Sunday Pass

‘When you talk about a lack of “insert minority” into “insert any industry”, what you’re also saying is that you’re not willing to support the people who are actually there.’

Aminatou Sow is a writer and cultural commentator. She co-hosts with Ann Friedman the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, which tackles the intricacies of feminism, pop culture and politics. Together she and Friedman coined the term ‘Shine Theory’, a practice of mutual investment committed to collaborating with rather than competing against other people –especially other women. She is a member of the Sundance Institute Director's Advisory Group and previously led Social Impact Marketing at Google. Sow is also the founder of Tech LadyMafia, a group that increases opportunities for women in tech. She was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Tech.

‘The absolute strength and pride of who I am today comes from these strong and resilient arweet murni-gurrk (old wise women).’

Caroline Martin is a direct descendant of the Briggs family and Custodian of Boonwurrung Country. She has worked in management and senior policy across arts, culture and tourism. A former Manager of Bunjilaka Culture Centre at Melbourne Museum, Caroline is currently the Creative Director of YIRRAMBOI First Nations Festival and is the founder of Yalukit Marnang, a cultural strengthening and development consultancy business. She is currently working on Bagurrk, a production that gives voice to the strength and resilience of Boonwurrung Matriarchal Ancestor Louisa Briggs.

'Whilst I’m aware that #notallfeminists are anti-sex work, there’s a pretty gaping chasm between "not being against" and being an ally.'

Gala Vanting is a writer, sex worker advocate living and working as a migrant settler on Gadigal land. Her work weaves through the brothel, the boardroom, screen, stage, and page, public health and sex education. She aims to create compassionate and justice-driven dialogue about gender and power, sexuality, technology, media and culture, and is a passionate advocate for the human rights of sex workers.

PLAYLIST

Books

• Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac and Molly Smith (Verso)
• Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown (AK Press)
• Decolonizing Solidarity by Clare Land (Zed Books)
• Playing the Whore by Melissa Gira Grant (Verso)
• Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin (Brow Books)

Podcasts

• The Heart
• How to Survive the End of the World
• Healing Justice
• The Oldest Profession
• Meat
• Silent Waves

Music

• Kelsey Lu
• Sampa the Great
• Foxtrott
• Young Fathers
• Moses Sumney

‘The freedom I want is located in a world where we wouldn’t need to love women, or even monitor our feelings about women as meaningful – in which we wouldn’t need to parse the contours of female worth and liberation by paying meticulous personal attention to any of this at all.’

Jia Tolentino explores the intersections of feminism, the internet and pop culture in startlingly original ways. Her first book, Trick Mirror, a collection of essays, is a New York Times bestseller and has earned her comparisons to Joan Didion. She was recently described by Rebecca Solnit as ‘the best young essayist at work in the US’. A staff writer at the New Yorker, she was previously a contributing editor at The Hairpin and deputy editor at Jezebel. She also served in Kyrgyzstan in the Peace Corps. 

‘The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.’

No voice coming out of the Arab Spring was as urgent and essential as Mona Eltahawy’s. Her new book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, is an incendiary call to arms from a journalist defined by her wit and her power. She is also the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution and is a contributor to the New York Times opinion pages. Her commentaries have appeared in several other publications and she is a regular guest analyst on various television and radio shows.

'Sometimes they’ll say, "I went through this, but it’s nothing like what you went through." But I tell them that, if I drown in 60ft of water and you drown in 30ft, we both still drowned.'

Monica Lewinsky is a social activist, global public speaker, consultant and Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair. She advocates for a safer social media environment and addresses such topics as digital resilience, privacy, cultivating compassion, overcoming shame and equality for women. She was recently named as a producer on the upcoming season of American Crime Story.

‘Most cities are gender-blind and disregard women’s experiences. Engaging with the stories of women and girls is crucial for making cities safer.’

Nicole Kalms is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design and founding director of the XYX Lab at Monash University. Examining the nexus of gender, urban spaces and advocacy, the XYX Lab brings together planners, policy-makers, local government and stakeholders to make tangible the experiences of underrepresented communities. In her role, Kalms is leading two significant research projects: ‘Urban Exposure: Interactively Mapping the Systems of Sexual Violence in Cities’; and ‘Understanding the Spaces of Sexual Harassment in Public Transport’. Kalms is the author of Hypersexual City: The Provocation of Soft-Core Urbanism.

Santilla Chingaipe is a filmmaker, historian and author, whose work explores settler colonialism, slavery, and post-colonial migration in Australia. Chingaipe’s first book of non-fiction detailing the untold stories of convicts of ...

Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela: A biography of survival. She is a South African writer whose work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. She has written for a range of international publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Newsweek and Al Jazeera. Msimang is the curator of the literature and ideas program at Perth Festival.

Sophie Black is a writer, journalist and Crikey’s editor-in-chief. She has worked in senior management across cultural and media organisations, and has written for outlets such as The Guardian and The Monthly. As the Wheeler ...

‘Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life. I was, like many young women, expected to be small so that boys could expand and white girls could shine. When I would not or could not shrink, people made sure that I knew I had erred.’

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an award-winning Associate Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty affiliate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Her work has been recognised nationally and internationally for the urgency and depth of her incisive critical analysis of technology, higher education, class, race and gender. Her most recent book, THICK: And Other Essays, is a critically acclaimed Amazon bestseller that situates Black women’s intellectual tradition at its centre. THICK won the 2019 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and is a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in nonfiction. Along with Roxane Gay, she is the co-host of Hear To Slay, providing listeners with incisive reads on politics and popular culture: a self-styled ‘black feminist podcast of your dreams’.