Life Uncut - Hot Girl Walks & The Rise Of Soft Patriarchy

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Hey Lifers!Britt’s having a rough trot today 😂. We speak about some RSVP and allergy mishaps, lucid dreams and some of the darker sides of professional sport. Truth be told, are you interested when other people speak about their dreams? How about if they’re about angry gorillas?There’s a piece of content that is popping off on socials at the moment from a podcast talking about how these young men want their partner to be able to not work and go on hot girl walks if they choose to. This video seems to be of a similar rhetoric that we are seeing across a few different channels of social media and also in the social discourse where traditional gender roles are being sprouted as an optimum lifestyle that we should aspire to. We ask, is this a caring provider and a man who wants to look after his partner or is it harmful, patriarchal messaging dressed up as modern masculinity? We unpack: Call out vs call in culture The need for financial security The ideologies of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ energies Soft patriarchy  Choice feminism You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. I'm stressed. Why are you stressed? I've just got a lot going on. Can you come to work with a good attitude, goddammit?

Do you know what I've started trying, actually? What? Meditation. A couple of days. No, hemp gummies. Oh, for fuck's sake. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a hemp gummy girl.

I'm a gumper. Are they like the proper THC ones? Can't be sure. I'll get back to you. But I think they're good. I used them the last couple of nights because I don't sleep very well. I never have. And it's more now, you know, like we're close to the wedding.

We're like within the next eight weeks. Just let that out of my head. Britt doesn't want anyone to know exactly when the wedding is. So she's being very obscure around it. Just cut that out. To be fair, I sometimes don't know. I have to go back into the invitation that's in my emails, find it and check the date. Because do you know what's happened?

Britt's like, just cut that out. We're not, we're keeping it all. It's been stressful because I have quite a few trips coming up for, you know, I've got someone else's wedding overseas. I've got my own wedding coming up. I've got a trip with my sister. There's a lot of little things going on, but I've had a few people that I have mentioned in the last week where I've said, what are you going to wear to our welcome drinks? Like just

friends that I've chatted because, you know, we're having welcome drinks for the wedding so people can meet and stuff. Don't ask me because I haven't planned anything yet. You probably don't even know. I don't know what it is. I have to check the invite. But this is what's stressful is because they've said, what welcome event? Because there's so, I'm going to be honest, there's a lot of events. There's not bullshit. Three days of events. That's not why though. It's because the invitation invitation didn't send to everyone. I had to go back through and I was like, why are some people not getting it? Some people I didn't know didn't receive the whole schedule. The whole schedule. I make it sound like it's not this huge affair. It's not. She's just admitted to the problem.

The royal schedule. No, but on like a, I mean, everything's online, right? Invitations are all done online for weddings. You sign up to an account like you did, Laura, where you put the invitation as dress sexy. You sign up to a wedding account, you put all your details in and it sends the limitations out. For some reason, some of the people just did only about five. Cause I've had to go through every invite and check what they received. I was like, this is so unnecessary, but they didn't even know about it. There is nothing. Actually, I'm going to rephrase that. I'm just about to say there's nothing more annoying. There's lots of things, but something that is also annoying is when someone can't be bothered to actually click the RSVP to the invite,

and then you have to go through and manage your RSVPs manually. I don't have the organizational bone in my body so when that happened to us when people just didn't RSVP to our wedding we had to do the ring around to all the ones that we we didn't know if they were or weren't coming and some people got missed I don't know if they got the invite they weren't at the wedding actually it's all Ben's friends a lot of Ben's friends and I'm not pointing fingers that's not your job no but there's a lot of the athletes of Ben's friends so like a lot of Ben's friends were really good that weren't athletes and the footballer ones that is invited from like past teams or they're all hopeless they're like hey I just can't confirm yet and I was like well you

sort of that's not how it works it's within a time frame that you need to confirm I'm like you sort of need to confirm but something really funny did happen I've spoken about how I haven't given Ben that many jobs mainly not because I don't trust him but also it's too hard we're on different schedules I talk to our wedding planner more but I have given him a few little jobs now one of them because I had to go through it every invite to see who didn't get an invite I'm sick of looking at that list and I said to him can you your job is to go through and look at what everyone wrote for their allergies for food and get those allergies across to our wedding planner and the caterer to make sure because like part of an RSVP is what are your food allergies oh yeah what

can't you doesn't the wedding planner just have access to all this well I've given her access now yes but I also wanted to give Ben a job so that was Ben's job so he went through the list and I said to him how did you go with allergies did you send them all off and he goes yes I did I went through every single one and I wrote them down. So I said, you need to be like so careful with this. Do not miss anyone. Check the list twice. Make sure you've sent every single thing because I can't have someone dying at my wedding.

Imagine the headlines. All press is good press. No, not a, not a shellfish death from my wedding. No. Anyway, he's like, I got it, babe. And I was like, thank you so much. A bit later on in the conversation, he goes, that Mitch is a bit of a character, isn't he?

