Laws that silence victims of DV and SA in Queensland

Posted in Human Rights by tjwithersauthor

The incredible Grace Tame recently did an interview on the podcast The Imperfects, and it reminded me all over again that we need to keep talking about this. Thank you, Grace!

It may be 2024, but in Australia, most states and territories still do not allow victim-survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence to speak the truth.

Vulnerable people are silenced by the very legal system that claims it wants to protect us.

The legal system disproportionately favours the person with more money and power. That usually means abusers, who:

Have often spent years controlling or withholding household finances
Typically earn more thanks to the gender pay gap that still exists in Australia
Have the power of a respected position in the community, or
Are confident that their victim is not legally allowed to speak up about what they did.

With pro bono legal services and DFV support services across the state already stretched beyond capacity, vulnerable women, non-binary people, trans people, and children, are being left to fend entirely for themselves.

The current legal system in Queensland perpetuates abuse. Because it’s easier for an abuser to control a person when they know that person cannot “out” their abuser.

Read on to find out what laws we need to change.

photo shows author TJ Withers at the Brisbane March against domestic violence in April 2024, holding a sign that says Queensland laws silence victims.

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11Sep2024

Mum jailed for not picking up the phone, and other weird ones from the Family Court of Australia

Posted in Human Rights by tjwithersauthor

In my research into Australia’s domestic violence epidemic, I’ve found an endless list of cases in Australia where parenting orders have been used as a blunt instrument to punish mums who were trying to keep their children safe from domestic violence and other crimes.

Apologies that the language about the parents in this post is mostly gendered (“mum”, “dad”, etc.). I could have said “parent A / parent B”, but instead, I’ve used gendered language based on how the parents were talked about in the court judgements because I don’t know these people’s preferred pronouns.

So let’s talk about why in Queensland, the Family Court of Australia and the Magistrates Courts, mums get slammed for doing the very thing mums are known for: protecting their babies.

This is not legal advice; I am not a lawyer. I am publishing this as a concerned citizen and an advocate for DFV victim-survivors.

And please ignore any typos; I was typing out this post on my phone this morning when I couldn’t sleep. #3amthoughts am I right? 😅

Let’s get into it.

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9Jul2024

Free Lesson Plan: Unpacking the patriarchy in context (Year 10 English)

Posted in Book Reviews, Human Rights, Teaching tips by tjwithersauthor

This is a lesson plan I wrote in 2024, to align with the F-10 Australian Curriculum for an English class. I wrote the plan for one of my university assessments, so I’ve put the research receipts down the bottom of the page if you want to look closer into the background information.

I’m just a student teacher studying my Master of Education, so please feel free to provide kind, specific feedback. 😎

How to use this lesson plan: I designed this with multiple parts that you can mix and match if you want to run a single lesson … or you can run all parts over a few classes or a double period.

Duration (mins): 70 minutes per class, designed for 2 class sessions or a double period.

Resources needed:

PPT and projector
Downloaded video clips (for when the WiFi fails us)

Before we get into the lesson plan, though, I just want to clarify one very important question…

Why learn about the patriarchy in English class?

Understanding how the patriarchy perpetuates domestic and family violence (DFV) in Australia is a key part of being an active and informed citizen in 2024. Students are learning empathy as part of the personal and social capability general capability (GC) in the Australian curriculum, and we know that students can build empathy and advocate for others by learning about past and present human rights violations. And because adolescent students are often having their first romantic and sexual experiences, talking about the red flags of abusive relationships helps to protect them from harm.

In a future post, I plan to show you a lesson plan for a Year 10 Psychology class, about how harmful messages in patriarchal societies have affected most people’s implicit biases. Learning to spot our own implicit biases is one of the easiest places to start when learning self-awareness and learning to create psychological safety in our society.

Content for today’s lesson

This lesson focuses on spotting and analysing literary devices and understanding how audiences view a text differently depending on their social and political context. We’ll look at the song Labour by Paris Paloma, which I love as a teaching tool for two reasons.

image shows thumbnail from YouTube video for the official music video of the song Labour by Paris Paloma, posted March 2023.

See YouTube for the official music videos for
labour and cacophony (labour)
by Paris Paloma

First, many students already know this song because it went viral on Tiktok (and then on the rest of social media). So they’re familiar with some of the lyrics, making more brain space available to do the “thinking” analysis tasks of this lesson.

Secondly, it’s often easier to spot literary devices in poetry texts than in prose like articles or novels, and song lyrics are a highly-effective form of poetry. So teaching Labour as a poetry text means again, students can put more energy towards learning or remembering the content.

If you’re an education student like me, this reasoning provides evidence of you meeting Australian Professional Standards of Teaching (APST) number 2: knowing the content and how to teach it.

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16May2024

Bumble’s bumble: Worst Advertising Campaign of 2024 Award

Posted in Advertising, Human Rights by tjwithersauthor

The second I saw this ad campaign by Bumble, I immediately uninstalled the app (I never use it anyway) and submitted a 1-star rating everywhere I could, and so did thousands of others.

Here’s why.

Note: This article refers to “women and other genders” and to “non-men” in an attempt to represent the reality of as many people as possible. Anytime I’ve written “women”, “trans women”, “trans men”, or “non-binary people”, know that I’m trying to remind people of a gender fluid spectrum, rather than trying to call out specific genders.