Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
Bonus Ep: Alpha Males, Sacred Cacao, and Other Nonsense
Something alarming is happening across social media platforms. A new wave of self-proclaimed experts are selling dangerous ideas about "masculine" and "feminine" energy, pushing us back decades in gender equality progress while calling it "embodiment" and "healing."
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I'll tell you something. Half of those men that are roaming about being influencers, with shirts off, covered in tattoos, shoving raw meat into themselves, sunning themselves, running, having ice baths a lot of them are just long-term unemployed. You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones from relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie mccubbin, and as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though. I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be, aboriginal land.
Speaker 2:Feminine embodiment work really does is it allows us to access a deep sense of nourishment and fullness and wholeness inside our own bodies. This is the true source of magnetism for us as women, where we no longer walk around feeling empty and scarce and lacking and depleted. We no longer have to chase and grasp and seek outside of ourselves to get nourishment. To feel full, to feel whole. We cultivate that from within. That is the power of working with feminine embodiment. It allows us to fill ourselves up, to feel nourished, to get our life force circulating through our bodies, to feel and alchemize and shift the various things that are coming up, for us to access our pleasure, to ignite our radiance, to connect deeply with our body, to turn ourselves on, to feel alive. Working with these practices nourishes our system and creates such a sense of fullness and wholeness from within. And when a woman shows up from that space in her life, she is magnetic.
Speaker 1:Well, hello smart women and welcome back to the why Smart Women podcast. This morning, as usual, I am broadcasting from the beautiful, sunny, freezing cold northern beaches of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and I just have to ask the question what, in the name of Hans Christian Andersen, is going on with that clip? What is she talking about Now? That clip I have lifted from a TikTok and that clip is redolent of many clips that are coming onto my feet at the moment that make me want to lie down on the floor and give up and die. What is she talking about, Hello David?
Speaker 3:Well, she's talking about feeling fooled, isn't she?
Speaker 1:She's eaten too much, I guess.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, I mean no, she's, I get it, Do go on, I get it. Well, I mean she's, I get it, Do go on, I get it. Well, I mean it's. I mean she's talking about sort of fairly radical acceptance of the experience of being alive, isn't she no?
Speaker 1:no, she's not. She's crapping on about something about her feminine side and I don't know what's happened. But there's all this stuff out there about the feminine side and I don't know what's happened, but there's all this stuff out there about the feminine side and the masculine side and men are now, um, weighing into it. Harry, can we please play that male clip, just so you can listen to the other side, because it's so beautiful to listen to masculine and feminine energy.
Speaker 4:Whether you're a man or a woman, you have both. The problem happens when we get out of balance. For a man, if he's too in his masculine, he's disconnected from his emotions. He's so busy working, he's so busy becoming, he's so busy acquiring, he's so busy going after the next goal that he's forgotten how to feel. He's disconnected from his emotions and therefore he cannot share those emotions, those feelings, with his spouse, his children or anybody, and he numbs that pain with alcohol and work.
Speaker 4:For a woman, she too can be in her masculine energy. This typically happens when she was let down by her father and she created a story as a little girl that she would never be let down by a man again. So energetically she becomes a man, she starts to work hard, she starts to pursue, she starts to want to become, and yet that leads her to a life of restlessness. Nothing wrong with becoming whatever a woman wants to become. What's wrong is when she loses touch of her true power, which is her womb, her intuition and her ability to create.
Speaker 4:Whether you're a man or a woman, you've got to understand that you have both masculine energy the ability to vision, create, decide and figure out and feminine energy, the ability to receive and love and feel and care for, and when either of these are out of balance. Life gets out of balance and it shows up in one of three ways in your relationships, in your finances or in your physical health. And that's why healing is so important, because healing takes you back into your past to show you the root cause of what got you out of balance when you were a little boy or a little girl.
Speaker 1:Healing- allows you to get back. Okay, stop him now, because I'll have to hunt him down.
Speaker 3:Well, hang on. Was that Oprah Winfrey?
Speaker 1:It's a man.
Speaker 3:Really I mean yeah. It's funny. I was imagining Oprah Winfrey speaking when I was listening to his voice.
Speaker 1:That's a man, and I just don't know.