Mitch Turi. Mitch Turi. We all know Mitch Turi. I said, what do you mean? Because it was a bit left field. I was like yeah he's very funny he's like oh he's just always cracking jokes and I was like what's happened and he said oh well when I went through the allergies list he had written mango kingfish avocado and I said yeah babe they're his allergies he's allergic he's like no is he

and I said yes Ben he's highly allergic I said did you not send those off and he's like no I thought it was a joke i excluded it i said why did you why did you make that assumption that he would joke about anaphylaxis to be fair mitch is a very funny man but it's a hard punt to assume that someone's joking about allergies but if you were to assume mitch would be the person that you would joke about it yeah but you but a weird thing to assume because i and i said okay did you not think maybe you should just like check check anyway mitch if you're listening crisis averted I have gotten your allergies to the wedding people but I was like what a weird thing to assume was a joke well look I like that every time you do talk about Ben and the small

tiny jobs that you give in him the fact that he hasn't been able to complete one of them successfully so I do hope that he shows up to the wedding now that he finally knows what date it's happening you just said before that you're like not sleeping and you're riddled with anxiety I am not sleeping but for a very different reason at the moment and I toyed around I tossed it around whether or not to talk about this because I am erring into territory of things people don't care about, right? Like I'm well aware. Let me just warn you. But the reason why is because I know that no one cares about what you dreamt about, right? Like I know no one cares. I know. That also feels pointed because I've brought a lot of my dreams to the podcast in the past.

Sometimes we edit them out, friend. Oh, you think I don't notice? You say no one cares about dreams. I would say a large percentage of the population don't. People care about their own dreams. There is not a single person in this world that wakes up when their partner wakes up and goes, oh my God, honey, I had a big dream last night. And they're like, oh, tell me. I do that. Tell me every detail.

The only time I do that is if the person says I had a dream about you last night. A hundred. I'm very selfish. I love dreams. Do you? Yeah. I love people's dreams. Remember we tried to do a dream episode, didn't make the cut.

Okay. So just to like lift behind the curtain a little bit. Not too much. Sorry to laugh so hard. No, not too much. Rarely. It is so rare that we do an interview where we're like, you know what, that didn't work out the way that we thought

that was going to work out. And there was a period there where Brit went through having like quite severe night terrors. You were having like crazy dreams. You sound like a toddler. I really was. I was having night terrors and I had no one to hold me. You're saying you wanted to do an episode on dreams.

And there was a lot of like, you know, we tossed it around for a long time and eventually we were like, you know what, let's do it. And we did it. I was like, that is not airing as well. Like I don't want anyone to think that. No. it's interesting right because there is a bit of psychology behind like why is it that you

dream about the things that you dream about like what is the reasoning behind it is it because that some manifestation of things that you're stressed about during the day is it hormones did you eat cheese like there's lots of different theories out there and obviously like some people have like reoccurring dreams which might have some sort of deeper meaning and I don't want to like I'm not here to poo-poo any of that because it's fascinating yeah it really is and everybody has had different versions of it right and their own unique experiences around it but no one cares about those experiences as much as you care about them if you're the one who's experienced it is what i would probably say do you think my most common facial expression on this is the dog eyes

i screenshot it and sent it to you the other day and i just sent the gif of the dog squinting on the simpsons i also think i have too much botox now and i don't come to it well you can't squint no i'm not is that it i have oh whatever i haven't had an eyebrow lift you're spreading false rumors. No, sorry about that. Misinformation. No, look, the reason why I want to talk about it is because it is a really common symptom of pregnancy. Also something that I'm sure lots of people don't care about, but I have hit that point. I've hit the point where I'm not sleeping because I'm getting kicked all through the night. The kicks only just started recently, like in the last week and a half. And this is one active baby. I'm getting kicked all the time.

Talk about produce occasion. Talk about trimming some podcast stuff. Yeah. And then secondly, sorry, you guys can make an executive call. And then secondly, I am having the most out of control wild dreams. So now we can talk about it. It's because it's because it's not just one dream. You know, most people like hit REM sleep and that's when you have your dreams. It's that twilight phase when you are probably hours off waking up in the morning. It's that's like kind of when you slipstream into like that really lucid dreaming state. Mine is continuous throughout all night. And I had forgotten about this pregnancy symptom. I'd forgotten that like the dreams are so vivid, your sleep becomes so disrupted. And then

it's just like these very wild movies play out in your head and last night it was like a horror about gorillas and they were coming for us all okay it was a lot i literally woke up and i was like wow i really could write a sci-fi movie about that dream but i'm not going to and we'll move on now so just wondering where that story was going i was gonna tell you about the gorillas but then i thought that i'm gonna give you really quick decide whether you delete this oh now now we're getting the story about the gorillas so what did the gorillas do hear me out we lived in an alternate reality where we all lived harmoniously with gorillas gorillas were everywhere but at five o'clock on the dot the gorillas tried to kill you and so all of the humans had to go and hide in

like their houses or hotels or bunkers or whatever couldn't make noise couldn't have light otherwise the gorillas would find you and they would kill you yeah fucking sci-fi that shit so this is interesting. Steven Spielberg, take that dream. This is interesting. You know how you just said, and you guys would know this if we were allowed to speak about dreams more, but you said you dreamt about this all night. The average dream lasts only between five and 20 minutes max. Like that's how long a dream goes for. Sometimes you'll feel like you've had this whole story in a dream and it's five minutes. I think that is really interesting. I understand that because when you think about, I say this because it's probably very rare in your waking state that you would

have one continuous thought for 20 minutes or one continuous storyline. Definitely not for you two. Certainly don't. Not for you guys. Both of you, I reckon, have got about three seconds. But it's true, right? So like when would you ever have one continuous storyline that plays out? Keisha's like, not unless I'm medicated.

