Life Uncut - TEACH US CONSENT! Uncut with Chanel Contos

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Welcome to your Tuesday Lifers. We have a really big important episode for you today, we're talking about consent!Chanel Contos is the woman behind the Teach Us Consent movement, which led to the curriculum in every state of Australia to include consent education - and it all started with an instagram poll.In this chat we talk about:-What is rape culture, and how it exists in Australia-What is pressurised sex-How our societal views of consent and sex have evolved and where we have to go-How Chanel has helped change consent education across the whole countryChanel is a powerhouse and a young woman who won't be stopping any time soon! You can check out her website here:https://www.teachusconsent.com/And her instagram here:https://www.instagram.com/chanelc/?hl=enTrigger warningIn this episode we speak a lot about sexual assault and rape. This episode may be triggering and/or tough to listen to. If it brings up any issues for you, there is always help available at 1800 RESPECT. It's perfectly okay if you choose to give today's episode a miss.If you loved the episode, especially if you know someone who could really benefit from hearing what Chanel has to say, please share it with them.Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your friend, tell your dog and share the love because we love love!!xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Brittany.

And we are not recording the start of this episode, which is a good thing, because Britt's sitting here in a hat and I have not showered today. And by not recording, you mean we're not video recording. I was hoping you were actually recording this. Yeah, I hit record. We're not video recording the start of the episode. No, and do you know what? I love it.

We went, as you guys know, we had a couple of years where we didn't really do the videos because we were chaos. And half the time I had like a baby hanging off my boob and it was just, yeah. We were not in a place to record. It was midnight. It was 6am. Mentally or physically. Metaphorically, literally, spiritually, we could not video record this.

But now we have started this year to finally we're in a place where we can record. So we've started to make ourselves slightly more presentable. but on the off days that we don't we rejoice because we can not worry about what we look like again we can be a little bit crazy and yes laura is laughing at me because i have a hat on inside it's cute it's new balance it's cute i am wearing it inside not sponsored by new balance it's not sponsored but could be actually might be coming up yeah if you're out there new balance i wear new balance to death probably because jordan was sponsored by it so i used to i got on that team okay too soon not talking about jordan oh no r.i.p the man that we never talk about anymore

But do you know I was at the dog park yesterday in this hat and someone that I have seen a bit lately at the dog park, like you learn the same people there. So you learn the dog's names more than you know the owners. It's just how it works at dog parks. It's exactly the same with the kids from daycare. I know all the kids from daycare's names don't know their parents. And this guy was sitting there and I looked at him and I recognised him

and I was like, hey, and he looked at me and I had my hair like up in a bun. You couldn't really see it. Then I had my New Balance hat on over the top. I had a fanny pack and everything because I wear a fanny pack now. Life has really spiraled out of control for Brittany over the last couple of weeks. Most people get a glow up in a breakup. I start wearing a fanny pack. Nah, I've seen your thirst traps, babe.

Don't worry. You've had a glow up. Yeah, it's fake. I'm putting my best foot forward on social media. Look at me right now. Why am I like... Put your shirt down. I'm so glad we're not filming this.

And this is partly why it took us so long to get cameras and actually do this properly. brit just out of nowhere just lifted her her entire shirt up above her boobs and then sat there holding her boobs i know that we're really good friends but also imagine if we did this recorded this in like arn's office and you just sat in a studio holding on to your titties yeah but we're we're in my home and it's comfort i anyway he looked at me and he looked at me strangely and i was like it's me and he's like oh i didn't notice you under there you look like a soccer mom and i was like i'm so offended what what do you mean he's like oh you i just haven't seen you quite looking like this and I'm like I don't know just stop digging your hole like what's

wrong with what I'm wearing he's like I'm sorry he's like nothing's wrong with what you're wearing but you he's like I just don't feel like you look like your potential I feel on behalf of all the mums out there who just like literally get by on life and leave the house I feel sorry for us and I feel personally victimized I said to him I said this I'm living my best life this is the most comfortable I've ever been do you know how practical a fanny pack and a hat is yes I do I absolutely do. And I think that I feel offended. Thank you. What have you been up to guys? I went to Brisbane over the weekend. I know if any of you follow my socials, you would be aware there was a telethon happening, which was, it was basically channel 10 and channel nine and

channel seven, all the major networks came together, put their differences aside and raise money for the floods, raise money for red cross. Love that. Now, I don't know if you guys know this, but channel 10, channel nine and channel seven actually hate each other. Like they never do anything together they're always in competition with each other well they are in direct competition so I don't know if it's hate hate but it's like we're not gonna go for a drink after work we're not gonna buddy up absolutely not and also if you're like deemed channel 10 talent you're like not allowed to go on channel 9 if you're channel 9 talent you're not allowed to go on channel 7 I'm channel 10 talent I'm not even allowed on channel 10

we apparently are channel 10 talent but they never put us on but basically there's this real like internal rivalry between the networks and because of the floods and wanting to raise money they put their differences aside they got all of the different talent together and they did this fundraising drive I mean like Matt and I didn't make the cut for Sydney we got shipped out to Brisbane offices but we basically flew into Brisbane for the day then we went to the Red Cross call centre there and there was so there was like heaps of people from maths there was heaps of people from MasterChef like it was a really fun little crew a lot of reality TV it was all it was like Brisbane was the reality TV office and Sandra Sully was there Matt got like