Speaker 3:Is that a man with a lot of feminine energy that he can sound like that? No, he's actually quite masculine.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know where to start with unpacking the level of bullshit that is dripping out of that woman and that man in relation to this business of your masculine and feminine energy. What's with the business with females needing to connect to their womb and their intuition? And there's another one that talks about, you know, men give, and if a man is giving and holding the space, holding the masculine space and being, you know, connected to his true masculine state, then the woman can just relax and she can become the feminine person that she feels on the inside and she can just receive and she can nurture. Have they heard of feminism? Have they heard of feminism that we have fought long and hard, long and hard to get out of these classic male and female roles? So the feminine mystique, which was Betty Friedan in the 60s, you know, which was credited with sparking the resurgence of feminism in the 60s, critiquing the limited roles assigned to women in post-war society, the limited roles assigned to women in post-war society, and here we are in 2025 with, you know, women roaming about with this notion of they have to reconnect and heal with their feminine.
Speaker 1:What's with the healing? And what's with his assertion? His definitive assertion that if a little girl was let down by her father, then she's going to take too much responsibility. What is with that? How does he know anything? He's horrible. I hate them all.
Speaker 3:I've been caught with a particular thought. So the advice for the ladies is to connect more strongly with their womb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the feminine side Okay, and then you become magnetic.
Speaker 3:So what are gentlemen supposed to connect more strongly with?
Speaker 1:Well, with their testosterone, you know, with their balls, I guess.
Speaker 3:And isn't that the problem when men connect too much with their genitals?
Speaker 1:Absolutely so if women need to. You know, there's all these. I think we talked about it on the last episode. There's all these sort of notions of women needing to be connecting with other women in a safe space and reconnecting with their feminine, and I'm like, why, why, why, why? The dichotomy is in our own heads. It's crap.
Speaker 3:Is it the essence of it that is problematic, or is it just sort of the ramping up the hyperbole around how useful it is to connect to your womb, to you know?
Speaker 1:Well, how do I do that? How do you do any of it? You recept it.
Speaker 3:Well.
Speaker 1:How am I meant to reconnect with my true feminine self?
Speaker 3:Okay, so let's just dial it back to things that we do accept as being, um, as being acceptable. So you know, if, if you remember our own own, own darling daughter, um, when she was little, she spent most of her life in a little pink fairy. Um ballerina dress right, yeah and um, and and so there's something delightful about, about little girls very, very girly, but was she?
Speaker 1:praised. We were very careful not to praise her for her prettiness, but to praise her for her smarts. And let's fast forward to where she's ended up. She's a lawyer and if they look at that model.
Speaker 1:She's very hardworking, she's a lawyer, yeah, and if they look at that model, she's very hardworking, she's very committed, she's got a lot of resilience, she's got a lot of push through, she gets up early in the morning, she exercises, she goes and works in a first tier law firm, she's got honors in chemistry, right, and I guess that is called masculine energy.
Speaker 3:What's driving her?
Speaker 1:You're sounding a little bit like a jewish mother and my daughter, the lawyer yeah, help help my son the lawyer is drowning. Yeah, but it's true, right, okay that's right. So um, yes, um she's not waiting for some man to take care of her, which is which, which is terrific.
Speaker 3:But in the midst of all of that, there still is, you know, she still, you know, still likes to dress like a woman. She likes to wear feminine stuff.
Speaker 1:So do I? That's right. If you would call me, would you say that in terms of my appearance, I'm very feminine?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. You are. So your question is what is all of this nonsense about? I think we have to accept that somewhere in the midst of all of this overblown language there's a kernel of truth around allowing yourself to take cues from your biology and the instincts and the intuitions that you've developed as a male or as a female Sure, and to not be reticent around leaning into those sometimes because they are pleasurable. I mean, that's the thing that I get when I hear the sounds of those sort of Gwyneth Paltrow wannabes that there's something pleasurable about it. I think that she even mentions that you know, allow yourself to feel pleasure in your body. I think that that's all good stuff. I think the problem of it is when leaning heavily into these things and elevating it to a spiritual pursuit.
Speaker 1:Well, it's elevated and it's dichotomized, isn't it?
