The thrift stores dividing Australian shoppers
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
At 21, Madison Griffiths dated her university tutor. It was legal, consensual – and a messy grey area
At the tail end of 2023, the author Madison Griffiths posed a question on her Instagram: 'Has anyone here ever been in a relationship with a professor or a tutor?' Hundreds of responses flooded in. There were those who revealed that their parents had met in the lecture hall. Younger women reported they'd been involved with a university superior. Their experiences were diverse but what united those who messaged her was gender: no men came forward to say they had been in relationships with a professor or tutor. In Griffiths's inbox, at least, it was all women. For Griffiths, the question had been a personally motivated one. When she was 21, about 18 months after she'd been in his class, she asked a university tutor she had a crush on out for a drink, attracted by his intelligence and charm. They started dating and spent the next five years in an on-and-off relationship, Griffiths changing her university major to avoid winding up in his class again. They were only separated by a handful of years in age but, in the time since their breakup, Griffiths found the afterlife of that romance 'convoluted and complex in a way that I hadn't encountered in other relationships'. 'From 19 years old, my dynamic with him was one where I put him on a pedestal and I wanted him to really 'see me'… and I think that had everything to do with the implicit power imbalance that operated right from the get-go,' Griffiths says. 'It wasn't until the relationship's fallout that I started reflecting on these things.' The conversations she had as a result of that Instagram post snowballed into something bigger. Griffiths's experience and that of four of the women who reached out after her Instagram call-out would form the basis of a new book, Sweet Nothings, which explores the ethics and mechanics of 'pedagogical relationships': those between student and teacher, and a phenomenon Griffiths regards as highly gendered. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Griffiths spent a year speaking to her four case studies, women now in their 30s and 40s who had 'lived lives well and truly outside of these relationships' and were now able to reflect on what had been. She readily admits that she was probably subconsciously 'looking for women that reminded me somewhat of myself, or could help me make sense of my own [experience]'. In her quest to understand these dynamics, Griffiths also spoke to male professors and tutors who had slept with a student – but not the ones who'd had relationships with her four subjects, to protect their anonymity. (Her subjects are also given pseudonyms and minor elements of their stories, like placenames, were fictionalised to obscure them.) Sweet Nothings is being published into a cultural moment that feels perhaps ready to begin reckoning with professor-student relationships. It arrives just ahead of A24's Sundance winner Sorry, Baby, about one woman's residual trauma from such a relationship, and not long after both New Yorker fiction and Diana Reid's bestselling novel Love & Virtue on the same topic. Perhaps most importantly, it comes in the long shadow of the #MeToo movement, as the conversation has expanded, sometimes uncertainly, to consensual relationships that feel not-quite-right – and what, exactly, in the arena of sex deserves our condemnation. Griffiths focused specifically on relationships that happened at university, where both parties were adults, and no abuse involving minors or high school students. What makes these relationships interesting to Griffiths is the grey area they operate in. Sex between a student and a professor is not against the law and, in many cases, not even expressly against university policy – yet these relationships can leave a lifelong mark on the women who enter them. 'I was particularly interested in sex that was 'problematic' but not necessarily 'bad',' Griffiths says. 'Every woman I spoke to was of the age of consent – [but] well and truly nursing a unique harm. The women that I was in conversation with didn't necessarily feel as if something completely, egregiously untoward took place within the framework of consent. It was something else entirely.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion What unfurls in Sweet Nothings is an examination of the way men in positions of authority can appeal to women when they are younger, at a moment in their lives when they perhaps feel that youth and beauty afford them a power of its own. Instead of flat condemnations, Griffiths wanted to highlight the agency a lot of these women had in procuring these relationships and explore their own desires. But she found that some men appeared over time, as one character notes, 'vile, dull and obvious' for using their sway in the classroom to get with women, sometimes many years their junior, who wouldn't look twice at them in a pub. A complicated shame and anger often bloomed as women looked back on these relationships in the rear-view mirror, their memories of university forever soured. Two of her subjects had seen their former professor or tutor go on to date other students after their own breakup. The revelation that they may have been part of a kink, 'as opposed to necessarily someone who met the love of their life in the wrong outfit, in the wrong place, in the wrong time, did quite severe harm to these individuals' sense of self', Griffiths says. So too did realising that a man they once idolised, who has a mastery of the field they aspire to work in, had made their relationship about sex when perhaps what they were really craving was to be told they could 'be him one day'. It perhaps won't surprise you to hear that Lisa Taddeo's Three Women, the 2019 bestseller about the sex lives of three US women (including one who, at age 17, had a sexual relationship with her high school teacher), was an inspiration for Griffiths. But another book looms much larger: Helen Garner's The First Stone, mentioned directly in Sweet Nothings as a book Griffiths finds both compelling and aggravating. Garner's 1995 account of two University of Melbourne students who accused a residential college master of sexual assault has been critically re-evaluated for its often-scathing cynicism towards its female subjects. Garner herself had an affair with an older tutor while at university, she revealed in The First Stone – but didn't view it as an abuse of power, and regarded the young women's decision to lodge a complaint with police over being groped as a 'heartbreaking' overreaction and affront to feminist ideals. Griffiths read Garner's book twice while writing her manuscript, determined to do her own differently. Garner didn't interview the women involved in the case for The First Stone – they had declined her interview requests – and Griffiths found the absence of their voices distracting. She made her female subjects the centre of her story and is happy to be writing in an era when 'we can speak in less sweeping terms' about gender and consent. 