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What being a public outrage taught me about fighting inequality

What does being a woman on an oil rig have in common with being a Muslim in Australia? Watch Yassmin Abdel-Magied give an impassioned speech about what it means to be misunderstood and misrepresented in the press and culture. What is it like when you show up and don't look like anyone else?


So I was quite nervous about this talk. Everything about it: writing it, memorising it, delivering it. And this is from someone who talks, well, for a living now.  

When Andrew Hyde from TEDx Boulder asked me to be a part of the program this year, I jumped at the chance. I loved the idea of the Boulder community, and the opportunity to flesh out a new idea. My initial draft for a talk was on a wildly different topic - one that I was looking forward to sharing because I thought it was new and innovative.

And yet...

Writing the speech felt like pulling teeth. It simply didn't want to happen. Although I was intellectually committed to the concept, my heart wasn't in it. 

So a few days before the event, I threw in the towel and wrote a new speech. This is it.  Some of you may be familiar with some of the stories; I wrote about it in my TeenVogue piece a few weeks ago.  This, however, was the first time I spoke publicly about in a formal setting - and to a completely unfamiliar audience.

They were kind, rewarding me with a standing ovation. This certainly helped the nerves. But ultimately, this talk is not about what happened to me in Australia. This is about sharing the lesson that so many of us have learnt the hard way - the need for structural and systemic change.

Alas, a 12 minute talk isn't enough to do the topic justice. But here's to being a part of the conversation.

To those who have been trying to tell me this for some time... sorry it took me so long to get it. I guess I always learn things the hard way! *bemused face*

Video: Gender and Infrastructure

Last year I visited the Inter-American Development Bank to talk Gender and Infrastructure. 

From there, I've now become a Gender Ambassador for the IDB - which is an awesome honour (and gives me licence to talk about gender related stuff all the time! woo!)

We recorded this video about why gender is important for infrastructure design... hope you enjoy!

Bounce: For the Love of Football

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My mornings have been drenched with the muted cheers of stadiums and my own shrieks at near misses or triumphs.  Football (spectating) is something that is in my blood, along with millions of others around the world, and this month provides the ultimate in that pleasure.

The morning's defeat - Mexico at the hands of the Dutch - was heart wrenching: the Mexicans scoring early in the second half and then falling back, providing Clockwork Orange with the chance to push and keep pushing until a very late equaliser and extra time penalty.  Like every match going forward, the looks of utter defeat on the faces of the Mexicans hearts the hurt...

In the spirit of the universality of football though, here is a wicked video for your morning :)

BOUNCE - This is not a freestyle movie from Guillaume Blanchet I Filmmaker on Vimeo.

Repping the Uni of Queensland!

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A little while ago I was fortunate / blessed / someone was crazy enough to let me in front of their camera - to be a part of a University of Queensland Campaign.  Enjoy the video that came out of it! Special mentions to the Spark Engineering Camp crew and the University of Queensland Racing team, who are like my family, truly.

Video: My Room while on the Rigs!

I'm trying out something new and venturing into video territory :) Here's a little clip of a typical room that we are housed in as oil and gas workers...

It's actually not too bad, all things considered!

Cosy right?

What do you think...?

Grass Roots Sudanese Inspiration (ARABIC)

A good friend of mine recommended this TEDx talk performed in Sudan and I simply love it. It talks about ambition, gumption, examples of Sudanese who have defeated the odds and 'made it'...and is a great grass roots video for young Sudanese to watch and be inspired by. Note that it is in Arabic, and pretty Sudanese Arabic at that!

Enjoy.

 

Crazy Rig Conversations: Part 3

haters-gonna-hate So, life on the rigs never stops with the amusement! This series, 'Crazy Rig Conversations', chronicles a few of the G to PG rated things that get said on a rig in an everyday context that make me internally chuckle in disbelief and misguided mirth. Enjoy...

NB: Generally, each person is referred to as ‘old mate’, or OM for short.  ’Old Mate’ is Australian for ‘that random dude’, or someone whose name you have forgotten.

