We live in a justice-hungry age, and with good reason.  Through the magical communications tool that is social media, injustices can be exposed to the world's critical eye for examination almost immediately after their happening.  Whilst it is empowering to view the world without veneer, this comes with its own erosion of perspective.  Where an individual's story might move the world to rally around a cause, engage with an issue, or simply become aware of an injustice to which they were otherwise ignorant, it also has the power to desensitise.  Humans are fascinating in their engagement with world affairs - we are moved by that which shocks and horrifies us; we quickly become bored and lose compassion by that which does not.

In 2006, nine Australian citizens were arrested trying to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin into Indonesia, a country with strict drug penalties.  Of the infamous "Bali Nine", comprised of misguided and vulnerable souls, seven people were sentenced to life imprisonment.  The two ringleaders, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran, were sentenced to death by firing squad.  This sentence sparked a series of lengthy appeals processes, humanitarian calls for clemency, and a boorish and completely insensitive attempt at intervention on behalf of then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott to the Indonesian Government, all in the name of sparing these men from a gruesome death.  With the figurative guillotine hanging overhead for nine years, Chan and Sukumuran had little option but to continue to live their lives and pray that mercy would be bestowed upon them.  And though the prison system so seldom yields rehabilitation, for these two men, such was the outcome.  Such model prisoners that even the prison governor petitioned for them to be spared the death penalty, the pair engaged with others graciously and generously.  Sukumuran taught English and computer design classes to other prisoners and became a trusted liaison between prisoners and prison authorities, Chan found love and married, provided spiritual counsel to other prisoners, and even privately coordinated the development of an orphanage - the latter of which was kept under wraps in order to sidestep any cynical accusations of currying local favour to avoid the death penalty.  Both men found faith in prison, and undertook university degrees by distance education.

In 2015, after nine years of uncertainty, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran were executed by firing squad.  In Australia, opinion was staunchly divided.  Polling reflected my own experience, where half of the population related deeply to the plight of two men who had done all they could, over the course of a decade, to atone for their original sin, whilst the other half were not so sentimental.  I scrolled my facebook news feed, horrified by the number of statuses posted by those who declared such a lonely and violent death "served them right" - not as justice, no, but as retribution.  And such callous condemnations were spewed oftentimes from the mouths of those whom I knew personally to have quite merrily dabbled in illicit drugs themselves.  To the minds of these cavalier individuals, a poor decision did not warrant equilibrium in the eyes of the law, but an additionally bloodthirsty revenge.  As if in making a severely poor choice (or perhaps several in the lead-up to their arrests), these two men had forfeited their right to be seen as human altogether.

The Black Lives Matter cause similarly straddles such jarring moral piety.  When an extrajudicial killing of a civilian at the hand of a law enforcement official is made, the general public immediately scrabble for information.  Generally the questions posited do not follow the line of what the trigger-happy officer's thought process may have been, or why this unhappy scenario of a black body created under suspicious circumstances seems to occur often... So often, in fact, that all the names and stories have begun to blur together.  Instead, we ask what minor offence the victim was committing when they were killed.  We liken them to another, beforehand, who was more or less guilty or more or less likeable.  We don't remember.  We are too overwhelmed by their similarities to recall and when we are too overwhelmed, it's simply not possible to care as intensely each time without effort.

"Trayvon Martin was the one selling cigarettes, right?" someone asks.
"No, he was the one with the bag of Skittles." another replies.
"Oh." the first says.

There's not much else to add.  When the differentials between these stories are so minuscule, it is no surprise that the average disengaged person begins to hear only white noise when Black Lives Matter rallies against another unfounded death.

In 2015, American police killed 1,134 young black men.  Sure, some may have been armed, and others may have been aggressive, and others still may have been caught in the midst of a criminal act.  But even so, what justifies such bloodthirst in us to ever presume that these 1,134 men received only as much force as was warranted, perhaps even that they perpetuated? How can we be so confident that these men "deserved it" at all? We have become so desensitised to the sheer number of black lives extinguished due to poor police processes, internalised racism, and insecurely masculinist trigger happiness that we hear "a life has been extinguished prematurely" and we think "well, it wasn't in the most appalling set of circumstances I've heard recently, ergo, who cares?"