Speaker 3:And it's also commercialized. It's commercialized. She's shocking. I bet there's a product on the back of it.
Speaker 1:Can I have a sip of that coffee please? Yes, of course. And we're now, you know, we've got women sort of wanting to be in environments where they're sort of cosseted in this Hansel and Gretel sort of fairy tale. Feel you of cosseted in this Hansel and Gretel sort of fairy tale, feel you know where it's all magic circles and there's words like alchemy and they're they're having ceremonial cacao. I mean, what do what? What do we? What are we talking about? None of that makes any difference. None of it is connected. And then you have the antithesis of that with if women are doing that, then men are going on these retreats where they're, you know, um eating a lot of meat they're eating meat, sometimes raw, don't even, because apparently a lot of them don't believe in bacteria anyway.
Speaker 1:um, you know, they have to soak up the sun without sunscreen um, they can't have. There's no women there, because women are an innovating presence. There's no vegans. You can't not eat meat because you've got to really plug into this masculine energy. You have to have ice baths. Well, ice baths, we now know, are completely freaking pointless. You know they're like some sort of raw meat version of Boy's Own Adventure. We're sort of back in this sort of terrible environment of toxic masculinity. You know, they're all tattooed. It's so homoerotic, I'm telling you, it is so homoerotic. Those men with their shirts off, all in circles, you know, beating drums and wrestling, come on.
Speaker 3:Yeah and again. Stop defending them. Come on, yeah and again.
Speaker 1:I mean we Stop defending them. It's so annoying.
Speaker 3:Well, I think, in order to defend yourself against the nonsense, you have to be able to recognise the kernel of the truth.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure. Well, you like playing?
Speaker 3:football. What the attraction is. Well, I mean, I did do a father-son retreat once upon a time, yeah, but Lachlan hated it.
Speaker 3:Our, I mean I did do a father-son retreat once upon a time, yeah, but Lachlan hated it, our son hated it. Yes, I know, I know. Sorry, lach, but you know I could kind of see what was going on. You know, it was one of those retreats. I hope this isn't one of those fight club conversations where I'm not supposed to talk about it, but you know, yes, we trekked into the night and we put up our tents and we had gatherings in a great big teepee and, you know, we talked about the pressures of what it was to be a man and yada, yada, yada, yada. And look, I think that there was something kind of satisfying about doing all of that, because it must be speaking to something that is, you know, part of the package of being a bloke. You know part of the package of being male, which I know is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3:It sells it short to say that male and female are just complete. You know polarities, you know we are on a spectrum of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what if there are some?
Speaker 3:people who don't even identify as male or female.
Speaker 1:100 what if you're gay? What if you're trans? What if you're a highly artistic, gentle boy that doesn't want to identify with that very, very hyper-masculine entity? What about them? It's dangerous.
Speaker 3:And there are some people who feel very strongly about identifying as non-binary 100%. I don't want to be male or female, so we do have this wild spectrum of stories that people tell themselves about who they are and where their energy comes from yeah and so, and yet, when, yet, at the same time, we're heading back into this um hyper masculine, feminine gendered identities. You know the bit that really bothers me.
Speaker 1:Oh, what I love it when it bothers you.
Speaker 3:Is that? Let's see, there's a celebration of a dynamic where she is saying you know, when I'm in the presence of my alpha male, then I get to be truly female.
Speaker 1:Ooh I did hear that yeah yeah. And what's the alpha male doing? What's he doing in that moment where she gets to just respond and be receptive and feminine, what's he doing?
Speaker 3:Okay. So what I find troubling about all of that is that's the slippery slope around coercion and control 100% it is. If you define your relationship, which is, you know, I'm the man and I'm doing all the the masculine the masculine protective, um you know thrusting, controlling, um you know psychological actions in this relationship, um so that you can be the, the loving receptive. You know it's one piece of paper's width away from being compliant and obedient 100%.
Speaker 3:And that's a real problem. I mean, I think it might be nice for people when they're away on the retreat and they get to sort of role play the ideal masculine or the fantasized feminine and do it there. But you take that relationship and you put it into a household which might be under pressure because someone's ill or because there are financial troubles or because there are misunderstandings. If you take that same dynamic and you expect people to behave like that when they are under pressure, that's when the toxic side of it will come out. To behave like that when they are under pressure, that's when the toxic side of it will come out. And so, yeah, that's where I think it's wise, it's sage, to be really cautious about this.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's absolutely perfect, it's exactly Harry. Can we find that TikTok?
