Fab Feb - I'm a feminist but...

Deborah Frances-White (The Guilty Feminist) and Cal Wilson

✅Fitness - #28bysamwood 'Pumping Iron'

❌Alcohol free

✅Fun at the Guilty Feminist (Factory Theatre)

✅Free entrepreneurs' workshop (Day 1)

✅Free lunch

This was a full-on Friday. During the day I was at an Entrepreneurship Mindset and Emotional Intelligence workshop. It runs for two days so I'll post about that later. The night was spent at a recording of The Guilty Feminist podcast with a good friend.

I have been listening to The Guilty Feminist podcasts irregularly for about a year. I know some people listen to podcasts in the car but I find they sometimes take away from the concentration I need to drive. Now I play podcasts during my #28bysamwood workouts.

The podcasts start with a series of statements from the stage starting with "I'm a feminist but...". In my head I thought, I'm a feminist but despite attending a feminist event and knowing that Deborah Frances-White, the Guilty Feminist herself, is against them, I wore Spanx, using the justification that on occasion Deborah Frances-White does too. 

Cal Wilson, the guest co-host, said something like, I'm a feminist but when the Uber driver picked me up from the airport I played the cutesy card, declaring he was so much stronger than me so he would lift my heavy bag into the car. 

A couple of years ago I wrote a post along the same lines as the 'but' statements, before I knew The Guilty Feminist existed: My Feminist Failures. 

The first half of the show was lots of fun with comical truths about marriage, the topic of this particular podcast. As part of her stand-up segment, Cal read from a book from c1958 called Woman's World. Some of the quotes made me cry with laughter. More so when Cal added her spin on them. But in all seriousness, it shows that sixty years on, there are some major positive changes that have occurred for women. Yet, there is a long way to go. 

Deborah's piece didn't hit the mark as well as Cal's but what I found funny was how often she dug herself into holes by over-sharing or stereotyping genders excessively. Even funnier were her attempts at climbing back out of the holes. Sometimes she'd just give up altogether and call out to future Tom Salinsky (her husband and editor) to cut that bit out.

The second half of the show brought Effie to the stage. Effie is a character that originated in the 1980s, played by Mary Coustas. She is a parody of Greek Australian women. In the 1980s and into the 1990s Australian comedy relied heavily on this stereotyping schtick. It seems to be more acceptable when the person playing the part is from the culture being sent up but I think we are more aware that mocking a culture, even from within it, can be damaging. On one hand, laughter can relax tensions between cultures but on the other hand, it can also act as a block for people to look at each other as humans with individual identities and personalities, only partly shaped by ethnicity. The same applies to gender. 

It is hard to become more conscious of the way you speak in stereotypes but as a teacher I had to became more aware. It is so important in a classroom to know your students in depth. This involves recognising cultures with respect but breaking down stereotypes rather than reinforcing them. So the stereotyping aspects of the show were a little disappointing.

Overall, it was great fun and in an adoption of what one fan said to Deborah, it was a joy to see the Guilty Feminist voice come from a face. My friend, who had no idea what we were doing (it was my birthday present to her), enjoyed the night too. I am looking forward to hearing the edited version which I suspect will combine last night's show with a second Sydney show in a couple of nights. 

I think the Guilty Feminist podcast is important. It helps to reveal how much the patriarchy has set the behaviours and discourse of social norms in our world and then arms us with ways we can smash the norms and the patriarchy down. I'm a feminist but last night's show failed to live up to my expectations and hopes.