Feminism Is Easy Until Someone You Love Says Something Shit

Feminism is easy… until it’s your family.

This one’s about the dinner table.

The comments that don’t sit right.

And the moments where you stay quiet.

Recorded in my car by the beach,

       with seagulls who are frankly furious about the lack of chips.

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 0:06

I think feminism is very easy to agree with. Although it's definitely something that can set some people off. But I I think feminism equality is something very easy to agree with. Most people at least like the thought of humans being equal. So this podcast today is going to be about where does feminism live? Where does it live in the world and where does it live within us? Oh, and just a note, today I'm coming to you from the car, actually from my mother's car. It's just me in it. It's just you and me here, it's okay. Not that there would be anything wrong with mum being here, but she's not. I'm at Horseshoe Bay in Port Elliott, South Australia. The windows are down. I did try recording with it's a warm day, so I did try recording with the air conditioner on. That sounded like I was coming from a telephone booth from 1987. Then I tried recording with the windows with the engine off and the windows up. Now that was coming to you from Menopause 2026. Hot flash, hot flash, hot flash. Not great. So now I'm sitting in the car. We just had a bike drive past with the windows down. So you will hear seagulls, you will hear the sea, you will hear people the car park's full. It's a very pretty beach. If you Google Horseshoe Bay, Port Elliot, you'll want to come here immediately. It's a very popular beach. Um you might hear the Surf Living Surf Life Saving Club are conducting some exercises in the water, so you might hear people splashing around. I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm just going to say that we're still recording. Yes, we are. Good. I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm just going to say, welcome to the party of my direct existence. This it's become more important for me and my nervous system to publish an episode every week. That doesn't mean I'm going to publish whatever random thought is popping in and out of my beautiful brain. It just means it's really important for me to publish this podcast of a Wednesday. Today's also going to be a bit different. It might be a bit a little bit longer, and it may not be the through lines, you might have to pull at them a bit more to connect the thought dots. Most of my podcasts I rehearse because I can't edit. I don't know how to edit. It's not technology and I we're like in a very dysfunctional relationship, so I'm one take redden. I have learnt how to put an intro on, and you'll probably hear an intro to this, and I have learnt how to put an outro on, as or as we call in the business, pre-roll, post-roll, or a mid-roll. I don't do mid-rolls because I've yet to have sponsors, which is good for you because you don't have to hear me spout on about something that you need to buy. This one's going to be a bit longer. Normally I rehearse it, then I feed the transcript through AI. Shock horror. I use ChatGPT and then ChatGPT and I talk about what I could change, what makes the dots connect a bit more, what doesn't make the dots connect, what's over-explaining and over-sharing. But I'm not going to do that today. I'm just going to talk and I'm going to see how that lands with you. Let me know if you hate it. Let me know if you want to go back to the short, sharp 15-minute episodes where I'm much more succinct. Let's see how this one goes. This episode is about where. But anyway, matters. Matters. When you think about something for long enough, you can start to think that it doesn't matter. What is that? Feminism definitely matters. This episode is about where feminism happens in your world, where you experience it out there in the world, and where you experience it more like on a personal level. I think feminism's very easy to agree with on a podcast, in a book, in the comment section where everybody already agrees with you. But I don't think that's where equality happens. I think equality happens at the dinner table. When someone says something a bit off and people look at you. If you're the difficult woman in your family like I am, people look at you. Or this kind of force field starts to break open that you've normally got. That's where feminist feminism and equality live. Now, the extension of that is something that I've discovered rather late in life, in that arguing with someone is never going to change their opinion. Ever. When you disagree with someone, when you contradict someone, when you offer them a fact, or as they might like to call it, fake news or too much book learning, I've never been in a situation where people go, oh, actually, Catherine, you're right, I'll stop being a misogynist cunt. And so then I think, well, what's the point of even stating the opposite or an objection to what that person is saying because they're not going to change their mind and all I'm going to do is expend my energy. But on the flip side of that, I do think converse a robust conversation is healthy. I think probably depends who you're talking to. Some people are more able to engage with an opinion that's not theirs. And also there are, you know, you pick your moments and all of that stuff. But it becomes tricky, right? It's like, well, where does feminism really live? And where does it die? I'm Catherine Redden. I feel like that's all I ever say. If you don't know that I'm Catherine Redden, who even are you? I'm Catherine Redden, and this is the C-word. It's a thinking space, it's not a shouting space. Even though I get a bit worked up sometimes. Oh, did you hear the seagull? See, the seagull's telling me not to shout. Are you a feminist too? Ms. Seagull? Don't know if it's oh, can you hear the seagull