Speaker 5:Here are the responsibilities of a masculine husband. He, first and foremost, leads. He doesn't control, he doesn't manipulate. He's not a tyrant, he's not a dictator. He leads and he can only lead because he leads himself first. He takes seriously his own growth, healing and transformation. He seeks out professionals to help him down that journey. He ensures that he is taking care of himself first. This is the only way that he can truly lead, to ensure that he is the provider, the leader, the protector of his feminine wife.
Speaker 5:The masculine husband is the king of his kingdom. That includes his home, his business, his family. He ensures that all is protected and all is provided for. He maintains and leads the direction of the financial future of the family. He leverages his feminine wife's creation, ideation, her life, her breath, into the decisions that he makes for the family. He validates and holds space for his wife and his kids to listen, to process, to hear their wants and desires. And then he takes action to ensure that his wife, that his family, and first himself, is moving forward.
Speaker 5:Moving forward with integrity, with purpose, with joy and playfulness. A masculine husband is never too busy, for he doesn't put his work, he doesn't put his buddies in front of the connection that he has with his wife and his children. And a man who makes the excuse that work is more important because he's trying to provide, is making an excuse from his wounded feminine energy. That is not a noble man. That is a man that allows distraction to overtake him, because a masculine man is focused, focused on the things that are truly important His health, his integrity, his growth and that man then can provide, protect and be the king of his kingdom.
Speaker 3:See what I feel like I'm listening to and I'm actually looking at the guy's face as he's saying all of this. I think it's a fairly low-grade human instinct to tell other people how they should behave and by elevating this to the purely masculine and the purely feminine, once the influencer occupies that particular space, then they're in a position when they can say with absolute certainty this is the way that you must behave. If you are going to be a good man, then you will be the provider and you'll get yourself sorted out and using words like you are the king of your home.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you're the king of your home, what do kings do?
Speaker 3:Well, they rule, they rule. And tell you what do kings do? Well, they rule, they rule, they rule. And tell you what else kings do? They reward good behavior and they punish bad behavior.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, so it is the worst, most appalling model, and it is all over social media yeah, but it feels, it feels so good to say it.
Speaker 3:and to someone searching for an answer to the question around you know, why is my life no? Why?
Speaker 1:is my wife annoying? Why is my wife critical?
Speaker 3:Well, if he's the king, I mean I can answer those questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can. I mean, you know the language of this whole thing you know really matters, all thing you know really matters. You know, back to that notion of women living in a Grimm's fairy tale. You know the words that we use. You know nestled, sipped, sacred, nourished, magical, heartfelt sisterhood, gently reconnect, healing, intimate.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:This is the words that we associate yes indeed, with women.
Speaker 1:Well, where in that, where in that, is the dissatisfaction or the anger? Where is the bit where we go? Don't put up with that crap. What you've got to do is reconnect with your feminine side, apparently, and some alpha male is going to wander into your environment and take care of everything. I'll tell you something Half of those men that are roaming about being influencers, with shirts off, covered in tattoos, shoving raw meat into themselves, sunning themselves, running, having ice baths, a lot of them are just long-term unemployed. You know what they do is they roam about, um, they're too special to work, they're too special, they've got a job on the planet, and that they roam about. You know eschewing vaccines I mean the notion of them being productive, and you know who takes care of them their mum they're or their women.
Speaker 1:Women fresh off a course are going to have to walk into this environment and then suddenly they have to access their masculine energy and do the work. Take care of the children and take care of these boy men. It's disgusting. Also, can I go back to the ceremonial cacao. Remember last we talked on? Tuesday about they were having this ceremony, where they wandered around in somebody's home and had ceremonial cacao. I found it, so cacao is on special at Aldi.
Speaker 5:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you can get one kilo for $14.99. That's Australian dollars.