But that's the problem. Whereas when you're dreaming, it gives your brain the ability to make space to do that. Okay, we can move on from the dreams now. One last thing. In the Facebook group last night, I was talking about this with some people and melatonin because everyone's like, if you don't sleep well, take melatonin.

And melatonin makes me have the most lucid, weird, and wacky dreams. And apparently a lot of people experience it. So it, I don't know. And cheese and chili. Okay. So can I just say, I actually had the best weekend and I don't say that often. Well, best one day, actually. It wasn't the whole weekend.

It was one day. On Sunday, my sister Sherry and Jay and Maya moved back permanently from Scotland. So they've been in Scotland for over two years. I'm lucky that I started dating Ben who happened to live down the road. Otherwise I wouldn't have been seeing them so much. but I picked them up from the airport. They're officially back. They've gone up to Port Macquarie and Maya's meeting all the family for the first time. But the funniest thing happened that showed me, I think I present a certain front on Instagram when I'm with Maya. I have her the whole time.

Like I'm obsessed with her. I feed her, I'll bathe her, I'll do whatever. I don't change nappies. That's just what I haven't done. When she changes a nappy, Sherry's always there because I don't babysit her on myself. It's also not your responsibility. I don't think that Arnie duties pertain to the necessity of changing a nappy like I don't think that it's expected yes I agree but I also think you can take all those duties I think it's fine like but I I've never needed to if I had her on my own I'm not gonna let her stay in a stinky nap because I'm like unnies don't change nappies anyway Sheridan's always there so she's like I'll change her so I didn't have to change her as such but I did bathe her and then I had to get her dressed and you know

I loved that time with her she was like all gooing and garring we're about to put her to bed and so I bathed her got her changed got her dressed put her to bed and then the next morning so just on Monday morning Sheridan's like what the hell from another room she's like what's happened and I was like oh my god what's happened and I ran in and I was like what's going on she's like I don't understand like there's poo everywhere like there's an explosion all through her cot everywhere and I was like what's happening she's like hang on a minute she's like did you put her nappy on last night and I was like yeah she's like you put it on backwards poo she did the biggest turd and because it's backwards I guess I didn't know she was wearing a nappy g-string Keisha did the exact

same thing when she minded Lola when Lola was a baby it's interesting me that anyone could think it would be intuitive to put the tabs at the back like you've got to wrap them behind the baby in order to do that rather than just wrapping them to the front which seems like very much the way to do it. I get confused because the two times I did it, because I didn't do it just once with Lola. I did it once and then I was told that it was backwards. And then the second time I went to change her, I was like, this is so confusing. I know I got it wrong last time, but I can't remember which way I did it last time. I think I did it so that it looks like underwear. That's what I did. But for some reason, the biggest part of the nappy, it doesn't look how it's supposed

to to the untrained eye. I agree because mine wasn't like a frivolous change. It was a conscious decision I knew that it had to go the right way and I looked at it and I did the same thing I looked at it this way and then I looked at it this way you guys also know that it often says back on it how would we know that I put a nappy on Delilah once when I got her snipped that's it but I also when I changed Lola and put her in clothes I couldn't find anything that looked like it would fit her so I just saw something that I'd seen her in before it was it was too small it was it was it was a cropped one but it's so funny to think that like I'm a 37 year old woman I've been around kids I have a degree I'm intelligent I've lived on my own like I'm independent

the littlest things I didn't know how to put a nappy on a child and then it makes you think of how every parent ever has said wow like it is such a learning curve because everything is something you've never done before that's how I felt even just putting the nappy on I was like I'm not made for this for me it was leaving the hospital with a newborn baby for the very first time and I was like, this feels criminal. It feels criminal that there is an expectation that I'm going to keep this child alive and not fuck this up. Zero help. Like why isn't someone supervising me? I got supervised more when I worked at McDonald's, but no, genuinely, like I have been supervised in every other aspect of my life except for parenting. And we just go on our merry way and we're expected to

do it. It's wild. Crazy. I went home after eight hours of having a baby and then I just had to figure it out. Let's just put the nappy aside. It's forgotten. Actually, she didn't tell me how to do it. She didn't teach me. So I do have to relearn that. But the other reason I had the best weekend is Ben had probably the biggest and most important game of his career. Like the biggest game he's ever played. He's now in the Italian league, which is like quite high up and his team were playing the number one team and he was making his Italian debut, which nobody wants to make a debut against the best team because they were expected to get absolutely whipped. Like they were expected to lose dramatically. Kind of good to play against someone when you're expected to

