Lilith: A Feminist History Journal is published by ANU Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 2600, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is available online at press.anu.edu.au ISSN 2652-8436 (online) This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press Cover photograph: Studio portrait of a Japanese woman wearing a kimono in Mareeba, Queensland, Australia. Photographed by Harriet Pettifore Brims, date unknown. Image courtesy of the State Library of Queensland. © 2022 ANU Press About Lilith Lilith: A Feminist History Journal is the journal of the Australian Women’s History Network (AWHN). First published in Melbourne in 1984, Lilith is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles in all areas of women’s, feminist and gender history. It is a valuable forum for both new and established scholars. The journal is produced by a collective of postgraduates and early career researchers, along with a distinguished Editorial Advisory Board of leading scholars in the field; it is distributed to subscribers via the AWHN. New collective members are always welcome. Please contact Lilith if you are interested in being part of the team. Editorial Collective Bridget Andresen (University of Queensland) Rachel Caines (University of Adelaide) Emma Carson (University of Adelaide Brydie Kosmina (University of Adelaide) Saskia Roberts (The Australian National University) Lauren Samuelsson (University of Wollongong) Michelle Staff (The Australian National University) Editorial Advisory Board Dr Jane Carey (University of Wollongong) Dr Sharon Crozier-De Rosa (University of Wollongong) Prof. Ann Curthoys (University of Western Australia) Prof. Joy Damousi (University of Melbourne) Assoc. Prof. Lisa Featherstone (University of Queensland) Prof. Patricia Grimshaw (University of Melbourne) Prof. Victoria Haskins (University of Newcastle) Dr Catherine Kevin (Flinders University) Prof. Marilyn Lake (University of Melbourne) Prof. Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong) Prof. Penny Russell (University of Sydney) Dr Zora Simic (University of New South Wales) Prof. Christina Twomey (Monash University) Prof. Angela Woollacott (The Australian National University) AUSWHN Journal Manager Dr Alana Piper (University of Technology Sydney) Alison Downham Moore (Western Sydney University) Submissions Submissions are due in November each year. Lilith only publishes articles that constitute an original piece of research. Thus it only accepts articles that are not under review by other journals, and that are substantially different from other published work. All articles are peer reviewed, and only articles that pass the review process are published. Lilith will also consider publishing short non-refereed book reviews and discussion essays. Submission guidelines are available at the Lilith website. Access The journal is only available electronically. All back issues are available via the Lilith website. LILITH: A FEMINIST HISTORY JOURNAL NUMBER 28, 2022 Contents Editorial The Problem with ‘Post-’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Brydie Kosmina, Rachel Caines and Saskia Roberts Articles A Soldier and a Woman: (Re)Negotiating Gender in Female Narratives of Civil Conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Francesca Baldwin Sex, Soap and Silk: Japanese Businesswomen in North Queensland, 1887–1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Tianna Killoran Relational Autonomy: Addressing the Vulnerabilities of Women in a Global Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Petra Brown and Tamara Kayali Browne Vegetarians, Vivisection and Violationism: Gender and the Non-Human Animal in Anna Kingsford’s Life and Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Ruby Ekkel Essays: What does it mean to do feminism in 2022? Activism and Erasure, Preservation and Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Sharon Crozier-De Rosa The Work of Feminist History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Ann Curthoys Reproductive Rights Denied and Delayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Catherine Kevin Pandemic Pandora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Ann McGrath The Power of Memory for Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Janet Ramsay Feminism beyond the Binary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Yves Rees Stitching Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Madeleine C . Seys Solidarity and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137 Jordana Silverstein Depp v. Heard: A Feminist Mea Culpa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Zora Simic Reviews Australian Historical Association Conference 2022: ‘Urgent Histories’ . . . 