***

OM: Oh it's good you're back on shift. The other guy was too hard to understand, I could never get what he was sayin' over the radio.

Me: Oh, was he talking too fast? Sometimes he talks too fast...

OM: Oh nah, he just talks too Asian. It's like COPYYY, and he's like *puts on an unidentifiable ethnic accent* "wha?! wha?!*

***

During a long winded, mostly joking argument with a roughneck about women are in general, he comes back with this:

OM1: Listen Yassmin, men were created first. Women? They were an afterthought, and only made for company.

In hindsight, I should have said something like "Oh yea? We were just version 2.0, the latest edition...but at the time I was too busy scoffing.

***

I asked someone how they got to their position, as I usually do. Had they been on the rigs for long, etc.

OM2: Oh yeah, I've been around for a while. But you know, I just kinda slept my way to the top. Even from school, that's how I got my grades you know, and I mean I was Captain of the Rugby team and ripped and all that, so it was no wonder with all those young teachers and that... yeah.  Just kept doing it, and it worked for me ya know?

Well, that was one bit of career advice I was not going to take...

***

OM3 is the Aussiest bloke around.  He starts off this conversation very clearly telling me about how he doesn't really subscribe to any type of religion.  I braced myself, and got my comedy-wit boots on!

OM3: So, like, do you hang around only African people living in, like, your own world that has nothing to do with the rest of society?

Me: No, well that's not how I see it, and most of my friends are from everywhere because I went to a Christian [ecumenical] high school...

OM3: Oh okay, so you don't get together and do like, bomb throwing practice or anything?

Me: Oh... nah not really...

OM3 starts laughing.

Me: ...but of course, if that was something you were interested in.. ;) [I start laughing, he sort of stops.]

[and now I am worried I have jokingly written this on the internet, I am so going to be tracked by some sort of law enforcement]

At the end of the conversation, which was surprisingly quite detailed and extensive about what we Muslims do, where I pray and what I eat etc, OM3 starts to leave.  He stands at the door and turns around, cheekily.

OM3: Now I'm gonna tell all my mates I spent time hanging round a Mozzie! Doing crazy practice throws!

***

If you haven't seen it yet, check out my interview on the ABC with The World - it was quite exciting and an honour to be on the show!

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What’s on the net…

A little collection of a few things that caught my eye… Between the Flags: A great little Tropfest video that shows the humanity beyond the mob mentality, a throwback to 2005 and the Cronulla riots…

 

I honestly wish I had thought of this when I was in first year…I always wanted to do a massive practical joke but couldn’t think of anything exciting enough! Kudos to these cats.

I work in a male dominated field for sure…But I have never considered what it would be like to work as another one: a taxi driver? "What's a girl doing here?" from Narratively on Vimeo.

An interesting essay On the Joy of Giving

"For a lot of us, what really defines us in the world is having so much money. We're exceptionally wealthy compared to the average," he says in the precise, logical voice of the studious, overgrown schoolboy he resembles. "Once you get used to the idea, I think you realise, wow, this is a really nice position to be in, to be able to help people."

He suggests giving away 10% of your income might, like vegetarianism, one day become a social norm. And he suggests philosophers should pay more attention: "Quite a few people think obviously it's good to donate to charity, so we're not going to talk about it. I think that's a mistake, because you can go further and say, do we have an obligation to do it? Is it not merely something that's nice, but something we really have to do? And I think the answer is yes."

An oldie but a goldie…a little cynical perhaps, but a fair bit of truth there:

Gas is the next big thing in energy, and a few interesting articles in the Australian on this issue caught my eye.  It is quite a contentious area, especially here in Queensland where many of the gas wells are on prime farmland.  However, in today’s society, money talks, and when push comes to shove, will people be willing to reduce their energy consumption or be willing to pay more for their electricity?  In my typical fashion I am not one to side either way just yet, but more play the devil’s advocate…

Randomly, the first massive internet hoax…from the Museum of Hoaxes, an interesting and trivia filled way to spend an afternoon *cough*

This is a useful little infographic… How to make the most of Google!