lose because you can only impress if they expect nothing of you you can't disappoint them set the bar low I feel differently surprise and delight that was my motivational speech to him I was like babe this is the best case scenario because you're not expected to win like your team no one expected them to win like sports bet was like no they're gonna get whipped but he played so well that he was up for person of the match they ended up drawing which everyone was like wow this has thrown a spanner in the works for the whole competition and it just could not have gone better for him so I just feel like I was just sitting on the lounge at 4am and I was like screaming at the tv I was so happy because it could have gone either way so it was a really

really big moment in his life and I guess our life because it can make or break our future if he did really badly which I knew he was never going to do but in terms of him being re-signed in Italy in terms of being anywhere just like showing everyone what he can do yes so that was just like a super proud yeah fiance moment and that was the other reason I just had the best weekend I feel like Sherry and Jay came home we all watched the game together as like a family and it was really cool how does it go with you celebrating that with him because I have a little bit of insight into this but I'm not sure how it works over in Europe obviously when sports people go onto the field they have to surrender their phones and stuff

there's all like sports betting and there's a lot of shady shit that can go on so they try to avoid it by like having their phones off of them for x amount of hours beforehand yeah when does he get it back and how like how do you guys communicate after it oh minutes after so I'm watching on the tv and the second they walk off in the locker rooms they can have their phones again but they have team meetings but a lot of the team were going out to celebrate and Ben wasn't going out and I said babe why aren't you going out and he was like I've got too many death threats already already because they're saying he was like such an imperative part of of the match wow and so he's like it's not yeah he's like it's just I'll just go home to bed it's so gross how normalized that

is in sporting culture because especially soccer yeah I mean cricket as well is really really bad it's largely connected with gambling they lose so much money that they get so aggressive about the fact that they've lost so much money and they take it out on the person who caused them to do so but there's also been so many reports about how deeply personal it becomes I mean like Candice Warner has come out and talked about it being the partner of someone you also become subjected to it and I know like you haven't experienced it as deeply as maybe someone like Candice might have But you have still experienced versions of it. No, I think I spoke about it at one point and I'll never forget this,

but it happens really bad in tennis and I got a lot of it on the back end of dating Jordan. I would get people message me saying that they were going to come find me and put me on a spit, like kill me, like literally put me on a spit and cook me like a pig. They're the kind of vile messages that you would get after every match. They play a match like every single week. I think people would be shocked if they knew how prevalent this kind

of response was privately to athletes and athletes' families in the sporting industry. Well, it's also there's lack of consequences. You can shoot off a message like that saying that you're going to put someone to spit and nothing happens. There's not even, I mean, you get blocked maybe by that person, but there's no consequences. You know why?

Because it's almost not treated as a serious threat or a legitimate threat because I feel like if you took that to an authority and said, hey, I'm getting these messages, they would say, oh, it's reactional, it's off the back of a sporting match, like we're not going to take that seriously because they don't take normal domestic violence complaints seriously. So it's one of those things where if you are in the sporting industry, unfortunately, people say it's expected. It's part of being in the public eye. It's part of being an athlete, which we know is incorrect, but it is just part and parcel with

being any kind of professional athlete. All right, guys, there is a piece of content that is popping off currently on socials also because I have been getting very ragey in the comments, I would like to admit. Now it's from another podcast that is called The Pocket with the host, Chris Griffin. If you haven't seen this, I really do want to admit when I first saw this reel without the context of knowing the full backstory of who this podcast is or who the host was, I did feel a lot of rage when I saw this one specific reel. And the reason why it showed up in my algorithm specifically is because of the very delightful Laura Henshaw. She shared it to her Instagram calling out the host for some problematic views around this ideology of

feminine versus masculine powers of like women leaning into the feminine men leaning into the masculine and of the traditionalist roles that we have in our relationships yeah I saw Laura's as well and I made the comment you just said she called him out she absolutely did well I made the comment to you I said I really like how Laura has a really gentle and intelligent and structured approach to the way she does it because it's not aggressive but it is to the point it is firm but she's not trying to cause a pile on she's trying to educate and I really like that because we definitely see a lot of different types of calling out and calling in online well let me tell you it's just as effective is what I would say because when you have a look at the comments and like

we're going to play the reel for you we're going to unpack it you know in quite in depth but if you go and look at the comments on this reel there are so many influential influencers from Australia there are so many women who have jumped on this to communicate how they feel off the back of it now I really want to make this clear because we have been sent this real countless times now however we tossed back and forth whether or not we were going to talk about it and the reason for that is because we didn't want to contribute to a pylon that's happening over a single piece of content because people can put great messaging out into the world and get it wrong one time. And that is undeserving, I think, of a pylon. It is deserving of a correction. The reason why we're

talking about this is because after we all collectively went down the rabbit hole of the content of this podcast, we realized actually this is not one outlier piece of content. This is a current and continuous theme that is running throughout the pod and throughout the messaging. Now, if it was a tiny podcast, I wouldn't even give it the time of day or the airtime. But I think it's important because Chris Griffin, who is the host, he has over 350,000 followers himself. He's only 22 years old, mind you. He's very young. The podcast Instagram page has over 80,000 followers. The TikTok has over 90,000 followers. These are predominantly men who follow him for his advice on how to be a better man, how to deal with quote unquote mental