Speaker 3:Isn't it just sort of one of the ingredients, chocolate, that goes into chocolate?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, but that's where you can get it from. So this woman that runs these things, where these women get to access their feminine side, has gone down to Aldi, got the $14.99 one kilo thing of cacao and somehow it's gone from an Aldi product to something sacred.
Speaker 3:Give me a fucking break, any, any you don't know that she hasn't um delivered some kind of incantation over the top of it. That has, that's changed its frequency, that's right, so that it's vibrating at a higher plane. Yeah, so when this, when this cacao, you know, when you have your, your sticky cacao latte, that sacred resonance actually finds its way to your womb.
Speaker 1:Your womb, which is where apparently, all our intuitions come from. I mean, the problem is with the influences, the argument from authority which, as we know, is a cognitive bias is a cognitive bias. So the argument from authority means our brains automatically are going to be more inclined to believe someone who sounds certain.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Now those Americans that we just listened to. They all sound certain. There's something about the way they speak. There's something about the king of the castle.
Speaker 3:If you're not going to be the king, then your lady is going to find one somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. So the argument from authority is very, very strong in this. The notion of us wanting to tribalize is very strong. We would love to belong to something, so you can belong to the alpha males and I can belong to the feminine womb people.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I guess that means I don't have to work. I could drop the podcast.
Speaker 3:No you have to work for me.
Speaker 1:Oh, just for you yeah that's right.
Speaker 3:So I will assure you that I am leading myself Are you healing, am I healed that? I'm in contact with my man bits Good, and therefore every decision that I'm making is right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I want the house to be nice and tidy when I come home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, fair enough, from the retreat, from the retreat, from the retreat I think that's right when you reconnected with nature and reconnected with spirit.
Speaker 3:Okay, so this is all really seductive nonsense.
Speaker 1:And dangerous. And dangerous and you can look at the political environment we're in at the moment.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:You can look at that and go. What in the decisions of these world leaders was fuelled?
Speaker 3:Ah Right, what you're going there.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not going to get into the whole thing because it's just too awful and I'm not schooled up enough on it. I'm not a political historian and you would need to be.
Speaker 3:But Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:What are they plugged into? But what?
Speaker 3:are they plugged into? Look, I mean on that, you know, without sort of straying into analysis of which, quite honestly, we don't know anything about the current affairs. But what we can do is we can look at history and say that war cabinets have almost always been entirely composed of men.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Men in drawing rooms pushing around little things on a baize table while men die on the front.
Speaker 3:Young men die on the front. Of course that's right. Old men, middle-aged men.
Speaker 1:Old men pushing things around while young men die on the front. It's entirely accurate, that's right, accurate, that's right.
Speaker 3:So you know, without necessarily saying that we know, what is driving the current parlous state of geopolitical affairs. We can look at history, and those who cannot learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. We do see so many instances of wars that are fundamentally being driven by the mental processes of masculine males who are probably trying to live up to some alpha male thing, of not just I'm going to be protecting our women, but I am going to be protecting our nation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the whole, and to do that in an aggressive way that bars the door to any kind of dialogue and cooperation. We're just pausing for a minute to hear a word from our sponsor.
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Speaker 1:And you know the notion that women, you know, need to just sit at home and I don't know what we're meant to be doing sewing or something, or having an apron. Also being really sexy so sexy in an apron, I think, is what you need to be Sexy, making good food.
Speaker 3:I don't need to be. I think you know I need to be sexy in an apron. You're sexy in an apron.
Speaker 1:I need to be sexy in an apron. I need to be sexy in an apron while I'm nourishing my soul whatever. Drinking cacao, I'm drinking cacao.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:I'm not drinking cacao on my own. I have to do that in the circle of the sisters.
Speaker 3:So there's nonsense here.
Speaker 1:The thing is that women are really, really good at running things and we know this. There is so much data around it that you put you put a woman on a board and there is a wonderful equalizing of the energy, because we are very good at making decisions not fueled by testosterone can I suggest a slight um uh amendment to that statement?
Speaker 3:sure you actually is it. Is it unfair to say you put the right woman on the board, because some women actually fall prey to the? Sure the error that they have to outmail the males. Oh yeah, a few of them, that can happen, but look, yeah, okay, fine, that's probably the.
Speaker 1:You? Oh yeah, a few of them.