talking to us? I think that's because I'm not giving it a chip. I've been in quite a long time. I'm obviously in my car, and there have been no chips forthcoming. I'm Catherine Redden, and this is the C-Word, and I promise that I'm gonna get my thought out this time. Today I want to talk to you about where feminism lives and where it dies. Because it is something I think about. You know, I'm able to easily be a feminist on this podcast. I'm able to easily, way too easily and way too often be a feminist in the comment section, be it on a misogynistic post or a you know feminist ally post or whatever. Like I'm able to be a feminist with my friends. I am at times able to be a feminist in public. Um if you've listened to I did an episode a couple of weeks ago called I was just ordering a fucking coffee about a conversation I had with a man who um I'd overheard, yes, it was none of my business, but I'd overheard saying that he would never buy his wife a new car because she didn't deserve it because she was a woman, and all women were bad drivers. And I ended up having a conversation with him about that. Spoiler alert, it didn't go well, but so I can do that, but where I don't often do it is at the dinner table with my family. Or sitting around the fire toasting marshmallows with my family. You know, and and maybe that's maybe that's a good thing. I'm I'm not sure. I mean, what do you think? Like, you don't want to blow up every family function because somebody says something misogynistic or sexist or racist or transphobic. But like, what does that say about me as a feminist? We've got laws, we've got policies, we've got workplaces with diversity statements written in very confident font, and all of that really, really matters. That's where change happens. When you make it a law and there is a consequence for breaking that law, that is absolutely where change happens. Even not the consequence part, like the making the law part's really, really important because I could be wrong about this, but I dare say after it became law that women could vote in South Australia and Australia, I don't know if they were prevented from voting after that, and then that became a crime, and then anybody got convicted. Um I haven't looked into that, but what I'm saying is you can make a law, and it doesn't always have to have consequences, it just becomes the status quo. All of that's really, really important. But none of that is where most of us live our actual lives. Most of us are not in parliament making laws or have the ability to make laws. Most of us are not in lobby groups that can that hope to get a law up in parliament to change that law. Most of us are not in HR, thank God. Look, in you if you're in HR, God bless you. Not that I believe in God, bless you. Thank you. But you know, most of us are not sitting in those meetings making diversity policies and inclusion policies and how that might look. We're not we're not doing that. Most of us are at barbecues, we're at sausage sizzles raising money for our kids' sports teams. We're in group chats. We're at family dinner night. We're at our uncle's birthday. We're at the airport waiting to go on holiday with our family. We're at work. What about people actually do I know that people have normal jobs. We're a teacher, we're sitting in a staff room. We're a nurse, we're doing somebody's meds. We're we work at Coles and we're checking out and I don't know, clicking off what's it called? Checking in and checking out. I don't know if you even do that anymore. We're living our life. We're playing mixed snetball. And what a competitive sport that is, my friends. That is a podcast episode. That's where we're living our life. We're at the football. On paper, I, as a person who owns a vagina, have a quality. This is not always a thing that women had. But right now in Australia, in theory, I have a quality. I can vote, I can work, I can get a loan. It is illegal to discriminate against me because I am a woman. And yet something isn't quite adding up. Equality exists structurally, but it is negotiated socially. And look, I just want to apologise at this moment because a very lovely car full of Queenslanders has rocked up to Horseshoe Bay and they are marvelling in its splendor, which it is absolutely beautiful, but they don't know all they're actually all now changing out of their bathers into something a bit more fancy because I think they're having lunch at the Flying Fish. Little bit of a tourism announcement that's not sponsored. The Flying Fish Cafe at Horseshoe Bay in Port Elliot is spectacular, even if it's the it is not the worst food, but even if it was the view, oh, it is divine. So we're just going to enjoy these people getting ready for what I think is their lunch. Again, I'm going to apologise. This is not ideal. Now somebody's lost their charger. Unsure why they need their charger. Maybe they're like me and they've got a flat phone battery all the time. They're searching for something in the van. It's one of those vans with the door that slides like sideways. People mover. Well, they've found it now. It's been found. No. Yep, good. Whatever it is, they lost it, they've found it. The driver, who is also a man, has found it. It's now being celebrated for finding whatever they lost. There's much excitement, slamming of doors, reopening of doors. Oh, more people emerging from the people mover. More doors are being opened and shut. This is the podcast you didn't know that you needed. I think that we're off. I think that's the final door slam. Well, they've got the big camera with the big lens. Off they go. Moving very, very slowly away from the discussing where they thought the item was and where it was found. Okay, thank you for listening. Thank you for staying with me. Equality exists structurally, but it is negotiated socially. Examples of this are when you're talking and you're interrupted. Examples of this are when