I Was Just Ordering a Fucking Coffee (FIELD NOTES)

I was just ordering a coffee. (Decaf latte, two shots, two sugars, normal milk) 

Instead, I found myself in an unsafe conversation about women, worth, and who deserves what.

This episode is a real-life moment.

No theory. No filters. Just how sexism actually shows up in the wild.

Welcome to Notes From the Field.

Content Note
This podcast gets into bodies, panic attacks, trauma, sexism, mental health, and the occasional emotional sinkhole. Please look after yourself only listen when you feel safe to engage with potentially triggering material. 
Also, I swear.

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Credits
Recorded on the lands of the Ramindjeri and Ngarrindjeri peoples.
Sovereignty never ceded.

Recorded & edited at Ridley Farm Studio by Luke Ridley
https://ridleyfarmstudio.com.au...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Notes from the field. I like to think of myself as Dora the Explorer, but for patriarchy. Look, and this may well become a weekly episode. Notes from the field of patriarchy. I know that's a bit wanky. Anyway, this is an on the ground as it happens episode. I went out for a coffee yesterday morning. Now I want to set the scene properly. I house it full-time. And I know that about half of you are not based in Australia. So I'm not sure if you know how common. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how common house sitting is where you are. But essentially, I look after people's homes and pets and gardens, just not bonsai and just not fish, because bonsai are tricky and fish are flaky little fuckers and they die all the time. So I look after people's homes and pets while they're away on holidays or work trips and stuff like that. And I've been doing it full time since about September 2023, and I absolutely love it. Today's checkout day from my current house sit. So that means I'm going to pack all my stuff in the car and whiz out of town. I've been in Loxton, South Australia, just in case you want to look it up on a map. Beautiful by the river, gorgeous town. I've been in Loxton for about a month. I usually, when I've been somewhere for that long, I like to pack a couple of days earlier and do the majority of the cleaning, so on the day of checkout, I've just got to go. But that hasn't happened today, or it was yesterday actually. If you have anxiety or CPSD or anything like that, you'll understand that, or if you're just a human, sometimes packing and cleaning do not occur in a timely manner. So my plan yesterday was to restock the fridge, replace anything I've eaten, buy the homeowners a little treat, and get a coffee. So I entered the I'm entering the field. So I went out for a coffee. I tied up the dog and I noticed two men at the next table: middle-aged, white, late middle-aged. You know, two blokes having a coffee, talking to each other, and they're sitting down. And then another guy pulls up in a caravan um and approaches them. He gets out, he approaches them and they start talking about cars. And I realised that he was driving a Toyota. Um, now look, I don't I don't know a whole lot about cars, but I do know that Toyotas have a reputation of being reliable. Australians love a Toyota, and they're all agreeing what a great car they are. It was the newest safari, Sahara, Sahara, Sephora, whatever it was. And the man standing said, Oh, and the man standing was the same vintage as the other guys, white, late, middle-aged, you know. And the man standing kind of changes his tone a bit. And I'm trying to type the dog, right? So that takes a little while. Murphy was not well, he was stubborn. And the man standing up says, Yeah, but I wouldn't buy my wife a turtle, and he kind of laughs. And he says he bought her something cheaper, because you know women, and they all kind of laugh. The guys sitting down laugh a bit awkwardly, but then the guy standing up keeps going, like not aggressively, not overtly cruel, but clearly suggesting that because women aren't good drivers, they don't deserve a car as good as men. And look, I felt that flicker, right? Like, I I'm my ears are I've got super spidey sensey ears, which I've now made up as a thing. Um when I hear sexism, when I hear misogyny, it's really clear what it is, but it's not my job to correct it because it just doesn't help me pointing it, it doesn't help me pointing out anything. So I said to myself, it's not your business, even though I want to. I I said to myself, it's not your business, Catherine. This happens all the time. You don't need to point it out, it's not gonna make a difference. You know what's coming right, just leave it. You're gonna achieve a lot more by recording a podcast episode about it and writing a Substack, talking to people about how Patriarch is not dead, in fact, it is alive in a lot of the conversations in there. Anyway, I decided not to say anything about it, and go inside the cafe. I I know this cafe, I've been going there regularly for a month, and they've got a system. There's usually three people on at a time. One person takes the orders, one person makes the coffee, and the and it's also like a little gift shopslash boutique. They've got frocks for sale and nice candles and cards and chocolate, you know, it's it's a really cute little store, very Instagrammable. And I know there's a system, and you know, like I sort of it's not like America. When you go to America, there's always a greeting person that says, Hi, how are you going? That's a very poor attempt at an American accent, and you know exactly what's happening. They tell you where to order, and it doesn't happen in Australia, so I just sort of figured out that's how they run this, that that's how they run. The person taking the orders always takes the orders, and if he or she is busy, you've just got to wait. Now the man who's standing up, the standing up man that the standing up sexist man from outside has followed me into the shop, and clearly he's a bit confused about where to order and why nobody's paying any attention to him, and he kind of turns to me and says, Oh, it looks like they haven't noticed it, they're just too busy. And I made a slightly smart-ass comment about women only being able to concentrate on one thing at a time, and he didn't get it, or he chose not to, or you know, whatever, and then he kept talking. And you know, he's one of those blokes, or there are women who do it too, that if you're standing next to them, you're now part of their audience, and whatever they want to talk about, they're gonna fill your ears with it. So I move on away from him because I'm not I don't want to listen to him, I don't want to be anywhere near him, I'm not in a desperate hurry to order my coffee. I also wanted to buy the homeowners a thank you card, and I just wanted to remove myself from him, so I walked, you know, towards the this where the gift cards were, like away from this man, and he followed me, didn't order his coffee, was clearly confused about the coffee ordering