Goes Without Saying - problematic families: your conservative grandma woke up and chose violence

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

it's your average festive podcast, but make it ~traumatic~. in this episode, we're discussing toxic family dynamics and how they play out during the holiday season. from political arguments to racist uncles to triggering body image comments, we're setting boundaries this year. christmas came early! enjoy x join the conversation every monday. speak your mind on instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals. Does that mean I'm gay?

So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Hello, welcome back to Goes Without Saying. If you're new, I am Wing. I'm here with Sefi. Hi. This episode is sponsored by no one. Big thank you to no one for sponsoring this video nothing new to report nothing to sell you hope you didn't get used to it

um this episode was fun and exciting for us to record so i'm hoping it'll be fun and interesting for you to listen to we cover a range of topics from the discourse of making it trendy to have a racist uncle at Christmas to food and body image comments from older family members to boundaries which we love to discuss and just all of those fun things about family trauma childhood toxicity and drama. Should we get into it? i'm excited okay have you done your homework no i'm not going first again you have to go first this time um can we say what the homework was yes yeah the homework was to do something sexually liberating hence why i'm making erin go first so all the people i know will have stopped listening by the time they will have

stopped listening because they'll be bored by my response no i feel like i didn't up my sexual liberation i just kept my constant level i know in the last episode the doing the work was very inspiring it was very like i even said to draw a naked self-portrait which i do want to do yeah but i've just been doing the usual kind of looking at myself naked and being like wow and that's kind of it god i love it like kind of get out of the shower like fuck oh my god incredible stunning and that's kind of it but i've been meaning to ask about you because i know you started quite a journey i started a journey and it turns out other people have been starting on the journey too because we got dms we did yeah so we spoke at the last episode about the

specifically we spoke about the lily allen slash kind of womanizer womanizer clit sucker sounds disgusting i think i don't think they call it a clit sucker by the way what do they call it it's it's also not it's more of like a clit blow dryer than a clit sucker right yeah it's kind of a hoover yeah yeah i don't really know what it is but i purchased i did purchase because i thought come on you can't not you can't talk about this and then not follow through yeah so i bought it i haven't really had a chance to like fully use it yet what no don't let us down like that why don't you take 10 minutes to yourself and we can record pause for a second loved it um well no i don't you take 10 minutes to yourself and we can record in a minute? Pause for a second. Loved it.

Well, no, I don't really know. I think I will love it though. I love the packaging. Well, that's kind of it. That's all that matters really, isn't it? We're sold. Love the colour scheme. Love the aesthetic.

I opened the packet. It came to my house and I was like unpacked. I was honestly doing an unboxing. I was like, look at Lily, how beautiful she is on the cover. And she is. Yeah, it's good branding. But we're yet to find out if the product delivers how long are you going to keep us hanging on this what an anti-climax pardon the pun oh you know who is what's quite funny

actually to see is the fast fashion exploitation i mean they don't stop exploiting but you know the fast fashion industry has really picked up on the vibrator vibe yeah like nasty gal yeah nasty gal in particular i was reading the names like to my friend the other day like this is crazy like i would love to be the person who comes up with the names for the vibrators on nasty gal because they're insane what are they called it's quite a fun job well it's, let me find one. For example, scream if you want to go faster, six inch dildo. For example, girls just want to have fun, rabbit and vibrator set.

I quite like that. It's only 15 pounds. I mean, I wouldn't support. But hey, a girl in need. Is a girl indeed. Is a nasty girl indeed. Not saying. In terms of the fast fashion element i think why it's fucking good to so the lily allen one i'm not joking was about 90 quid

90 smackaroonies and you do love lily allen in her own right anyway i don't know if you listening know that but sephi is dedicated to lily allen i actually think i don't so much love her now but i'm dedicated to my past self's love of Lily Allen. She was my first album I ever got as a child. And I do think she has shaped much of my aesthetic. And I do love her. When I was about nine years old, I thought that is the girl for me. Yeah, so I splashed out 90 fucking pounds for a homework.