health, which we will unpack that as well, but also how to show up within relationships. I want to play you this reel, which is the one that Laura Henshaw took particular issue with, as have we. And then we're also going to unpack a couple of other pieces of content from this pod as well. Have a listen to this. I don't want my partner working unless she wants to work. If you feel the need to go and work to make money, and then you come home and you're complaining about your day when we don't need you to make money because we're sorted if we've got four hours to spend in the afternoon and i ask you how was your day today babe i want your eyes to light up with excitement with whatever the fuck it was i collected four postcards today and that's energy

too it's so good it's the calm it's the harmony it's the peace and love that a man that's got a busy life that's chasing his dreams needs when he's trying to wind down this is why i heavily encourage hot girl walks i would love my partner to go on a hot girl walk with her friends every day. She gets this feminine energy. They get to talk their shit and then they get to have a bit of excitement about their day. I don't think the girl needs to go through challenge, pain and hardship to be an amazing girl. I think she can fill her days with passion filled things and still be amazing. The music, it's the piano music underneath. The music has me laughing. Hashtag insightful. What I want, well, the music is there to lead you to believe that it is deep and it is

insightful and it is thought provoking and it is beautiful and wholesome, right? It's absolutely not. My initial thought to this, I watched it and I disagree wholeheartedly with almost all of it, but I thought, you know what, let me just have a look at this person's page quickly and see what we're dealing with. And I just sporadically at random picked a few of their reels, had a little look and I thought, do you know what, this guy looks like he's really trying to put some good messaging into the world because he does a lot of like mental health. He's sort of leaning into mental health for men he gets some really good guests on he gets some very questionable guests on which we have discovered but the reels that I picked I could see that he was trying to do

good things and we had this conversation between us and I said yeah I was raging and Britt was slightly more leveled and was like she was like I don't agree with the content that piece but I don't want to just annihilate this individual because maybe not all of his views are problematic exactly I was like let's have some grace right people are allowed to get things wrong and we are allowed to call the men and correct them. And so when I sort of trawled through his socials a little bit, I was like, it doesn't look that bad. I think he has gotten it wrong with a semi-decent intention behind it. What we discovered on a deeper dive, like I went very deep through his this morning before we had this conversation. And I found that this is an ongoing theme of

the podcast. And I switched my tune a little bit then. Let me be clear on this. I think he has good intention. I think he is well-meaning. I think he has absolutely no idea how deeply entrenched the misogyny is in what he is spewing. Because this idea, and he says it at the start, he says, if my partner chooses not to work, that is how he's originally set this up. And he's using that as the antidote for the rest of the things that he says. However, he's then put in the specifications that he doesn't want her to come home and complain about her job. He wants her eyes to light up when she walks in the door because he has had a busy day chasing his dreams he wants her to do things that fill her with joy things that are very very condescending like

collecting postcards or going on I actually can't believe he said collecting postcards and there are so many parts of this that are so problematic because it is not a woman's responsibility to create harmony and to have her tail wagging when a partner walks in the door because he's had a hard day. Space should be held for both parties. My problem with this so much is that we are dressing up this idea of modern masculinity, and it is just another version of toxic masculinity. And I really want to unpack this conversation that's happening online at the moment between the masculine and the feminine, which seems to just be a modern take on traditional roles. This idea that there is a masculine energy that is withheld and that masculine energy

are things like taking action, achievement, logic, assertiveness, whilst feminine energy calls into things like intuition, receiving, nurturing, compassion. The problem with this is that he has gendered those energies, right? He has said masculine energies are for men, feminine energies are for women. The reality is, is that every single person has this complex duality between masculine and feminine energy. And that is the antidote to toxic masculinity, Recognizing the fact that men can also have an incredible presence of feminine energy. Recognizing the fact that women can have an incredible essence of masculine energy. These two dynamics were never meant to be gendered and everybody is supposed to encompass

both. But what he is teaching and what these ideologies teach is that men have one and women have the other. And unless they are leaning into their feminine, then they are not fulfilling their role as women. Well, so this is one of the issues that I took from this. He's 22 years old. He's very young, but he has a very big social media following as we've established.

He is influential and a lot of young men are following him, women as well. I don't think he has enough lived experience and I don't think he has done enough due diligence about the things he's talking about. This, I believe, probably hasn't even registered with him. But by saying you want your female partner to stay at home and be happy for you and just go on hot girl walks and collect things that make her happy, it is a form of financial control. She is not earning an income.

she is not earning superannuation. She's not setting herself up for the future. If that relationship collapses, if she chooses to leave, there's nothing for her retirement, whatever it is, unless you are saying, babe, if you choose to stay home, that is all good. I'm going to split my salary with you. I'll pay you a salary. I'm going to put money into your superannuation. Like unless you are setting her up financially, it is not enough to say, babe, I've got this. I'm going to earn our money and I'll give you what you need. Because we know that relationships don't go down the gurgle. We know that women need to leave and absolutely should have financial independence. One thing that's like really just so reassuring and solidifying is go and check out

