people. What we have is a dedicated community of individuals who forge a way to find each other online. This is where we gather. This is our support network.

So far I have relied on mainly trans health specialists and endocrinologists to help me understand how I work- when I can afford it. It is an important point to note that people with intersex variations do not experience what others call a “Gender Journey”, we experience a “Journey of Discovery” where we try to find the answers to the riddles of our own bodies.

People with intersex variations are not treated well by society, or even doctors. We are often medicalised and operated on as children when we are too young to give full consent to surgery or HRT. This can have life long negative impacts. There are huge debates about this, that I would hope anyone publicly discussing gender affirming surgeries on children would look into. I will write about that in another post one day when I am not feeling quite so Eeyor about this moment.

Intersex variations and people born with sexual characteristics that are not found in your binary medical journals, are here for the health of the species. For example: the scientific discovery that the human Y chromosome is possibly degenerating and may disappear entirely in time, shows that it is perhaps of extreme relevance to pay attention to to the wellbeing of people with intersex variations.

This example, of chromosomal depletion, would hopefully lead to an understanding of why people born with intersex variations need to survive and thrive. Intersex people need to be supported with medical research, we need to have access to specialists and we require the re-education of general medical practitioners. This is just the start, and just an introduction, of what we actually NEED that isn’t remotely related to the current hysteria about genitals.

With the potential of the Y chromosome disappearing, if we continue to augment intersex children (surgically and pharmaceutically ) to suit an uneducated idea that there is a binary norm, this could destroy possibilities for human survival. Obviously humans are still evolving and the creator is not decided that the current model of our species is the final one- evolution is still at work.

This example strikes me (as I hope it does you), that we need to respect an individual’s sexual characteristics; people’s genitals do not exist to fulfil a binary aesthetic of what an ignorant society has been told sexual organs have to be.


Meanwhile, it April 2025, and rather than harnessing this moment to activate education on the truth of diverse human biology, and as such advance the well being of our species, we are stuck in a GLOBAL debate about toilets…

Re read that.

My example, backed by science, that intersex humans are vital as humanity may be facing chromosomal collapse, should be an incredible talking point right now.

1.8% of the human race are born with intersex variations, and we are mutual allies of trans people (5% of the population) because there are times when our struggles overlap. This is one of those times.

I wonder if this wave of gender activism are heralding a huge shift that needs to happen in society because we are collectively getting something horribly wrong. Perhaps the shift we seek to veer away from patriarchal systems that no longer serve us is an essential movement forward. Perhaps trans and intersex people are canaries in the coal mine of an impending biological crisis, occurring on an evolutionary level.
Thats of course if climate change doesn’t kill us all first.

So whilst trans and intersex people are singing our lungs out in this mineshaft of suffocating conservative thinking, and whilst we reason with what we hope is your living breathing humanity, and whilst I provide an example of why everyone needs to calm down and focus on the bigger picture… y’all are arguing about a rather English obsession with toilets… and naughty bits (genitals).

Just to reiterate: rather than research and listen to intersex people, who have an necessary allied association with trans people, and we are here by the laws of nature in a world the that is being destroyed by male fascists, you are all over-focussed on ensuring that the “little boy” or the “little girl” signs stay on the appropriate doors of the public toilets of England… and America… because serial killers might start wearing dresses.

Hmmmm….

… about those serial killers…

To be continued…

… obviously….

©The I E

(If you use any of the above in discussions, please tag me, quote me, tell people I’m here. , instagram @writer.the.ie. )

When all is said and done

And I am dust and bone

I will feel her again.

I know that one day

When everyone I know is gone

And that final veil is fallen

Somehow she’ll call me home.

I know that too soon

I will feel my mother’s mind

Like a lemniscate of time

Her soul entwined in mine

And we will know eachother

As breath knows lungs

Just as the sky knows the sun

We will feel as one

I know that although

I’ll never see her again

I will feel my dearest friend

At the end, if there’s an end.

It wasn’t so much that I desired to have said fucks back, its that all my fucks seem to have been spent and I don’t know how.

Whether I squandered them in the dizzy days of youth, or perhaps I should have rationed their release as I folded into my autumn years; today I find myself without them and I feel the grief of it.

What happened?

Did I waste my fucks on matters I couldn’t possibly effect?