weirdly nervous around Sandra Sully he was like she's amazing maybe she's his hall pass I think she might be cute and I'm not even mad about it she's pretty great she's a boss she's a boss so yeah basically I spent my Saturday night on the phones like answering phone calls and taking money from incredible people who rang up to donate there were people who were donating like $20,000, $25,000 pop. I'm sure some of them were businesses. Who are these people? But even I had this one little lady ring up and her name was Susan. And she was like, dear, I'd like to donate $200. And that was all of her pension that she had left over for the week. I just got goosebumps. Like stop it. People were incredibly generous and they raised like $25 million to go towards

the flood victims. It was an incredible, it was incredible. What was raised was I knew, because I was watching I wasn't invited as any talent but I was watching from the sidelines it's still it's like a little bit dirty that she didn't get to go and do it I actually feel like you missed an opportunity I could have raised so much money for you guys but I I was watching from the sidelines and I just I knew we would make a lot of money and I say we as a country I knew Australia has a really really great way of pulling through as a community in these times we saw it in the bushfires we've seen it multiple times I knew it was going to be a lot of money I picked my drop off the ground when I saw the number when I saw it was over 25 million dollars in one night and I

know there'd be a couple of big spenders in there there'd be a couple of businesses that dropped some some big money a couple of businesses that dropped some money to see Matt wear a dress we'll get into that in a second but I was just so it's these moments that makes me so proud to be in a like I was so proud I shared on my socials I was just like fuck yes I in this moment I I love Australia so much and I know that we have things to say about the government but as a community as of people we are rock solid and it makes me very emotional you know it's interesting that you say that because at the beginning of the night I was thinking maybe we'll make 10 million dollars like maybe we'll raise 10 million I thought that that would be just an astronomical achievement

but I think the reason why I wasn't expecting the amount of money to be so high is because I do feel like people have real fatigue at the moment like almost like charity or empathy fatigue there's been so many bad things that have happened and it's happened just like unrelenting it's one bad thing after another bad thing and so every day you see there's a GoFundMe page or there's something that's happening where somebody's life has been disastrously affected. That is a real thing this fatigue and the world because the world is a shift fire at the moment. Well Sandra Sally actually she put it so well into words when we were speaking and she was like you know people get empathy fatigue they become desensitized to the plight and the need of people purely because

we're seeing so much of it and it's unending but it was just such an incredible night and obviously live tv is always a little bit rogue and a little bit silly and matt ended up wearing a dress which he would have done for free but he did it because we got someone who donated five thousand dollars he does it for free at home all the time he wore my beautiful floral dress on national tv so that was a real moment in the night i thought he looked amazing he looked very pretty but yeah that was it that was uh we went to so we went to brisbane we got to be a part of this incredible fundraiser and britney ended up back on hinge it's been a successful weekend all round well i wouldn't say successful for everyone it's definitely it's definitely been successful for you tell us what

getting back on the dating apps is like brit i went oh i mean i'm not back on there yet so uh keisha and i were at my house last night quite late after doing some work and we're like oh let's just grab some dinner and she was talking about her dating life and i was like fuck should i get back on there and i was like why not i'll just put a profile up see what happens so i haven't talked to anyone or met anyone but it was so you haven't set the profile live but you've curated. It's live. It's live. We're live people. You're there. People can screenshot this now. Daily Mail Brittany is back on the dating app. People have already screenshotted it. I was like, is my dating life really that interesting? Yes. There's a whole podcast about it. It was so

funny. I was like, fuck you Hinge. I was setting up the profile and it's been so long since I've been on a Hinge profile because even before, there was a while there before I even met Jordan that I was, I wasn't really on a dating site anymore because I had dating fatigue. I was only on Raya where I met Jordan and that profile had been set up a long time ago. So I forgot what it was like to set a profile up I was seeing the hidden profile up oh my god it asks you so many details wanted to know the last time I did a poo like every single thing about my life I had to put into this thing and then it's like put your age in put your birthday in so it logs your age so I put my birthday in and then it came up with a message that was like just so you know you can't

change this and I was like fuck you hinge I'm 34 I know I can't change this don't you don't have to remind me why do you think that your age is such a bad thing I don't I just think it's hilarious that every single piece of your information needs to go on and I just thought it was more hilarious that it was sending me a message a reminder being you can't change your age obviously it meant like the data but I just was having a little hissy fit that it's like you can't change your age in life and I was like I'm very well aware of that but I got back on hinge it was a little bit I'm not gonna lie I did about 10 minutes of swiping it was a bit soul crushing I felt a bit defeated I was like I can't believe I'm back in this dating world only because the first 10 minutes there was just

nobody that was of interest to me. It's always pretty jarring getting back into the dating world after being like coming out of a breakup, coming out of a relationship. And then that first initial swipe where you're like, fuck, oh, we're back. I can't imagine I'm going to be on it for very long. I'm hoping it happens organically. I hope I meet someone organically or they slide into my DMs. Now I have always told you guys that people don't slide into my DMs and I'm not exaggerating. They just don't. It does not happen. People do not slide into my DMs. But last week I did say that there were I think two or three people over a week period that did the most ever one of them I started to engage in conversation with he has a bit of a profile but that's irrelevant but I sort

of famous is what she's trying to say I googled yeah I mean like I did I didn't know him but he was yeah so I did my due diligence and I looked it up a little bit can we can we play like a game of charades like can you give me a couple of clues and we try and guess who this guy is this is what happened right is he a sports person yes Michael Clark we're not no Clark he's a friend he's oh god here we go he's a nice guy Clark is great so no so um we were I was like you know what let's engage let's engage in conversation within two days we were having a fight we were having an Instagram DM fight because I don't know if I'm hypersensitive he told me that long story short he told me that I wasn't capable of building or if you follow me on Instagram you guys see that

I'm doing a lot of do-it-yourselves. You know, I live alone. I build stuff alone. That's what happens. From now on, I'm going to pay more so it arrives built. You make flat packs. I make flat packs. In your spare time.