So I think that's pretty good of me. It is, it is. Yeah, let's not undermine it. But we just can't wait to hear the juicy gossip. Look, I think I will really like it i just also think i'm it's just i don't know who listens to this podcast i've been getting people coming out of the woodwork left right and center saying love the bit about this love the bit about this haha didn't know you thought that everyone be saying love the bit about the vibrator tell us more next

time don't be so shy next time squirty emoji It's funny because you, I agree, you're quite prudish, but in a quite specific way. Yeah, yeah, I am. Because you're not prudish in like weird ways, but shy about certain things. Do you know what I mean? In what way? Yeah. Like you'll kind of make sex noises for half an hour,

but you won't actually talk about like an experience. Like, do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think it's because i am quite open but then i'm i don't know with certain people i'm incredibly incredibly like closed i'm kind of like no no you don't i'm shy yeah but even with me even with me if i was talking if i was sat i mean it's just i know there's a microphone but if i was sat talking to you you would say certain things and you wouldn't say certain things i don't think that's because you're shy with me. But you've always had like a really specific way of being really like quite crass.

Like you say quite vulgar things. Do I? Or like not even say, not even say, you perform quite vulgar things. Yeah, I do. I do. I do. You'll put quite a funny show on i think i don't really know actually that's quite interesting because i was i think we said this in the last episode i i have known of those things and i just think that style that method the air technology vibe yeah is not for me i mean the packaging like design wise is stunning but as in the design of like the actual tech of

it yeah the tech behind it is not my thing. But I knew that it was your thing because you... Well, anyway. But with yourself, I think you keep like certain things under wraps. But you would make sex noises for 20 minutes. Well, that makes me sound absolutely mad. What the hell? Also, I wanted this to be the homework last week. Well, I wanted this to be the homework last week.

Well, I wanted this to be the homework for a long time. And I don't think it's necessarily like a specific doing the work thing. I just think it's something that I'm going to try and do more in my life. And I would hope you listening will do that too. And Sefi, I'm sure you will too. I have said the word bellend more times than I can count. I've said crazy things about penises. I use them.

I use them. As a joke. I make crazyises. I use them. I use them. As a joke. I make crazy remarks. I use them. Plain and simple. I have said the word clit under like 20 times probably in my life and maybe six of them so far have been in this episode. So can we all make a pact to use the word clit more often? I think instead of fuck I'm gonna be like oh clits. Clits is quite funny clits plural plural yeah so join me on the clit mission okay a message that I loved someone actually was just saying replying to a question box that we had on the story saying how are you but I took this as relevant to the toxic family home for the holiday season vibe so this person said home for christmas and i am suffering

i'm not laughing at you i'm laughing with you um home for christmas and i'm suffering every nice aspect of my hometown now just makes me upset and sad feel like i should also clarify i'm home based on my country's corona rules yeah that's fine don't worry i'm not coming for you i just thought that message was so heartbreaking but also kind of epitomized every other message that we had and i we were talking about this sephie the other day lucy mountain who we follow and love put up a really stunning meme that i think i might have to repost onto our feed i don't know that basically said no one is posting the argument that they're having with their family no one's posting the argument that they're having with their parents on their instagram feed yeah it's like no one's storying them crying in their

childhood bedroom like it's just not happening and trust me we all are and they are i thought that was a good way to kick off because i think the overall tone for me of the messages was in whatever shape or form your family takes and your sense of belonging within your family and etc etc you'll always be dealing with the universal problems that we're just dealt as human beings like no matter how specific or niche your disaster and catastrophe feels that the chances are there's millions of other people going through something that feels the exact same and it's easy for things to look like kind of perfect happy family on the internet like you're gonna see this everywhere kind of people i mean you just can't escape it can you and actually in reality yeah the tone of

the messages was i am suffering yeah the tone of the messages was it's a fucking chaotic mess coming home for christmas because it's a load of people the the only thing they've got in common was they have the same blood but actually you've all gone off and you've lived separate lives different lives you've gone to uni somewhere you've gone you've got totally different friends you're gay your family are homophobic it goes on and on and on everyone has gone and had different experiences and you all come together you sit around this table you all tuck into a little meal together and the conversation is just gonna like explode yeah the tension is just always at an all-time high i think for people that celebrate christmas and go in on it and make it

they want it to be perfect but it becomes obviously there's pressure yeah the pressure kind of somehow sheds the light like removes the veil on all of those problems and those worries and those tensions and those dynamics that are hidden for i don't know maths but i'm just going to say 90 of the year yeah one out of 12 I don't know even if you yourself are not feeling there being any pressure on this and it's kind of an event you're potentially dreading was what a lot of people were saying someone else in that room will have placed pressure on that day being perfect there being some kind of element of this must be a great day we must prove something by this being a great day that we can all get along

and it'd be a great day and in reality it's just any old other day it's just the same old chaotic mess of people and you've all just somehow got to get along with it even if you like them it's stressful even if you like your family it's fucking stress well that's the thing i think regardless of it being the 25th of december or regardless of everyone being home or not, I just think a family vibe, quote unquote, is a space where tension can just breed. And it's hard. Are you excited for Christmas? Well, should we go into our kind of,