When white people tell Black Lives Matter campaigners that they are approaching their agenda incorrectly - be it promoting their message "too aggressively", or interfering with the much-loved Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign to demand he pledge greater political support to their cause, or even the Baltimore riots, which were not incited by Black Lives Matter but a public response to another black death in police custody (later ruled homicide) - what they are effectively doing is neutering their message so as to better disregard it.  Because if we are not horrified by these murders, we tell ourselves, then surely it is because they were just.  What a dangerous supposition to make that in some circumstances, a petty crime (such as Eric Garner selling cigarettes, or Sandra Bland not using her indicator during a lane change, or Tamir Rice playing with a toy gun) justifies the taking of a civilian life.  Regardless of what the legal system determines these instances, the court of public opinion is not beholden to such standards.  We can and should empathise with lives taken prematurely with violence, through a racist or sexist or transphobic or wh*orephobic lens... or any other derivation of misplaced moral piety.

I'm not admonishing people for not sitting in front of the television watching twenty-four hour news programming whilst sobbing.  There is too much tragedy in the world for anyone to feel profoundly and significantly regarding every instance.  But that does not mean indifference.  That does not mean passing an ego-based judgement.  Instead, our focus should be on exercising greater compassion when these stories arise.  Compassion is humanity's saving grace, even as it is devalued by contrast to "having an opinion" (read: judging others).  It's funny that a bad attitude or grievous error on behalf of the victim seems justification to some for their murder.

When considering the chalk outlines tallied as reasons for Black Lives Matter to keep fighting, or the didactic lesson of drug smuggling in Southeast Asia, or any number of other victims who are just that tiny bit too human to make a hundred-percent-unproblematic protagonist, their post-mortem condemnation is an additional twist of the knife.  Critical engagement is important means of interacting with the world around us, but when it comes to passing judgement versus seeking empathy, the Devil is his own advocate.  He doesn't need any one individual to posit why, through a system of loopholes and circumstances and a non-simpatico "attitude",  there are some circumstances in which extremely inhumane retributive violence can be justified.

It is possible to be both critical and empathic simultaneously.  To feel an emotional understanding of a wrongdoer's situation does not immediately equivocate to advocacy for their wrongs; this lack of correlation is the basis of redemption.  But like all else in the world, empathy requires practice.  One must nurture a capacity for multi-layered processing of information, an ability to discern nuance, and nurture a fundamental core of empathy.  In a world so riddled with injustice, a little compassion for a less-sympathetic victim can make an astounding difference.  And it's not so hard as you'd think.

​... After all, people seem to be able to do it effortlessly for white athlete rapists on college campuses.

The older I get, the more I realise that the personal is the political.  The old adage “the standard you choose to walk by is the standard you accept” has never rung quite so true.  Malevolence is not the true enemy of human kindness, it’s ambivalence.  And when enough people suppress a quiet dissatisfaction with a social expression, the aforementioned social expression becomes a standard, and when it becomes a standard, it becomes an ingrained cultural norm that requires a concerted effort to pull from the roots.
 
And we all know weeding the garden of human decency is gruesome work.  To point out the ingrained biases in ourselves and others is confronting, which is why people are quick to react adversarially to preserve these biases.  To the average person, justification reads like, “Who are you to judge me? I am a good person.”  And to an extent, they’re right: every villain thinks they are the hero of their canon.  The world would be a strange place if self-awareness was so honed as to prevent anyone from ever making an error in judgement that saw another hurt.

With this in mind, it comes as no surprise then that when a group of male friends back home were sprung by a mutual female friend for maintaining a Whatsapp group which, amongst the usual banter, was used to share compromising photos of their romantic and sexual partners without consent, the reaction was one of anger and defensiveness.  The female friend, upon expressing her disgust, was immediately treated as if a traitor; accused of histrionics, of making mountains of molehills, of having some disloyal agenda.  But she held fast, determined to have the necessary emotionally-exhausting conversations with each individual regarding how their actions – from passively viewing these images to actively sharing them – were equally harmful, criminal, and cruel.

Sadly, but not surpisingly, the clique closed ranks.  Several resorted to emotional blackmail, even going so far as to threaten to terminate their individual friendships with her if she would not let the issue lie.  Despite this, she persisted with encouraging them to do the right thing by closing down the Whatsapp group, and contact the women involved to both disclose their actions, and apologise.

Considering the ongoing insistence that the sharing of these images was harmless, none of the men involved were comfortable with informing their sexual partners of their photos’ divulgence.  And this, I feel, is extremely telling of the undercurrent of semi-self awareness that ripples through issue: if the act of sharing these womens’ images without consent was not an inherent misogynistic criminal act, then why were these men so anxious to conceal it from the victimised parties?

