Boys will be boys....

From how we learn about respectful relationships (or not), red flags, MAFS, financial security, and recorders in pass the parcel...Sarah and Lauren feel the rage, and celebrate the glimmers of hope that get us all through. 

So pour yourself your beverage of choice, and join us friends. We're mad, actually. 

Special thanks to Mon and Bri at The Last Supper, a fabulous venue in Darwin city, and to their patrons for adding a bit of extra spice to the episode. 

Flag Guy has a name....Dustin Poynter. We thank you for your service.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Rage on the Rocks, where two women pour a drink at the end of the week and say out loud the things that we usually only text to our friends. I'm Sarah. This is Lauren.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

And today we are talking about tiny moments where girls are trained to swallow disrespect and call it nice. From he's just pulling your pigtails to teenage boys writing fuck you and still being described as nice guys. If that already has your blood pressure up, grab whatever is in your glass and pull up a chair because this is for every woman who's ever raged in the group chat instead of out loud. What a week, hey. Big week. Welcome to the end of the week again. Oh, here we are again. I know. Welcome, ladies. I hope you all made it. With your pants still on. Or not.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

We are here. We are at the Last Supper in Darwin City, and we give a big shout out to Mon and Bri who do some amazing things out in our community. And what are you drinking today?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Today it's a pin noir for me. Beautiful. We're in the air con here, so I can convince myself that it is winter. And I too want to echo your shout because many times I have come to do's here, and one in particular was an opportunity for women around Darwin and Palmerston to just come and meet other women. How great is that?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Which is really good. We're all about connection and we really appreciate it. I'm having a Kim Bolton piano. Enjoying it. It's lovely. And where are you feeling the rage, Sarah? Tell me about it. There wasn't there was a thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Tell us all about it. I I am outraged. So let me tell you what happened in my house this week. So my daughter was in class, and they had this little peer assignment that they had to do, and then they had to swap and mark each other's work. And the partner that she got was a boy, and so she's marking his work. He got several things wrong, as you do. And so she marks them wrong because that was what she was supposed to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Well done.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Um anyway, he doesn't like it. She hands the paper back, and sorry, he takes his paper, then hands it back to her, and it has F U written on it. And so she's telling me this story in the kitchen, and I ask her, Do you understand what that means? And she looked at me and she said, Yeah, it means fuck you. And I asked her how she felt about it. And she sort of shrugged at me and went, ah, you know, it's okay. It doesn't matter. Because, you know, he's a nice guy. Oh good lord, that was when the rage started. Red, she saw red. I totally saw red. Look, her shrug and that little sentence, I just went so deep in that moment. There is something wrong with this narrative. So I thought I would bring it to here for us to rage around. She knows what fuck you means. And what frightens me is that she has learnt to reframe it. Yeah. She has learnt to think that just because other interactions she's had with this boy has been okay, that that excuses this behaviour in this moment. And when I was listening to her, I'm thinking, this fuck you was kind of shrugged off as a joke or silly or a boy being cheeky, when actually what it is is quite aggressive.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

It is aggressive, and I instantly also thought, welcome to our generation being mums of girls, and just how much we know that we wish we didn't know, and how much we want to prepare our girls for a world that should be getting safer and actually isn't. That was what I first thought about. But where where do you think this all comes from? This idea that if a boy is mean to you, it means he likes you. Just complete bullshit. I mean it might not be complete bullshit, but if a boy is mean to you, that's not the boy you want to be with.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

No, but this isn't a new narrative. No, I remember being told about this when I was a little girl. So where does it come from?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Where do you think this is beginning? Is it movies? Is it that their parents tell them that if the boy is mean to you, means they like you? It is just perpetuated through playgrounds through to today. Tell us, tell us all what you think about where this comes from. But I think most importantly, it does lead to this kind of pipeline where there's this teasing, or it's all just a bit of playful teasing, and he actually really likes you, and then that sort of develops into when they're teenagers and they're going into relationships, and then it just turns into really dismissing red flags, right? And if people haven't seen I think his name is Flag Guy on Facebook, I'm gonna send it to you, Sarah, and to those of you out there, we'll find a way to share it with you too. Flag Guy, he's is watching all of these videos of these couples, and he gets out mostly his red flags, and it's excellent. Does he do want green flags, people?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

You want green flags?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Green flag guys.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Does he do funny memes? Like he does. Here's a scarf, here's a here's a scarf I just made out of all the red flags you gave me. I have seen that one. It's very amusing. And I don't say that too.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

