Bøker utgitt av Spinifex Press

Around the world, people looked to the skies to tell them when to sow and harvest their crops, and when the rains would come. The sailing stars, have guided explorers and endless migrations of people. In Old Europe, among the Ainu of Japan and in Indigenous Australia the Pleiades were associated with water and birds. They become Oceanids, Ice Maidens, Water Girls and the Subaru. The Parthenon in Athens, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and the Mayan Temple of the Sun in Cuzco, are all said to be aligned with the Pleiades. The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades will amaze and awe you, and above all will remind you that all of humanity shares the night skies.

Drawing on Marxist and feminist analyses, Ekis Ekman argues that the Self must be split from the body to make it possible to sell your body without selling yourself. The body becomes sex. Sex becomes a service. The story of the sex worker says: the Split Self is not only possible, it is the ideal.

The concept of gender is central to a vaguely progressive-looking set of ideas based on the maxim that people possess a so-called ' gender identity' . The real problem arises when this nebulous concept, bandied about with different and even incompatible meanings by different groups, is used as a prop to introduce policies that mark a huge setback for the rights of women and girls. The general public, watching the controversy from the sidelines, is confused by conflicting claims about whose rights are being infringed. In this incisive book, Laura Lecuona sets the record straight by reviewing the origin of the current uses of the key term gender and exploring the main theories of transgenderism. She discusses what lies behind the claims about pronoun usage and warns about the consequences of promoting the recognition of so-called transgender children. She points out the collateral damage arising from this activism, from the perpetuation of sexist roles to limitations on freedom of speech. She dares to confront the accusations of transphobia that inhibit those who this ideology and shows the devastating effects transactivism is having on women, both socially and politically.

What do you do when you fall in love with your next-door neighbour? You peer at each other through a hole in the fence and eventually climb over. Sybil is a member of The Good-Hearted Gardeners, a Society for Well-Meaning Efforts for the Betterment of Language and the Salvation of the Planet, which her lover, Demo, is allowed to join. It's funded by MI5, who ask them to monetise and weaponise the English language. Soon afterwards they discover that English is even more widespread than anyone had thought. Even the birds and the fish, the cows and the kangaroos can speak it - when they choose. The Good-Hearted Gardeners set about trying to talk to anyone - crows, magpies, robins, goldfish, cows, horses, rats, mice - who will talk to them. With climate change and technology gone mad, what's in store is a frightening scenario that threatens everyone - humans, animals, plants. Can the headlong rush to extinction be halted? When the birds, and the cows and the horses and the mice and all the rest come together, much is made possible. But at what cost? Will the planet and its inhabitants be saved? A comedic allegory for our future.

This book is a radical critique of gender ideology and transhuman design. Silvia Guerini shows how the TQ+ rights agenda is being pushed by eugenicist capitalist technocrats at the top of Big Business, Big Philanthropy, Big Tech and Big Pharma companies. She argues that dissociation from our sexed bodies leads to dissociation from reality, with the human body transformed into a permanent construction site besieged by synthetic and artificial interventions. Erasure of the material dimension of bodies and sexual difference is an erasure of women. She explains how fundamental struggles such as the fight against genetic engineering and the fight against artificial reproduction can only advance in conjunction with an opposition to gender ideology. By linking ' gender identity' to the genetic modification of bodies, she warns that humanity itself is at risk of becoming a synthetic life form with synthetic emotions within a virtual, fluid, deconstructed metaverse. Today, being revolutionary means preserving everything that makes us human. It means defending the living world and nature as entities to be respected, not as parts that can be broken down and redesigned in a laboratory world.

All I've ever wanted is the deep sense of belonging associated with knowing and being connected with who and where I've come from. Penny Zagarelou-Mackieson always knew she was adopted. But she didn't know she was swapped at birth. After a lifetime grappling with issues of identity and belonging, outlined in her earlier book Adoption Deception, Penny discovered that her natural mother, according to her adoption records, is genetically unrelated to her. Penny's family reunion of two decades was based on falsehoods. Her ancestry is Greek, not Celtic-Anglo as she was led to believe. So begins Penny's new quest to learn about her origins. She confronts a shocking legacy of babies misidentified in the heyday of Australia's forced and closed adoptions and appalling medical record-keeping - meaning many adoptees may never know their true origins. Penny's quest leads her to court seeking legal recognition of her true identity, involving her ' de-adoption' - termination of the Adoption Order imposed on her in infancy. This remarkable story of one woman's determination to uncover the truth and restore her dignity reveals human rights violations inherent in adoption. Penny questions continuing laws and practices that cement stigmatising secrecy and harm adopted people, arguing for wide-reaching reforms. We share Penny's rollercoaster of emotions as facts are revealed, court orders made, records sought and corrected, and travel planned and thwarted. We see Penny persist in the face of numerous hurdles and learn about those who help her. This inspiring, heartfelt book is gripping to read and impossible to ignore. " it is neither logical nor fair that the natural identity and name of a child adopted in Victoria is legally cancelled and replaced with fictitious kin relationships years before they are in a position to make an informed choice about their preferred identity and the ramifications for their descendants."