people are talking about pay and wage. Um the Labour Party in Australia are introducing um equal pay for 18 to 20 year olds, which I already thought was a thing, but basically saying if you're an adult you deserve equal pay no matter what work you do. And then if someone's talking about that, which they have been in my presence, and you say, Well, what about the wage gap? What are we doing about that? Or what are we doing about paying people who work under the Pastoral Act minimum wage? Um, people don't like that. When you talk about who organizes things, who's making the sandwiches and who's blowing the whistle. When you talk about um when you're having a conversation about unpaid work, you know, or women or women's health or anything like that, you know, you you're at that time trying to negotiate feminine feminism socially, and quite often in those conversations, I am trying to not be the difficult woman. Like I want to be the difficult woman, but also it's exhausting. Most of the time I just want to live as a hermit in Tasmania in a cute little cottage with a wood fire and a border collie and a good coffee maker. Oh, and really good internet, obviously, obviously. And a veggie garden. You know, but I really believe equality exists structurally. I don't even know if that's how you pronounce structurally. Equality exists structurally, but it is negotiated socially. Organisations love equality. They love to tell us how equal they are. They absolutely love it as long as it fits into a policy document. Organisations are made up of people, and people bring their dinner table with them. So we talk about, oh, we absolutely supports women, but look at who gets promoted. I want to give an example of this. When I worked for the Department of Justice in Victoria, um, and I was a community corrections officer, you might know them as a parole officer, there were mainly women at the entry level, but managers of the team, team managers, half and half were men. So I would say 5%, or maybe more than that. Alright, let's say 20% of entry-level community corrections officers were men, 50% at the at the middle management level were men, and then at the upper management level they were mainly men. Overwhelmingly men. And yet the Department of Justice definitely has equality legislation. So what's going on there? What's going on in organizations? We still have an alarmingly really strange low level of women who are CEOs in Australia and in fact across America and the UK and other countries within a so similar socioeconomic band, if you like. I'm thinking Europe, I'm thinking North America, I'm thinking South Africa, New Zealand, Australia. Still very low low rates of low levels of women who are chief executive officers, and in fact at any level, and so-called executive levels. Low late low rates of participation of women in in parliament. Low rates of still low rates of women doing engineering and science. I think they call them STEM, I'm not sure. I don't know what STEM means. Maybe someone can tell me. Why why? When there's all this stuff about equality and inclusion, it's still very low rate. And and yet it's difficult to have these conversations. Well, I find it, maybe you don't find it difficult, but I find it because these conversations just produce either silence or argument. Like nasty argument, not polite debate, but like nasty argument. The dinner table is where equality gets tested. Not announced, not declared, tested. Someone makes a joke, right? It's not horrific, it's just a bit off. Enough that you can feel that joke in your body before you can explain it. And then there's a moment, there's a tiny flickering moment in me. I'll give an example. This is not a feminist example, but it's a racist example. So recently, um, Sap Saza is a terrific program in primary call primary schools in South Australia where once a year for a week they all participate in sport. I don't know if they all come to Adelaide, but let's just say they all come to Adelaide from all around the state, and they participate in softball and athletics and swimming and football and all this stuff I probably haven't included. And it's a really terrific program. And it was on in South Australia in Adelaide a few weeks ago, and the girls' team from the APY lands, which are um lands where a lot of people who are aboriginal live, um, they they flew down a girls' softball team, and they won. They absolutely blitzed every game they they knocked the other teams out of the park. They're incredibly impressive athletes, these girls. And I mentioned it at the dinner table at a family dinner, and a family member who I don't consider racist said, Oh, was the prize a pair of shoes? And I didn't say anything. I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I didn't say anything because I don't and I'm ashamed I didn't say anything, but it's like I'm always the person saying something. I'm always the person who's I feel like pulling up other people for what they're saying. And it's exhausting, it's really exhaust. It makes me not want to go to family functions. I wouldn't consider my family overtly racist, but maybe they maybe we are. I think that family member would not like me talking about that on this podcast, which which is interesting in and of itself. You know, I th and I think that too is why we see so many negative comments about anything on the internet. People feel very comfortable on the internet to express these feelings. And maybe or thoughts. And maybe they feel obviously felt comfortable around the dinner table to express that thought as well. But that's an incredibly ignorant racist thing to say. But I didn't say anything. I think why it's so hard to say things in those moments is because it's not abstract. I can come on this podcast and talk about feminism really easily because in my mind there are the links between inequality and feminism and are really clear and really obvious. And