23/08/2026
S*x, crime and activism at the National Library of Australia. What more could you want from an event?!
As with almost everything we do at She Shapes History, I’ve done an outrageously appalling job of promoting the second event in our four-year partnership with the National Library of Australia. It’s on Saturday September 19, just under four weeks away, and I’ve done zero real promotion. Please consider this my quite belated but extremely enthusiastic attempt to fix that.
The second talk is titled ‘Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History’.
Women were criminalised for vagrancy, for s*x work, for public drunkenness, for having children outside marriage, for living as men, for killing the husbands who were abusing them. They were transported, indentured as children, photographed on admission to prison, and sold to the public as scandal in the morning paper.
The National Library holds those records. Read the way they were meant to be read, they’re evidence of women behaving badly. BUT turn that around and read them against the grain, and they tell an incredible story of women shaping history in Australia.
After the first event, so many people told me the same thing: one of the best parts was diving into the collection itself. So that’s exactly what this event has been built around. It’s about going properly behind the scenes with the archive, alongside three historians who’ve spent years sitting with these items.
Joining me are three INCREDIBLE women and historians: Dr Zoe Smith, Associate Professor Leigh Straw and Dr Esmé Louise James.
Despite doing zero promotion, a third of tickets are already gone (thank god tbh as I’d probably be a nervous wreck otherwise).
Hopefully I’ll see you there xx�Sita