system, and thought, I don't know what he thought, but he followed me and he starts making comments about the shop and about women and about dresses and how they're not serving him. And I just said, Look, I'd prefer that you didn't talk to me. And he sort of looked at me and he said, Oh, I didn't mean to upset you. I said, you know, also, I just wanted to let you know that that conversation you had outside about buying your wife a lesser car because she didn't deserve it, and all women are bad drivers, I didn't find it funny. And he looked at me like I'd sliced him open and I'd taken out a kidney without asking permission, which is not a good metaphor. But he looked at me like I had spoken words that he never thought he was going to hear in his whole life, and he said, What? And I said, Look, I don't need to talk about it any further, I just want to let you know that what you said is sexist sexist and I don't appreciate it. And he said, Well, actually, I bought her a better car than me. And I said, That's not the point. He said, No, it is the point. Like he said, I didn't buy her a lesser car than me. And I said, No, no, that's not the point. I said, The point is the conversation you chose to have in public where you joked about women not deserving as much as men, is casual sexism, and it happens all the time, and it's very rare that it's called out. And he kept trying to defend himself, saying that he thought women were great drivers and he was just joking around, and couldn't I take a joke? And I just said, Look, I've got a quite well defined, quite well um I've got a great sense of humour. I said, I just didn't find it funny. Um and he kept going on about how in real life, you know, he had actually bought his car, his wife a much nicer car than him, and I just said actually, what happened in real life in real quote unquote life doesn't matter because I said in my real life and your real life, you put your wife down to make a joke about it. I said, and you put down every woman out there. And I kind of I was getting a little bit wound up, and he was getting a little bit wound up, and then his face kind of changed, and he said, I'm sorry, and I said, Oh okay, and he said, No, no, and he took a step towards me, he said, No, no, I'm not sorry for saying it. I'm sorry because you clearly have mental health problems, and there's something wrong with you. And in that moment, I got scared, but I blamed myself. I'm like, Oh, Catherine, you should just shut your mouth, you shouldn't, it's never gonna change anyone. What are you doing? This is all your fault, and then like the little feminist that could inside me said, No, no, wait, wait a minute. You may have been forthright, but you haven't been rude and you haven't been aggressive, you've tried to get away from this man, and now he's taking a step towards you. And I really felt like I was gonna cry. Um, because that's the sort of person I am. Like, after the fact, I can construct a brilliant argument, I can draw the lines, I can, you know, make the logic airtight, but in that moment I just wanted to cry. Also, in that moment, a staff member, other staff member who looks after the shop, came and asked if everything was okay, and the man kind of muttered and went off and and ordered his coffee, and I sort of hung back a bit and and ordered mine and you know composed myself and berated myself all the way home for you know having me speaking to this guy in public was not gonna change anything. But here's the thing here's the thing, here's the thing that I would really love for you. Well, I mean, you don't need to connect the dots, but if you did, that would be great. There's um the Louis Threw documentary, I think it's called Inside the Manosphere on Netflix at the moment, and it's about men with horrifying, bigoted, misogynistic views on women talking about talking about them like they're normal. It's it's I haven't watched it, I've watched clips of it. I don't know if I will watch it, um, because I know exactly what it's going to be like. It's going to be about these horrific men and the way they treat women. But the thing, you know, the thing is there's a bit of discourse at the moment saying it's shocking, and people didn't know that men like this still existed. The documentary seems to have a lot of younger men, and you know, there's all these people wide-eyed, clutching their pills, horror. But I want to say, I can draw a straight line, well not a straight line, but I can connect the dots from the conversation I had with that man in the cafe to the manosphere. You don't have to deviate very much. It's how it starts the jokes, the entitlement, assuming an audience, assuming agreement, dish dish diminishment, diminishment, disminishment, diminishment dressed up as humour, and then when you're challenged on that humour, instead of taking it on board and thinking you know, and thinking, oh wait, maybe that is offensive, and maybe that does say something about me and women and how I disrespect women, you just put it back onto women and you say, No, no, you're wrong, you've got a mental health problem. And to prove this, you take a step towards her just in case she didn't know what an aggressive fuck tar you were. This podcast, the C-word with Catherine Redden, it's not just theory, it's not just about institutions, governments, or media. I mean, it is about all those things, but it's not just about that. At its core, it's this it's noticing the small everyday moments where patriarchy is so ingrained that most of us don't even see it. So I'll ask you, what have you noticed lately? Something sexist, something patriarchal, doesn't have to be massive, just something small. Oh FYI, you don't need to call it out. In fact, I don't recommend it, um, because most men, and I'm I know that I'm laughing as I say this, but most men do react do not react well to being called out. Um, I would say that this bloke that I called out is probably a pretty okay guy in everyday life, you know, probably you know, the the classic good bloke defense, and and but there's a very fine line between that sort of man who gets slightly aggressive when a woman challenges him to someone who gets really, really violent. So I don't recommend calling it out because most men do not react well. Look, I was just ordering a fucking coffee, just wanted a coffee, and yet I find myself in the middle of the patriarchy telling me there is no patriarchy and I'm mentally unstable. If you want to continue this conversation, um, you can leave a comment on Spotify because I respond to them all. You can join the Facebook group, you can send me a message, you can send me an email. Um I really have enjoyed reading all your comments on Spotify, and so thank you very much for that. I really hope you're having a great day that's not being stifled by the patriarchy. But hey, if you are, let's come and talk about it. So, over and out, this is over and out, Catherine the Explorer from the field of patriarchy. Hope you have a great day. Bye.