Speaker 3:That can happen.
Speaker 1:But look, yeah, okay, fine, that's probably the you know just, that's the 1%, just you know, look at the, you know the data around the number of women in CEO positions and sitting on boards, and it's absolutely woeful, Absolutely woeful.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:So, and the more we get entrenched in these Instagram-driven notions of what it is to access your feminine and what it is to access your overtly advocate that it's probably better to have men on the board, because they can be protective and get the ladies to take.
Speaker 3:After you know, hr, bring them the tea.
Speaker 1:Bring them tea and biscuits into the boardroom. I don't know, is it? You're the one that's all over corporate governance? Yeah?
Speaker 3:Look, I do think things are changing and I think that there's the possibility that in some think things are changing and I think that there's the possibility that in some areas, things are changing in the right direction. But it is not about the oversimplification of masculine and feminine energy. It's actually the, the um, the, the true application of meritocracy, um, not, not, not. Not meritocracy that says that we should do away with quotas because we just want to hire the best people, but true meritocracy is probably being borne out by the fact that more diverse boards diversity in terms of gender and cultural background and even thinking style, are more meretricious.
Speaker 4:Merit, merit, they have more merit. They have more merit because they do perform better.
Speaker 1:That's true meritocracy. So if we are going to actually change the current status quo and have equal pay for women, then you know, just equality across the board for men and women, and try and sort of ameliorate the appalling level of domestic violence that we have here in Australia, then what we don't need to do is infantilise women and stick them in the middle of a frigging Grimm's fairy tale and talk about soul-nourishing them. They need to find their voices.
Speaker 1:They need to be supported in finding their voices. Stick them in the middle of a frigging Grimm's fairy tale and talk about soul nourishing them. They need to find their voices. They need to be supported in finding their voices, without hitting up against the notion that, oh, they've got too much masculine energy. And men need to be supporting women because we know it's structural as opposed to individual, it's structural as opposed to individual. Then men need to be supporting women, not from the context of too much masculine or too much feminine. Just what do we need to do here? What can we bring to the table and what are we capable of achieving?
Speaker 3:so you're saying that that what we just have to do is to make space for people to show up however they want to show up?
Speaker 1:I don't like that terminology.
Speaker 3:I can't stand showing up, okay I was going, I was going to pick you up on. Women should find their voice because, again, that's is it a bit cliche? That could be one of those, those cliches.
Speaker 1:It's very easy to say it and it's so true, and a lot of people talking.
Speaker 3:You know, women need to find their voice. Just on that. What does that mean? What does it mean for women to find their voice?
Speaker 1:well, I think we we are schooled and socialised to women to be nice and to be polite, and I think there is doing some self-analysis, working out if you do have old patterns and beliefs around, when it's okay to speak up. If you do have old patterns and beliefs that are around, you don't want people to think badly of you because maybe you've been too vociferous. Then I think that's what we need to be doing just supporting women in challenging some of those old patterns and beliefs, whereas what we're looking at at the moment with this current crop of crap is we're going further away from women questioning whether or not, in this moment, they need to access their quiet, nice, pretty feminine, gentle, nourished side.
Speaker 3:Okay. So if a person has a whole lot of expectations and injunctions that they have to be a certain way and that doesn't match what's actually going on on the inside, then they end up being muted. They end up being.
Speaker 1:Can you say that again?
Speaker 3:Okay. So if people have a whole lot of, if a person has a whole lot of expectations and conditions about what is acceptable in the way that they communicate with people, you mean an internalized sense of what they should be like? Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, um, that's the thing that stops women from yeah, absolutely and I was going to use the word showing up again. Um, you know, expressing their point of view. Expressing their point of view, you're sitting around a table.
Speaker 1:You're in a meeting, you go to speak up and then some part of you goes.
Speaker 3:I can't say that.
Speaker 1:I can't say that. Or no one's going to listen to me. Anyway, someone's going to laugh at me. You've got these internalized voices. They're the things you need to be challenging.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, voices, they're the things you need to be challenging, okay, okay. And so let's, let's imagine you challenge that and you find another way of another way of communicating does that mean that some healing has happened?
