Ten Steps to Nanette

by Hannah Gadsby

You see, when you are forced to keep a trauma secret in order to survive, you need to actively avoid incorporating the traumatic event into your official version of self. You don’t forget it, you just don’t put words around it. And when there are no words, there is no sharing. And when there is no sharing, you can’t find your way back to safety. And with all that comes a deep and dark dose of shame.

It is always offensive when victim status is claimed by the very people who are actively advocating for legal limitations on the human rights of a marginalised and vulnerable group within their community.

But the vileness of this tactic goes through the roof when they do so by co-opting the vernacular of the very group they are so proud to hate and oppress, legally or otherwise. How can “all lives” possibly “matter” in a world where people just keep doing this kind of horrific shit?

Welfare systems don’t accommodate for transience because welfare systems are not built to be accessible, they are built to be temples of administrative doom, because, apparently, welfare is a treasure that must be protected.

I decided that I did not want to waste any more of my precious energy trying to police what others have to say about my body or even try and change what it is they believe my body says about my worth as a human.

have every confidence that I will continue to hear all the same horrific things about how I look, and I am sure I will continue to find it painful, but for me this is the last time I will speak about it. I have never identified with how people see me. I have a great big universe of stuff inside of me. None of it is gendered. None of it. I love who I am. It’s only on the other side of my skin where the pain begins. But I will not negotiate anymore. I am proud to be Queer.

Sarah Kendall is the best storyteller who has ever graced the Fringe. Adrienne Truscott was responsible for one of the most powerful shows critiquing rape culture in comedy—and I include Nanette when I say that. I have already mentioned Zoë Coombs Marr but I will do it again. Zoë Coombs Marr. And finally, Ursula Martinez, who could just build a brick wall on stage and I would be riveted.