well, let me give you a bit of context. So I want to touch on a few different things with what a few different people were saying on the stories and blah, blah, blah. If you want to get involved, by the way, if you're new here um before every podcast episode we go to our instagram stories and you all flood in with your amazing hilarious insane ridiculous messages and we kind of butcher them and like make ourselves sound like idiots for you we tear them apart and look

like fools in the process so come along it's a great time so christmas for me has looked like lots of different things this year is pretty like i'm i don't i won't be seeing my family at christmas i'll be with my boyfriend's family which has been the case for the past few years but i've had lots of different scenarios on christmas i've had very white christmases on one side i've had very white christmases on one side i've had very brown christmases on the other i have had fucking a chicken burger on my own in my room on christmas day i've had the lot it's just a day i think actually for me it's made it so that there's there's just no pressure now in the way that i think lots of the messages were like

like oh i want to i want to do fun things i want to enjoy the time and blah blah blah I think if you've not had that which is why I think it's a blessing for a lot of people that haven't experienced something it's just like I just it's like um kind of if you don't go to uni or you'd never left the house for example you would find it harder to leave the house but it's like if you just had to do it then you just go along with it so I don't really find that I'm the type of person that puts pressure on holidays in general yeah what about you i think mine is quite my experience of christmas is quite traditional in that it's always the same it's kind of me and my family we have kind of presents here then we go to my grandparents house and my uncle and i aren't and my cousins go there and it's a big kind of family traditional Christmas but it's obviously just a complete chaotic mix of political beliefs kind of attitudes to life approaches to

kind of self-awareness and it's just one big chaotic mess always often ends in tears often ends in laughs it just depends which way it's gonna go does it often end in tears well basically my Christmas is also quite it's quite a string of quote-unquote celebrations in that it's it really is so christmas eve is kind of we still we make quite a thing of it then it's christmas day then boxing day is my uncle's birthday then the next day is my birthday the next day my great uncle's birthday it's quite like before you know it it's new year's it's kind of you and the uncles it's kind of you're the three wise men it's quite the time but i mean by my birthday which is the 27th I mean everyone is very much

done everyone is very much ready to blow or has blown and is just done but I think my Christmas is quite traditional in that it's always the same it always has been the same although this year will be slightly different well it will be very different that we're at home this Christmas so god knows oh yeah interesting so you've never done that before no we've never done this and i think i mean god knows it's our first one without like young children there and um old people and you know everything it's so fascinating again you just you don't see the arguments on someone's instagram story does yours often end in arguments because i think mine has mine is always always pushing it like by by lunchtime that it's pushing for an argument in the past yes in particular as i said about a brown christmas i mean so i've actually had

christmases you know not western so i've had as i said times where i wasn't it wasn't christmas christmas wasn't being celebrated in the house and therefore it was a mcdonald's vibe for me and then but speaking of arguments, and someone actually said, they replied to the story saying, Asian families are mostly toxic. And so now why I don't spend Christmas, there's a multitude of reasons. There's lots of things at play.

But why I spend Christmas and most events with my boyfriend's family is because I made the very firm decision at about 17, think executive decision the absolute executive decision like pulled out all of the stops in my little 17 year old brain to make a boundary for once because the thing is with a white Christmas as in a white family Christmas I'm dreaming yeah exactly and boy was I dreaming of a white christmas with a white christmas it's kind of a white girl calling her mum a cunt because she looked at her funny when

she was carving the christmas turkey and then kind of everyone just gets really drunk and blah blah blah with a non-western or non-white christmas it's kind of four days of everyone slaving over a dead animal with seasoning and like god knows what everyone's cleaning all week everyone's like making sure that their clothes are appropriate for x y and z person and it's and it's arguments to the next level and i do think white people have toxic christmases too because i've seen them and white people just are toxic too because we know it but the stress of being a child to non-white parents during anything that requires any level of pressure is crazy so I made the decision at about 17 that I'm not these aren't Christmases for me and I'm only 17 so I'm not doing it and luckily I had

alternative options kind of like few and far between but I just think you can't have pressure and you need to stand up for yourself yeah if you've got yourself into kind of a tradition that is not working for you and I think there is pressure to to spend time with your kind of birth family. Well it's it's not easy to say to your parents I'm not going to see you on Christmas actually and then the next year comes around oh what are you doing for Christmas oh we're just gonna be blah blah blah not seeing you but listen I mean lots of people had messages step families broken home vibes someone said i quote everyone has got the most chaotic families and trust me we can relate yeah it's chaotic vibes so i just think it comes down to not putting pressure on yourself

