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Guys… it’s Day 3. You don’t need another intro. Read on!
Module 1: How Representation is the BEST Way to Solve Systemic Misogyny
To begin a morning full of feminism, NUS Women’s Officer Ellie Venning led her plenary on diversity in education, and highlighted the segregation within our universities. The panel included Jade Poulton (ANU Women’s Officer), Libby Austin (NX General Executive, Western Sydney University), Bridget Clifton (Curtin), and Tess Robb (Swinburne Vice-President).
The first question given to the panelists: Why is it important for universities to encourage diversity throughout courses and gender segregation?
It was interesting to see the next question — What should universities and governments be doing to encourage women into “men’s” fields and men into “women’s” fields? — actively falling into the trap of segregation. Come on NUS, gendering the fields is a form of segregation in of itself!
Many of the arguments discussed were that women need more role models and representation in male-dominated fields. Of course, the dispute of these claims was the fact that these issues are not simply a “we need more representation” situation, they are a structural, sexist oppression of women in every area of life. Socialist Alternative (SAlt) discussed the Labor government’s refusal to address wages in feminised industries (noting that “feminised” is different to “women’s field”).
Estelle from ANU summarised SAlt’s perspective well: “I think what you have actually just said is that the main issue is only to break down stereotypes. We need to increase the gender forces, which is good, but actually that’s delineated from the fact that we have a Labor government [that is] actually very capable of increasing wages… We shouldn’t just be fighting about putting more women into male dominated fields.”
This received an interesting response from Poulton, kicking off the countless shouts of “shame” from the room: “In NSW, teachers did get a pay rise. So did police —”
USyd’s General Secretary and Sexual Violence Officer Grace Street spoke on on the topic, noting that these issues are not only an issue of representation, but a broader fight to be tackled on our campuses. She specifically noted the presence of sexual violence (SV) in the elite colleges, alongside the gag orders of SV victim-survivors.
“We’re not MPs, sure, but this is the NUS. If you want to look at issues of women getting into things, start with these systemic issues on campus, start by valuing the fields that women go into.”
The plenary was an interesting discussion between those who wanted real, hard change in systemic misogyny, and the others with the ideal of having simply more female role models. One part that was understood and agreed on by all was the idea of implementing Indigenous cultural law into our governing system.
Everyone in the room was now prepared for the next event.
Module 2: The Manosphere and Liberal Feminists
Following the Women’s Officer plenary, Eddie Stephenson (SAlt, ANU) ran a workshop discussing the rise of the ‘Manosphere’. Stephenson started off by discussing the increase of far right extremism that is being seen in young men. She noted the universality and normalisation of boys being exposed to violent pornography from an astonishingly young age:
“The fact that watching porn is basically now universal and normalised amongst men from a really young age helps reinforce all the worst, most objectifying attitudes towards young women; degrading, painful, violent sex acts are an absolute staple of pornography. 97 per cent of those acts are directed against women.”
She emphasised the importance of uniting those who believe in anti-sexist politics — considering the “75 per cent of Australians who think Andrew Tate is a fuckhead”. Essentially, to fight the rampant sexism in society, we must build up the left bloc to confront the far right as a whole, rather than focus our energy on educating individuals.
The workshop went to discussion, starting with NLS emphasising how important it is for young feminist men to be calling out their peers when they say or do something misogynistic. The NLS speaker stressed the significance of young men having positive male role models to look up to. A speaker from SAlt, while agreeing that it’s good for anti-sexist men to confront others, spoke to the comment on having a positive male role model:
“One thing to say is that’s a bit of a concession as well: that men need a role model that is specifically male.
“The argument that left wing people should be making is that men can have problems that are not women, that there’s not some version of masculinity that they need to live up to, and that there’s a positive version of masculinity that a man should role model.”
Unity went on to divert the conversation to the misogyny on the left. One of the speakers mentioned that this issue is an attack from all spaces, both the right and left bloc. Another Unity speaker asked SAlt, with them being against the existence of police and law enforcement, what they would suggest to hold these people to account and address the violence.