QandA is a great show but sometimes without the level of sophistication and depth in the discussion that the issues require:

If the producers of Q&A were serious about their adventures in democracy, they should seek to include such experts in all of their discussions. This would make the show more productive and could bring it into its fuller potential as a place of critical, enjoyable, and serious political debate for Australia.

Until then, it will just be the contrived gabfest we tweet at each week.

I do love this blog:

The touchiness of Muslims about assaults on the Prophet Muhammad is in part rooted in centuries of Western colonialism and neo-colonialism during which their religion was routinely denounced as barbaric by the people ruling and lording it over them. That is, defending the Prophet and defending the post-colonial nation are for the most part indistinguishable, and being touchy over slights to national identity (and yes, Muslimness is a kind of national identity in today’s world) is hardly confined to Muslims.

In India, dozens of Christians have sometimes been killed by rioting Hindus angry over allegations of missionary work. Killing people because you think they tried to convert members of your religion to another religion? Isn’t it because such a conversion is an insult to your gods?

In Myanmar, angry Buddhists have attacked the hapless Muslim minority, sometimes alleging they were avenging an instance of the rape of a Buddhist girl (i.e. these are like lynchings in the Jim Crow South).

Or then there have been Sri Lanka Buddhist attacks on Tamil Christians. In fact, Sri Lanka Buddhists have erected a nasty police state and shown a propensity for violence against the Tamil minority, some elements of which have had revolutionary or separatist aspirations (not everybody in the group deserves to be punished for that).

And, militant Israeli Jews have set fire to Muslim mosques in Palestine and recently tried to “lynch” three Palestinians in Jerusalem. If Maher thinks only Muslims are thin-skinned, he should try publicly criticizing Israeli policy in America and see what happens to him.

Since Iraq didn’t have ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and wasn’t connected to 9/11, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that 300 million Americans brutally attacked and militarily occupied that country for 8 1/2 years, resulting in the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the wounding of millions, and the displacement of millions more, mainly because Iraq’s leader had talked dirty about America. Now that is touchy.

To wrap it up…France in the year 2000… from the early 1900’s. Super interesting!

Have a great day!

Linksies, Quotesies and Other Bits of E’s.

 

‎My recommended read of the week: Waleed Aly on the weekend riots.

"It feels good. It feels powerful. This is why people yell pointlessly or punch walls when frustrated. It's not instrumental. It doesn't achieve anything directly. But it is catharsis. Outrage and aggression is an intoxicating prospect for the powerless."

How far would you go to protect your kids from bullying? I think I would be pretty hardcore…but not sure if I would want my kid to go under the knife.

 

We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven’t even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.  Chuck Klosterman

 

This was a few days ago but sounds like a great idea!  Giving out money to strangers can be quite a novel way to spend the day!

As we continually replace real life with ever shorter digital updates, what happens to the memories we build for ourselves and the people we serve? More and more, we don't remember what actually happened to us, but what we've encountered digitally. 

Seth Godin

I sometimes wonder how the minds of men like this work. It just makes me think of Flowers of Algernon to be honest >>> The Guy Who Solved Some Legendary Maths Problem

 

I don’t know what the right answer is, in terms of changing the sport to attract youngsters, but I do know that it is necessary to do something because despite what some people say the sport IS broken and does need fixing, even if it may not appear to be the case. The length of the races is always going to be a problem for the diehards because “it has always been like that”. Just like cricket was always five-day matches and white flannels until Kerry Packer came along and shook the tree a little.

Any sport needs to be open to new ideas, particularly one that sells itself on the idea of being fast-moving, cutting edge and innovative. One area where there is clearly a need for change is the sport’s involvement with the Internet.

Joe Saward on Change in Formula 1

 

I do secretly have an issue with retail therapy ;) The post asked some interesting questions about whether our possessions are actually broken promises?

My enthusiasm to acquire this new thing made me think: what are our possessions, really, but a bunch of promises? That dress promises to make us look stylish; that smartphone promises to keep us tech-savvy and connected; that cookbook promises to make us a culinary whiz; that moisturizer promises to take years off our face; that heirloom china promises to help us remember our grandmother.

Life is in all the gray...