Binge My Blogs
A gluttony of words, glorious words
On Mowing, and Motherhood
Mothers give their love freely - but there's a cost My white narcissus with butter-yellow centres bloom unselfconsciously. No silvered water in sight, no chance to get distracted by their beauty. The pungent bulbs are the first to brave the clear, chilly mornings....
Episode 8: Women In Leadership
Outspoken harridans, school marms, bad mothers, bad fashion and Conspicuously Empty Fruit Bowls – that’s right, today we’re talking about Women Leaders.
We’ll discuss why there aren’t more, what barriers they face, what female leadership looks like, and why there *should* be more.
The Murder of a Fairy Woman: Brigid Bolan
"Are you a witch, or are you a faery? Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?" Brigid Boland, wife of Michael Cleary, wasn't like other women, Sady Doyle writes in Dead Blonde and Bad Mothers. Boland was in possession of a singer sewing machine and knew how to...
Shrews Untamed Episode 4: Unspeakable. The C-Word and the M-word
Disruption is as easy as lock, stock and three smoking syllables. Make sure your earphones are on for this dangerous episode. That’s right, Jay and Jen are unleashing the worst word in the world – and we’ll soon get sick of calling it “The C Word” so consider...
Shrews Untamed Episode 3: Mother’s Day (and its Firebrand Feminist Roots) + The Emotional Load
Episode 3 of Shrews Untamed Podcast When Mother's Day 2020 came around, we couldn't let it pass without giving it the Shrews Untamed treatment, and seeing how it looked after a bit of pot-stirring. I asked myself questions like: What’s the significance of the date?...
What’s In A Name? The blog that inspired Episode 5 of Shrews Untamed
The blog that inspired the Shrews Untamed episode Nearly three years ago I stood yoga mat under my arm, belly protruding, lining up to register before beginning my prenatal yoga class. I’m not sure if the practitioner was doing her own little case study, but for the...
Shrews Untamed Episode 5: What’s In A Name?
Is taking your husband's name Unfeminist? Say my name, say my name! Yes, we know Unfeminist isn’t a word. We’re breaking the rules. We’re also showing you a little of what it’s really like to record a podcast when kids – young and old – are home due to COVID-19. Water...
Shrews Untamed Episode 6: Feminism in the Land Down Under
You'd better run, you'd better take cover... From suffrage to second-wave feminism, from Greer to Ford, from Vida Goldstein - the "darling" of the cause to Gillard's misogyny speech, meet Ellen van Neerven and hear how First Nation's women's roles were overlooked...
Shrews Untamed Episode 7: The Hustle An Episode Where Shrews Disagree
"Everybody's hustlin'"... not in the House of Shrew they're not. On Episode 7 of Shrews Untamed, it was Jen in the Anti-Hustle corner, and Jay defending the Hustle. To be fair, the results of our small scale polling were enough to tell Jay she was the one with the...
Read me in Eureka Street: The Girls Are Exaggerating
How Australia’s ‘good bloke’ narrative silences women across generations.
I spent the first six or seven years of my life spellbound by my mum’s stories of her childhood in Far North Queensland. Herstory came from warm, outback and subtropical places. She and her sisters wrote on slates at school, played in custard apple trees, kept their own bees…
The girls are exaggerating, Peter said on the last day he beat his wife.