It's amusing because it's but because it just hits us so deep, right? Like Yeah, what we put up with. What we put up with, and it's the like it's the smashing the wedding cake in the face and the you know blokes thinking things are funny that really invalidate all the hard work that a woman, his his wife, his partner has done to organize an event or make a day special. It's just red flag city, and let's not set up our little girls to just bypass these red flags.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

No, exactly. And what I also thought of is my mind goes to places like, you know, will she one day be in a situation where she's able to dismiss violence, physical violence? But it's not even it's not even to that extent that worries me. I think about will she be in a relationship where I ask her, how's your relationship? And her comeback will be it's fine, at least he doesn't hit me. Like, is that the standard that we are setting? Is my concern.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Look, I am a married at first sight watcher of old. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch this latest season, but I did watch one episode when I was travelling to Sydney the other week. I didn't need to actually watch any of the lead up. It it follows a tried and true formula, right? And that is Red Flag City for sure. And I think for as long as platforms like Channel 9, Married at First Sight continue to provide a platform for these like Red Pill, Manosphere blokes, then yeah, I think we're gonna continue to see it perpetuate. Because in that context, if you think about the way the world is changing, in that context, this is a bunch of people who want to get on TV, want to get famous, want to have followers on Instagram and sponsorship deals, which is increasingly where the world is going, and they're putting up with complete horseshit, and they're showcasing that to the world, and the network's got like zero responsibility around what they're showing and what they're who they're matching these women with, and people are laughing it up as entertainment. That's what we're contending with as mums of girls.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

We are, and we are mums of girls, and we don't have a mum here who is a mum of boys as well. So that that's I feel for them as well. Oh, I think it's it we've both got a huge responsibility, you know, in in terms of this particular topic. I go back to the did you see adolescence?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I saw adolescence.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Well, it left me in pieces. It's shocking, isn't it? And it's so real though. It's real, yeah. So I I think that was a beautiful demonstration. I think the fact that it did so well globally is a a demonstration of how shocked it was, it how shocking it was for people. I do. I I I worry about the standards that our little girls have in relationships, uh, the allowing of poor behaviour, the the narrative that is allowed to just form in their heads that we need to laugh off this behaviour, or you know, you're just a bitch if you can't take a joke.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Oh, that's a big one, isn't it? It's a big one. You're playing the victim as well, I will say. Yeah. Yeah. Very familiar with um with that old trope of yeah, yeah, yeah. And I will say, I had an experience in my former professional life uh when there was a gentleman who wrote a uh comment on my Facebook page that got quite a lot of attention and had quite a lot of knock-on effects. So look, I'm gonna name it. Uh I had a picture of me out in my community after door knocking for a long time, and a comment was written about something along the lines of like, I bet your moss is hot, or something like that. Something that can very well, yeah, see, see straight away. And for all of the denial about what it meant, um, had to also acknowledge that, yes, of course, he understood that there was a sexual innuendo element to that. Look, if you ask me, that's what was intended. For me, that was an extension of my professional self, it was an extension of my workplace, it was very uncomfortable, and a whole range of things ensued that were very public. So, you know, and I do recall that individual being on radio at some point and saying something along the lines of I'm glad that she didn't play the victim, though, or something like that. And I barely talked about it at all, to be honest. Nobody even really asked. It was mostly other people talking about it. But that's kind of stuck with me, this idea that it's like if I'd have stood up for myself, it would have been worse for me.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Because then people would have just gone, she's so sensitive. Yeah, because she's got offended over, can't take a joke, blah blah blah blah blah. So yeah, it was a really interesting experience. And even now I'm like, it just became this conversation between men realistically, um, as opposed to about the standards we accept around women in their workplace. So I think the glimmer in all of this, I think the thing that that I would want people to be thinking about is like if you are the mum of girls, you talk to them about what respect looks like. I know that's what you did, you know, what what this actually means and what respect looks like. But also if you are the mum of boys, like there's a world of work there around treating women with respect, and that's hard work, but it shouldn't be if that's what you're doing from the outset. You know, and and just make sure you're keeping an eye on what they're consuming on like YouTube and all that sort of stuff, because it's just being fed to boys.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