the comment section because like there are so many incredibly intelligent women who are doing their best to educate probably more eloquently than I did when I jumped in the comment section. One of them was Victoria Devine who runs She's On The Money and she brought up that exact point, Brit. The reality is like the fastest growing population of homeless people are women over the age of 55. And it's all well and good to think that you're being altruistic in your relationships and that you're providing this sense of equality by saying, you do whatever you want as the woman, I will provide, you provide the home. And that's okay for the now, but I absolutely agree with everything you said, Britt, unless you are committing to the financial future of that

woman and putting money away from a superannuation perspective to safeguard them in the instance that this financial security is gone the man providing is gone from that equation then there is no security in this arrangement and I guess like ultimately the thing that really is quite shocking about this is like when when we sent this around we're talking about it last night Keisha your first reaction was I genuinely thought this was satire yeah I thought it was a joke and it's shocking that a 22 year old who lives in Bondi who so many young men look up to for advice on the right way to go about modern masculinity are being fed these very, and they are extreme traditionalist ideologies. This idea that women, the most important and powerful essence that we

can bring to a relationship is to be nurturing, loving, unchallenging, the warmth embrace around the man who has such a hard and stressful job, but they are going to take that from us to be able to protect us. The other thing that really irked me was this underlying message that women don't have dreams. Like women don't want to go chase things because he's like, we are working hard to provide for you, chasing our dreams, getting out there, earning the money. Like the best you can do is create a happy environment for us. What that is saying is that women don't have anything that they want to chase. No, I would challenge that. And I've looked at Chris's response. He has responded on that social media thread. He said, you know, look at the first part

of my video exactly what we unpacked I said if they didn't choose to the problem is is that it came with a caveat you can chase your dreams so long as you have a smile on your face at the end of the day so long as you don't complain about the fact that you had to chase your dreams now anyone who runs a business or who does anything that is ambitious has a job that's stressful but also fulfilling are going to have days where things are actually just fucked and they want to come home and they want their partner to hold space for their complaining I do it all the time I love my job. I love how fulfilling it is.

I love how financially rewarding it is. I love the stability it creates for my family. But you better believe that there are days where I come home and I do nothing but complain to Matt. Probably more than not, to be honest. That's the society we live in. Like work is hard whether you're chasing your dream or not. But the thing is is in this equation he is allowed to have space

to be held for when he's having a hard day but she is not. And maybe we are reducing it down because we only have what a lot of this conversation stems from is this one-minute social media clip. Oh, I listened to a little bit more of the podcast and I would say it was a bit of a reoccurring theme, to be honest. And because of his age, I want to give him, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he has without knowing a complete lack of acknowledgement of things like his privilege. And I don't think he realizes that his unevolved version of choice feminism is actually very

regressive. And what I thought was really interesting about this type of messaging is that we are seeing this shift back to more traditional gender norms more conservative values but it's coming in a form of soft patriarchy it's not coming in the form necessarily of this really harsh women belong in the kitchen go make me a sandwich it's in this more soft I want to be a provider for you and I want to set you up with a good life and I want to treat you well and do good things and support you in that way and you're not going to have to worry I'm going to look after you which are all great things. It's things that you want in a partner. But we also know that statistically it's not the

case. Yes. And it also, it lacks firstly, the acknowledgement that there is only a certain type of woman who can have a lifestyle like that. And it's one that is incredibly privileged. There's also only a certain type of man that can provide that. And it's one that comes from immense privilege. And again, I don't want to come down too hard on him because he is young. These are ideas and concepts that I didn't wholly understand until I was in my thirties. So I don't expect for a young man who doesn't experience the patriarchy in the same way to have an evolved stance on this I just don't think that he realizes that by implying that being that provider for a woman and saying that you can have the choice of not working and just being a family man being there

for me being you know my calm when I come home at the end of a stressful big day he's actually sprouting a lot of the messaging of this very conservative let's go back to a better time where women didn't have to work and women didn't have to go and do these things but guess what women also didn't have the right to fucking vote they didn't have the ability to leave their relationships if they wanted to well it's very romanticized there is actually a really great comment in the trenches of this post and it's from a person named nicola carter and it just said choice isn't something a man grants it's something a woman owns autonomy isn't a favor it is a right and that is what I think is the missing link of this conversation. It's as though this ideology

bestows choice upon a woman to be able to live the life in whatever version she wants. So long as it is always showing up happy and with a smile on her face, because ultimately the messaging is at the end of the day, your obligation is to make this household peaceful. And that's what you bring to the relationship. So do a good job of that. It's funny because in the last 24 hours, Keisha, I have done a flip. I started out by saying he is only 22. Like let's give him some grace and say, you know what you just haven't lived enough you haven't done enough due diligence you haven't spoken to enough people then when I went down the rabbit hole and saw how many conversations he's having on this topic I thought 22 is old enough and you do have a responsibility when you have

a platform as big as he does I 100% wholeheartedly agree and also there are other parts of this that we wanted to share like there are a couple of other reels on here like this reel which is an interview with a man named Mark Rolton who is the guy speaking and this reel is captioned a woman's role is far more valuable. Episode 65. What a woman can provide and bring to the family, you and I just simply aren't capable of that. You might turn around and say I can make a million a year, a million a month. That's terrific. That's wonderful. I think that's a meek measure against what a woman can bring to the family. You can bring calm, harmony. You bring love. You bring a place of peace. And that's what a man would want. I'd rather go in money. I find her role