The female friend’s persistent challenging of these attitudes were grueling and came at great personal cost to her, something that I sadly only learnt of long after the fact and from a different party.  But ultimately, a modicum of progress was made.  Some perspectives changed, some apologies were made, and some women were contacted to explain how their images had been used with a request for forgiveness.  Others, unfortunately, opted instead to double down.  Such is the way when emotionally immature people who, fortified in the privilege of never needing worry about the commodification of their bodies, are confronted with how their so-called harmless fun victimises others.  Curiously enough, the staunchest proponents of the “it’s not a big deal” camp were seldom the individuals who shared any pictures in the first place.  It would seem that in this situation, the bystander effect – or perhaps a mere combination of guilt and defensiveness regarding the exposure and attack of “secret men’s business” by a woman - remains a powerful psychological motivator.

It is not a complicated exercise in empathy to determine the moral failings of this situation, and the countless others that have seen revenge porn increasingly criminalised across the western world.  These women shared their bodies with a partner, an act of inherent vulnerability in a world that perpetually shames them for having a sexual appetite, even as they are burdened with unreasonable expectations to play the part.  They trusted these men with their physical bodies with the expectation that to do so could be reciprocally enjoyable, not to mention void of commodification and objectification.  Instead, that trust became the basis of mockery – the images were used to flaunt a trophy, to denigrate the women for being so arrogant as to think their bodies were their own, to shame them through covertly laddish bro-culture.

When the personal is political, placing one’s sexual vulnerability in another person is an innately political act.  It is unpleasant to think even sex must be seen in this light, but the reality is that sharing someone’s unclad body without their consent is criminal, and with good reason: in the process of sharing or passively receiving these shared images, we are perpetuating a socio-political norm that shames women for daring to embrace their innate sexuality, even as we try to nurture it for our own satisfaction.

This is beyond “boys will be boys” or “we meant no harm” or “I was just so proud to be with a woman this beautiful.”  This is “look at what I snapped when she was going to the bathroom the morning after” and “the image stopped being just hers when she pressed send” and “I thought the guys would find it funny” and “who the fuck does this slut think she is to demand I keep this private?”

These men have been my close friends for many years.  We have laughed together, cried together, exposed our soft underbellies, and celebrated each others’ successes.  I know them to be, at their core, well-intentioned people.  But their actions victimised other women and I’ve struggled to reconcile the ways in which they have treated me – a girl “friend” rather than a girlfriend – by contrast to the women who sit lower down the hierarchy for trusting them with a side of themselves a platonic friend has no need to.  It is when good people go to extraordinary lengths to preserve a status quo that repeatedly oppresses and humiliates others that the true degradation of their moral character becomes apparent.

I don’t know how these friendships will play out when I return home.  Maybe by virtue of writing this piece, I will have negated my right to have them in the first place.  But what I do know is this: uprooting ingrained misogyny is dirty work, and I would rather be elbow-deep in filth than ever be passive when women are treated as prize pigs or a cheap punchline for daring to have sex.  And if that precludes me from remaining part of the clique, then so be it.  If norm-challenging women are unwelcome anyway, then maybe I never was.

And now I think of it... even in its innocent heyday, there were never any women in the Whatsapp group in the first place.

Those who know me appreciate how much I like a challenge.  I decided to double-major at university because giving myself a bit of flexibility and breathing room throughout my degree felt too slack.  It's why as soon as I graduated, I applied for full-time work in an industry in which I had no experience, and began at the office within a few days of being offered the job.  But this persistence to get my responsibilities out of the way before allowing myself any fun often means that once my duties are done, I'm grouchy from the knowledge that I have been working too hard, whilst simultaneously hankering for some new way to burn through my days because I'm bored.

Naturally, the challenge to write 50,000 words of a new novel in November through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) seemed a perfectly sane idea for me to do within the same four weeks that I was already slated to both move house, and jet interstate for five days.  I approached the challenge with military precision, dutifully packing up my laptop to tap away on the train to work each day, befriending the perky English girl that worked at the cafe near my offices so I could have a chai and a type in peace (although, miser that I am, I never returned after she overcharged me that one time), and ensuring that I was awake an hour earlier than I needed to be every single day so that I could hit the word count before 8.30am... and if I decided to write on the train home as well, so much the better.

To clarify: normal people do not do NaNoWriMo.  Every person I met at the first social event of the season was lovely, switched on, and desperate to get started.  That night, I stared at a sea of people in bunny ears, oversized band t-shirts and overalls, and saw, vainglorious creature that I am, my own emo-loving, pubescent awkwardness reflected back at me, ad infinitum.  But the people I met that night didn't need to be normal.  No good writer is.  After an hour of chatting about our stories, and becoming increasingly excited by the diversity of minds around us, my friend and I departed from the meeting feeling genuinely bolstered for the month ahead.  The countdown from then to November 1 was an arduous one.  I couldn't wait to begin.