You're a flat packer. I am a flat packer, yeah. Not a very good one, but I'm doing it. And he made a comment that, you know, I'm not capable to do it alone. And I don't know if I'm hypersensitive right now because my biggest tick in life is somebody telling me that I'm not capable of doing something or that I have had excessive help somewhere along the way. like this is what I this is what I hate from people in life and I don't know if I'm like

highly emotional but I just arced up he's like you can't do that on your own and I just lost it and we ended up having a fight on our dms I've never met the guy having a full-on fight and he was so passive-aggressive back to me do you think he was doing it in the hopes that you would invite him around to help you make this piece of furniture well I gave him the benefit of the doubt right so I thought that I got a bit defensive informed him made sure he knew how capable I was so I was like you obviously know nothing about me so I filled him in on you know I was like well actually I'm very capable I've done this this and this and this I've lived in multiple countries alone like trust me I can build my own furniture and then so I gave him the benefit of the doubt

and I was like maybe he's looking for an in so I said well you're more than welcome if you don't think I can do it even though I know I can you're more than welcome to come and do it for me or help me and he wrote back and said oh no you've made it very clear how in quotations you've made it very clear how independent you are i think you i think you'll be fine on your own something like that and then i lost it again then we had a full-on fight and then that's my experience with anyone sliding into my dms it's not positive and the funniest part of this is that really end up calling producer keisha to come over and help her make the flat pack this is the second flat pack this hasn't been built yet this is my second one and i was like look i just want you to i just

want to highlight there's a difference between needing help and wanting it i want it and don't need it. But also this comes back to like men being casually aggressive, like being smart asses or being like nasty and messaging, poking fun at and thinking that making a degrading joke is a funny way to connect with someone. I was like, are we 12? Are we back at school when you like someone and you pay them out? You know, when you're a child, a lot of people do it. I don't think it's just gendered. I probably shouldn't say just guys, but there are definitely. And I remember from my experiences in dating there are definitely a lot of men who find it funny to put you down and think that that's the way that they're going to be able to get you to go

oh hey actually let's go on a date together there's this weird put down culture sometimes when it comes to dating and it actually sometimes comes from people who do have an interest in you but maybe they're trying to play it cool or play it too cool I don't know where it comes from but it's very unproductive to having a great relationship put it that way yeah I haven't responded to him in a couple of days. He's dead to me. Okay. Well, this is, we have such a fucking awesome episode for you today, guys. And we are so excited for who we are speaking to today. Now, Chanel Contos is somebody that we have spoken about on the podcast before we spoke about her last October when she made headlines for her incredible work in changing the way that we

are viewing and the way that we are educating consent in schools. So basically over the last year, Chanel has been lobbying and campaigning for within schools all across Australia for consent to be brought in as a mandatory part of the curriculum. So not, I mean, you guys remember what consent conversations were like when we were at school. Well, they didn't exist. They didn't exist. You would have one or two lessons around sex education, but the actual education around what consent looks like, how do we give or take away consent to someone? How do we navigate those conversations and relationships, especially when we're having our first early sexual experiences in school. This is what Chanel's entire campaign is about. Now, she is the founder of Teach Us

Consent. And as of last year, there has been huge reform in the way that these conversations will take place in school, all because of Chanel's advocacy. Yeah, she's really incredible. She's the thing she has done within a really small timeframe as somebody that didn't have a platform to start with she was just somebody that really believed in something someone that had experienced things she shouldn't have her friends had experienced it and she just had enough and I take my hat off to her because within a year she's meeting with the prime minister she's meeting with Scott Morrison she's getting big money to make changes she's made huge changes with the curriculum she has gone above and beyond and she did it with nothing but passion and hard work the thing that

I think is really incredible about speaking to Chanel and so amazing about the way that she she talks about consent is that this episode centers hugely around a conversation about sexual assault. But what Chanel has managed to pinpoint is that so many of us grew up in a culture that not only was sexual assault prevalent, but it was almost accepting of it. And now I know that that's going to sound really jarring to a lot of people, but what I mean by this is so many of us went through our adolescence or we went through university where we have seen or heard of our friends being sexually assaulted maybe we have been sexually assaulted ourselves maybe you have your own experience of how it has affected you and nobody is held accountable for this and so

much of that comes down to the conversation around consent it comes down to the fact that we have been conditioned not that we're okay with sexual assault not that we're okay with rape culture but we're very familiar with it and that the fact that we have been brought up in a society where it is so incredibly common and very few people are held to accountability for it well it's because people never and actually i shouldn't say never not enough people in the past have had platforms big enough to make enough noise that they want to make about we weren't having open conversations now and we speak about this in the episode now women have had enough but not only have they had enough we've always had enough but we actually have a means to voice our thoughts and

our opinions we have a means to say no we have platforms now we have other people that will help us amplify our voices and I think that's made a huge difference but don't you think it's amazing that Chanel she identified like she looked at this and she was like why have so many of my friends been sexually assaulted why have I experienced sexual assault and why isn't why aren't more people fucking furious about this like this is an epidemic that young people experience so many women and young girls experience sexual assault and instead of just looking at it as though it's a it's just a part of what happens in our society chanel has unpacked where that stems from and the way to be able to condition and to kind of change people's views and mentality towards this is to

start teaching consent in schools really driving home the basic facts of things that we think everyone should know but kids don't know it unless they're taught it and speaking of being taught something before we get into the chat with chanel i want to add something that chanel and i spoke about after we recorded the podcast. So I learned, she taught me something. In the episode, we speak a little bit about a different level of consent. And this is the idea that women can change their mind when they're already in a situation. They may have consented, then they may change their mind and they don't want to have sex anymore. Yeah. And consent being this fluid thing that can change at any time. So I was telling a story about how I, I mean, I've done it before. I've