'You ask too many questions, Matilda. It's not becoming in a girl.' But Matilda is full of questions. It's the late 1800s in rural New South Wales and Matilda, as the oldest daughter, is expected to cook, clean and help Mama with her brothers and sisters. But her inquiring mind will not be stilled nor her rebellious spirit tamed. When frustration overcomes her, she finds escape in the land she loves and in her imagination, nourished by books. In the rust red landscape, both striking and harsh, and against the backdrop of World Wars and a changing Australia, Matilda is torn by her desire for freedom and allegiance to her growing family. With their never-ending demands, and crises of poverty, drought and illness, what Matilda really wants seems further from her reach. Will she ever see the sea? Have a vocation and earn her own money? Have the time to read? This sweeping novel brings to life the injustices faced by women in the 1800s and 1900s. Punctuated with betrayal and loyalty, hope and despair, love and loss, Matilda and her family come alive showing how the grip of patriarchy tried to strangle the ambitions of women, but there were women who refused to give up.

Robin Morgan's latest collection is a tour-de force: poetry that thrills the intellect and stirs the emotions. Robin shares her joys and intimacies which take centre stage and laments 'the ringmaster's desertion' as death hovers in the wings and aging unfolds, 'while laughing at the pain / through the gridlocked traffic in my brain.' Light and shadow, sleep and wakefulness, holding tight and letting go, regret and contentment, order and chaos, battle it out simultaneously through the interplanetary and domestic worlds.

In the village where Chinongwa lives, her family, displaced from their lands, are very poor. One desperate solution to hunger is to trade young daughters into marriage. At first, to their shame, her father's and aunt's attempts to marry off their youngest child fail. No one is interested in this small, thin girl. Eventually, a childless woman, Amai Chitsva, offers Chinongwa as a second wife to her own husband who is old enough to be the girl's grandfather. Chinongwa is forced to grow up very fast and rely on her survival instincts. She does her best to do what is expected of her and become a good wife and mother, but being very young, very alone, and a girl, the odds are stacked against her. Eventually, after spending her whole life doing the bidding of others, all Chinongwa wants is her independence. But how can one gain such a thing as a woman? Will she ever truly be free?

Reading this book is like falling through a faultline, as we respond to poesis, both as poetry and as thought creation. Margaret Somerville attended the 1984 Pine Gap Women''s Peace Camp where urban women and Aboriginal women demonstrated against military bases. As she moved through the landscape of this and other very different places, she recorded her interactions: with Aboriginal women in the desert in the mountains and at home, and with white women in the tropics and at home. It is a thoughtful challenge of all that we think. She concludes with reflections on the architecture of love.

Finola Moorhead pulls no punches, her voice is extraordinarily fresh, direct and honest, she takes chances, she is often surreal, and always challenging in both her ideas and style. Tough and uncompromising, she writes out of the modern nitty gritty of Australian life. She stitches together essays, reviews and short stories that make an incisive comment on the process of writing.

Ann Hannah was an ordinary, no-nonsense, practical woman. While a constant and caring presence in the life of her granddaughter Betty McLellan, she remained emotionally distant. In an effort to understand her grandmother, Betty has used Ann Hannah's everyday expressions as a starting point to uncover the truth about her life. These words and phrases, heard countless times during Betty's childhood, are the clues to a life that, like those of many working-class women in the early 1900s, was fraught with challenges and difficulties and ignored by historians. What did Ann Hannah mean when she said that she was forced to migrate to Australia from England in the 1920s? Why did she remember her husband as a ‘wickid' man? How did she cope with the death of those close to her, including her own son? How did she manage to overcome the struggles and disappointments that punctuated her life? Written with a sharp feminist consciousness that displays both compassion and intellect, this astute psychological biography tells the story of a resilient woman who, when placed in circumstances beyond her control, managed to live a good life. It provides valuable insight into the lives of many (un)remarkable women whose lives may have gone unnoticed but whose experiences shed so much light on the realities faced by women throughout the 1900s.