Lily (SAlt) responded: “I just think the police are very clearly not equipped or capable of dealing with that, and they’re not, at the moment, doing literally anything to prevent it. The police are much more likely to be like people perpetrating.”
The rest of the conversation went back and forth around the utility of centering men in the movement, the importance of building a mass left movement against sexism, and an overview of the gendered issues at hand.
The core of the idea that Unity was encouraging was to fix the internal misogyny in the left-bloc, while they equated those issues to the far-right extremists in question. It was a typical derailment from any approach that is, in any way, confrontational. It’s an approach that completely deunifies the anti-sexism movement on the left.
Unity, babes, we know this doesn’t work.
Module 3: How Can We Live Under a Labor Government?
The afternoon plenary turned into a bit of a hamfight. Led by Jorden Van Dem Lamb, a member of Victorian Socialists and well-known on X as ‘purple pingers’, Van Dem Lamb received both respect and ridicule in his dissection of the causes and solutions to the housing crisis.
Van Dem Lamb said that “There’s an unspoken agreement between landlords and tenants that tenants know they’re living in illegal renting conditions, but as long as the landlord doesn’t raise the rent, we will put up with it.
“We’ve got 30,000 people in Victoria who are experiencing homelessness at the last census. We have three times as many homes as the number of people experiencing homelessness.”
Van Dem Lamb commented on tangible ways to address the crisis: “We can do things like joining housing unions. We can do things like green bans that would rely on a massive increase in the level of struggle in this country.”
He spoke about the way ALP policies contributed to the public housing crisis, particularly in Victoria where public housing blocks were being privatised or demolished.
During the discussion, a Unity speaker defended the Labor party, claiming that they had built 300 houses after demolishing public housing. Stephenson corrected them, saying that Labor had bought the houses rather than building them, and that the comment was “pretty exposing of what that policy counts for as a response to the housing crisis”.
Ela Akyol (NSWLS, UoW) said “I chat to hundreds of tenants throughout the month, and I know the tenants’ union must have a long list of tenants that you get into. So how do you think that attendance [of the union] would better mobilise rentals to actually renting rights?”
McVicar heckled “How about stop actively demolishing public housing!”
Van Dem Lamb responded that “the NSW Tenants Union and also the Victorian tenants unions both used to be member based unions, and they were organised around the rent strike in both states. In Victoria, we had the Masters and Servants Act replaced by the Residential Tenancies Act because of that rent strike.”
A SAlt speaker commented “I think these questions are dodges from the fact that all of the people in this room, in the Labor Party factions, the campaign that this union ran was a ‘Get Labor Elected’ strategy.”
Unity heckled this, saying “Don’t get mad, get elected!”
They proceeded to defend Labor’s demolition of public housing, saying “[Public housing conditions are] horrible. In fact, we’re knocking them down and building better ones so people actually live in safe conditions without having to freeze to death or overheat in summer or die from lifelong effects.” Gee, what would we do without Unity? Should those 30,000 homeless Victorians be grateful that they don’t have to live in decrepit public housing?
O’Rourke said that Unity were “devastated” about changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax being removed from the ALP platform, and made a show of being very disappointed in Labor — following a criticism of Labor from SAlt that nobody could have seen coming, he went on to squawk about Labor’s election win, squealing “94 seats, baby!”
Another Unity speaker joined O’Rourke, saying “No political party has a silver bullet to the housing crisis. It is a long-term problem that needs a long-term solution. The only party offering a serious solution is Labor.” We wonder how Unity manages to balance being so devoted to Labor whilst also claiming at every turn that they agree with SAlt’s vociferous criticism of Labor — perhaps they might one day follow SAlt’s lead and open a thesaurus.
Module 4: The Invisible Crisis of Trans and Gender Diverse Rights
This workshop was conducted by Clarity James (Deakin Uni, Victorian Alliance), who led a very peaceful and orderly session. James focused on four main topics: systemic discrimination, overt discrimination, perceived & prospective discrimination, and mental health.
