THIS WEEK ONLINE – Babe Wake Up

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We're so back. Took a two week hiatus so Ari could go to New York City... if anyone even cares...

• ABORTION W
• Babe wake up, new sexually transmitted gastro superbug just dropped
• "Slowly we’ll see a shift into the Gold Coast having taste.”
• Big gigantic good read of the week
• Who is xmunashe?
• Photos of Samoa’s Fa’afafine community that reshape coloniser art

Abortion pills will become more accessible in Australia under a new TGA framework that lifts restrictions on who can prescribe and dispense them. As Aleks Bliszczyk writes for VICE AU, doctors and nurses who prescribe the pregnancy termination pill – known as MS-2 Step mifepristone – and the chemists dispensing the medicine, will no longer need to receive extra certification. The TGA will also remove the requirement for GPs to undertake mandatory training and special registration every three years.

Under the new framework, the abortion pill will become just as accessible as any prescription medicine. 

This is a major step forward. Just because abortions are legal, it does not mean they are accessible: only one in ten doctors prescribe the abortion pill, and three in ten chemists carry it, meaning only about 30% of people who may need local access to abortion care are able to receive it. In remote areas, it’s worse, with only half able to access local treatment.

[ here ]

Rising cases of a new sexually transmitted gastro superbug have forced a Victorian health warning from the outgoing health minister, Brett Sutton, about a high risk of sexually-transmitted, antibiotic-resistant shigella bacteria infections, also known as shigellosis. Shigellosis is a bowel infection and can lead to acute diarrhoea, fever, nausea, vomiting and abdominal cramps.

It is highly contagious and can be transmitted through sexual contact.

“Symptoms usually develop one to three days following exposure but can occur as early as 12 hours to as late as one week afterwards in some cases,” Sutton’s alert warned.

The alert includes that many of the antibiotic-resistant Victorian cases have been identified among men who have had recent sexual contact with other men, while others involved returned travellers.

[ here ]

From a few weeks back but I thought I’d flag it for your interest. The Gold Coast, home of the Official White Australian Stereotype, soundtracked by cheesy top 40 bangers at grotty clubs where wet pussy shots, pingers and jagerbombs reign supreme, has found techno. The Sunshine State is finally catching up with Melbourne and Sydney in the 90s, and is now home to a baby rave scene. As evidenced in the big cities oh so many years ago, all it takes to start a revolution is one inspired kid. 

Enjoy these photos from the Goldy’s burgeoning underground rave scene. Go Queensland!

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When VICE AU’s Julie Fenwick met xmunashe, the Perth-born 22-year-old musician who’d seemingly appeared out of nowhere a month ago, she didn’t get his full name. “Just xmunashe,” he said. 

Preparing for a gig in a loft-like space above a Redfern bar, cluttered with leather couches and musical instruments, xmunashe said he only really started making music when he moved to Sydney. 

“I feel like you don’t get the opportunities [in Perth], because they’re very slim compared to the things you can do here… But Perth’s crazy. I think it’s kind of a good thing that they don’t have all of the industry bullshit that comes with that because you can do your own thing.”

And xmunashe’s own thing is exhilaratingly unique. Most of his performances are improvised, a product of fine-tuned synchrony he curates with his band – communication is through eye contact and an innate ear. He sings about his life, philosophy, family… rather than money and bitches.

“I don’t have enough money and bitches,” he laughs.

[ here ]

PHOTOS OF SAMOA'S FA'AFAFINE COMMUNITY THAT RESHAPE COLONISER ART

When Paul Gaugin travelled to Tahiti in the late 1800s, he was in search of a “primitive society”. His idealised portraits of the girls, fauna and flora there became his most famous works, but survive today as exemplary of coloniser fantasies, neglecting the truth and lived experiences of the Indigenous people of the pacific islands. Samoan, Japanese artist, Yuki Kihara’s latest exhibition, Paradise Camp, deconstructs Gaugin’s gender-binary, voyeuristic portraits. Reinterpreting Gaugin’s works through photography, Kihara replaces his caricatures with Fa'afafine – the third gender of Samoa – interweaving interrogations of climate change and the gender essentialism leftover from colonisation that plague the Pacific Islands today.

Kihara’s exhibition is currently showing at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. Go!

[ here ]

Dive headfirst into the paradisal panopticon of Barbieland with Willa Paskin, who interviewed Greta Gerwig on the upcoming film of the year whose name needs no mention. Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ Dream Job is an interesting evaluation of Mattel’s biggest IP – the endeavour which has spewed hot pink, buxom blonde, blue-eyed mania all over every possible aspect of society; that too shall launch a thousand franchise ships. 

The movie is the paradox of Barbie – the doll who had a hundred careers and never needed children, who became the enemy of feminism; the perfect woman who, if she were a real woman, “would have to crawl on all fours, weighed down by her massive mammaries”.

The real paradox is how Greta Gerwig can say she is “subverting the thing while doing the thing” – if the thing is to sell dolls and it’s working even before the film’s release, unfortunately that “subversion” must be, just like Barbieland, all pretend.

[ here ]

the internet is a beautiful place. that brings people together all over the world.

everyone stfu! mother speaks.

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