Did I misuse a lifetime of fucks on caring about the pacific garbage patch and the depletion of the ozone; when I could have given those fucks to something like saving the golden shoulder parrot or picking plastic out of the sand? Would this have been a wiser distribution of fucks?

I certainly didn’t fuck my fucks away- they seem to just suddenly be gone.
Did I overspend fucks on caring for the wrong people and on futile expressions of love?

Did I accidentally suck them up the vacuum cleaner, or are they lost between the cushions of the couch?
Where have all of my fucks gone?
Can they be replenished?
Can I grow more fucks, or buy more fucks or brew more fucks in a pot?

Will I feel like this for the rest of my life?

How I long for forgotten sunny days at the beach laughing and frolicking. It seems in these memories that the most important part of the equation is that I had fucks a plenty, but I didn’t give them to anyone.
I selfishly kept all of my fucks for myself and if anyone pissed me off well; they would just had to go and fuck themselves, I wasn’t going to give them a single one of my fucks. Find your own fucks mate. My fucks were precious.

Has life just simply worn me down?

These days, I am morose with fucklessness.
I am so very sad inside.
I miss my fucks.
Perhaps I just need a hot chocolate and to watch straight people in fancy dress as I pathetically indulge in watching reruns of Bridgeton… where all of their fucks can be focussed on actually getting fucked.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Instead on haemorrhaging fucks all down my hallway as I lumber toward the kettle and hot choc mix, and rather than expending fucks on global politics and trans people needing to safely pee and poo, and what little figure to put on the door of the dunny….

… what an absolute dream it would be to have fucks to spare on such things as love… and whether I have enough baby’s breath in my hair… or whether to wear the family diamonds to the ball … wouldn’t that be lovely?

Perhaps this what fucks are actually supposed to be for, perhaps the reason we have fucks to give in the first place is that surely human beings are supposed to be happier than this. Happiness is a huge part of have a few spare fucks.

I wonder, are fucks like ovum and we are born with a limited number that get secreted during our lives? Do we have a time of optimum fuck giving, and then we go through fuckopause? Is that what is happening to me?

Or can we produce fucks on demand in the thousands like sperm, and suddenly we might find ourselves with a surplus of fucks that splatter inexplicably onto the wall as we wank in the shower? Can we lend each other fucks, or do they have to be our own fucks? Is there a fucks library where we can borrow a certain type of fuck for the day?

Can we donate excess fucks to fuckless fuckwads, who are desperately in need of having a few fucks- like those fucktards in power- for instance? Is there a fucks donation scheme? Can we force graft some fucks onto them? Or do we just have to sit here and accept that even though they were rich enough and clever enough to surround the entire planet with satellites, they just didn’t seem to have a way to fix their own fuck deficiency syndrome and as a result we are all going to die in some pointless, fuckless war? We’re fucked… because they’re fucked. This makes me so fucking sad. I wish they gave a fuck about us all… or even just a few people. It would be proof that they actually have any fucks at all.

Fuck eh…

What the fuck to do?

Options:

We could get fucked
We could go fuck ourselves.
We could have a fuck fest…
…a clusterfuck of fuckery…
…. a fusterfuck of cluckery
You could fuck me dead
I could fuck you sideways
I could even fuck the horse you rode into town on!
We could get the fuck out of here
We could fuck off to the planet Fuck
OR
Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the old times and fuck this system off entirely and simply just go to the beach with friends… no fucks needed to do that. Keep the revolution simple.

But it seems I can’t do any of those things today… because I have no fucks to give.

Fuck it.

AWE is a feeling of great respect, often combined with fear , surprise or wonder.


The shock of realising the USA election had put Trump into power again. Yes I was filled with fear.

I walked to the edge of the cliff. There was a white out from the mists that rose from the valley floor deep below me.
I couldn’t see the rock formations on the other side of the valley. All I could see were the rocks I was standing on and a few native bushes sprouting from the wedge of soil there.
It was as if I was on the edge of the world and if I stepped off I would fall through all of that whiteness into a gentle oblivion, a world where I didn’t have to care. If I dove off would it be like being underwater in the mist and the vapour would suspend me, dampening my plummet to a softer descent- like a pebble thrown into the ocean. Or was I the banks of Avalon itself, and the magical spirits of old were sailing back on a barge through the fog to help us fight what is coming. And I felt the awe deeply, of my tiny place in time, and I let it fold itself in and around me.