definitely had sex at a time with someone where I'm not saying it was forced. I'm just saying inside my head, I was like, Oh, I don't really want to do this. All my friends have been in the same situation. Like I feel like every single person and I know everyone listening is going to be like, Oh, I've definitely done that. We're definitely done it. Yeah. And so we want to talk about the fact that you, you can change your mind and you don't have to do it. Now we did speak briefly about this in the episode and afterwards Chanel sent me, she's like, look what you were talking about, what your friend did recently. She's like, that has a name, but people don't know about it it's actually the fourth trauma response so the trauma responses are number one

is fight number two is flight number three is freeze and number four is fawn so this idea of women subjecting themselves to something they don't want to do and not actually voicing that they don't want to do it it's called fawning and it's essentially you're people pleasing you're scared in a situation you don't want to cause conflict you don't want to upset somebody else you think it's easier to just do something you don't want to do than cause a scene. So it does have a name. It is called fawning and it is absolutely something

that is not acceptable. You do not have to do it. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do to please another human or to be scared to disrupt him, to embarrass yourself or to embarrass the guy. Or to hurt his feelings. To hurt his feelings. You can change your mind.

I would say that there are probably so many women listening to this who have had sex in their life with somebody who they didn't really want to have sex with. Now it wasn't, I'm not saying that it's sexual assault, that it's rape because they in themselves just did it and kind of were like, it's easier to do it and get it over with than to try and get up and leave or to have a conversation and tell the guy I'm not interested. Like maybe it had already gone so far that you're like, Oh fuck, I don't want to have sex with him. Let's just get it over with. I'll just do it anyway. And that's exactly what we're talking about in this. It's like really understanding that you have agency over your own body understanding what consent is

and why it's so imperative that this is taught to kids from a really really young age so it's not after the fact it's not after they've already started to have sexual experiences that they learn that they can say no in all these different complex environments it's a fucking good episode guys we're gonna get into that shortly but as you guys know before we get into the chat with chanel there is a segment that we do on every single episode and that is accidentally unfiltered confessional it is slash can do you have a confessional do you have an accidentally unfiltered today well i had two i think i might just go with a short so good to see i was like i didn't know which one to do i might just go with this i think i'll just go with like

a super short confessional today all right because i have a super short accidentally unfiltered my husband and i own horses and run horse clinics and what that means is we take people's horses and we train them for them or we care for them while they are away we had a very lovely but also very proper client of ours leave her horse with us for several weeks to care for on friday just passed she sent me a message saying she wanted to come pick up her horse as she wanted to go riding on the weekend but unfortunately her horse wasn't ready being the generous horse doing well i think it's like the horse is in there doing specific training so it's like you can't just take it out or it breaks the training right sorry your car is not ready yeah i'm sorry the horse

ain't ready we have another service to do on the horse she still needs her nails done being the generous woman i am i wanted to offer her my husband's horse duck to take out for her trail ride so i sent her a message and didn't think anything of it at all until i received a message back saying that i was being totally inappropriate turns out the message i had sent had a typo in it and it read as follows unfortunately your horse won't be ready for this weekend but lee has offered you his precious dick to ride for the weekend instead how does that sound i had pressed send without even looking at the messages and now i have to face this woman when she comes next week because i'd offered to take my hubby out for a spin so she offered her

husband's dick up to her a very professional client because her horse had to get her nails done i just love how innocent it is but also like here please take my husband's dick for a spin it's Because why does Apple think that everything we want to write is duck? Well, no, she wanted to say duck. Oh, true, true, true. She did. The one time that it does it backwards. Because every time you want to say dick, it autocorrects to duck.

But also I want to say that I have never in my life said that I ducking don't want something. No. But I will write I ducking hate that or I ducking everyone does. Everyone. Why do they think that we want to do it? And the one time this poor lady actually wants to say duck and it reverse autocorrects to dick. but also why on earth why why would you call your horse duck for how no for how smart apple is for how i'm like why would you call your horse for how advanced at apple technology is why would it ever

think that the australian population is so obsessed with saying the word duck or ducking who knows i think that they're trying to say look we don't encourage the word fuck we don't encourage profanity but like we get it apple however here at life uncut we do all right what is your confessional okay here's my confessional so my sister has just got out of a very long-term relationship i'm talking 10 years unfortunately nearing the end the last couple of years it was getting quite emotionally abusive i'm so glad she got out of it and she's finally happy again but i have something that i want to confess my sister and i used to live together and her boyfriend would come and visit us often he worked interstate so when he visited it was good for a few days at

a time inevitably every time he visited there ended up being a huge fight between them he would resort to derogatory name calling which has really got me because i would witness this so it got to the point when they were out of the house i would take his toothbrush wipe it all around a dirty toilet bowl flush it under the toilet water and put it back well played this is just like the perfect crime you'll always get away with it because you're never gonna know except he'll know when he gets gastro well I wonder if he did oh it's just so do you know what it is a perfect crime because I guess you it's so satisfying to you know that there's like poo water on his toilet brush but he'll you'll never you would never look at it it actually makes me a bit worried this is

why I can't ever live with anyone I don't trust them he will never look at that and be like that's poo water there's poo particles on that you do remember this happened on maths a couple of years ago no I don't watch it there was a big toilet toothbrush conspiracy that happened someone did that on national television did they get roasted yes it did not go down well anyway guys let's get into the chat with Chanel as we talked about at the beginning of this episode we are talking about sexual assault with Chanel today now this comes with a bit of a trigger warning if this brings up anything in you or you need to speak to someone please call 1-800-RESPECT also it is completely find that this episode might not be for you so please feel free to skip it maybe you want to