James spoke about deadnaming, saying “Deadnaming on campus could really affect students. I find it hard to describe it because it’s like you’re getting in the back of the end with a brick — a proverbial brick.”
She also explained the concept of Trans Broken Arm Syndrome, where a trans individual goes to the doctor with a serious issue, only to have their issue misinterpreted or misunderstood by doctors and health professionals.
James said “Off the top of my head, 40-something potential university graduates, all transgender, who were unable to complete their degree, not through failure, not through a lack of hard work, but because they felt that their university didn’t want them.”
She also explained overt discrimination, saying “This is still fairly rare, but it still occurs, and how we handle it as student unionists is really important. You can completely ruin anti-discrimination policies by [having] obscure reporting processes.”
She continued, “I think it would be remiss to ignore that transgender diverse communities have higher rates of mental health issues. These are often informed by trauma from all the other things we have discussed.”
James went on to discuss practical ways to increase trust with trans and gender-diverse communities, saying that people could ensure that incidents of transphobia were known to the student union & responded to promptly, could lobby for more robust enrolment systems to prevent deadnaming, and could establish and/or maintain queer safe spaces.
Finally, she talked about what to do once trust had been established: set aside money to fund community groups, listen to and be receptive to emerging issues on campus, ensure that the student union has defined responses to emerging issues, and contribute to discussions on trans and gender-diverse rights. All in all, it went exceptionally smoothly.
Module 5: The NDIS and Its Failures
Socialist Alternative speakers Holly Medlyn and Carter Chryse delivered the workshop ‘How the National Disability Insurance Service (NDIS) Fails Disabled People’, much to the horror of Unity who levy accusations about SAlt’s ableism.
Medlyn outlined the attacks and cuts on the NDIS and stories of human suffering associated with these cuts: “This is a classic move out of the Thatcher playbook. Sell off a public service, then when service quality inevitably declines, or it becomes less equal, or there’s cases of fraud, or in this case, all three, that becomes a justification to cut funding.”
Medlyn put forth the argument that the NDIS as an insurance scheme is fundamentally flawed because it rests on the assumption that the private market is capable of providing socially desirable outcomes, in this case adequate disability support, given the right incentives.
She rebutted the defence that the NDIS model is empowering for disabled people because it gives them choice and control over the services they receive. She also didn’t believe that the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) could be reformed, or that greater regulatory oversight could address what they saw as a fundamental flaw in the market system.
The alternative put forth by Medlyn was “a fully funded, publicly run service: one where the government pays to ensure that every single person, regardless of the severity of their disability, gets the care they need to live a normal and dignified life.”
The ensuing discussion was sadly predictable, and no faction was willing to properly discuss each other’s arguments. The disagreement was fundamentally over what the role of the government is in regards to disability care: to be the provider of services themselves, or to be the regulator and facilitator of services provided by the private sector.
Olivia Stronach (Unity, UWA, NUS Disability Officer) argued that just because rorts in the NDIS system exist does not mean that the NDIS is inherently flawed. She criticised SAlt’s lack of engagement “when there are plenty of other disability activism [issues] that we’ve asked you to participate in and you guys ignore us.”
Another Unity speaker characterised SAlt and Unity’s position about the NDIS as “two contrasting approaches” that are mutually exclusive, “you guys would destroy the NDIS, leave nobody with support while we wait for your magical public system to appear.”
NLS speakers agreed in principle to a fully public disability care system but expressed concern over those who are currently on and require the NDIS.
Socialist Alternative had (correctly) delivered a class-based analysis of the failures of market solutions to disability care and argued for using the crude but necessary cudgel of nationalisation. Despite this, Unity was correct in identifying that SAlt does not engage in disabilities communities on campus, or at the very least, our campus. They could, in fact, partake in these spaces and make the argument for moving beyond the social and rights based models of disability to a class-based model.
Labor factions expressed concern about what will happen to people already on the NDIS, though no one actually believes that the NDIS should be scrapped overnight and the people on them left hanging. They made no serious consideration of economic solutions beyond regulation and incentives.