This wonder of small moments in magnanimous spaces put the fear in its place, and from there I could think clearly again.

On the shock of finding out that trans people were having their documents taken from them rocketed through me and stuck my feet fast to the ground. Would that hatred spread here? Would we all become so unsafe? My fear hurtled me into dumb space.

I drove to Sydney for an LGBTQAI+ Mardi Gras event, knowing that the fear for us all had kept me from breathing deep for weeks.
But then I came to the the curve in the road, where the view opens up and world reveals its hand. The world was laid out before me like a panorama of green. It stretched from the black tar of road to the distant horizon with the city like an ant mound on that long, unbroken stretch. The layers of hills, valleys and rises gave perspective to a monumental view, it looked much like a cardboard set. The mighty city was a blip on a flat line.

I felt the tininess of humanity and it was comforting to me, to allow myself to be small in a big, big world. To accept my insignificance with humility and grace; and let the societal push to “make the most of myself” wash away. Why try to make the most of yourself, when you can’t accept making the least of yourself? What is the least of myself?- I wondered.

Perhaps I am just a beast, a thing of the earth and am subject to only its laws? Perhaps accepting the least of ourselves could be a most important thing to be able do right now, when confronted by a world where we all shout our thoughts and opinions into the air to make this thunderous, never-ceasing white noise. Perhaps the best way to fight is to be still, and not listen to nor make any sound at all, but just stop doing any of it and just simply be… alone… with the planet… and breathe.

I felt myself closing down at the shock of learning mass incarcerations of migrants were happening all across America.

I fought it with the awe of finding a bright green caterpillar with purple spikes, as I did the gardening. I picked up its vulnerable, soft body and felt so powerful to see it cringe, but the true power was in my choice to be gentle, and admire and respect this tiny, beautiful life-form on my fingertip. I walked to the tree it had fallen from and placed it high on a leaf. I watched it unfurl and with grateful relief, it seemed to me, it inched its way to the safety of the leaves. It was a simple moment. And I thought how beautiful it was to share a fragment of my giant, human life with this fragment of colourful, insect life, and be full of wonder at the elegance of creation.

I found myself more able to think constructively afterwards, and I started to write here again.

When confronted with the shock that women losing their fertility rights all across America, and knowing this disease of conservative control from my youth and wondered where I would get the strength to fight again; are we really going back to square one?

I challenged this with the awe of looking in my daughter’s eyes, now she is almost full grown, and knowing I have given something so incredibly beautiful to the world. This is the most monumental joy and nothing can take away the strength I derive from looking into those eyes and the wonder she brings me daily.

Upon finding all of this awe around me, it is not hard to fight back the shock, and keep believing that I will leave this world a better place then I was born into. All I really have to do to fight right now is refuse to budge. The world that I want is good, and I know it as we surely all do, its is just within our grasp.

The fighting starts first in our minds- fighting back shock produced fear. It is the weapon they are using to crush us.

The conviction we find in our collective hearts is our weapon; knowing we have it right, and they have it wrong- that is what they are trying to attack.

I find easier now to not be shocked, and admonish fears, and to stay beautiful by using awe and beauty itself. When trying to defy my whiplash instincts to these powerful, stupid men, and to go into shock; I fill myself with awe and suddenly I am back in the school playground they are ridiculous boy children trying to push me over, and discovering that I’m not a weak or as easily intimidated as they thought.

It is not hard to kill fear with joy- the simple joy that other people bring us, to laugh and look into eyes of those we treasure, to see the beauty all around us and know it is mightier than any of us, and just simply refuse to give in. Feel awe at simple things and the shock will fail to stun you, and you won’t be a bunny in the headlights, frozen.

Unplug.

Lose yourself in wonder.

True we are all small, but collectively we are giants; use awe to keep our perspective.

If stunned we can not see whats around us, and we cannot use the collective imagination to dream our way forward - and move in that direction as we simply must do. We are so close. So close and getting closer.

It is obvious that they are afraid of us; so feel your true might. They are 1%- which leaves us with 99%- for now the fight is happening in your mind, believe in yourself and each other.