Cunning Stunts
IN response to Susan Grace’s letter “Get a Band Aid” (Herald, December 2, 2017), I’m the vocalist from cuntsnot, and I would like to thank Susan for the fair articulation of her issues with the name we chose for our intersectional feminist punk band.
I would also like to thank Susan for having the courage to voice her distaste and create space for a dialogue.
I wholeheartedly acknowledge that the word cunt is still being used in ways that are denigrating and violent towards wom*n.
The members of our band, which is majority wom*n, are actively fighting misogyny in our social and environmental justice work and everyday lives.
The name we chose is a deliberate attempt to point at and subvert the ideas that uphold gendered oppressions, like the idea that vaginal discharge is disgusting or that wom*nhood can be reduced to genitalia.
I stand by our right to reclaim the word in a way that may raise disgust to some. I stand by our right to take up space, to shock and to encourage people to question why they respond in the way that they do.
For a white cis wom*n such as myself interrogating various privileges and assumptions is awkward and painful.
In the tradition of our genre, our music seeks to move people into uncomfortable spaces and encourage conflict (internal or interpersonal) from which we can grow.
I feel as though conflict is almost as taboo as cunt in our culture.
Many wom*n have told me that our music empowers them, and it empowers me to perform to them.
I would like to thank Mojo’s for making space for us and many many other femme artists to be heard.
I have found the staff and the booking agent, Andrew Ryan, to be nothing but respectful of wom*n and continue to uphold a policy of safer spaces for femmes and queer people.
I want to personally invite Susan to come see us perform and offer her a door spot for the Christmas eve gig we are playing at Mojo’s, a fundraiser for the WA anti-nukes movement.
Let’s commit ourselves to a feminism that is pluralistic.
It is nobody’s right to tell someone how to empower themself.
Claire Anderson
Chester Street, South Fremantle

Smashed avo
I HAVE just finished reading an email from the council about the South Terrace “adjustment”.
Apparently a significant number of people want the road painted and all the trees and furniture airbrushed to look just perfect.
Did the survey bother to ask if the reader wanted the council to do nothing? Just leave it as it is?
I know this is a revolutionary thought, but things seem to be going quite nicely down the Terrace, unlike what’s happening further up the road. Why not just leave it as it is?
I dont want appear to bring up a touchy point, but the council has been airbrushing and manicuring the main drag in Freo for a number of decades and the result is…ummm….underwhelming.
I’ve been driving up and down South Terrace for over 30 years.
It has never looked so lively and interesting.
Mark Sims
Duoro Road, South Fremantle