come back to it at a later date or maybe you don't want to listen at all that is totally okay chanel is a young activist and the founder of teachers consent and she has been successful in lobbying the government to create and provide holistic consent and sexual education in schools she's been awarded the australian human rights commission of 2021 young people's medal for her exceptional advocacy for better consent and education and raising the issue of sexual assault within schools to the national spotlight chanel welcome to life uncut thank you so much for having me i'm really excited to speak to you both chanel where are you coming from right now because everyone listening we're on a zoom call but where are you i'm in sydney at the moment

you are and because you correct me if i'm wrong do you still live over in england do you live in london it's a good question i was meant to come to sydney for just a few weeks and i've ended up staying a few months. But yeah, I've been living in London and was living there the whole time the petition was going on. And I'm hoping to go back in the next month or so and then spend like another six months there and then move back to Australia. So Australia is very much home. Fair. Chanel, we never start an episode of Life Uncut without an accidentally unfiltered when our guests come on. We love nothing more than throwing you under the bus on a national and a worldwide level and hearing your embarrassing stories. So do you have? I have a few, but I have one that I'm willing to

share and I'm still not entirely sure I'm willing to share it but here we go too late now girl yeah it's too late that's also why we put at the start so people can't back out so I had a bit of a crush on this boy and I spent a bit of time with him not much time this is probably like the third time we were hanging out and we never like kissed before or anything it was actually almost like it was very friendly but I was pretty into him I went to his house one night to watch a movie after going to dinner with friends and then I started to just like feel a little bit sick and I was like oh I'm gonna go he was like oh I'll walk you out and in my mind I was thinking like well please don't walk me out like I feel really sick right now but okay I'm gonna let one worry please do

not come out yeah anyway so we're like walking and in the like lobby of his apartment block and context for everyone is that I'm allergic to mushrooms and my reaction to when I eat mushrooms is to follow them up uh and turns out there was mushroom sauce all over my dinner so I turned around him and said i'm so sorry but i think i'm about to vomit right now and before the like automatic doors could even open to the outside of the apartment block it literally like just projectile everywhere please tell me you turned away from him i didn't have time to do anything i was vomiting and then that's not even the worst part it gets worse he happened to have like an extreme like phobia of vomit so he was a sympathetic vomiter so I'm like laughing and vomiting at the

same time and he's like two meters away from me also like gagging and vomiting and it was probably the most embarrassing that's ever happened to me it was actually just so absurd if anything vomiting in synchronicity is something that's going to bond you together for the rest of your life well you don't know if it is are you dating you're like no we're not dating it can confirm it didn't it did not bond us so were you inside the glass door so are you in like a carpeted area or a tiled area and just like letting it rain or what's the situation tiled area and then I got most of it on the concrete just outside but there was some on the glass automatic doors I think because obviously he had a phobia of vomit so then once I felt better I had to go clean it up

oh my god so you had to then go and clean up your vomit and his vomit you'd never kiss please tell me did you ever kiss this boy we've kissed once and both of you couldn't really get over the whole vomit saga yeah he texted me after saying sammy wanted to kiss you and i replied saying knew that vomit was your kink and this story just gets better and better we also i mean it's a funny question because we usually ask all of our guests for a little bit about their childhood like what school did they go to but asking that question is actually so fundamental and critical to your story. It is your story. It is part of your story. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up, the school that you went to and what that experience was like for you?

So I grew up in Sydney's eastern suburbs, which is a very privileged area of Australia. And I went to Kambala, which is a private school. And I feel like, as you said, it was very fundamental to a lot of the work I do, the kind of culture I experienced in that environment. And yeah, I mean, I had so much fun at school. I loved school. Like I actually went back the other day to give a talk at my old school and I was walking through being like, God, I miss this. Like this is just, these were the days.

And, yeah, I had the most amazing group of friends who are still all my best friends today, which I think is really special. Well, it's because you've got no bills to pay and you don't have all these adult responsibilities and you think life is so hard at school. You're like, oh, I've got to study for this exam real quick. But then, and you want to grow up. Like I remember just being like, I can't wait to finish school.

I can't wait to get out into the world. and now I'm like take me back let me put me in your 10 yeah your math class and just let me do the thing and exactly you have like a structured routine you never have to think about what to do you just like you get to hang out with your friends eight hours a day I know I talk a lot of bad things about single sex educational institutions but being surrounded by just like amazing girls and women 24 7 was such a privilege so you were just so everybody knows you were at a same-sex school you're at an all-girls school yeah and do you have like a sister so I you're talking to someone that grew up in a public school that was boys and girls so

this is not my world do you have like a sister school sister brother school that you sort of join up with for sports carnivals and things like that like an all boys school is that how it works yeah so not for things like sports carnivals but like random social events like the year six hoedown and like year 10 mass day the hoedown yeah you would have is that line dancing it was literally line dancing because it's like a safe way to let children interact without like dancing and touching each other I had line dancing too we had to wear the skirts and everything I think it's so interesting because I feel like even though I mean you being from the eastern suburbs and going to an all-girls school here I had a very similar experience in that I went to

an all-girls school called St Mary's in Wollongong and we had a school that we were associated with it wasn't by any means like attached to each other but we would do like our discos and stuff with it and it was called Edmund Rice. And I think that there are some interesting parts of your story and about the conversation we're going to get into that I think echoed throughout a lot of private schools, not just, and I guess that that's where this petition came from. But Chanel, can you talk to us a little bit about when you finished school? Because the petition that you lobbied for and your work that you've done didn't come immediately after school. So can you talk to me a little bit about what your experience was like and when was it that you started to have

