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Author: Ellena Savage

  • MEDIA

    Bewailing Wikipedia's white male bias

    • Ellena Savage
    • 13 April 2012
    17 Comments

    Nearly 90 per cent of Wikipedia's editors are men, the majority in their 20s. This is not Wikipedia's fault: it exists in a world that is already weighted towards the white male experience. The murder in Florida of African-American teen Trayvon Martin has catalysed criticism of the effects of white male privilege.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Iraq's sexual cleansing

    • Ellena Savage
    • 16 March 2012

    In high school, I'd hack my hair into asymmetrical experiments, dye it impossible colours, and layer myself with kitsch op-shop garments. I was another precocious teenager who wore her individuality on the outside. Right now in Iraq, teenagers like I was are being murdered as 'homosexuals'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Feminism in Bougainville

    • Ellena Savage
    • 22 February 2012
    3 Comments

    'Women in Bougainville have no choice but to be political,' I was told by a community leader. From housekeepers to businesswomen, they all seem to be pretty fierce feminists. Even random women I meet at cafes and pubs tell me about the work women do in their communities.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The hell of hoarding

    • Ellena Savage
    • 20 January 2012
    3 Comments

    Inside an old case of art supplies I'd lugged in and out of three houses but rarely opened, I found a plastic bag with something like a dead rat in it. It was not an animal however but a full head of my own hair from the time I shaved my head. There is internal logic to hoarding, but it has its perils.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Death by a thousand yuppies

    • Ellena Savage
    • 25 November 2011
    2 Comments

    Pubs with boutique beer are creeping their way north. Day-old bread at the café where the yummy mummies drink lattes is $4. Gentrification. The cycle of life. I want to save my heartland from this fate, but I should first register my own complicity. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian larrikinism is a royal myth

    • Ellena Savage
    • 28 October 2011
    22 Comments

    The fact the Queen is a very nice lady doesn't negate her inherited privilege, her arbitrary powers, and the fact her reign isolates many Australians. There is a myth that Australia is a larrikin nation. But we are a nation not of provocateurs, but of conformists.

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  • MEDIA

    'Perverted' Sharia slaps artistic freedom

    • Ellena Savage
    • 14 October 2011
    3 Comments

    Marzieh Vafamehr, the Iranian actor awaiting corporal punishment in Iran for acting in a subversive Australian film, is the victim of a legal system that has abandoned any pretence to public interest. I'm drawn to this case as I, too, am a young woman forging my own way in the arts.

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  • MEDIA

    Sex discrimination by the book

    • Ellena Savage
    • 16 September 2011
    4 Comments

    Women are prevalent among book buyers, editors and writers, yet largely absent from major literary pages and prizes. The Stella Prize, Australia's proposed new women's-only literary prize, is best viewed not as 'affirmative action' but as social mobility with a feminist face.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Alice Springs drinking stories

    • Ellena Savage
    • 19 August 2011
    3 Comments

    On my last night in Alice, we went to the pub, and drank and danced with some locals. Patricia, for whom English was a fourth language, had moved to Alice to be with her husband. Her manner of speech was beautiful. When she invited us to her table, she said, 'Come, I'll tell you a story.'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gender more than anatomy

    • Ellena Savage
    • 22 July 2011
    3 Comments

    The Census won't recognise the fact that some people in Australia don't identify as either female or male, and that such people have specific needs. One advocacy group is urging intersex people to list their religion as 'Intersex' in order that their gender is recognised.

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  • MEDIA

    The black face of fashion

    • Ellena Savage
    • 24 June 2011
    5 Comments

    Sao Paulo Fashion Week has come under criticism for its absence of non-European models. But the absence of non-white faces is a near universal standard in high fashion. If fashion wishes to be considered a legitimate art form, it must interpret and transform the world it reflects upon.

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  • MEDIA

    Politics of Slutwalk

    • Ellena Savage
    • 27 May 2011
    9 Comments

    Slutwalk is an international feminist movement in response to victim-blaming in cases of sexual violence. Detractors argue that supporters are mistaking their sexual subjugation for liberation. That assumption entirely misses the point.

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