About Disorient

Disorient is a living and growing resource for intersectional feminist thought, education, and activism.

It was born out of a charge to bear witness to these times of explicit violence, following Beth Kamunge, Remi Joseph-Salisbury, and Azeezat Johnson’s call to “work towards changing our fates” in the face of systemic oppression.

Among these pages, you’ll find intellectual and practical tools to challenge the interlocking systems of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, cisnormative, heteronormative, and patriarchal power.

If you’re new here, start with these posts:

We Are The Revolution

We stand against white supremacy, imperialism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, patriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism.

We stand against the structural barriers that limit our ability to work, live, go to school, graduate, get paid, get promoted, rent homes, own homes, feed our families, access healthcare, love each other, love ourselves, and stay alive.

We stand against relentless everyday sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, racist, colorist, casteist, Islamophobic, and ableist assaults and microaggressions.

We stand against an inhospitable world that refuses to see us as human.

We Are Here Now

This blog was born in 2020, a year that saw a steady series of traumatic events.

Intersectional feminism fights for gender, sexual, racial, and class justice, values that Disorient represents. — Photograph by Chris Henry

Just as the bushfires that ravaged Australia extinguished, we succumbed to a global pandemic that exposed the vulnerability of people of color, the working poor, and our friends and family in the Global South.

In that year, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd joined the long list of Black people who have been killed by police in the United States.

In my own country, three Indigenous people also died in police custody.

So we marched in the streets again, hoping with all our heart it’s the last time we will have to march, yet knowing the struggle is far from over.

We Will Remake The World

We create from anger.

We embrace an unapologetically corrosive gaze of the current state of injustice. We reject the insidious attempts to silence, contain, and diminish us — to prevent us from speaking our truths.

We recognize that anger is the appropriate response to injustice.

We create from pain.

We have endured heartache and hopelessness in what can feel like a never-ending struggle. We carry with us a deep yearning for coalition with others in resistance.

We understand that to be seen and heard is the first step to restoration.

Finally, and most importantly, we create from love.

We survived the brutalities of the white world because of our commitment to beauty, pleasure, and joy. Our love for one another is boundless.

We know that our revolution must center rest and joy.

May Disorient serve as our place to be seen, to be heard, and to heal. This is where we build our community and raise our collective power.

About The Author

Disorient is created by Dr Helena Liu (she/her), an intersectional feminist scholar living and writing on the unceded land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, colonized as Sydney, Australia.

I’m a tenured associate professor by day where my research examines the ways gender, race, and class inform our enduring romance with leadership. My theories have been taught in courses at Monash University, University of Bath, Mid Sweden University, Brown University, and Wayne State University, among others.

My first book, Redeeming Leadership: An Anti-Racist Feminist Intervention, was published with Bristol University Press in 2020 with the paperback released in mid-2021 featuring a special foreword by Prof. Stella Nkomo.

Helena Liu, an intersectional feminist scholar and creator of the Disorient blog, sits on a bench in a courtyard

I was awarded my PhD in 2012 from the University of Sydney. My doctoral research investigated banking leadership during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. In the final year of my degree, I was rocked by the death of Trayvon Martin. The classroom then became a space for consciousness-raising and collective healing as my students and I processed our anger and grief.

I created Disorient as a way to extend my work beyond the Ivory Tower. My education and profession have granted me privileged access to invaluable scholarly books and articles that are sequestered behind expensive paywalls and veiled in academic language. I hope this blog will serve as a bridge between knowledge and practice; a path towards changing our fates.

Find Me Elsewhere on the Internet

I was a guest on the All Things Relax podcast on November 16, 2020 where I spoke with host Sandi Duverneuil about Disorient, including how it was born, what intersectional feminism represents, and why it’s vital to validate experiences of injustice. Click play on the player to listen to our interview and subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or your preferred podcast player.