One day there will be peace in Vietnam. But not before more war. Touched by the Lady of the Realm, Liên dreams of bones and bodies under the sea. The prescient warnings from the Lady weigh heavily on Liên, who is burdened by her inability to save everyone. But she knows that the Lady speaks most to those who listen. Set against the background of the Vietnam war and in its aftermath the rule by the Communist regime, in The Lady of the Realm, we follow Liên's path across many decades that are punctuated by endless war and suffering. Yet even in the most desperate of times, Liên refuses to be ruled by fear and anger and persists in her hope for a peaceful future. For some, it will be too late.

Is it the sun a hole sucking in a bird or Icarus about to singe the sun? Which composes which? The poet asks as she circumnavigates the globe, history, and an inner universe. When it responds, there's the small shudder, the sprawl of a spin, or the quiet before and after a full circle. The eyes catch a black bird close to an eerie sun. Instantly, a poem: an accident of composition. Or a tree, rock, light from a story heard, dreamt, read or remembered returns as if it were the only tree, rock, light in the planet. The poet is caught, returned to her first heart: poetry. After four novels, Merlinda offers poems from the stillness of contemplation to the spinning of tales, then to passage across different histories. Glass becomes eternal greens underwater, fish gossip about colonisation, a gumnut turns dissident, and the dreams of Captain Cook and Pigafetta circumnavigate the globe leaving a trail of blood, beads, and the scent of cloves. But in between, the poet hopes: ‘there could be accidents / of kindness here.'

In Gardasil: Fast-Tracked and Flawed, the author argues that there is no evidence of how much cervical cancer the HPV vaccine will prevent. What is emerging, however, is evidence of its harmful effects. In the nine years since the experimental HPV vaccination program began, there have been 255 deaths worldwide and 43,000 adverse events. Gardasil was fast-tracked through the FDA, a process usually reserved for serious diseases where a new drug is required to fill an unmet and urgent medical need. Yet the incidence of cervical cancer had been markedly in decline due to Pap smear programs. This in-depth investigation of the approval of a vaccine exposes the cracks in the pharmaceutical industry and highlights the problems that arise when government regulators and corporate interests are prioritized ahead of patient safety and independent science.

Have you ever wondered how it might feel to have been adopted in Australia during the pre-1980s era in which vulnerable young mothers were coerced into relinquishing their babies? How it might feel to have grown up, become a social worker and worked with vulnerable children and families? How it might have felt to hear Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's moving speech in March 2013, which apologized to the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the unethical adoption policies and practices prior to the 1980s and vowed to ensure that such practices are never repeated? How it might have felt to hear the announcement made only nine months later by new Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who had given his party's support to the Gillard Apology, of his intention to expand and expedite intercountry adoptions by Australians? How could someone in such a position respond to the re-popularization and deregulation of adoption in Australia? This book provides answers to those difficult questions. Adoption Deception presents the personal and professional reflections of Penny Mackieson, an Australian adoptee and social worker, on issues associated with adoption – many of which are shared with donor conception and surrogacy. For anyone with an experience of or interest in adoption, whether personal or professional, who is open to perspectives other than those selectively portrayed by populist mainstream media, this book will provide invaluable insights.

I remember how you were, not how you are. We were we until we became you and I. Midori and Âu Cô are international university students tasting freedom from family for the first time. They discover Melbourne and each other. All is well until the tsunami that swamps their world... Midori and Âu Cô are international university students in Melbourne. They play at being silver dragons birthing pearls from their mouths. They are united by loneliness. Midori's parents are killed by the tsunami in Fukushima and soon after Midori and Âu Cô witness a university shooting. Midori ends up in a psychiatric hospital, not able to cope with the double blow.Âu Cô is courted by a Vietnamese-Australian boy (Dzung) who has also survived the shooting. Dzung is unaware of Midori and Âu Cô's relationship and pressured by his parents asks Au Co to marry him. Midori is silenced and unable to out herself and Âu Cô she understands too well the pressures of family. Âu Cô accepts since her own family wants to migrate to Australia. Midori absconds before the wedding to the Blue Mountains. She suicides close to the Three Sisters. Âu Cô is left to work through her guilt.

