Finding the right phenotype

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Trans as monster

GR OnlineA near future in the West in which access to gender-affirming surgery and cross-sex hormones is outlawed is no longer unimaginable. Those of us who have updated our sex markers on our passports have begun to wonder if they will be soon declared invalid with the stroke of a pen. It’s already happening in the US and the UK, once the global torch bearers of queer liberation. Why couldn’t it happen here too?

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The Juansons

FictionIn the morning, she walks over to the Johnsons’ place and knocks on the door. Nothing. She calls the police, but once the officer on the phone understands that Norma is not the boy’s kin, he brushes her off. She makes coffee and goes into the living room and turns on CNN. A banner across the top of the screen reads: INSTANT E-DEPORTATIONS ACROSS US.

Lifedorm

FictionThe fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh decades filled me with bitterness. I felt like the big oak tree in the centre of our play garden, stuck in the same place forever. Except even the oak tree’s life was more interesting because when it was small Parent 3 had told us to be careful not to step on it, and now it was this huge thing with ugly tree wrinkles and scars in the trunk from the branches we cut off to build a raft one summer, but I’d hardly grown at all.

When adults are at risk

Non-fictionOne significant subset of our modern adult-safeguarding environment is elder abuse, which we know is a significant and under-reported problem. In 2021 the Australian Institute of Family Studies released the results from the first-ever broad survey of elder-abuse prevalence in Australia. This showed that 14.8 per cent of adults aged sixty-five and over had suffered abuse in the previous twelve months. Importantly, only a little more than one third of people who experienced abuse sought help.