147 Bridget Andresen Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Emma Carson Sound Citizens: Australian Women Broadcasters Claim Their Voice, 1923–1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 Belinda Eslick Vera Deakin and the Red Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Nicola Ritchie My Body Keeps Your Secrets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Zoe Smith Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Jessica Urwin Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 EDITORIAL The Problem with ‘Post-’ Brydie Kosmina, Rachel Caines and Saskia Roberts What is the ‘new normal’? What does it mean to live in the world ‘post- Covid’? These are not new questions; they are questions that have been asked—sometimes hopefully, sometimes in mourning—since 11 March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic. In characterising Covid-19 as a global pandemic WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the following remarks: ‘Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It’s a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustifiable acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death’.1 Words, as Ghebreyesus’s statement signals, shape our orientation within the historical event. To use ‘pandemic’ (rather than, say, epidemic or public health emergency) instills particular moods, behaviours, and political, social and cultural responses. Over the past eight months, as this issue has come together, the language around Covid-19 has shifted. We are now ostensibly living in a ‘post-Covid’ world despite case numbers placing pressure on healthcare systems, numbers of fatalities continuing to climb, the emergence of new variants and the social, economic and political impacts of the pandemic being far from over. Compounding this sense of being ‘after’ Covid is the political rhetoric around the pandemic: Australia’s political leadership in 2022 has presented a narrative of Covid-19 that lives ‘in the past tense’.2 In this context, we highlight Ghebreyesus’s words from what seems like a long time ago at the outset of this issue for several reasons. First, because the questions of living in a ‘post-Covid’ world are ongoing, and will continue for many years to come, and historians— particularly feminist historians—must address these questions. Secondly, 1 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, ‘WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19–11 March 2020’, World Health Organization, 11 March 2020, who.int/ director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on- covid-19---11-march-2020. 2 Michael Toole and Brendan Crabb, ‘Australia’s response to COVID in the first two years was one of the best in the world. Why do we rank so poorly now?’ Conversation, 28 July 2022, theconversation. com/australias-response-to-covid-in-the-first-2-years-was-one-of-the-best-in-the-world-why-do-we- rank-so-poorly-now-187606. 3 Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, Number 28 because the ubiquity of the conversation of what the ‘post-Covid’ world will look like evokes long discussions from scholars about the prefix ‘post-’ in political rhetoric. To describe something as being ‘post-’ implies that ‘we’ (a pronoun that brings with it its own questions and uncertainties) have moved past the originating events. But, as has been evidenced over and over again, rarely is this the case. Much like Ghebreyesus’s caution around the term ‘pandemic’, the prefix ‘post-’ is not to be used lightly or carelessly. Decolonial and anti-racist scholars have demonstrated that the application of ‘post-’ to ‘colonialism’ has the potential to offer the comfortable lie to the coloniser that colonialism is finished, a product of the past, something that has been moved beyond and nullified (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has even said in interviews, ‘I find the word postcolonialism just totally bogus’).3 This is particularly urgent for researchers in so-called Australia, where the academy and the university as institutions are built on unceded Aboriginal land; to claim to be ‘post’ colonisation implies that these structures of domination and power have ended when that is anything but the case. Feminist researchers in fact need to be more attentive to the ‘colonial project of gender’, to use Professor Sandy O’Sullivan’s phrase, wherein binary gender norms are instituted as an ongoing feature of the colonial project.4 Postfeminist sensibilities offer a similar avenue through which (some) feminist ideas are imbricated into mainstream culture and simultaneously critiqued, rejected and/or commodified.5 What the ‘post-’ signifies is not, as sometimes seems more comfortable to the privileged and powerful, the quiet acceptance of living ‘after the problem’ but is, in fact, being in the problem itself. To live in the ‘post-Covid’ world is to live in the Covid world. This issue, despite the varied nature of the scholarship and reflections contained within, is a product of the Covid world. 3 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Robert Young, ‘Neocolonialism and the secret agent of knowledge’, Oxford Literary Review 13, no. 1/2 (1991): 224. 4 Sandy O’Sullivan, ‘The colonial project of gender (and everything else)’, Genealogy 5, no. 67 (2021): 1–9. Professor O’Sullivan also spoke on this in their keynote speech, ‘No cession: Rendering the colonial project of gender’ at the September 2021 Lilith symposium, Gender in Catastrophic Times. 5 Rosalind Gill, ‘Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2007): 162–63. This understanding of postfeminism has also been nuanced and given regional, historical and cultural context in Margaret Henderson and Anthea Taylor’s recent book Postfeminism in Context: Women, Australian Popular Culture, and the Unsettling of Postfeminism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020). 4