Speaker 1:you know, no, it doesn't mean there's healing. What it means is that you've managed to dispel some of the negative thinking and just think, no, maybe I don't need to be quiet in this moment. And then you have to withstand the fact that some male is going to go. Ooh, she's got too much masculine energy. That's in my camp Because I've just come off a retreat where I ate raw meat and beat my chest and sat around in a circle with men and played drums and ran and swam and ice bathed. Why is she speaking?
Speaker 3:It's my turn, okay, so don't just ignore these silly influences and the nonsense.
Speaker 1:Do ignore them.
Speaker 3:Oh, do ignore them.
Speaker 1:Ignore them. They're horrible, horrible people. They're horrible dangerous people with the IQ of 72. Okay, so they're horrible dangerous people with the IQ of 72.
Speaker 3:But aren't you saying that there's a that it's actually more damaging? You know that, just ignoring them.
Speaker 1:I'm not ignoring them.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're not, I'm calling it out, okay, great.
Speaker 1:If you want to join me anybody out there wants to join me feel free in calling out the nonsense that keeps women trapped and keeps men trapped in some idea of toxic masculinity. By all means, join me, because our voices, our skeptical voices, are few and far between and it is a hard job we have at the moment because there's so damn many of them. The Gwyneth Paltrow look-alikes right, with their blonde hair like a curtain over their face, yes, with their pale oval look and their and their natural lips just and their minimal eye makeup, talking about how to reconnect with the alchemy of being feminine. There's a lot of them, right, and we have a job to do to counter their voices because they are dangerous as other men.
Speaker 3:Okay, so we get active in that particular campaign by talking to your daughters, your sisters, your friends.
Speaker 1:Or if you want to post something and go this is crap. Knock yourself out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, start a podcast Do something. Take away that bowl of cacao, stop drinking Sacred cacao and give someone a shardy instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have a glass of. Yeah, forget the sacred cacao and the letting in and having your heart or something. It does something to your heart. Cacao $14.99 from Aldi for one kilo, which I think is pretty reasonable, apparently opens your heart.
Speaker 3:Is it free trade cacao? I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Also just forget hashtag grateful right, just forget it.
Speaker 5:We are tired of being grateful.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for that.
Speaker 1:We are tired of being grateful. Right Women are having a crappy time. What they don't need is any more hashtag grateful and hashtag blessed. We don't need any more of that. And if you're with someone that's fresh off some sort of masculine retreat and they don't have a job because they're a bit too special and they just want to connect to nature and they're not into the material, drop them like a frigging hot cake because I'll tell you he'll be doing the supportive and it won't be the male circle, it'll be you. That's all I've got to say on that. It made me pretty cranky.
Speaker 3:Or you could ask him to empty the dishwasher.
Speaker 1:He needs to earn money. David, Empty the frigging dishwasher. He can do that as well. Oh my God.
Speaker 3:So if he's not just going to empty the dishwasher, he's going to go out and get a job and earn money, then isn't he protecting you.
Speaker 1:No, he's going to go out and get a job.
Speaker 3:Well, both people are going to be working right Then, isn't he?
Speaker 1:protecting you. No, he's contributing. You are also working.
Speaker 3:See, that's a really good distinction. It's right, you don't think that you have to be there as a protector.
Speaker 1:What you have to be is a contributor, just contribute like we're all contributing. Yeah, yeah, okay, I've got to whip down. Is a contributor, just contribute like we're all contributing. Yeah, yeah, okay, I've got to whip down to Aldi. Can I tell you why? Because they've got these 2499 pet carrying hoodies in the Brookvale Aldi. And it's a hoodie and on the front of it there's like a big pouch where you can carry your pet.
Speaker 3:Are you seriously thinking that you're going to be able to carry Ryder around in a hoodie?
Speaker 1:No, because he's 34 kilos.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:But Yo-Yo's 22 kilos. I could maybe put her in the hoodie. What do you think or you know what we could do? You know what we could do. You and I Get a miniature Dachshund.
Speaker 3:I'm sure Ryder and Yo-Yo would be thrilled about that.
Speaker 1:They'd get over it in a minute and I could carry it around because apparently what it does is it reduces the anxiety of the pet.
Speaker 3:Right $24.99.
Speaker 1:I could get that while I'm getting the sacred cacao.