Middle-aged Poppy Sinclair enjoys an ordinary, quiet life with her partner on New Zealand's north coast when unexpected changes challenge her happiness in this evocative tale about the boundaries of friendship. This lesbian romance illustrates how turning 50 can be a time of reassessment, unpredictable adventures, and new relationships.

There are (at least) two competing views on prostitution: Prostitution as a legitimate and acceptable form of employment, freely chosen by women and Men's use of prostitution as a form of degrading the women and causing grave psychological damage. In The Idea of Prostitution Sheila Jeffreys explores these sharply contrasting views. She examines the changing concept of prostitution from White Slave Traffic of the nineteenth century to its present status as legal. The book includes discussion of the varieties of prostitution such as: the experience of male prostitutes; the uses of women in pornography; and the role of military brothels compared with slavery and rape in marriage. Sheila Jeffreys explodes the distinction between "e;forced"e; and "e;free"e;prostitution, and documents the expanding international traffic in women. The author examines the claims of the prostitutes' rights movement and the sex industry, while supporting prostituted women.

Sex dolls and robots in the female form function as an endorsement of mens sexual rights, with women and girls positioned as sexual objects. The production of these products further cements women's second class status. Lifelike, replica women and girls produced for mens sexual use, sex dolls and robots represent the literal objectification of women. They are marketed as companions, the means for men to create their 'ideal' woman, and as the perfect girlfriend that can be stored away after its use. Advocates claim the development of sex dolls and robots should be actively encouraged and will have many benefits but for who? SEX DOLLS, ROBOTS AND WOMAN HATING exposes the inherent misogyny in the trade in sex dolls and robots modelled on the bodies of women and girls for mens unlimited sexual use. From doll owners enacting violence and torture on their dolls, men choosing their dolls over their wives, dolls made in the likeness of specific women and the production of child sex abuse dolls, sex dolls and robots pose a serious threat to the status of women and girls.

Shattering the popular myth that porn is harmless, the personal accounts of 25 brave women in He Chose Porn over Me reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their porn-consuming partners - men who were supposed to care for them. This confronting but necessary book dares to tell the truth about pornography's destructive impact - about the men who habitually use it and the women and children who are mistreated and discarded as a result. The women in this book were collateral damage in their partner's insatiable greed for porn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy, respect, connection, love. Porn colonised their families, leaving women rejected and scarred. They were subjected to sexual terrorism in their own homes. The men, turbo-charged by pornography, were intoxicated by sexualised power. They didn't care if they lost everything including their partners. In this haunting expose, pornography is rightfully situated as an insidious tool of violence against women. The contributors, now working to re-build their lives, found a confidante in Melinda Tankard Reist who supported them in the sharing of their experiences in these pages, and to warn other women - don't date men who use porn ...

In the face of widespread discrimination against the disabled and a eugenic culture which pathologises disability and crushes diversity, comes a new book which radically challenges the status quo. Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics, tells the personal stories of women who have resisted medical eugenics - women who were told they shouldn't have babies because of perceived disability in themselves or because of some imperfection in the child. They have confronted the stigma of disability and in the face of silent disapproval and even open hostility, had their children anyway, in the belief that all life is valuable and that some are not more worthy of it than others.

In this blisteringly persuasive and piercingly intelligent book, Sheila Jeffreys argues that women live under penile imperialism, a regime in which men are assumed to have a sex right of access to the bodies of women and girls. She reasons that the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s unleashed an explicit male sexual liberation and that even now, under current laws and cultural mores, women do not have the right to self-determination in relation to their bodies. Sheila Jeffreys argues that the exercise of the male sex right has mainstreamed misogynist attitudes and so-called sexual freedom has meant the freedom of men to use women and children with impunity. The power dynamics of sex, rather than being eliminated, has been eroticised, supported by state regulations and structures that have further entrenched male domination. And while mens sexual fetishisms such as BDSM and transvestism have been normalised, women now have to fight as their spaces are being erased and their voices silenced in a faux inclusivity that has naturalised sexual harassment. Sheila Jeffreys contends that womens human rights are profoundly harmed and sexual violence is used more than ever to enforce social control of women. This is a sobering and brilliant analysis of the modern predicament of women that is impossible to ignore. There can be no liberation of women without a complete transformation of the way that male sexuality is constructed. Whilst the eroticising of womens subordination remains the basis of what is seen as sex, women cannot escape coercion in the bedroom, sexual harassment on the streets and at work, and the requirement to service mens excitements in the way they dress and behave.