Follow the trail

In an hour and thirteen minutes, the deadline for Australian electoral registration for who will lead the country—and the mantle of dead women—will expire.

At the time of writing, there have been sixteen deaths of Australian women ushering in the Year of the Wood Snake.

When I last followed the instance in 2024, I noted seventy-nine cases of femicide. Many of these are tracked on journalist Sherelee Moody’s website, indicated by the caricature of a tear-stricken heart, meaning the victims are unnamed. Sometimes I scroll too fast on the Instagram interface and I mistake the hearts for a new graphic design, perhaps to go on some mugs and t-shirts. This is not to say I am making light of sartorial advocacy. At a previous workplace, I even contributed perspectives to how celebrities are showing, nay, throwing their support behind this movement.

Donna Haraway: “Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic.” Maybe there is no name for the cause, because the word femicide has become an angry garnish. The statistic that has gripped the nation enough to term it a national emergency— on average between 2018 and 2019, one woman was killed every week in this country due to family violence. The numbers have been warded off and extolled, and the men in Canberra make more solemn comments in escalating obligation.

There are more hearts in surplus: An online map tracks the migration of gender violence in this country. Every red and white circle tracks every life taken, forming the outline of Australia’s landscape. One night I hover over a fleet of hearts over Adelaide with my mouse. Causes of death are varied: Asphyxiation, Stabbing, Bashing, Domestic Violence, Stranger Violence, Associate Violence, Vehicle, Poison. For one second, I am transfixed. Forget fiction. The directory of motives is robust enough to compete with Law & Order SVU and Criminal Minds.

In Violets Bent Backwards over the Grass, Elisabeth Grant croons, ‘On top of being a woman, I am afraid.’

I don’t want to offer the situation any poetry. Nothing I have written is within the remit of the violence.

Here are some bylines that did not make the count:

One time a past partner held me too hard by the arms. The cajoling did not work, nor did the request for release. By the time I was let go, I could not form a sentence. It was probably no

more than a couple of minutes. Hysteria, lanced with confusion. I felt a rush of something — gratitude that he did release me, and that maybe I was not to blame after all for his actions.

My seventeen-year-old sister insisted on taking the train at 9PM and was touched by a stranger on the outskirts of Ashfield station. I came home to her baptising her pruny thigh under the faucet.

I was fondled outside a bar, and three of my male friends (all homosexual) chased the assailant down the winding lanes of Dubrovnik until he was a puddle of snot.

When I walk home at night, I like to break into song. If I make it to the lobby, I count myself lucky and I move on.

When I feel leached of hope, I turn to the East for alms and prayers. I am fixated on the narrative kinship fostered between the gendered similarities of the two countries, Korea and China. They have yielded a messianic child: 6B4T. The first bi in the 4B Movement refers to ‘Bihon’. It is the refusal of heterosexual marriage. ‘Bichulsan’ is the refusal of childbirth, ‘biyeonae’ is saying no to dating, and ‘bisekseu’ is the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships.¹ Within the plasticine femininity of Korea, heads are shorn. Cosmetics grew obsolete, new noses turned down. The idea of a feminist has taken an ugly inflection there, perhaps in relevance with the popularity of 4B. In China, pastoral feminism, ‘田园女权’ and female fists ‘女拳’ relay the same sentiment, derided into public consciousness.² There’s another slogan gaining momentum — “反婚反育” fan hun fan yu, a Mandarin limerick that means: against-marriage & against-reproduction.³

And yet the movement thrums with life. Since 2023, the cause has spiked in momentum. The numbers in Korea indicate this too. Community is proportional to the success of 6B4T.⁴ Solidarity blossomed online, and on digital forums like Twitter and Kaokao App which propelled movements like 'Escape the Tal-Corset'. Promote narrative kinship and affinity, provide textual relationality, and you have begun to fashion something like activism together.⁵

On Weibo, one Chinese user @七月荔子, argued: Please be more awake! Referring to their 6B4T does not necessarily mean we have to copy it without any modification. [It] has to conform to our situations.⁶

I am not suggesting we break out the shears. Our situation only calls for an understanding of the power of repartee. Collative, cross-continental efforts will always translate.