It's insidious. It is, and really trying to the best of our abilities to keep to keep the standard for accountability the same. Girls get it drilled into them quite early. Kindness is super important. That's what they're supposed to be. Good little kind girls that look after everybody. Boys don't have that same thing. Smile more, absolutely, do it for other people, it's not about you. Uh, and I think in you know, in this respect, maybe he didn't realise what he was doing. He's only a young fella. However, he has learnt somewhere along the line that behaving in such a way gets him something. And I don't know what it is exactly, attention, perhaps. Maybe he was awkward, maybe he can't manage his feelings, maybe he didn't like being told that he was wrong. All of the above. And it's not my daughter's responsibility to be PR manager for his feelings. You know, just no, absolutely not. So my job in that conversation was to actually recalibrate her brain and say, here's what I think. Can I tell you what I think? She said yes, very kind. And I said to her, his behaviour is appalling, it's a disgrace. Yep. And I am really disappointed that anyone would speak to you that way. And it is completely okay for you to not feel okay about that. Of course. And it's completely okay for you to say something about that as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Well, somebody's got to, don't they? And I'm just gonna interrupt this uh very good conversation to say I did forget that tonight is tarot reading night, which is very cool. So there is a very cool woman setting up her tarot reading table tonight, which I think we should do at some point and share with all of the rages. Now I think we probably can transition into our next segment, which is about systems that are not built for us. We're only gonna dip into it today because where would we end? We wouldn't. And Mon and Bri from The Last Supper might have to chuck us out because we would still be talking about systems that don't suit women, are not built for women. But I think it's important for us to talk specifically about the disproportionate financial exposure of women in relationships and how that impacts when women are going through things like divorce and relationship breakdown.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Oh, I have so many thoughts on this one.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

So we we will get kicked out if we're still here at midnight.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

We totally will. So look, my thoughts on this. I am uh almost 47-year-old woman. I think we just had a taxi moment, everyone. About three years ago, I separated, two and a half years ago, I separated from my husband. And it's a good situation. He's a good man, it's amicable, etc. The previous 10 or so years to that, I had spent the first sort of half of that at home with small babies, doing the baby and mama thing, and it was it was wonderful and a gift, and it was the hardest job I've ever done. I think I said that last time, but I'm very grateful for it. And then the next half of that time was spent working part-time at a not-for-profit, choosing the job that I did specifically so I could be flexible enough to be able to pick up children and take the days off and have the holidays and things like that. Huge. And still manage everything at home. And what I found when we separated, and it was a it was a fair split, it was a 50-50 split of everything, and we have our girls one week on, one week off, so it's a 50-50 split there. I couldn't get a credit card, couldn't get a mortgage, because even though I had some money in the bank from selling our house, etc., I didn't have the proof behind me that I had earning capacity. Exactly. Whereas he came out of that separation and could do those things immediately. So this isn't about him, this is about the system. So that's totally my story.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Totally, and it's why we've you know that women are one of the fastest growing populations in the homelessness population, right? It's because lots of women find themselves later in life with a relationship that breaks down and then finding that they are in a really impossible position, just trying to get back on their feet. It's really it's it's a real problem out there. It's almost like we were just never set up to win this. You know, it's you have babies, you get judged for not being at home with them and working. You've got to manage the childcare, whichever way you look at it. You've got people who'll judge you for sending them to childcare because you should be at home, but then you get make less in your super and you're really um it does set you up to kind of be beholden to this kind of relationship situation that might not work for people.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

But also don't forget you should be working because if you're not contributing financially to the family, you're not doing a real job either. You're a drain.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

You're a drain on society.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

That's right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Come on, you bludges.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Yeah, and do some real work. And there are there are so many different examples of this in our system. Women out there that have separated from husbands, uh, you know, several children, they're needing to work, they're full-time carers of children for one reason or another, where husband cannot, maybe they're incapacitated in some way, or just disinterested in taking care of the children, and then receiving practically no support. So no practical support, taking care of children, no financial support either. And really, then the going through the child support system, you're not getting enough financial support there to make a difference. These women are struggling.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

And we will say, for any men that are listening, yes, of course, hashtag not all men. Um, of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but on this podcast you will find the real story about how these things disproportionately impact on women because it's a fact. So women take on such a huge amount of the mental load at home. My flustered moment when I entered the chat today is that I had just not played family coordinator as well as I should have done today, in terms of the logistics of who's picked up what child. Women wear that mental load all the time. It's like the pizza party, so at the end of term that you've got a cutoff date to pay for. That's always, I would say, probably you. Me? You know, knowing when swimming's on in the term and those sorts of things that seem so little but add up, you know, when's the development check? Who's got dentist appointments, including your partner, you know, is generally in your brain, and you do a really good job, ladies listen, of keeping all those balls in the air, and you will all know that feeling where you just have something goes from the back of your brain to the front of your brain, and you go, oh fuck, I've forgotten that thing, and then you just have the mum guilt. Total mum guilt. Yeah. Because your kid's missing out, because you didn't put in the form the form.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

And it takes up a lot of space. We don't have a lot of space left. It does take up a lot of space on a and on a systems point of view with this stuff as well, is how many times do the mums get called from school if something needs to happen compared to dad's?