I didn't stay up to partake the midnight write-in.  Heck, I didn't make it to another NaNoWriMo event, social or work-related, for the entire month.  But the invaluable company of my fellow writers for one evening motivated me to push on when I felt my feet dragging in the dirt for every one of those thirty days.

My commitment to NaNoWriMo did not cease for anything short of calamity.  I allowed myself one day off, and that was to move house.  By the next day, I was writing furiously from the early hours of the morning with atonement on my mind, spurring myself as if I had something to prove for the absence.  I wrote on the plane interstate, and tapped away furiously on my creaky hostel bed at 10pm on a Saturday night when seemingly everyone else in Sydney was partying at the nightclub just downstairs, making out with adorably-accented foreigners.  But I had taken this trip with a very particular agenda, and I wanted my weekend's quota out of the way before the main event on the Monday evening.

I had gone to see the King of Fiction, himself, speak.  He answered questions from the audience about the religions and minutiae of his world, and bantered merrily with the actresses from the television adaption about whether winter was truly coming.  He held the entire Opera House in the palm of his hand, and we barely dared breathe, so desperate were we to catch his every word.

After the panel discussion, those who had paid six hundred dollars for the privilege of receiving autographs, having a chat, and being photographed with he and the actresses were instructed to line up on one side of the building.  The cheaper-ticket holders were told that they could line up along the other side of the great Opera House for an autograph... if they wished to try their luck, and if the man himself felt so inclined as to hang around.  It was evident that any autograph-dispersing on his behalf was utterly subject to whim, and not to duty.  I contemplated not lining up for all of thirty seconds.  Only when I recalled that I had nowhere better to be did I search for, and find, my friend in the line.  By the time I reached the tail, it was already over a hundred people deep.

The people in the queue churned ahead of me silently, silent with a deferential awe as they approached the little table of the most renowned living fantasy writer on the planet.  He signed each book placed before him with frenetic energy and within moments, the expectant fan would make for the front door, clutching their oh-so-cherished, autographed merchandise in shaking hands.  As my book was handed over by an Opera House employee, I instinctively thanked the man himself for his time.  He actually raised his gaze to look at me and my brain went crazy, urging me to be cool.  I was so excited that I almost missed our entire conversation.  He asked me if I had had a nice night, to which I replied: "Absolutely, it was amazing.  I'm an aspiring author, and hearing you speak has made me want to go home and write like mad."

And George R.R. Martin said to me, "Then write! Never stop writing.  Persevere, persevere!"

From then on, the challenge was not to simply "win" NaNoWriMo, but to write as much as I could and with as much energy as I could possibly muster.  After all, George R.R. Martin himself had charged me with the duty.

The bare bones for my second novel, Love, Inc., was finished within a week of that moment.  Though I harbour a subconscious terror that I am encountering a sophomore slump, I granted myself the permission to edit at a reasonable pace, one conducive to my time-poor lifestyle.  I am no longer in a desperate hurry to prove that I can "finish", though by no means is that something to turn one's nose up at.  Because the few throwaway words of advice from my favourite author reflect the equal blessing and curse of the writer: there is no finish line, no point whereupon we really feel that we have said enough.  We write because the story is clawing at our insides, desperate to spring from the confines of our mind onto paper.  And we want to be rid of it as if it were a parasite sucking us dry, because to hold onto it too long evokes the same dread as if we were squeezing an infant too tight.  We love the story desperately, but until it is rendered in ink, it is not permanent, or fixed, or safe.  To simply hope that we will remember its nuances is to guarantee forgotten details, or lost insight into the characters.  When we are so cripplingly scared of putting our baby into words and rendering it vulnerable to criticism, we have already failed.  The alternative is agony but it's the sweetest struggle there is.

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I'm exhausted.  Looking at my manuscript, which required an additional 7,000 words to pass my benchmark, I felt no desperation to churn the final, filler pages out. It is not the satisfaction of completion that motivates me, though it is an amazing sensation to see page upon page materialise by your hand.  The process itself is magic.  There is no feeling in the entire world quite like when the right words appear onscreen unconsciously, as if your fingers have been hijacked by a third party, and your characters are reacting to the world around them in ways that surprise even you.  It's the writing that I hunger for, not the completed project.  No matter how many books I write, there will only ever be one story: the one I am writing now.

So yeah, I guess I did conquer NaNoWriMo... but in many ways, NaNoWriMo conquered me, too.  Because it slaughtered the pedant inside of me, allowing me to disregard deadlines or expectations of myself, and simply write.  And given that the first tome of A Song of Ice and Fire was released the year that I was born, and the series shows no sign of being completed soon, I think my hero would approve.