The simple suggestion that gays and lesbians be protected from acts of genocide has provoked a hate-filled diatribe from the rightwing mob who run the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL). In its submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee inquiry into the 1999 Anti-Genocide Bill, the RSL portrayed homosexuals as a threat… Read more »
Radical Women
Elián González Brotóns: 6-Year-Old Hostage of Yankee Imperialism
December 5, 1999 — news from Miami: Elián González Brotóns, a young shipwreck survivor from Cuba, blew out the candles of his birthday cake. He had just turned six. With his mother, the “little Cuban refugee” had set out for the Land of the Free. She drowned. Elián was saved by the U.S. Coast Guard… Read more »
Mobilise Now Against Backward Laws: Equal Access to Reproductive Technology
The patriarchal nuclear family may have disappeared from most households, but it’s alive and kicking in Victoria’s fertility laws. In August last year, a lesbian police officer was charged with using an in vitro fertility (IVF) treatment. According to the Victorian Infertility Treatment Act (ITA), only married or heterosexual defacto couples can legally access IVF… Read more »
Welcome the New Century: Meet Revolutionary Women Leaders From Cuba!
Going to Cuba, as I did in 1997, is absolutely eye-opening. One day I was packaging bread for Buttercup; the next, I was landing at Havana’s international airport where murals said: “We believe in the Revolution. We believe in Socialism.” Stepping from Howard’s Australia into a workers’ state is a breathtaking experience. I was among… Read more »
Sexism and Racism — Linked by a Common Source
For Radical Women, art is as political as life. It can be a tool for change, as powerful as our struggles for a better world. Karen Brodine, acclaimed socialist feminist poet and Radical Women leader who died in 1987 from breast cancer, once said this about women artists she looked to for strength and insight:… Read more »
Defend Indigenous Sovereignty without conditions! Global sisters debate Makah whale hunt
One morning in early June, as I was checking email messages, I found several postings on an international feminist list with the subject title, “Radical Women and Freedom Socialist Party support Makah Tribe whaling!!” The exclamation marks alerted me to the possibility of controversy. The first whale hunt in 70 years by the Makah of… Read more »
Spirited Memorial Celebrates the Life of Clara Fraser – Irrepressible Radical Innovator
On Sunday May 24, people from wide-ranging political backgrounds joined in the Melbourne celebration of the extraordinary life of Marxist feminist trailblazer, Clara Fraser, who died of emphysema on February 24 at the age of 74.
Radical Women Statement to AZT Rally and Candle light Vigil
Melbourne, 3 March 1988 Radical Women is an international socialist feminist organisation comprised of women workers, students and welfare recipients of many races, both gay and straight, older and young. We are pleased to be represented here this evening and are delighted that we could help build this important rally. We demand that all people… Read more »
International Women’s Day: Ghetto Festival or Front Line of the Struggle for Women’s Liberation?
One is that we are all lesbians or a least celibate women who prefer to socialise mainly with other women. This has become a stumbling block to the movement. Instead of clear political demands about fighting the oppression of lesbians that we expect all who support women’s liberation to take up and fight for, we’ve got a bizarre combination of lesbian political invisibility but an underlying assumption that in our lifestyles we are all dykes. We’ve got to make IWD political; we have to address the issues of the day — those that people who aren’t at IWD are concerned about or fighting around.
A Tribute to Doctor Bertram Wainer – Courageous Fighter for Abortion Rights
This tribute to the work of Bertram Wainer, who died on 16 January, 1987, was presented to the 28 January 1987 meeting of Radical Women. It is only fitting that this Radical Women meeting pay tribute to Doctor Bertram Wainer, a courageous man, who died this month at the age of 58. Wainer’s name is… Read more »
