The National Institute of Standards and Technology

About the author

Andrew Galan

Andrew Galan is the author of two collections of poetry, That Place of Infested Roads and For All the Veronicas, and his work has...

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Non-fictionAs a recently diagnosed transgender person, I was already part of a highly online, over-educated and underemployed cohort, routinely blamed for stifling free speech as well as both maintaining the gender binary and destroying it. The alt-right discourse was already aflame, decrying the social scourge of everyone wanting to be seen as a ‘special snowflake’ and the creeping ‘politics of victimhood’. Did I really need to inhabit a second suspect identity? Did I need another personal attribute I felt deeply ambivalent about to become a public part of my persona?

Animal control

FictionShe’d seen her mother a couple of times since the lockdown ended, but it was still a shock. Margaret had lost some vital density that seemed ethereal, although it was obviously about her body – the protruding cheekbones, eyes sunk too deep in her head and hair a wispy cap across her scalp. Only her hands looked the same – her piano-playing hands resting neatly in her lap, long-fingered and surprisingly preserved. The rest of her was ghostly, and there was a blink when she looked at her daughter and the lights didn’t go on. SJ felt a momentary sinkhole: not that, not yet.

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.