far more significant than none. Now, this is playing the role of masculine and feminine. that's the model that you're tabling here. Women today, feminists will argue, they'll scream down your podcast and say, you know, we're equal, we're the same, we deserve to have, you know, the same amount of money. Right. If that's what you want, knock yourself out. But a feminine woman won't be looking for the markers of finance and commerce and economics as a measure of her worth. If it's a woman smart and intelligent, she'll realize she has far more to offer in her power of bringing love, bringing that connection, being deliberate about who she is, her loyalty, her purity. That's what a woman has to offer. This was the reel that absolutely sent me like

into orbit. No, I sent me out of space. I was Katy Perry. I was like, I was like, it's a woman's world. He really drove it home with the final statement, which was a choice for them to include and publicize as the messaging of the reel that a smart, intelligent woman will know that she can bring peace, love, loyalty, harmony, purity, purity. Look, I think it comes back to something that I said at the very beginning around this idea of masculine versus feminine. And it has been hijacked and it has been turned into something that was not the intention. Now, it would be absolutely remiss of us to not touch on the thing that a lot of these male-focused podcasts seem to circle around. And that is that suicide is so high in men. 75% of suicides are men

within Australia. That is a fact. Toxic masculinity exists. This is not the antidote to it. That's the problem. And it's being dressed up as the antidote. It's being dressed up as the solution, allowing men to lean more into their masculine quote unquote, and women to take more of a role of the feminine so that people have defined roles and men know how to lead and they know how to take autonomy. And I say this because this is literally Chris's quote. He has responded to the overwhelming backlash that he has received. And part of that response says, I also don't think it's fair to label traditional masculine values as toxic. Wanting to provide, protect, and lead with strength doesn't make a man toxic.

It makes him grounded in his role. What is toxic is weakness, master's masculinity, insecurity, control, emotional suppression. That's not what I stand for. We can all agree with that. The truth is we have too many weak men out there, men who don't lead, who don't take responsibility, who don't make the women in their lives feel safe. And when women stop feeling safe, they are forced to lean out of their natural feminine and into survival mode. That's how we end up with quote unquote toxic femininity and hyper independent. I don't need a man culture.

It's not empowering and it's doing more damage than good, but no one wants to talk about that. Men and women are equal, absolutely, but we are not the same. Pretending we are strips away our natural strengths and creates confusion instead of connection. It's all well and good to talk about equality. When you say a man's role is to provide money, power, security, stability, and all of the things that our society deems as the most important functions of a person, and a woman's job is to provide all of the things that have no monetary value, love, care, nurturing, then you create inequality. And that's what he's not understanding.

The way that they have reframed, you know, the value of what a woman can bring to the relationship. I think in that video, he actually said, you know, it's a higher value than what I can provide. The thing that they lack is that there's a hierarchical structure. He is still positioned at the top. He's the head of the household. And this is why I call it soft patriarchy. It's not saying this is the only thing that a woman can, you know, she just belongs at home raising the kids it's almost this language of like i'm empowering her by acknowledging that what she's bringing to the table is more than what i could ever do and i'm a high value man and therefore i want a high value pure woman in my life you know what this screams to me you guys

remember the speech that was done by the jd van no the kansas city chiefs kicker harrison butker and i and i fucking got riled up at the time fair enough right so look if you don't remember it the speech was at, it was a Christian college. It was at the graduation college, like university graduation. And the speech started off with saying, some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you, this is directed at the women, are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. He then went on to say that his wife's life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I think it is absolutely insane that someone would get up and say in a

graduation speech, when someone, every single person who's sitting in that room has just spent years dedicating themselves to their education, that the biggest success that they're going to have in their lives is being a mother and a wife. The last thing I want to say on this, and I think it could be possibly one of the most important parts is off the back of something that you just said, Keisha, you said this is like a soft opening into a more dangerous world. it is not a soft opening that world is here i want to talk to you about this study young men are going backwards in their view of gender norms and increasingly believing they should be the breadwinners while a woman's place is at home a new study has found though australians of both

genders have generally become more progressive in their opinion of gender roles over the last 25 years analysis conducted by policy think tank e61 institute found that since 2018 men aged between 15 and 24 so our next generation and this yeah yeah chris have veered back to conservative direction the research used household income and labor dynamics in australia survey to gauge the level of support for traditional gender roles based on how greatly they agreed to a series of statements these are some of the statements on the whole men make better political leaders than women it is better for everyone involved if the man earns more money and the women takes care of the home and children possibly my favorite statement from the survey it is not good for a relationship

if the woman earns more than the man uh it's not good if you're in a relationship with a man who is easily emasculated that's the reality right like chris i hope you listen to this i really do too it's not an attack i think he will think it's an attack and that's okay it is kind of an attack it's attack it's an attack on the values that he holds but he is 22 years old and there is a lot of life to learn. My worry is, is that sometimes being called out doesn't push people in the direction of being open-minded to learning. They double down and they become even more steadfast in the views. And I hope that that is not the case. That is specifically why I have a problem with this. It's the soft opening where they start to have these traditional value kind of