conversations with your girlfriends around consent what that looked like and maybe started to realize that the things that you learned in school weren't really marrying up all the things you experienced in school weren't marrying up too so i feel like the first time we ever spoke about consent was when we got our consent education none of us had ever really thought of the concept before and none of us knew it was something that needed to be attained it was the same moment that many of me and my like my friends and me myself as well realized that those like bad experiences were actually acts of sexual assault rape and violence and yeah that was it was a unique experience because none of us had to share stories about sexual assault to each other we all knew them

we all knew these things as like almost gossip but then suddenly it was portrayed and we were we had the language to be able to explain what happened and I remember so clearly that lunchtime in the break between that consent education day we had which by the way we had far too late and only because my school was a private school that had the flexibility to work outside of the Australian curriculum not and this is not something that everyone got but yeah that lunch time in between that day we were like I remember all like throwing around how many years jail our perpetrators could get like like oh man would get seven years man would get 14 like depending on whether they sexually assaulted us or raped us digitally orally or vaginally and like all these

different things which is kind of testament to the type of conversation we had and how consent education was framed it wasn't very realistic at all it wasn't as if oh someone sexually assaults you and they go to jail for this many years because we know it's very obvious that's not true for most people so that was kind of like the moment where I was like oh that's weird and that really changed I think me and a lot of my friends frameworks about all these things that had happened to us and what was happening on weekends and also potentially where we felt more empowered to kind of start calling out behavior or believing each other more or like all these different things But yeah, there was quite a delay until years later. So I graduated in 2015. And then in 2020, me and three friends basically started like sharing stories of sexual assault with each other and just had like unlimited ones to share, not only that it had happened to us, but to people we knew. And we knew both the victims and the perpetrators. And that was kind of what we were talking about. We were like, how messed up is this?

that like this boy who we all know and socialize with and everyone's friends with and has a great job at an investment bank is like the guy who did this or blah blah blah and that's when I started collecting my first few testimonies but I didn't take it to social media I just like texted my friends individually who I knew had been raped and asked them to kind of like send me in stories yeah when I was studying my master's I did master's in gender education and international development and the more I learned about I guess gender in the education system sexual coercion in young people gender norms all these things it's just increasingly like wow this is this is strange and to me there was this massive hypocrisy that i wanted to expose and the fact that

you think that going to a private school in australia is going to mean that you're going to have a safe education experience but actually it yeah quite the opposite that started kind of getting me thinking about this being like i should probably do some research into this and then the final catalyst was one of my good friends who i witnessed and stopped their sexual assault when we were 15 but none of us ever thought about it we didn't talk about it the day after it wasn't even anything we only realized in that consent talk that it counted as yeah sexual assault and that it was illegal they started going to therapy and basically started getting flashbacks to this moment and we started talking about it and i was just like we are here

years and years later you were crying about the situation and he doesn't even know he's done this to you and the boy who did it to me doesn't even know he's done this to me and to me that was just like the epitome of the injustice like not only are we being sexually assaulted in mass as a community, there are also people who are sexually assaulting people without knowing with, you know, just ignorance and being products of the society we're in. And when we talk about this, like taking you back a little bit in that conversation. So being in school, when you did start to learn about consent or when consent came up as part of, you know, your school curriculum, what year was that in? So it happened, I think late year 10, and it was a one day talk, which at the time we

thought was the best thing in the world and in hindsight was like so problematic yeah and I guess also like the important part of that is is like how old were you when like the school started interacting with each other when you've already experienced what sexual assault is and then you have context around what that is because somebody's told you this is what consent is but you've never been taught it prior just so I have a bit of an idea and the listeners have a bit of an idea the experiences that you had had going to this all-girls school at what year did that start uh so for me i was 13 so i was in year eight and yeah that's that seemed to be like a pretty common age when this sort of stuff started happening i speak at schools a lot in the uk

and it's almost as if like that 12 13 age group you're speaking to them and you're kind of getting feedback of like lots of kind of shock from the people you're speaking to a little bit been like oh we haven't really heard of these concepts before this isn't entirely relevant to us yet and then you speak to them one year later you're speaking to the 14 15 year olds and every single time why didn't you tell us this before like why isn't this earlier why wasn't this before it's too late and i feel like that like really pivotal transition year in those early teens is when things just kind of really kick off for a lot of people so it's really important to get it in before that but we were getting it way after the fact they gave us our consent talk when

the majority of the year group was 16 which means we were legally allowed to consent to sex but that seems pretty stupid to me because it's after the fact I honestly like I have been racking my brain trying to think back and I'm I'm a bit older than you but I've been racking my brain trying to think back if we had that talk at all in like our PE and sex education and I genuinely don't remember ever having a conversation about consent it was only ever don't get pregnant this is how you wear a condom don't have sex that was pretty much it and so I feel like we've come a long way with the help of people like yourself but I know because I have read and I know the story but I know there is quite a pivotal story a fundamental story with something that happened

to your friend that you were obviously involved in are you happy to share that on the podcast now it sort of sets the scene as to what really pushed you and your drive to to get these changes that friend I was talking about that last conversation when I was speaking to them and they were crying and like that experience for them was yeah we were 14 15 or something at a house party and essentially walked into a room because one of my friends came up to me was like have you seen you know our friends missing like where are they all these people were huddled around the door and we kind of like pushed through to the front and our friend was like topless on the bed pants pulled down boy on top of them belt undone you know everything out