and through history and today, and it's really, I think, maybe not true, but I think it's really easy for me to make my arguments. Women haven't always had the vote, um, the abortion is still illegal in lots of countries. Medicines are mainly tested on men, men are paid the uh more than women almost for every occupation except sex work. Um you know, I can go on on and on and on. You know, domestic violence is mainly perpetrated by men against women and children, you know, nothing and nothing nothing is done about that, in my opinion. Nothing meaningful has ever been done about that. Um I can make those links really, really easily. But at a dinner table, when somebody says something sexist or racist or transphobic, I'm I most of the time don't say anything because in the past I have said something, and it all it ends up is me either in tears or crying or thinking that I'm the bad person for ruining Christmas. Feminism's really easy when it's theoretical, but it's not easy when it's your dad, when it's your friend, when it's someone you love, when it's someone you have to see next week. And I guess does that matter? I'm not sure. Maybe it matters more that I'm doing this podcast. That I am an ally, that I am a feminist, that I am speaking about it in a public forum. Maybe that matters. Maybe that outweighs the fact that more often than not I stay silent. Feminism's so for me, really easy when it's theoretical, but it gets really complicated when it's relational. Because I'm not just making a point, I'm risking connection. And those connections, my the connection I have with my family is really important to me. They're a support to me that I that I want in my life. And look, I don't think equality happens through big speeches at the dinner table. I do think it happens through micro shifts. So examples of what I could have said last night and I didn't say, What do you mean by that? Or that's interesting, but like in a tone that's not sarcastic. I don't have that mastered yet. Redirecting the conversation, naming something gently, backing another woman in. I guess because not every moment needs a takedown. Not every moment is tacklable, not every moment is winnable. But some moments do need a witness. I think there's a gap between what we say we believe and what we actually do. You know, and I I would say now that there's this anti-wok woke, I was gonna say woke. There's an anti-woke movement that's so fascinating to me because woke is a word that the right made up to describe things they didn't like happening on the left. I'm gonna say that again. Woke is a word that the right made up because they did not like some things that people on the left were doing. Woke is not a state of mind. Woke is a word that the right made up to criticize the left, and it's worked. Words have power, words have meaning. Don't let anybody tell you any different. Words have so much power and so much meaning. So when I asked back at the beginning, where does equality actually happen? I don't I don't know. I I not only do I not know where equality happens, I don't know, I don't know about where do those moments happen. You know, if I imagine a great big line, and on one hand there's men's privilege, and on the other hand there's women, and we're and we're inching together, and this is actually not a great metaphor, I'll think of a better one one day, but you know, we're inching together towards that centre line of equality. I don't know where that happens. I do know, like of course, it happens in Acts of Parliament, it happens in policy, it happens when people speak up. It happens when organizations change behaviour. But is that the only place it happens? Is that the only place it can happen? I wonder if it does happen in those small, slightly uncomfortable moments where somebody cracks the joke about, you know, I don't trust something that bleeds for seven days and doesn't die. And then somebody else says, What do you mean by that? Well, that's not funny. Is that where equality happens too? I I don't know. Maybe equality isn't something we achieve, maybe it's something we practice. Because if equality only exists in theory, then it doesn't exist at all. Shout out to all the Christians listening. I do love you, I do love you all, and I absolutely respect your right to practice your religion, but I am gonna say again. Because if something only exists in theory, does it exist at all? And I know we're going deep, but I'd just like to say I'm a thinker, I love thinking, I'm really interested in philosophy, interested in philosophy and anthropology and feminism, and I'm interested in words, and I'm interested in social change and social justice. So, you know, if you've come this far and you don't like that, I'm not quite sure what you're still here. I'm gonna say that thing again because I really love it. If something exists only in theory, does it exist at all? I don't think equality is a straight line. I don't think it's being built in stages, it's backwards, and as we can see with the abortion um debacle in the American in the American States, I was gonna call them in the United States of America, don't look so united at the moment, people. As we can see with, I think it was 1971 where Roe v. Wade came in and gave women the right to have an abortion to to whatever the fuck is going on there now. You know, equality's not built brick by brick. It's not built in a straight line, and it's it's not even. Perhaps it's built at kitchen tables. Perhaps it built perhaps it's built in the coffee line. Perhaps it's built in the outer at the football. I want to thank you for listening to this longer form podcast. I don't I don't know how it's gonna go. It's just me sitting by the beach, navigating the loss of an item in the car next to me, and hoping that I don't know what I'm hoping for. I high I hope that this found you where you're at. I'm Catherine Redden, and this is the C word.