The Monthly Missive #46: arguments, change and clinging to our mistakes

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Hi there, and welcome back to the Monthly Missive. You can save anything in here to read later in Pocket, and email me at sophie@sophiebenjamin.com.

OK, LET'S GET INTO IT

It seems like everywhere I look at the moment I stumble across an interesting first-person piece - one from a sex worker on why men cheat with them, what normal life feels like as a psychopath, this long and magnificent review of the recent Splendour In The Grass festival (which touches on drugs and getting older), why (some) people turn to sex toy shopping rather than having difficult conversations with their partners and why you probably don't 'have a book in you'. Speaking of which, I love a deep dive into an obscure subculture, and this piece exploring recent controversies among Amazon Kindle Unlimited romance writers was great.

I also liked this article on how (and why) soldiers and doctors suffer "moral injury" and how hatred just made Gwenyth Paltrow's curated brand GOOP stronger.

RACISM, CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER THORNY TOPICS

If you're a privileged white person like me, there's no better time than now to sit down and listen to people from other backgrounds on how we can all do better. Randa Abdel-Fattah skewers our fantasies of multicultural unification a piece aptly titled Go ahead, white Australia, eat your kebabs while you remind us of your 'values', and Masako Fukui explains why she has had it with being a model minority. Any white lady who bases their identity around yoga must read this.

Richard Flanagan's speech at the Garma festival is a rallying call for Australians to look our bloody colonial past in the face in order to move forward in our current uncertain times. If we don't get it together, we should not be looking towards the rich and powerful to save us - they're already planning their exits into bunkers and new settlements on other planets. For real.

If none of those things have got you thinking - perhaps ponder why we are so certain about our mistakes.

THINGS I HAVE BEEN DOING

Preparing for this big event work is holding at the MCG next Sunday
Listening to The Aces new album (shout out to my housemate Flavia for the suggestion), this one Wolf Alice song and this LUCIANBLOMKAMP song pretty much on repeat.
Trying to get over a cold
Thinking a lot about this Kurt Vonnegut quote