and yeah i remember one of my friends like pushing her other friend off the bed so no one could see her boobs because everyone was watching and then a room full of people so again this just was a testament to the normalization of this behavior completely watching bystanders to this and then me and my friends who stopped it got booed out of the party and got called cock blocks by one of the like girls at the party again like just testament to what that meant our friend was completely unconscious like completely limp when they fell off the bed and yeah we left that party being annoyed that we got booed out of it more than thinking oh we just witnessed a crime none of us ever really spoke about it again until we got that consent talk and we're like oh my god

that was that's what that was i read your story and you were saying when you when you left the party there was like not really like you just said this understanding of what had just happened that not understanding that this was constituting sexual assault and so months go by or years go by how do you then process when you do discover you become an adult you understand what sexual assault is you understand what rape is to then look back on an experience and go that happened to my friend and I was witness to that how do you then compartmentalize that how do you work through that i mean it's really weird and the thing is i think like over the last year i've had hundreds of people tell me that they've gone through that experience you know i've been told

that they i've had fully grown women tell me they didn't realize that their experience is counter sexual assault or rape until these kind of intricacies were drawn out about what consent looks like in a more public domain and it's weird like the hindsight realization that you've been sexually assaulted is a really weird thing because you also feel like a lot of agency is taken off you it's not as if you have the opportunity to you know if you did want to report it go and get a rape kit or it's not as if you have the opportunity to remember exactly what happened in that night of detail when you find out about this thing yeah months years decades later but it was it was really strange but it was also kind of like I remember in the consent talk having the

hindsight realization that what happened to me when I was 13 counted as rape was almost empowering in a way because it was a little bit validating to be like okay I felt really weird about that and all of society told me I shouldn't have felt weird about that but no I'm actually entitled to feel weird about that but I don't know it's very overwhelming and it's it's pretty heartbreaking as well again kind of the epitome of the injustice of what our education system has done so far that there's also been lots of people who have had the hindsight realization that they've perpetrated sexual assault it really does highlight and and I feel like it's almost like where do you begin it really does highlight the fact that there were so many people watching on that that this didn't

even raise a flag that what was happening was a problem and then the throwaway comment from another female that you girls are cock blockers because you literally stopped a rape when was it that your did like did your friend know what had happened did you guys ever talk about it did you explain to her what had happened or was it something that you you thought oh it's better she doesn't know if you know if she was unconscious because and this is just because you didn't have the education around it what did the foreseeable future look like after that event I mean I barely remember it was so insignificant I think we all had a sleepover that night and the next morning we're probably like oh my god you were so drunk last night and this kind of happened like I don't

know I'm speaking to them about it I guess they said it was I was actually I was speaking to the other front who stopped this with me the other day actually and we were saying how horrible we feel that we never addressed it yeah it was just left completely unaddressed and when I like confided and my friends about my experience with sexual assault, it was just kind of like, yeah, that's what older boys do. It wasn't a, yeah, it's just complete ignorance from all angles, which is also why we can't really, like, there's not really anyone we can blame for this situation. It's a culture we've created. Chanel, this was like the huge catalyst for your 2021 petition. And now when you started this, it wasn't even a petition at the start. It was just a poll that you put up

on Instagram, on social media. Can you talk us through a little bit about what the poll was and how you use this. So I posted an Instagram poll. Funnily enough, I was actually going to tag the boy who did it to my friend and the boy who did it to me. Oh, thank God I didn't on my story. But, I mean, why do you say now, just out of curiosity, why do you say thank God you didn't?

I mean, I know that it's not something you don't want to publicly do, but was there a part of you that's like, oh, it's gotten so big now, I would have hated for people to have known who did it? Or what stems from that? uh defamation i don't know what defamation was before this petition and since have had my fair share of encounters with defamation right yeah which is such a shame and such a silencing of the australian legal system of women and victims in general well just showing that the victim is the person that's being silenced here like the problem is you're trying to say hey you're trying

to out a rapist and the person that's getting into trouble is yourself the victim yeah because imagine trying to prove that eight ten years after the fact like it's kind of laughable to think ever even bothering to try go through the criminal system for any sort of justice or accountability for my perpetrator and also because it was it's bigger than that like my whole point was that this happens to everyone and acting as if it was just two boys doing this would have actually been quite kind of productive in hindsight even though I was really angry at the time and really wanted to you know expose them and them to feel negative emotions of a sort, I guess, in a, I guess, almost vindictive way. But this whole thing is about structures

and changing, scapegoating to people. And that would have almost been counterproductive because then people can think that they're not part of the problem. And I think as well, on top of that, like these are children doing it to each other and children who haven't necessarily, as much as we say as women, we weren't educated on what consent is. I think there's a huge lacking for boys and for men to have been educated. So in a lot of ways, the system has failed them just as much as it has failed the women. And I'm not saying that there is an excuse that means that this behavior is acceptable, but I would hope that there are some men who have grown, who now look back on that behavior that they may have done when they were in year eight or year nine or year 10

and go, maybe they don't even remember it or they're like, holy shit, I can't believe that I had done that, you know? You would hope they're mortified. You would hope, you know, but I just think that like, if this conversation wasn't happening amongst girls and with women and that they weren't identifying that they had been raped. And as you kind of mentioned earlier, there would be a whole group of men in this conversation who probably at the time didn't identify what they were doing either. A hundred percent. And can guarantee that is the case because of dozens of conversations I've had and many, many messages I've received saying that exact same thing. So what were the results of the poll? You've popped this poll up. You didn't tag

