Since Clause 28 has become law it has meant that any positive lesbian or gay male programs that promoted lesbian and gay male relationships as a viable alternative have lost their funding. It has virtually outlawed the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by prohibiting discussion and distribution of information. This attack by the right wing is happening world-wide, not only in Britain. There is a strong push by the right wing to strengthen the image of the monogamous, heterosexual nuclear family as the only ‘acceptable’ and ‘proper’ relationship.
International
Clara Zetkin – Revolutionary Fighter for Women’s Liberation
Zetkin was a pioneer who paved the way for many fighters for women’s liberation who followed. She was a great leader of working class women. One of her greatest contributions was to successfully challenge the dangerous and incorrect notion that socialism and feminism and incompatible ideologies.
Fifty Years of the Fourth International: What future for World Trotskyism?
Political cancers ravage the Fourth International today… The FI majority’s refusal to settle accounts with the US SWP is objectively an acquiescence to Stalinism.
Two Hundred Years of Oppression Sparks Resistance – and an Unexpected Controversy
Millions have been spent by the government in its ongoing attempts to generate mass bicentennial enthusiasm but the January splash had petered out to a mere whimper before the year of “celebration” was even one third over. There is nothing for ordinary people to celebrate in 1988.
Footplate Classics
I am a lesbian feminist. Between 1979 and 1984 I worked as a locomotive assistant training to be a train driver for the Victorian Railways in Australia. At one time six women were training at South Dynon Loco and four women in country areas. Dianne Brown became qualified as a train driver in 1985. Unfortunately the other women left. The attitudes of many of the men working in the railways added to on the job pressure. I have put some of these attitudes into poetic form.
Women’s Health on the Cheap — Again: Inadequate Screening for Cervical Cancer
This is a summary of a talk presented at a meeting of Melbourne Radical Women held on 9 March 1988. Evelyn is a socialist feminist and lesbian activist. Women’s health… Read more »
‘Equal Opportunity’ in 1988 – A Balance Sheet
The limitations of seeking employment equality within the existing structures are clear. Equal opportunity programs only provide the option for some to get nearer to the top of an unequal system. We need to defend and extend such reforms by using them as tools to protect existing rights and gains. But reforms cannot finally redress the inequitable position of women and other oppressed groups in the labour market, let alone society as a whole.
Labor’s “Graduate Tax”: Will It Make The Rich Pay?
The proposed graduate tax will see students paying between $4,500 – $18,000 for courses. But the graduate tax will hit ex-students on lower incomes much more heavily because it is a regressive tax. All students, rich or poor, will have to pay back the same. The total debt is not linked in any way to income but is based on a standard fee for the type of course undertaken.
Launching the Public Sector Fightback
We must all encourage and build the leadership of the most oppressed within the struggle. This task is all to clear in the public sector where, in many industries, women are a clear majority yet, almost without exception, we are, as a group, at the bottom of the heap.
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… Read more »