conversations, but they're dressed up as wellness and they're dressed up as what's going to be best for you as a woman, what's going to make you happiest and feel the most secure. And the more and more that they hear from the, and I'm quoting them, angry feminists, they just think it's ridiculous and they invalidate it. And then they find more comfort and more sense of belonging in these more like red pill men's type of communities. But I don't think a lot of people have the context around this type of messaging and why it can be so problematic because it's delivered in such palatable way. We do have such a huge female base of listeners age from age, I think 17 to 60. To anyone listening, if you don't already know this, the most important thing

that you can have in a relationship is financial independence or access to money, whatever that looks like for you. Even if you are a stay-at-home mom, like that is absolutely fine, but make sure there is no financial dominance in your relationship. Make sure you have a shared account where you have access to money. I just want to drive home. If you want to choose that life, that is absolutely fine. Have access to money. You will 100% need it. Exactly as Laura Henshaw's mum has pinned to her fridge as we all found out from the stories. A man is not a financial plan. Let that be a lesson to you all. It's time for Suck and Sweet, our highlight and our low light of the week. Why don't I kick it off? I've already said it, but it is the absolute highlight. My

sister moved back. So that's it for me. I finally got, my sister's my best friend. You guys all know sherry on the pod she's come on multiple times you've seen her but it's been really hard having her overseas and have a family and start that next chapter of life so she is back officially on aussie ground after two years living overseas so that's very exciting that she's now far more within reach she will be an hour flight as opposed to 26 hours my suck and i don't know how this is going to sound i think you're meant to do it the other way around just fyi you are well my suck and I don't know how this is going to sound. I'm worried.

No, well, I've had so much on that I have forgotten to do something extremely important that I shouldn't have forgotten to do and I've only just remembered. So next week I have to fly overseas to a wedding. Not her own wedding, just FYI. I'm flying overseas to a wedding and Ben had said to me, he's one of Ben's friends, and Ben had said to me, Wendy Land.

You forgot to book your flights. I haven't booked a flight. I forgot to book a flight. That's fine. I went to look for my flight and I was like, hang on, how did I miss that? How did I book – how have I done everything else? I've got booked hire cars over there. I don't even have a flight in one week.

And I was like, oh, my God. So anyway, that's my suck. I'm going to get across that. But imagine if he hadn't asked me. Would I have just assumed that I had a flight? You would have figured it out eventually because you would have thought, when have I got to get to the airport? That's like –

Well, because I know the flight time. It's always the same flight time. So I wonder if I would have just – I don't know. I am a person and I don't know if there's common, I don't think it is, but I am a last minute everything gal and I will book an international flight two days before I have to go. I don't recommend it. It's usually more expensive, but I just don't have the capacity to be organized. I still haven't got accommodation for like the time that I'm going to Bali for work. I don't have everything sorted yet. So like, yeah, anyway, whatever. No one cares about me and my organization.

All right, my suck for the week is that I have the most raging indigestion even throughout this entire record. I have had to stop down to spew burp in my own mouth. And I'm at the point now. I need some Rennies, I need some Gaviscon, and I keep forgetting that I need to have it on me all the time because sometimes I think it's just a morning thing or a night thing.

It's an all-day thing now and it's an all-the-time thing. I even had to take my bra off halfway through this record because I got so fired up over feminism, the patriarchy. I didn't even wear a bra. that I had indigestion god damn it so that is definitely my suck and then my sweet for the week is that it was Mother's Day as you guys know last week and the girls are at an age now so they're five and four and they're at an age now where they actually can make Mother's Day really really special and they get as like they get so excited about it so it makes it a big thing yeah you know

at the schools and the and the daycares and I joke because like they put on so many things that you have to go to it's like I had to go to the the primary school Mother's Day breakfast lunch and then I had to go to the daycare afternoon tea thing sounds like a lot and I was like why are you killing me and torturing me with all this admin but actually it was so freaking cute and Lola was just so excited you guys know I mentioned it earlier in the year that she was having a really really hard time at her new daycare and she's finally after like almost six months found her feet there and she was so proud to show me around so it was really nice to see like the night and day between where she was at in January to where she is now with it but yeah Mother's Day

this year just felt really special and it wasn't because we did anything big it was because the people in my life you know took the time to make it feel like it was something that was important and you know I saw some people on Instagram kind of talking about how the people they loved in their life did fuck all and that was subtle yeah I mean I'm not going to tell you who it was but but yeah it really reminds you that like it's one day and as a parent or as a mom like being made to feel special on a day that seems you know it's only as special as the people around you make it and I feel very very grateful that like Matt and the girls really went out of their way not to do big grandiose things but just that Matt did everything from like the cooking and the cleaning

that day and he made dinner and then he cleaned up after dinner like they were small thoughtful things but it meant that like my mental load was so minimal that day and it was really really nice so yeah that was my sweet anyway guys that's it from us if you love the episode if you have your own thoughts on it if you maybe you listen to the podcast and you think something different maybe you've seen a lot of the positive messaging that's come through that pod and hadn't really considered this very specific conversation that we have had today love to know your thoughts love to know your opinions and slide on into the dm send us your ask uncuts and everything else at live uncut podcast you know the drill tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends

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