SPEAKER_01 19:25

I get called all the time because if I send hot food, my child forgets that I've sent hot food and then tells them that she has no lunch. Or that she thought she had a lunch order and she doesn't. So I get phone calls from the school all the time. I now recognise the number and I go, oh.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

All the time. My amazing child. Uh I got a phone call from the school one day because it was the third day in a row that she had gone to the office to ask for a sandwich, something to eat. And so I got the sheepish call from the school saying, um, we're just wondering if you're sending enough food in for your daughter. Good on my mum. We found out that no, she just didn't like what I was giving her. So story of our lives, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

That's the that was the first, that was transition. It was like everything you send comes home. And you just so then you also have in your brain all the time, what am I buying to mix this up that they also won't eat? I mean, good on the school.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yes, it does make you feel terrible, doesn't it? I'm really glad that's not me. Just me then. No, no, it's definitely not just you, I must say. But in terms of, you know, disproportionate financial disadvantage and separation, for example, disproportionate mental load, disproportionate being called by schools, etc., if something is going on, or if something needs to be sorted, uh, or even things like I don't know if other women experience this, but even sorting out, you know, extended family calling about Christmas presents or birthday presents for the kids. No one used to call my ex-husband. They always call me.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

You are the coordinator. Yeah, yeah, hundred percent. I think that will resonate with a lot of women, and probably a lot of blokes who spend a lot of their Christmas morning in surprise. Oh well, that was a that's a great present that we bought, isn't it? The magic of Christmas does survive for more than just children, is that what you're saying? The magic of Christmas, where very often the dads are also surprised by what Santa brought for the children. Wow, yeah, of course. And again, I say that with full love for my partner because he is excellent. But yes, I would say birthdays and Christmas predominantly I am well sorted by the time I have to ask for a little bit of help getting the last few presents. I am trying to steer people into useful gifts that won't add to the you know, add to the just piles of stuff. Because I feel an enormous amount of guilt about that too, landfill.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

And the kids having just more and more staff and worrying about Timu and staff at the same time. Because we just are guilt machines, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

So many things to think about there. You know, your your obligation to the social fabric that we have and making sure that there aren't people working in sweatshops overseas to provide your child with crap for you. Yeah, exactly. That probably makes a noise that we're gonna fucking hate and it's gonna drive us nuts.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Shout out to my friend who um put some recorders in the past the parcel at her daughter's birthday party and watch the faces of other mums as their children unwrapped the recorders. That was like peak rage moment, but also beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

So beautiful. You've got to take these wins as they come up. You've got to take the little unhinged joys in life, don't you? Yeah, that's right. Create more of them. It's a way to channel the rage.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

It kind of is. Yeah. Well done to that friend. I am gonna text her later and tell her listen to this episode. Well done, you, for channeling your rage in a way that will not only enrage others but will also make them giggle at the same time because you are so just great.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

I would love to hear how other women channel their rage into very amusing and clever things. I would like to really know that.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

You need to get in touch with us. We are gonna put something in the show notes that will tell you how to get in touch with us with how you channel your rage in amusing, productive, well not necessarily productive, we don't always have to be productive, but you know, in interesting ways. We we want to know so we can share that with other people. And we're gonna go to our final section, really, which is glimmers, because we think that glimmers are just as important to talk about as the things that trigger us, which is many, many things, because it's hope that gets us through. So have you had a glimmer this week? Is there something that's caused you maybe it's been a little unhinged, caused you massive amounts of joy, or a woman that's just been smashing it?