Speaker 3:This week's podcast, brought to you by the Centre Isle at Aldi.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Could you see, if you could, I got a fog machine.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I got a fog machine from the Central Centre.
Speaker 3:Isle of.
Speaker 1:Aldi Centre, Isle of Aldi. That was handy, wasn't it that fog machine?
Speaker 3:And then there was the meat grinder. I thought the meat grinder, I thought the meat grinder was one of my favourites. You were never fond of the meat grinder were you, I threw it out twice. Do you know what happened to my masculine energy when you threw away the meat grinder?
Speaker 1:It plummeted. Were you going to eat raw meat?
Speaker 3:It plummeted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that what you're going to do, that meat grinder? It was fantastic, it was the worst thing, like you couldn't go to the to get a big thing out, put meat into it it was hugely messy and then make it up and put them in casings.
Speaker 3:It was disgusting. I could get all these fantastic different alternate cuts. Oh my gosh Blade, Do you know what?
Speaker 1:happened, Harry. I put it on the back of the truck ready to go to the tip for one of our tip runs.
Speaker 3:Is that where the meat grinder went?
Speaker 1:No, you found it on the back of the truck.
Speaker 3:That's right went.
Speaker 1:Now you found it on the back of the truck that's right and and reclaimed it and put it back under the house and do you know what I did? What did you do? I went and found it again and and I picked it up and I put it on the truck and harry and I drove that truck at great pace towards the tip where the meat grinder is now sitting next to somebody's pointless smoke maker. Was it a smoke maker?
Speaker 3:It was a fog machine. Fog machine Anyway, and if there's any particular topic or dynamic that you'd like Annie and I to talk about, then let us know.
Speaker 1:Oh, please, do we really mean that? I'd love that. It would make me so happy. If someone said can you talk about this? I'd go, yes.
Speaker 3:I think if there's anything that we're certain about and correct me if I'm wrong, annie I think the only thing that we're sort of super certain about is that we're not certain about masculine, feminine energy and what drives people to be the very best person that they can be.
Speaker 3:You can't take a position of certainty on what is going to work for everybody on this planet, because everybody has different lives, different circumstances that are driving, you know, the next decision that they make, and the next, and the next and the next. And I think that if anybody would like to have a conversation where they might go from sort of general confusion to some very specific things, I mean, maybe what's the one or two genuinely practical, useful things that they could do in a given relationship, or in their career, or with their well-being or with their finances, or even just if they, if they feel they're not having fun in life anymore, this is the thing that we do. We do have conversations with people where we can go from the general sense to something that is individual, that is specific, that is doable, practical, practical and sensible. If we apply the good critical thinking skills, apply some common sense, because it's your own thinking that Apply some common sense, you know, because it's your own thinking that gets in your own way.
Speaker 1:Right. It is your own thinking, but also apply some compassion to it. Yeah, be kind to yourself.
Speaker 3:To be kind to yourself. I mean, the last thing I think you want is for people to you know. Turn off the podcast and go. I am such an idiot.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I don't want that at all. Oh no, I don't want that at all. We are all victims of our own thinking. Well, we're doing the best that we can we are? And, of course, this whole environment of social media doesn't help us to make better decisions, but we can help.
Speaker 3:That's right. Social media it's built for a mass market, it's built for a marketing funnel. If you want to go into conversation about some of these things that are very, very specific, I think in the show notes there's a link. You know, reach out to any, or, or david, or even crazy, you know, um, I'm I'm very happy to to to have a conversation about this sort of stuff, david does a lot of coaching.
Speaker 1:So, look, we're here If that's of any interest to you. If you do think that your own thinking is getting in the way of you you know leading a productive, purposeful life get in contact with us. Well, that's all from today. That's my rant for today, the thing that has really got up my nose. I hope wherever you are in the world, these are very, very uncertain times that we are living in. I hope you're finding some sense of peace and calmness in the middle of the trials and tribulations of being alive in 2025. Thank you very much for listening. Talk soon. Bye-bye. Thanks for tuning into why Smart Women with me, annie McCubbin. I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style.
Speaker 1:Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home. Please, please, respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that.
Speaker 1:And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, annie McCubbin.
