Dear Clementine: Issue #2

📝 Before We Begin

Hello darling hearts! I hope you all had a wonderful week (last week - yes, this is late) with plenty of moments of joy and levity. And if your week was not so wonderful, or downright full of fuckery, then I hope the weekend brought some relief even if just in the absolute decimation of the gargoyles who make up the thoroughly defeated Coalition party (more on that below). If even that didn’t help, I hope you managed to find at least one moment to stand still, breathe deeply and remember that you’re here, you’re alive and you matter.

I wanted to thank everyone for their beautiful feedback to my newsletter relaunch. I know it came out later than the Thursday I promised (possibly an ongoing theme), but I hope it was worth the wait! I used to believe the responsibilities of parenting would lessen as my (beautiful, divine, gorgeous) child got older but, as with so many assumptions about parenting, I’ve been thoroughly disabused of that position. Sometimes I’m not even sure where all the afternoon hours go in providing the kind of love and care I want to give, because the care itself is so much less obvious than the needs of babies and toddlers. Thankfully, he’ll be a teenager soon - and as we all know, the teenage years are completely smooth sailing and have absolutely nothing in them to worry about. Phew!

Beyond that, my world has been softer than usual and more pleasure focused - which seems almost ludicrous, given the cataclysmic demise of the world around us. The importance of finding your own centre and nurturing it cannot be underestimated.

In other news, Australians headed to the polls on the weekend for the federal election. Like a lot of people, I expected (and hoped) that we might end up with the ALP retaining parliament but with a minority government in which the balance of power was held by the Greens and independents. Alas, it was not to be. Thanks to our preferential voting system (and the fact the vast majority of the country quite clearly - and gratifyingly - loathes the conservatives), the ALP was returned to power in a stomping great landslide.

Sidenote: I was kind of shocked to realise that Anthony Albanese is the first prime minister since John Howard to be elected in back to back elections. That’s twenty one years of relatively unstable leadership, so if nothing else we might actually now see a Labor party with the stamina and confidence to carry out some actual vision rather than freezing in the face of change like a herd of deer in headlights.

Like many of you, I found it deeply depressing to realise Israel’s genocide of Palestinians was a minimal factor in people’s voting choices. On the other hand, I took some comfort in realising we aren’t awash with Trump loving buffoons. I’m trying to remind myself that political change is a moving force, and we are always playing our part. I’m going into this in much more depth further down in today’s Tarot Club (available only to paid subscribers), but if you don’t have access to that then please still remember you have power and you are entitled - indeed, obligated - to use it to the best of your ability to be a good ancestor.

Finally, I wanted to share with you all the very exciting news! Some of you will know that I co-hosted a trek to Sagarmatha/Everest Base Camp last November with my friends at Take On Nepal (a Nepalese owned and operated trekking company that was the first company to train local women to be guides and porters). It was such a profoundly transformative experience, and I know how life changing it was for all of the incredible women who joined us. There’s something about women travelling together that can create such magical energy. Our group was relatively large - 18 trekkers all up, plus our guides and porters - and yet every single one of us made it to Base Camp. Those familiar with trekking in altitude will know that this is quite rare, and I maintain that a large part of the reason for our success was due to the support and love we all fostered as a group.

Well, we’re going back! And this time, it’s under the banner of a new women’s adventure group that I’ve formed with my friend Susan. Paying tribute to Susan’s native Ireland, Sister Saoirse (pronounced: Ser-sha or Sear-sha depending on dialect) translates to “Sister Freedom”. Susan and I are committed to the vision of bringing women together in love and care to help take them to the centre of who they are. Months ago, before I trekked to EBC for the first time even, I was walking through a forest in Margaret River when I heard a voice come through my heart: “Take the women to the woods and show them what they’re made of.”

This is exactly what Sister Saoirse will help us do.

Maybe you’ve never even considered trekking to base camp at Mt Sagarmatha/Everest. But now that you know it’s possible - now you have the invitation right there in your hand - I hope you’ll be gripped by the whisper of the Sister as she calls you to adventure.

NOVEMBER 14-29: SISTER SAOIRSE X TAKE ON NEPAL

Remember - you only live once (in this form, anyway), so you might as well make sure you’re living for yourself.

Okay, let’s get into issue 2!