and accepting that you can't control other people's fucking mouths and beliefs and behaviors and you just have to do what's best for you and do what's gonna be the easiest situation for you one of the things we asked on the story was do you feel that the people you're spending christmas with are emotionally intelligent and i think that's one of the things that makes things so difficult in that if you are engaging in this space you're kind of used to a level of self-awareness a level of questioning your beliefs interrogating yourself blah blah blah that we do on the internet but we don't do it in real life that we do exclusively on the internet we don't follow through in our own lives but we're useless in real life we're utterly useless and

that will be proven at christmas on christmas day but you're used to this level of like interrogating yourself and all this stuff that we talk about and then you go home to your town to your house and you're plonked on a table and with all these people that have been engaging in daily mail media things like that you're reading the mail online they're on kind of they're getting their news from like snapchat they're not engaging they're not they're not trying and then you'll hear things like oh poor old boris he's really had a tough year hasn't he um and i just think how are you supposed to keep your fucking mouth closed so how are we supposed to keep our mouths how are you supposed to keep your fucking mouth closed so how are we

supposed to keep our mouths closed are we supposed to keep our mouths closed not in my experience it's fucking hard to because there's a i think well i don't know from my experiences there's a part of you that's kind of like you've been told right keep the peace today try and keep the peace have you been told yeah i think i think there's an element of like it's christmas day let's just not have political stuff but then i think actually politics does come up in every space there is room for politics in every space and also if someone's sitting across the table being racist homophobic sexist anything what kind of person are you if you're trying to prioritize a fucking christian celebration that we don't fucking celebrate over like what is right and what is good in the world you're're a cunt then. Here we go. One of the things that we asked on the

story was, do you have to like alter your behaviour, your identity, your self-expression on Christmas, around Christmas? And I think this is one of the things, especially around sexuality, that came up a lot in the responses. I mean, there are literally so many, but one of them, I'll read one of them. Okay, so she actually said quite a lot. This is kind of about 10 things in once once but this is the one i'm looking at right now my grandma telling me i'm fat countless problematic things i hear people ask me when i'm going to get a real job lol i'm an illustrator absolutely no one except my mom and my dad know that i'm bi because that would cause a shit storm so quite a few things covered there and i think we can all relate to a lot of the how to unpack honestly how to unpack and i think the idea of having to a lot of the how. Yeah, how to unpack. Honestly, how to unpack.

And I think the idea of having to kind of alter your identity, something that makes up a lot of how you express yourself and how you relate to the world and having to like deny yourself of that is so, it's one of the most toxic bits of traditional Christmas. There was another message that said something really similar and it said that they not only are concealing the fact that they are gay but the fact that their parents know and if it comes out with their

grandparents it will explode so the parents and them are working together you're putting on a big show to be like you know they're of their time like don't ruin your relationship with them basically and it's like for how how much are we excusing how much are we affording they are of their time as an excuse anymore when it comes to who you are it's just quite a tired argument now that it's like oh they're just that they're just from a different time they like old people kind of oh they'll never understand it's like we'll hurry up and die then i'm joking well no i think there's an element of just die then. And there are old people that I love so much. I mean, there are old people that you love,

but it's just how long can kind of old conservative beliefs be kind of just like quieted down? Oh, don't worry. He's just going to say the N word at the table and we'll just all brush over it. It's like, actually, no, we won't brush over that. Well, that's the thing. It's when they've got the power that's the problem.

It's kind of if they're sat in their rocking chair all day and they say kind of 20 words per 24 hours but it's when they're given that power in for example government when they're given that power at your dinner table with your family then it becomes an issue and it's like we need to all just kind of age out of that what's your kind of does it depend on what day we catch you what your response will be or do you have a structure method for how you deal with shit that you don't want to hear like um homophobic shit for example i think it kind of comes in two waves because if it's about me then it's like okay well they i'll just take that on that's fine but if it's something for example about someone else then it's like no no this now has to stop this has to justice this is going to be called out this is going to be a big

discussion now and it's it's worth causing huge discomfort at the table for it's just so worth it but if it's something just like for example um a comment about like sexuality or something oh we had a lot of like go get a boyfriend go get a boyfriend yeah but the problem is with that the more that it happens with stuff coming at you, it's actually perpetuating the cycle of it happening to other people anyway. Yeah. But it's just when do we have the energy? Exactly.

