The Accidental Feminist: When lived experience collides with the myth of a post-feminist world

04 March 2009

Emily Maguire

Many of us born after the success of the 1970s women's liberation movement were raised to think of ourselves as 'people not genders'. We grew up believing that being female would not affect our opportunities or choices. We rejected the idea that women were oppressed and if we thought about feminism at all it was as an historical movement with no relevance to our futures.

Genuinely believing that sexism was dead we moved into the worlds of work, marriage and motherhood and got a hell of a shock. We realised that personal declarations of gender blindness are no defence against a world that insists on defining women by their sex. We realised that the ‘limitless' choices women have today are oddly less limitless than the choices of men. We realised that political, economic, sexual, professional, social and domestic equality is far from achieved and that post-feminism is a media myth. We realised that, quite accidentally, we had become feminists.

This lecture was filmed and broadcast by Slow TV and A-PAC

Broad Topics:

Sub-topics: Society & Culture

Areas: University

Emily Maguire is author of the novels The Gospel According to Luke and Taming the Beast (2004), an international bestseller. Her latest book, Princesses and Pornstars: Sex + Power + Identity, is an unashamed call-to-arms for young women to reject tired gender roles, fight for public equality and embrace private particularity. Her articles and essays on sex, religion, culture and literature have been published widely, including in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Griffith Review, The Financial Review, The Observer and The Age.

The Pamela Denoon Lecture Committee holds the annual Pamela Denoon Lecture to mark International Women's Day, and to commemorate Pamela Denoon's life.

 Part of the Toyota-ANU Public Lecture Series 2009