But before we do, I’d love for you to become a subscriber! It’s only $12 a month, and you get these bumper editions plus access to workshops and fun exclusive things. If you appreciate the work I put into these, please believe me when I say your weekly $4 goes a long way to helping me to keep making it.

---

🧠 The Deep Dive: Trad Wives, liberal white women and the appeal of fascism to both

I’ve been thinking about bodies.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the continued use of western women’s bodies as a barometer for how willing [white] women are to enforce empirical oppression against other people and thus codify the legitimacy of patriarchal rule. The more women are willing to adhere to capitalist ideals of beauty - and to strive to meet them - the more guaranteed a society is to be under covert fascism and economic dictatorships. The more we normalise the adherence to these ideals, the easier it is for fascism to shed its covert layers and more blatantly declare itself to be not just necessary but also desirable.

I mention whiteness in particular because white women have been crucial to the success of fascism. The cultural obsession with size - whether too thin, too fat, too loud, too hungry, too slutty etc etc etc - isn’t just about the tactics of distraction, but about a carrot’n’stick approach to ensuring white women (who occupy a swing state of oppression between suffering patriarchal violence and inflicting white supremacy) continue to align ourselves with minority empire over majority liberation. And because the economics of whiteness relies on hyper individualism in order to maintain itself, those women eager to benefit as individuals within it are easily seduced by the promise of a little bit of special treatment in exchange for their loyalty to broader systems of harm.

Others have written very eloquently about the renewed interest in the performance and aesthetics of Trad Wifery and its historical relationship with fascism. The popularity of dull eyed, extremely thin, monotonously toned influencers like Nara Smith (who isn’t white, but shares the same enthusiasm for concealing the staff of nannies, housemaids and assistants who very clearly do the work of running her house) and Ballerina Farm (whose marriage to the heir of an aviation empire is equally concealed in the carefully curated aesthetic of ‘prairie style’ living, and whose body remains lithe and slim despite having grown and birthed eight children) seems to be the inevitable next step in a world collapsing under the weight of inequality, civil unrest and an increasingly desperate proletariat.

Sure, women in the modern aristocracy would never be so gauche as to suggest the masses feast on cake for sustenance - but they will ask you to tune in and watch as they bake cakes the public will never taste, standing in kitchens the public could never afford while dressed in the full regalia of their chosen aesthetic brand.

You won’t see the lighting set up that helps bathe their (expensively cared for) skin in the soft glow of money. You won’t see the assistants or the producers, the outtakes or the breaking of characters. You’ll never see the nannies. All you’ll ever be allowed to see is the airbrushed image of domestic simplicity, and the happiness it promises to women who are finally ready to embrace their true calling - that of the gracious Wife and Mother.

Hannah Neeleman, aka “Ballerina Farm”

Despite the glaring anomalies and factual inaccuracies denied by this trad-nonsense, the culture at large still wants us to believe that a female human’s natural state is to be submissive while her greatest dream is to find someone to be submissive to. I say “female human” because, as Koontz points out, there’s no other animal on earth in which the female of the species is confined to the sphere of domesticity and reliant on the male of the species for provision and/or protection. That so many people still eagerly choose to believe in the fantasy of male supremacy and the benevolent custodianship of strength, intelligence and morality it claims to wield over women is laughable - and that’s before you even address the fact most men can’t even piss into the toilet straight.

In my book I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage (which you can buy here), I focus in one part on what Stephanie Coontz calls ‘the long decade’ that marked marriage between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. This is the era most revisionists and conservatives love to mythologise as the golden age of gender relations; a time when men were recognised as the captains of industry and women embraced their “natural” role as dutiful, adoring champions and helpmates.

That this period of time also coincided with a catastrophic rise in malaise and depression amongst said women is conveniently glossed over, as is the fact that entry to this so-called superior representation of the Ideal American Family was reserved solely for middle class white people. When today’s fascists reminisce about the glory days of ‘traditional marriage’ and how far women have strayed from the path of their biological imperative, they aren’t talking about the Black and brown women whose labour was required to facilitate this technicolour fantasy. They aren’t talking about poor women, or disabled women, or sex workers. Those women don’t get to be characters in the story of men; they are only ever allowed to be bodies with a pre-determined function. They can be fucked, put to work, extracted from and used to serve - but they don’t get to speak.