It's protecting your own energy, especially at a heightened high. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals.

Does that mean I'm gay? So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer,

and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com like kind of a holiday season where it's like okay well i've got to get through a certain amount of kind of social engagements that i will be interrogated at at each of these things

especially for example this girl saying she's an illustrator and people saying get a real job i mean i'm sure that we can all fucking relate that we're going to be getting comments like that and it's just like actually no no no you don't get to analyze my life you don't get to like sort of lay it out on a spreadsheet and say well i actually wish she wasn't dating that girl and i wish she was dating this lovely conservative badminton playing boy oh yeah my grandma's got a real fixation that I should date someone that plays badminton. A badminton player? Yeah she I don't know where this is from. I think when she was younger I mean I'm obsessed with my grandma but I think when she was younger she fancied a badminton player.

She fell in love with the badminton player. She really wants that for me. She's kind of the mum from the notebook. I haven't seen that in absolutely years. And she drives around to the old kind of junkyard and her love is there and sorry that's big spoiler for the notebook if you haven't seen it but yeah there's a heavy emphasis on badminton in fact oh you just need to join a badminton club it's like i don't want to play badminton and i'm not going to date a badminton player what's a badminton thing called a shuttlecock a shuttlecock i knew

it had a funny word shuttlecock god i was gonna say something quite vulgar about your grandma then but i'm glad i did so was i and i thought no i thought i could make a little pun yeah i think a lot of people pretend that they care more about their racist uncle than they actually do i think people especially with the discourse now on social media it's kind of like oh my racist uncle and blah blah blah and it's like but you're a bit racist too like just because you posted a black title you actually don't really care about this guy like you're still gonna give him a cuddle you're still gonna make jokes you're still gonna pour him drinks and let him kind of pinch your bum i think people are actually really willing to give up anything that they do or don't believe in

because i actually just think for most people i hate that i'm sounding quite jaded but i think for most people it's all about the perception and being perceived as woke or being perceived as anti-racist than actually trying to be anti-racist in their daily lives i'm not saying you have to give in all of your energy to reforming an old man because potentially it's not possible but I do think people like to put on a bit of a show these days and kind of indulge and find comedy in like an extended family member being problematic but it's actually that doesn't affect you what he's saying isn't affecting you I know you're not affected you don't feel affected because if you did you'd be either properly cut up about it

and not making jokes about it on social media where the people who are actually being affected by racism, for example. Are having to see your tweet. Are having to see your shit. And watch you laugh about it. Watch you make light of it. I'm not saying that everyone's fucking racist

and they're like sucking off their uncle. But I think people pretend to care more than they do. Absolutely. Do you think people play it up as if they're so hurt and they're so cut up by the horrific and oppressive things that their extended family is saying when actually they don't care? Or am I just a bitch? Well, I think it's kind of trendy to be it's kind of the champagne socialist vibe of it's trendy to be kind of the liberal one with it but then also get all the benefits of having a kind of posh conservative um white middle-class family who's buying for you you're on their christmas list and you still got all the fucking

expensive presents you're getting the lovely lovely christmas but you also want to be the one that yeah tweets about oh my uncle is so racist and it's like actually yeah what are you actually saying i think that's what bothers me is that you've got this tweet caring about your problematic family from a country house in surrey where you've been unwrapping apple goods all day apple goods yum oh apple goods i was like apple pies apple pie that sounds great i'm not saying like fucking slit his throat and hold him accountable but i just think some people love the show of pretending to care more than they would actually like that your energy isn't being drained you actually don't give a shit you if anything you

just want to be right in an argument you don't like arguing and losing do you know what i mean i think that's what drains people's energy more than actually hearing really abhorrent views about marginalized groups of people. Yeah. And it's become like a comedy sort of figure, like in any sort of- Dodgy uncle. Any sort of thing that's come out recently,

comedy that's centered around Christmas has a racist, dodgy uncle in it. And it's like, actually, that's not funny. That's not charming. It's kind of Hugh Grant's been reading for 10 of those parts. Exactly. It's not Hugh Grant charming. Oh parts exactly it's not hugh grant charming

oh yeah it's not that it's actually a disgusting person and then it's it's a fun role to play the kind of liberal um niece that has gone off to uni has joined the kind of labor society they've gone off to art school and they want to now like regurgitate a load of beliefs back to the racist uncle to feel good about themselves rather than interrogating their own homophobia their own internalized misogyny their own internalized white supremacist beliefs it's actually quite easy to point a finger at a racist uncle and actually not look at kind of the circle that you're participating in your part within this dynamic yeah absolutely i agree like racism is still a problem whether or not you're confronted by it with your family it's like all of these things that you think that you care about, are you

