This performative annual bullshit routinely finds me furious. Cupcakes and coffee while we politely discuss genocide in couched careful terms? Overpriced brunch in sunny AC while the world dies around us? Pretty empty speeches that change absolutely nothing from politicians committed only to re-election as femicide and domestic violence stats continue to rachet unchecked as we lose rights, respect and equality.

This performative annual bullshit routinely finds me furious. Cupcakes and coffee while we politely discuss genocide in couched careful terms? Overpriced brunch in sunny AC while the world dies around us? Pretty empty speeches that change absolutely nothing from politicians committed only to re-election as femicide and domestic violence stats continue to rachet unchecked as we lose rights, respect and equality.

In a sea of performative annual feminism, women just get on with it. As we always do, quietly and without chest beating. It is how this world actually keeps spinning, no matter the wars in the world of men or the disasters that lap at our homes and caravans of care. Running the usual gauntlets and battling the same old shit, getting more than our share done for less of the spoils and hoping for throwaway thanks.

For centuries upon centuries sirens have been rendered perilous, their song a fatal enchantment that lured weak men to their demise. In mythology sirens are the embodiment of temptation, their otherworldly beauty a danger to those who heard their song and could not simply pass by. And yet nowhere in these ancient stories do sirens hunt,

Last year International Women's Day got swallowed up by a pandemic that would go on to indisputably prove the actual value of feminine currency. Women's labour, so much of it undervalued or unpaid, remains the sinew that holds the backbone of our countries and our worlds upright.

In Australia, this is what it looks like after you get justice in a system stacked against you. It isn't joyful. It is barely relief, more often collapse and as rare as hen's teeth. The archaic and brutal judicial system victims battle compounds the terrible damage of the original crime.

Australian politics is a deeply biased self serving gong show at the best of times but last week the curtain got pulled all the way back by Brittany Higgins, a courageous young woman who will reshape our political landscape with her brave public recount of being raped at Parliament House.

Let me tell you a tale, all too common. It starts somewhere near where you live with once upon a time but doesn't end in happily ever after. Because as the statistics overwhelmingly prove, the epidemic of domestic violence in our country - and probably yours too - is beyond crisis point and only getting worse.

This is my niece Liv on her way to score a try in her first game of girls rugby last week. Warms the cockles, I tell ya. Rugby tragic that I am, when I was at school girls weren't allowed to play. Now Liv can take her love of the game to the world stage if she wants to - but at the moment she will only be paid if she reaches the national level or attracts her own sponsors.

Oh International Womens Day, here you are again gifting at least half the world's population just the one day every year to officially fly the sisterhood flag. In the face of gross gender disparity, unequal pay for the same work and the lioness's share of emotional labour across the board.

Musing on sisterhood on International Womens Day and the world our girls are growing up in as they seek their far horizons and look to shape their world.

I've been spending a lot of my time lately in the company of wise women. Elders who school me gently in the fine art of life, their hands soft on my back as I navigate mine. Mothers with work writtten on their faces and arms aching from the weight of all they choose to carry with a weary smile. Corporate wonderwomen who dazzle their field but still have to fight for it to be level.

We make our way through the far end of the zodiac as if underwater. The afterglow of eclipse and the undertow of retrograde combine as an odd surrealism permeates the landscape.