Women’s Soccer Changed My Life

Belatedly posting this here considering the FIFA Women’s World Cup is over, but I wrote for Daily Life about my experiences with community women’s sport. I wanted to write personally about how valuable I had found joining a women’s soccer team, despite having no interest in being a sports spectator (or audience as I often […]

Happy Birthday to one of my Mums

Today is my mother, Teresa’s 60th birthday. She’s an excellent parent, friend and mentor, and her party on Saturday night was so good people left the gig upstairs to crash our shindig and boogie to my brother Rowan’s excellent playlist. The party theme was Mods vs Rockers and Teresa rapped her thank you speech (complete with backing track) […]

How to behave when you’ve invited gay friends to your wedding

I knew people – gay and straight – might react badly when I called a Daily Life article I wrote ‘How to behave when you’ve invited gay friends to your wedding’, but I had a point to make, so I went with the clickbaity headline and forged on. The wedding industry is huge and the same […]

Stella

When I saw something this morning on facebook about Stella’s passing, my first reaction was to think it was some sort of joke she’d concocted, which tells you a lot about how far Stella was willing to go for a laugh. Surely, this was some set up for a searing critique of the way we […]

Community Comes Together for Candy Royalle

This article appeared on Gay News Network on 9 August 2014. Get along to support Candy Royale on August 24, or donate via the youcaring.com fundraiser page. My name is Maeve Marsden and I hate the word ‘inspirational’. I am so desensitised to the Videos That Will Change Your Life shared daily on the book of […]

Blurred Lines

This article appeared in the Star Observer on 4 October 2013. My Facebook feed, dominated by queers, has been quick to share parodies and outraged blog posts about Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. But where is the outrage when it comes to the ‘blurred lines’ in our own community, namely the appalling way we tend to […]

One down, twenty-four to go

“Can we open the doors?” said the front-of-house girl. “There are forty-five people outside.” “Did you say four or five?” I said. “No. Forty-five” Our first preview. And we had an audience! Despite a brief microphone issue, our 15-minute changeover ran smoothly under the expert leadership of Phoebe, Linda and our venue tech, Emma. Up […]

from palenque with love

I wonder what will be left of our great cities in years to come, when ours is the ancient. Churches and houses of parliament, galleries and perhaps the foundations of our skyscrapers. Twists of metal and plastic; my mothers’ ornamental plates, broken apart; your iphones, smashed to pieces. What new age hippies of eras to […]

he’s like the wind

Throughout primary school I spent most weekends in the company of a dear friend named Cleo. Our friendship is defined in my memory by dance classes and two films which we watched incessantly. Shaping the cushions of her brown velour couch around us to make dashboard and roof, we pretended we were at a drive […]

The Battle for Fun: Queers & Straights

I recently posted this photo to the ‘this is oz’ website, an Australian initiative which basically involves people posting an anti-homophobia message in the form of a photo of themselves with a handwritten sign. The posts vary from playful, to political, to passionate pleas for equality, to more abstract statements. I have received mixed responses […]