actually caring so much about those individual topics? Or is it just that you feel like your identity is in question? Or like your ego isn't being stroked enough? Or you are fragile and insecure right now? I think I think it's a mask for actually like, you just don't like that guy. Well, he just makes you feel uncomfortable because you've never been able to win an argument with him don't pretend to care about immigrants because you don't you know what it takes to run a fucking business but you don't sorry i'm on one today i've been up since 3am this is what happens i start getting angry at everyone yeah it's been a weird day so far already something we asked on the story was about whether we find it easier to set boundaries with family

or like familial relationships versus other people, friends and ourselves. I've kind of got a bit of a theory as of two seconds ago when I pressed record. Nice. Well, the majority of people on the story said that it was harder to set boundaries with family. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah, they said that it was easier to set boundaries with friends. I correct yeah yeah they said that it was easier to set boundaries with friends i think it was like 70 of them yeah would rather set a boundary with

their friends and i'm not surprised and i actually think one of the reasons i'm sure there are many for that is that you grow up with your parents telling you someone hits you tell the teacher or hit them back or blah blah you grow up with your family telling you to be brave and blah, blah, blah. You grow up being told to respect your elders and respect your parents. Please don't yawn when I'm talking. I knew you'd see that. And I just thought, I am going to die today. I just said to Sefi, off the record, you need to reply to me because it's just me

talking this whole episode i don't know what's wrong with me today guys i'm an insecure kind of tired wreck today so i'm sorry you're just getting a weird version of me today she's toxy i'm so toxy today she's a toxy shy girl today it's okay i really am i just actually like my head is mush today yeah i hate that i know i hate it too well it's nap time after this it actually might have to be go and have some breast milk and a long nap some breast milk mom get up here now have a suckle and go okay so my theory is i think most people are not raised with kind of any scope of understanding that they could ever approach their parents in a really mature and rational way are you gonna fucking you on again

she's yawning again no i really had to fight that one down you held it in which is even more insulting i'm so sorry fuck okay no keep going keep going i'm loving it you yeah she's loving it okay is it really that shit of a point i think it's a good point no no the point's not shit i'm just honestly just a shithead today you say that again you're a fucking shuttlecock you fucking shuttlecock i reckon because people are raised without any grasp of the fact that they can approach their parents in a really rational way and say like i actually don't like it when you invade my privacy and go through my phone or barge into mine in my sister's bedroom without asking blah blah blah and i do think that that is especially in households that aren't white

as i said i grew up with all my white girlfriends calling their mums like fucking bitches and god knows what oh my god i would be smacked into the next century and i'm not exaggerating i fully would be yeah i'd be toast you wouldn't be yawning at me you would be doing this with somebody else i wouldn't exist and so i think then we get to a certain age where we become empowered especially now with our generation looking at all of this shit online i.e sephian wing where it's like oh my god i can dump him and be amazing shit online what do you do what's at the christmas table say what do you do i just run some shit online some shit but i think people grow up and discover their sense of autonomy and wonder why they've never been able to have that with their parents and so i think that is just a big part of the reason why it feels so alien alien yes so foreign you are listening i'm of course i'm

listening to approach that with your parents i've got a counterpoint we're not counterpoint i've got to i've got i've got stuff as well yeah take it away well i was thinking this definitely the other day in that i think a lot of family arguments are sort of just habits they're trained from a young age your mum will say could you load the dishwasher please and you just instantly go i already fucking had load the dishwasher fucking hell white girl radars beep central as in not even me but i think that it very much jumps to, it jumps to conflict quicker than it would with any other dynamic because it's just trained from a lifetime of, right, we're crossing the road now, but I want to talk to my friend.