'I think older generations have a very cartoonish view of an assailant and his prey,' she laughs. But even 30 years on from The First Stone, Griffiths found she and her subjects still brushed up against an attitude of, as she puts it, 'Well, what did she get out of it?' Despite typically being in only their late teens or early 20s, Griffiths found that uni students are seen as capable and headstrong, and therefore unable to be victimised like a high school student who is just a couple years younger than them. That disregard for uni students, paired with the innate respect professors enjoy, has muddied understandings of power and allowed men at universities to do what they like. 'There is certainly a class dimension to all of this,' Griffiths says. 'I think professors are held to high esteem and are able to operate in [this] way throughout a cultural understanding of them as quite esoteric, niche, unconventional genius. Genius men throughout history have gotten away with a lot.' Sure enough, while two of the four women featured in Sweet Nothings filed complaints against the men they had relationships with, there have been no repercussions for any of the men. There are rules around student-teacher relationships at most Australian universities, Griffiths says, but 'they are open to interpretation'. At many universities, guidelines only apply to relationships between teaching staff and their current students; for Griffiths and two of her subjects, the relationship began after they were in the same classroom. The order of events didn't change the power dynamic. 'One thing that I found was the origin story of all of these relationships, having once met in the classroom, pervaded the relationships at their core. It never went away,' Griffiths says. The women she spoke to remained eager to impress or prove themselves to their former teachers, forever affording them the upper hand. For Griffiths, now 31, that has proven true. 'I guess at the core of my almost childish want with him was to be taken seriously,' she says. 'I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a shadow of that in my relationship to my work more broadly.' She hopes that if her former tutor reads her book, he will see that she is able to look at their relationship academically now – 'with the fine-tooth comb that perhaps he didn't teach me'. Sweet Nothings is out now ($36.99)
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
The thrift stores dividing Australian shoppers
You can subscribe for free to Guardian Australia's daily news podcast Full Story on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Read more:
The Guardian
17 hours ago
- The Guardian
Notes from a nursing home: ‘We don't speak of sadness here'
I sit in my room in this nursing home near Sydney, a box of four walls that holds all I now call my own. Two suitcases could carry it: a few clothes, some worn books, a scattering of trinkets. The thought strikes me as both stark and oddly freeing. Not long ago my world was vast, a house with rooms I rarely entered, a garden that sprawled beyond need, two cars idling in the driveway, one barely driven. Now it's gone. The house, the cars, the cartons overflowing in the garage, all sold, given away or abandoned. A heart attack and dwindling funds brought me here two and a half years ago. Family ties, thin as they are, keep me from moving anywhere away from here. I don't resent it. I've seen the world, jungles, deserts, cities that glittered under foreign skies. That hunger is sated. This is a different journey, one of stillness, of finding meaning in what remains. The nursing home is no idyll, no glossy promise of golden years. It's a place of routine, of quiet necessity. Mornings begin with carers, gentle, hurried women who tidy my bed, adjust pillows, offer a smile before moving on. Tea and toast settle as I sit by the window. The air carries the clean sting of antiseptic, mingling with the chatter of birds outside. There's peace in these moments, before the home stirs fully awake. The staff do their work well, though they're stretched thin. They check on us, ask after our aches, offer kind words that linger like a faint warmth. Activities fill the day, card games, a singalong. I join when I feel like it, which is less often than I might. The choice is mine, and that's enough. The front doors creak as relatives arrive, their faces a mix of cheer and strain. Some hide tears, we all pretend not to see. We don't speak of sadness here. It's a silent agreement, a way to keep the days bearable. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads The residents are a varied lot. Some are old, their bodies bent by years. Others are younger, broken by minds that betray them. A woman down the hall clutches a photograph, her son a rare visitor, his life too crowded for her. She speaks of him with no anger, only a flat resignation. A man, his eyes dim with addiction's toll, mutters of a sister who never calls. I listen, nod, share a story of my own. We understand each other here, bound by the shared weight of being left behind. This place is a mirror, reflecting a truth we'd rather not face. Families, once close, find it easier to place their own in these clean, quiet rooms. It's not cruelty, not always. Caring for the old, the broken, the lost-it, demands time, patience, a surrender most cannot afford. So they sign papers, appoint guardians and let the system take over. The nursing home becomes a vault, sealing away what disrupts the orderly march of life. Out of sight, out of mind. Yet I wonder if, in the quiet of their nights, those families feel the shadow of what they've set aside. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion I walk the corridors, dim and smelling of antiseptic and something less tangible – forgotten promises, perhaps. Residents sit, staring at walls or televisions that drone with voices no one heeds. Many wrestle with dementia, their thoughts scattering like ash. Others bear scars of choices or chance, their lives eroded to this point. A few, changed by illness or time, became strangers to those who loved them. To care for such people is hard, unglamorous work. Easier to let them fade into these walls. Yet there's life here too. I find it in small things: a book that holds my attention, sunlight warming my room, a laugh shared over a memory. The community binds us. We talk of old days, of children grown distant, of the world beyond these walls. There's comfort in that, a kind of strength. The local shops are my horizon now but I don't mind. I've seen enough of the world to know its pleasures are fleeting. Here I have my memories, these people, this quiet. The day stretches before me, simple and unhurried, the sun climbing higher, the air still fresh. There's no need to rush, no call to chase what's gone. This is my life now, pared to its bones, and it's enough. The light shifts on the wall, and I breathe it in. It's a good day. Better than most. Andrew McKean is a writer and a resident of an aged care facility in New South Wales, Australia
