Uploaded April 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Chanel Contos has generated global conversations about rape culture, consent and sex education. She has led a powerful movement to include consent education in the national curriculum, and was recently appointed by Julia Gillard to chair the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership’s Youth Advisory Committee.
Her debut book, Consent Laid Bare: Sex, Entitlement & the Distortion of Desire, is a battle cry from a generation no longer prepared to stay silent. In it, Contos explores the political, legislative and cultural changes required to combat Australia’s culture of misogyny and normalisation of sexual violence, and outlines steps to achieve true gender equality. Consent Laid Bare advocates for intimacy, consent and enjoyment to be centred in all sexual relationships.
At this exclusive Melbourne event hosted by Madison Griffiths at The Wheeler Centre in March 2024, Contos discussed the vital role of consent amidst a culture influenced by porn, the patriarchy and male entitlement.
This event was presented in partnership with the Victorian Women’s Trust.
Content note:
This event includes references to sexual abuse and assault. If you need support relating to these topics, you can learn more and seek advice via the below resources.
Lifeline: 13 11 14
Kids Helpline: 1800 551 800
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
Beyond Blue: 1300 22 46 36
Headspace: 1800 650 890
Sexual Assault Crisis Line: 1800 806 292
Chanel Contos has generated global conversations about rape culture, consent and sex education. She has led a powerful movement to include consent education in the national curriculum, and was recently appointed by Julia Gillard to chair the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership’s Youth Advisory Committee.
Her debut book, Consent Laid Bare: Sex, Entitlement & the Distortion of Desire, is a battle cry from a generation no longer prepared to stay silent. In it, Contos explores the political, legislative and cultural changes required to combat Australia’s culture of misogyny and normalisation of sexual violence, and outlines steps to achieve true gender equality. Consent Laid Bare advocates for intimacy, consent and enjoyment to be centred in all sexual relationships.
At this exclusive Melbourne event hosted by Madison Griffiths at The Wheeler Centre in March 2024, Contos discussed the vital role of consent amidst a culture influenced by porn, the patriarchy and male entitlement.
This event was presented in partnership with the Victorian Women’s Trust.
Content note:
This event includes references to sexual abuse and assault. If you need support relating to these topics, you can learn more and seek advice via the below resources.
Lifeline: 13 11 14
Kids Helpline: 1800 551 800
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
Beyond Blue: 1300 22 46 36
Headspace: 1800 650 890
Sexual Assault Crisis Line: 1800 806 292







![Language Under Occupation
Evelyn Araluen reflected, I had all the theory in the world to explain the logics of our erasure, the violence of our replacements, and our more palatable Others. [...] But no one ever asked how we were both colonised by and inheritors of these words – from ‘To the Poets’, Dropbear (2021).
They traced the contours of language, sought out its limits, and pushed against them. Histories were cut up, struck through, misplaced, and misremembered. Evelyn Araluen, Hasib Hourani, and Mykaela Saunders engaged in a conversation about the careful craft of ripping the empire’s language to shreds. In their work, these brilliant writers shifted form in myriad ways; they rendered nonlinear temporalities and introduced new vocabularies. They wielded opacities while sharing the dearest of intimacies. Thinking through poetry and prose, language and craft, these three writers shared the shape of a language unsettled. Language Under Occupation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/E1Yx7W2M4Pw/mqdefault.jpg)