Well, it's kind of respect your elders and you own me because I've put a roof over your head with veggie. It's like, lest we forget, you brought me here as an act of intercourse that you had with someone that you're not even with anymore. By the way. You've dipped out of the situation as much as much as possible and here i am left to pay the price handing in fucking essays and paying rent because of you because you didn't wear a condom because you were horny and you didn't have a fucking womanizer lily allen could have solved this problem in families it jumps to conflict more than it would

with friendship where you haven't got this basis of when you were five years old it was just it's easier to shout in a household especially if you've got a lot of siblings and also if i disrespect you we're not friends anymore if i disrespect my mum she's not my mum anymore my situation is quite specific but if people disrespect their family like you know your sibling is going to stick around versus your friends you have got the idea that they could abandon you they could go you you might lose the friendship yeah you're not tied to each other with blood exactly exactly there's no evolutionary benefit of our dynamic unless we were to have a child but there is no reason for us having a connection oh i didn't know you felt that way

but there's no evolutionary benefit of us being close whereas there is an evolutionary benefit of me being close to my sister because i want our bloodline to continue but i don't know where i was going with this point no well yeah i completely agree with you it's just um and also you said before i interrupted you you said this is the thing i beg you to um and also you said before i interrupted you you said this is the thing i beg you to talk and then you talk and i over talk you the camera's just cut out that's why we're confused and now we're just going we're trying to find ourselves back cut the cameras honestly we just had to just we had to sort stuff out mid-joke so been a bit of a kerfuffle you were saying we argue with family out of habit yeah we argue with family out of habit. Yeah, we argue with family out of habit and it's just a learned behaviour. Whereas I think actually getting to the crux of kind of spending time

with your family as adults, I really have been trying to rewire the basic levels of communication in that if there is something that would have usually like sparked conflict, like, oh, like you didn't lock up yesterday. Quite bad. I always never lock the doors. To be fair, I know that for a fact because I remember living with you and you left the key in the front door overnight that was so bad that was so so bad and wild things like that yeah yeah i'm just really if you haven't guessed right i'm quite chaotic got quite a strange energy you're quite ditzy yeah i've got quite a strange energy i forget things at times but so for example it's like oh you you haven't got a spare key things like that and usually it'd

be like uh well actually blah blah blah when i was a teenager and now now there's just residue conflict left from all of those times whereas i think actually it's really difficult to communicate kind of intellectually with your family because there's so much history of emotion in every dynamic yeah me and my brother have a very specific dynamic me my sister me and my mom and then each of them within itself actually when you add it up together there's like 18 dynamics going on here at play in one room it's so much it's like me my sister and my brother that dynamic me just my brother that it's like actually there are fucking tons of there's so much shit going on there's so much history here so i think it's actually about stripping it back and when there's

kind of a conflict like you didn't lay the table in the right way or something like that rather than being like uh actually i did blah blah blah being like what about that annoyed you are we on a time limit getting to why why did that upset you oh actually my mom's had a really long day and this is what's triggering her now because it's actually not really about the dishwasher it's not really about the table it's about the fact that someone was fucking annoying earlier or whatever and i actually think it's about communicating in in a way that you would with your friends whereas if me and you started being off with each other a bit wait wait wait can we bring it back what just happened you know what's actually annoying you is it really about laying the table whatever and

it's never if you're shouting about laying a table it's never about laying a table it's never about laying the table is it it's never about a dishwasher it's never about laying a table but the problem is adults find that adults older adults find that really hard to grasp they don't grasp yeah because they just think they think they're shouting their nut off about crumbs but actually they're shouting their nut off because their wife left them and they're heartbroken and their pride has been broken yeah it's so true i think it's really difficult to get through to people that aren't um i've got i've got a really fluffy blanket around me and really like going in my eyes and mouth i made it weird by not replying that's a normal thing to say but that won't go in now maybe now it will um but i think there's definitely a a communication barrier between our generation and potentially our

parents generation and their parents generation in that we've just been maybe they have maybe we're completely naive and kind of think we've got the answers to life but very much i don't think i have the answers to life but i definitely think we have more of the answers to life than they do yeah i agree same no i'm being so i'm joking no i'm no i'm not though i think we do have more of the answers to life no i know you're not there's more self-awareness and there's more honesty in the connections that i see in our generation in that it's like actually i would have an awareness that i'm not actually shouting over crying over spilt milk i've spilled my tea and i'm not actually crying about that it's about it's about the whole history of my day and what's happened leading up to me spilling my tea and that is what's triggered my crying or whatever

but I genuinely think with the older generation a lot of the people I know and this is why we ask the question about self-awareness that are they emotionally intelligent the people you're arguing with I think if someone spilt tea in front of the people that I know, they would think they were crying over the tea, when actually it's because of a long list of things. I completely agree. I also think in an anthropological sense, it is a generational thing in the sense that the older generation, our parents' generation, saw relationships survive by brushing things under the rug, not letting arguments surface and holding their ego on their sleeve versus their heart whereas our generation has seen the majority of our parents split separate and divorce and so we've learned that in order to sustain relationships you have to be honest and vulnerable