White women who choose to align with their patriarchal masters (and non white women like Smith, who still embrace the culturally white, patriarchal ideology of Mormonism) are also assumed to have no interior lives, but they are given the illusion of speech and scraps of privilege as a means of distinguishing them against the “less valuable”. So pathetic is their hunger for the crumbs that fall from the table at which those masters eat that they’ll do everything they can to be the most enthusiastic of patriarchy’s defenders, believing against all logic that elevation to the state of peer will be their reward for loyalty. But as the great Audre Lorde once wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

I also like this from Alison Floyd, posted on Twitter back in 2020: “Being master’s favourite dog is still having a master and being a dog.”

And funnily enough, this memory popped up on my FB page today. Generally speaking, I hate invoking The Handmaid’s Tale as some kind of ominous warning against a terrifying dystopia that remains unrealised because Gilead has been the reality time and time again for women the world over. It’s white supremacy that allows so many of us to believe it still lives in the realm of fiction. That said, this quote stands up as an accurate description of those who find power in aligning with their oppressors.

Elevation to this subservient-but-privileged status isn’t as simple as just pledging allegiance to those who naturally claim power as their birthright. A woman vying for patriarchy’s favour must also prove her willingness to exist in a state of deprivation - to make the cake, but never eat it; in fact, to make it clear she doesn’t want to eat it. Where once a woman’s chastity was used to signify her moral value and material worth, now it’s her commitment to austerity and the physical reduction of self that earns her a place by master’s side. To be invited to dine in the artificial reality patriarchy has constructed for itself, women have to prove they come already satiated. That any hunger they feel is meagre, inconsequential, invisible and certainly no threat to the spoils hoarded by their rulers.

They may receive, of course. But they must never be allowed to take.

I’m interested in all this partly because of the pantomime of women’s liberation we’re being forcefed while the world as we know it collapses (see: Space Girls) and partly because it proves we’ve learned nothing from history. Trad Wives might (justifiably) earn the ire of liberal women everywhere, but don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s because the latter abhors negotiating with the patriarchy. Capitalism long ago figured out how to co-opt the language of empowerment and sell it back to us (often with the pink tax attached), but no group has proven more valuable to cementing this illusion of freedom than the white women desperate to be considered exceptional among their peers and therefore worthy of finding favour with their oppressors.

It’s no coincidence that the use of Ozempic has skyrocketed in the few years since #MeToo briefly flared across the world, especially amongst liberal white women in the ruling class (all of whom want to pretend they’re not using it, they’re just #workingout and #drinkingwater). Men have always responded to their perceived loss of power by ramping up their already insane levels of paranoia, but the last few years in particular have given rise to broxic influencers cycling through the most predictable of complaints. Women are taking up too much space. We’re out to get men. We lie about their behaviours and use it to “ruin their reputations”. We fuck too much, we’re rude, we’re sloppy, we’re disgusting. All we want is to trap men and steal their money. We’re run-through whores who have simultaneously never known the touch of a man, and we’ll end up old and alone and lamenting the time we spent inviting every man but them to dump their cum into us.

Also, we’re fat.

You’d think the global embrace of the #MeToo movement would have steeled women against these predictable taunts. We’re certainly still repeating lines learned from it, pushing back against boys will be boys rhetoric and the purity culture it frames as being women’s responsibility to maintain. Unfortunately, liberation movements seem to only briefly flare amongst white liberals. They extract what they need from them (which all too often just translates to some pithy slogans and a self aggrandising sense of political importance), and then return energised and raring to succeed in a system whose rules have only been very slightly altered by public pressure to ensure its board of directors now has gender parity. This definition of success is and has always been enough for liberal white women, most of whom are still trapped in the delusional belief that their freedom shouldn’t have to come at the expense of sacrificing the admiration of men whose approval they’ve been so thoroughly conditioned to crave, nor the systems whose subjugating power they aspire to benefit from.

This is why we have Australian influencers like Abbie Chatfield profiting from the performance of being politically engaged and presenting herself as a voice of feminist and political authority, while railing against anyone who demands more from her than shallow aphorisms and platforming genocide supporters. Everyone who criticises her is an idiot. They clearly don’t understand how things work. They have no strategy. They’re being mean to her. They’re jealous of her podcast and her university degree. She’s hotter than them. Everyone who disagrees with her is a troll.