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Do you know my my glimmer this week has actually been my two girls? So they have been with me this week, and it's one of my daughter's birthdays at the end of this week, so she has just Mental Load. Oh, huge, huge. It's been coming at me left, right, and centre, and I have said no a lot to things that she wanted, and not stuff, but she had in her mind big things she wanted for her little birthday party that she's having, and I've had to put some big boundaries around that, and it felt really awful, to be honest, but I needed to because there is no way I could have delivered on it and still turned up for work and turned up for myself as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

So you you were like, I'm gonna channel a politician, I'm gonna underpromise and over-deliver.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Yeah, let's go with that. I don't I've got to work on the over-delivery. I've got 24. What are you gonna do? Yeah, but you know, she's she has been delightful and huggy, and my other daughter, who is in high school, has been coming home and doing all this sort of self-directed assignment work, and but it they've had a brilliant attitude towards everything, and we can't always be like that all the time. But they're just excited about life, and I love that, and I have been paying attention to that because life as an adult, like some days I just want to resign from adulting, it's just ridiculous. Yeah, exactly. Like, do you know what? I came to the interview, I got the job, I did it for a bit. Thanks so much for the opportunity. I'm out. Like, I think I'll retire now and do something different.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Can someone else just look after me for a bit?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Exactly. I don't know what I'll do, but that's okay. I'm open to all sorts of weird and wonderful things. So I took some joy from them this week. They were my glimmer. That's so beautiful. And you?

SPEAKER_01 26:09

I probably have two glimmers of the week. One is very unexpected, and I feel like I need to give voice to it. I did this morning, but I'm gonna go again. My first one is also my six-year-old. It's been very wet up here in the territory, and there's been some pretty heartbreaking stories from different parts of the territory. Some people have lost everything. It's been really discombobulating, I think, for everybody's nervous systems this week. And then we had this situation where the pump house for Darwin's water supply stopped working because ironically, there was so much water and it flooded. And so we don't have water because there's so much water, basically, and then we the whole of Darwin got put on boil alert, and so it's just been this crazy other extra layer of life for everyone this week, you know, where just things feel a little bit topsy-turvy. And so my six-year-old does what she always does, and she uses that 10-minute time in the car to ask me really hard questions about like Darwin's water supply. We've done underground power, we've done how babies are made, we've done all sorts of things in that 10 minutes, and you know, in the moment it's really challenging, and I have to think of lots of ways for the questions that I can't answer, going like maybe we can look that up together when we get home later, and just hope that she forgets about it. Um, but you know, it's a really beautiful time, that 10 minutes, and she's she's just really curious, and that's really lovely. And then the other one is actually it's a political one, I'm sorry, and look, it's with a person that I will be honest, there's no love loss between her and I, and that is the current speaker of the NT Parliament. But I will say that yesterday she gave an incredible and very rare smackdown moment in question time. So it's very rare that the speaker would be asked a question there occasionally, it's usually really boring. She got asked a question about bullying allegations against a member of parliament, and she chose the opportunity to basically show more leadership than anybody else has shown on the issue and really tell him it's time to kind of put your pride aside and apologize and just take ownership, then you can move on. And you know, it it's kind of shocked me all day because I was like cheering this cheering her on. Go you. I saw it. Well done you. I was really impressed, and I don't often agree with uh her politics either, but I was very impressed, and you know what, it means we've also come full circle because we started by talking about things like accountability for bad behaviour, but I was just it was respectful, it was succinct, but it was also like if no one's gonna say this, I'm gonna say it because people aren't gonna be silenced on this issue. And I was like, great, it's really good, and it's especially good to hear it from you. Let's all do this. Yeah, let's all do this, lift the standard of what everybody is seeing, especially at times like this, where globally it's just like probably overstimulating all of us all of the time, with negativity, a little bit of respect, a little bit of compassion, yeah, a little bit of accountability.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

It was accountability, it was very well said it was It was Yeah, it it wasn't it wasn't party politics. No, it wasn't. It was just decency. This is decency. Totally. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

So winning winning Robin? Good on you. And good on well, I should also then give a shout out to Justine Davis, who's just she is an independent member of our parliament here in the Northern Territory, and I think she has many, many winning moments, to be honest. She's she does, uh she's really out there fighting the good fight to try and get people to be more respectful of one another and uh really do what we talk about a lot, which is put compassion at the centre. So I'll I'll give her a shout-out too, because I think she's really consistent. Yeah. Because hey, look at the world.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Exactly. She's I've got a lot of time for her. She is someone that's out there just fighting the good fight with no no power agenda in mind.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Hundred percent no power agenda, which how refreshing is that? That's really lovely.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Yeah, it is so we maintain the rage, and then through the rage, we find the glimmers. We have to. Second challenge tell us the glimmer as well. You know, we we need to know where we're getting this from. It's really important.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

So tell us how you're channeling your rage, and tell us your glimmers. And ladies, rage on. Rage on.