buzzword and drop the ego and compromise and communicate and that is a relatively new concept in that sense that we've learned that that is a relatively new concept in that sense that we've learned that that is how relationships survive because we've seen what happens to that very same generation or the older generation when that isn't kept up but i also think we are just really like honest and just amazing and i also think we're really young and naive as well but then i think there are lots of people in our generation that i think the majority of our generation are in really toxic relationships yeah exactly basically it's about the individuals but it's also about kind of the history of you and your family like there's there's deep shit in every single family that is just buried underneath the surface and

you only need one smug little comment from someone and it's all fucking coming to the surface especially when you're all sitting around there's pressure on the day you're all in like little outfits and shit and you're eating fucking turkey and you've gone vegetarian your family are angry oh yeah there are lots of those people saying a lot of you have gone vegan and your family are pissed i always notice hate to assume gender but i always notice when there's a boy around here and there were there were a couple of boys in these stories and one of them in particular really made me laugh. It was like, I told, oh, let me read it word for word.

I don't want to butcher it. Pardon the pun. I'm really punny today. It really tickled me. For a guy, you're pretty funny. And I'm joking. Boys just aren't funny. Imagine.

So they said, it's really funny. Hosted a vegan lunch and said, no dead bodies will be served. And everyone got upset and refused to go. I just thought it's so classic but then lots of people were saying things like they get a lot of shit for being vegan on like family events and things like that it's just funny isn't it when you show any degree of autonomy and like a sense of being your own person it's just unacceptable and suddenly kind of your grandparents are the CEOs of like McDonald's. It's like, what?

They really care about the farming industry. They're like heartbroken. Yeah, they really, really care. They really care. Although I don't think I have. I think I can't relate to a lot of it because I've been veggie for my entire life. Well, I don't have that either. But I guess you lot with families can relate.

That's the last like traumatic joke I'll make. But I do think all of it comes down to just accepting that you can't control what comes out of other people's mouth and then if it's if something's bothering you taking a second to think okay why is this bothering me is it because i actually i'm very concerned with justice and making sure that marginalized groups aren't being spoken down on at my dinner table or is it something about my ego that i feel like i can't keep up in an argument with this older man and i've got my ego is rooted in the performance of a liberal person and he's

disrupting my performance yeah also we haven't spoken about weight which was a huge huge huge topic i guess because it is a holiday surrounded by food oh my god it's massive especially in festive vibes but i guess our point is just the same as fucking usual fuck these people that have internalized the patriarchy to such an extent and fuck ourselves for internalizing that bullshit we can't have it at a dinner at a fucking celebration fuck that bullshit yeah you just you can't carry it at any time and it again is like you can't control i can't stop your grandma from being rude to you on christmas day if that's what you're doing i'm sorry that she yeah i'm sorry that's going to happen.

I can't stop that for you. And maybe neither can you. You might be able to have a conversation and you might not, but at the end of the day, it's always going to come back to the fact that you need to be okay with your body and understand that it's not a problem with your body. It's a problem with society

and society's perception of what your body should look like based on paedophilic and white supremacist standards of beauty that have really nothing to do with you and you should go and listen to the body image episode if you if it's something that is really playing on your mind i.e in terms of christmas go and listen to that episode and you know be healed forever and hopefully you have the money for a therapist lying around let's hope so well i wish you all good tidings and good luck yeah in every endeavor that you have with your family well i hope you i also we don't know what to say now

basically i really do hope you make the most of whatever holiday it is and also just your life just your own life like whatever time you're listening to i guarantee there are people listening to this in summer and i hope you're actually just having a good fucking life don't let people's fucking bullshit get get you down yeah so true it's like it's actually just a load of bollocks yeah it is it is complete bollocks you know what it is it's complete clits it's a load of clit that was like ages ago i know that was like days ago when i'm exhausted don't let the clit holes get you down go get a clit sucker and don't talk about it ever on a podcast because you get too shy. Okay, let's go.

Thank you so much for listening. Thanks, guys. And Merry Christmas. Oh my God, that thing in JLS from the like, Merry Christmas. Oh my God. Do you know it? I wrapped it up and sent it. How could I not know it?

Because I didn't think I did a good enough impression. I'm not doubting your awareness of JLS memes. You doubt my culture. No, I'm doubting my impression. I told you I'm insecure today. Yeah, yeah, I get it, I get it. Anyway, three, two, one. Merry Christmas.

Is that what we're doing? Yeah. Okay, bye. Bye.