Preethi 
 
Today I affirm my feminist resolve.
Today I promise to call it what it is.
Today I encourage my sisters to stand together and say it has to end.
This hatred of women
This litany of male entitlement
This perpetuation of the myth that women are victims
 
It must stop with you
It must stop with you Preethi
It must stop today
It must stop
 
There is a howling in my heart
For the woman you were
For child you were, bright eyed and thirsty for knowledge
For the years I spent with you
 
I am stunned
This time I know the face
Smiling at me from papers and on screen
A smile I knew well
A face I loved
 
There is a rage building in me
A wave so huge it could engulf the world

I will cover myself in steel
Take my shield onto my shoulder
And stand against the men who did this to you
Not just one man
But many
Puny little men who think the world owes them
Nasty little men who think women are beneath them
Men with no respect.
 
Their days are numbered.
Starting today.
It all must stop with you.
 

Ask yourself how you would feel if someone else had the right to decide for you - about your life, your death, who you leave your property to, whether you can ever get married and be offered the same protections under the law as every other Australian citizen?

You pay the same amount of tax as every one else.
You have fewer rights.
Surely you shouldn't be expected to pay for rights to which you are not entitled. 

You are watching ads on TV which declare you a threat to family.
Yet you are family, have families, care for children, elderly parents, your neighbours....

You want to ask the people on TV and in the churches -If marriage is sacred then how are divorces possible? Annulments? Where are the protests about reality TV programs where couples marry the day they meet? Where are the sermons about marriages which enslave women and force them into lives of domestic violence and servitude?

You know that those who rejected you are now deciding your future.
How does this make you feel?

A YES vote cannot put at risk the rights of churches to discriminate. Their rights are enshrined in law. They cannot be forced to marry those they choose to deny. 
But a YES vote can ensure every citizen and tax payer of this country is equal under the law. Equal. That's all.
​Isn't that what we'd all want?

SBS expresses it beautifully. Enjoy!

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/video/675336259637

I am a woman, who, like many, hears the rhetoric of overwhelmingly male politicians telling me they act on my behalf. As though I was a child. As though they know better about my body and my hopes and my struggles than I do.

It doesn’t wash with me.

We are judged on what we do. All of us. And we must hold the current government, the current prime minister to account.

This government continues the cycle of rape, torture, deprivation and degradation inflicted on the most helpless of this planet; women and children. It threatens doctors, counsellors and social workers who speak out about their suffering and torture. Australian doctors. Australian social workers. Australian psychologists. This government is threatening its own citizens for doing their jobs! (as it did the Human Rights Commissioner)

It debases and dehumanises those who begged us for help – no different from the Nazis and the treatment of Jews, of foreigners, of people whose skin colour is anything but white.

The world has been watching. And the panic we see now is a panic born in the hearts of the desperate that they must run, now, before the world closes its borders to them as Australia has done.

We, the luck country, are responsible for the bodies washing up on shores around the world. We began this climate of ‘turn backs’ – this turning our backs on the suffering of others.

If Malcolm Turnbull wants to set his government apart from the mean-spirited and morally bankrupt policies of his predecessor, Abbott he must ACT TO REMOVE WOMEN AND CHILDREN FROM DETENTION.

Nothing else will send a message to the women of Australia that he is listening.

Otherwise the women of Australia will know that their voices count for little in the face of arrogance and male privilege. And it is those two things which see more than an Australian woman a week killed in domestic violence.

Release women and children from detention now. To wait will cost more lives.

Make no mistake. Australia is responsible for the dead children washing up on European shores.

The world has looked to us for leadership and followed suit.

Close the doors.

Punish the desperate.

Render them stateless.

Torture them behind razor wire on god- forsaken islands in the tropics.

Leave them to the mercy of brutal guards, paedophiles and rapists.

Forbid them human rights and its commissioner.

Forbid government accountability.

Smother us in secrecy.

We are the Dehumanists:

Europe has watched us turn towards Hitler and his ‘solutions’ with impunity.

They will follow suit.

And the stark white bodies of children will blind us

In this great dark night of our soul