the men, the boys, but what, what happened from that? So I ended up asking, instead of calling out to people i ended up asking have you or has anyone close to you ever been sexually assaulted by someone who went to a single sex school in sydney and it was i think 73 or 74 yes and this was just to my immediate instagram following at the time which wasn't at all large and i think that was like 203 people saying yes something like that 204 people saying yes then the next poll was if you went to a single sex school in sydney do you think one of your friends has ever sexually assaulted someone and the numbers for yes on that were way lower which was kind of like proving my point and then my next thing was would you be willing to sign a

petition to demand for better considered education and then would you be willing to submit testimonies to amplify the desperate need for this after that happened they just like started coming in they started coming in slowly and then after about 24 hours my dms couldn't even reload like They were coming in so quickly, I couldn't even read them and post them. Well, you now have 6,756 testimonies on your website from women who have been sexually assaulted, and you have 44,798 signatures. I mean, that's harrowing in itself, but it's absolutely unbelievable that the amount, something that started off as a social media poll, and where you put out there to say,

like, let's see what we can get, or let's see what other women have been affected by this, that there is an absolute army out there of women who have experienced the same thing that you have. What did you hope at the time when you actually set out to do this to achieve from that poll or to achieve from doing this petition? What was the original goal? So my original plan, again, like I just posed this to my initial Instagram following. I never thought about the fact that people beyond that would kind of see it. And my plan was to get all these old schools in this kind of ecosystem of Sydney and some of the schools that all interact with each other or friends with each other blah blah blah so I basically wanted my old school and the nearby

schools to teach consent education earlier and better and I mean I literally if I had could have gotten my school and the kind of two brotherish schools nearby to start doing that I would have been pretty satisfied the thing with single-sex schools is they're private institutions and private institutions have resources to get in external speakers and they have flexibility to work outside of the school curriculum and it never for a second crossed my mind that it would be able to using the power of the tens of thousands who signed the petition have the chance to work at this at a state or federal level so it just didn't cross my mind that I could ever kind of have any sort of influence in the public school system. Chanel can you you touched on it we've spoken

about a little bit but I think it's so important to define what it is can you explain to the listeners what is rape culture? So rape culture is a setting where our attitudes towards gender and sexuality and our expectations of them lead to a situation where sexual violence and rape become normalized. When I say that some people find that quite extreme and dramatic and think like oh we don't we don't normalize rape no one no one approves of rapists but when you actually break it down and start thinking about it you know it's sort of things like catcalling is a pretty common experience for people in australia especially women that's a form of sexual harassment that i don't think has that again language equipped to it in the public eye you know all

these kind of little things rape jokes are really common this kind of expectation of male sexual satisfaction being at the center of sexual interactions and such a dismissive view on female sexuality and how that should be played out often leads to situations where women can be extremely uncomfortable and again like our expectations about gender and sexuality so like very strict gender norms about what a woman's role should be and what a man's role should be and what this should look like in the bedroom and you know the massive the kind of constant discourse of like oh boys are going to chase you and that's okay you just have to reject them and not empowering women to have sexualities in their own right and actually taking taking any sort of

like authority over that and then at the same time normalizing situations where coercion becomes common and boundaries are constantly pushed and a massive empathy gap between girls and boys it's kind of hard to summarize in a sentence but it basically means that i mean if you look at statistics of not just reporting but criminalizing like how many people who do report end up in jail in australia and how common this problem is again taking into account the insane rates of underreporting of sexual violence due to the lack of justice that often comes out of it and the kind of lack of nuance understanding in that space and how it deals with it we've essentially legalized rape in our society like i mean i remember having a conversation i was away with

some friends and i remember like being out by the fire and for some reason all the girls were side of that stage and it was just all the boys and me and I remember saying to them like it's socially acceptable to rape someone and they're all like that's absolutely ridiculous like they all disagree with me blah blah blah and I was literally like to them I can name you 10 people right now of your friends who you socialize with who have raped someone and I can't name a single person who's ever gone to jail for this that we know and then I did I named 10 boys that were the year above them year below them mutual friends at nearby schools and they were all just like sitting there stunned and I was like can you name me a single person who's ever gone to jail for

rape and you all hang out with these people you all say hello to them they've never been excluded from any sort of social event it is completely socially acceptable to be a rapist in our society and that's the epitome of rape culture was the response from the boys around this fire that you're that you're saying okay look all your these are your friends that are associates that have raped someone was their response shock disbelief did they say you were lying there's no way do you think that they knew at a certain level like what was their response in that moment they didn't say you're lying i mean yeah these are my close friends so they obviously like trusted me and believed me and i had no there's no agenda there's no point of me to just randomly make up 10 names

they would have known many of the stories i was talking i was talking about i think it was probably mainly shock but more perspective i think i think it would have been like a oh but i mean none of them altered their behavior i've haven't seen anyone be socially ostracized for this and which is actually an interesting one because when you think about how common this is and how many people have perpetrated sexual assault it's actually not feasible to genuinely ostracize every single person who has sexually assaulted someone i think the focus should actually given what you said before about the boys and men not knowing and it not being fair on them as well to perpetrate this the focus in like hindsight should actually be more on

is accountability being taken acknowledgement apology what are they doing now going forward how do they treat people around them now going forward because it actually if every rapist in Australia just like click of the fingers disappeared right now our whole country would collapse yeah that's right culture I just speak from like my experiences for not when I was a teenager and I started going to parties I mean I remember being at a party and there was a girl passed out in a in a bathroom or way too drunk to be able to be having sex with a guy I don't know whether she was passed out or not but there was like oh but they were hooking up earlier in the night so like obviously it was like consensual now understanding as an adult and really understanding

what consent is that that's not fucking consensual but at the time because they had been hooking up earlier in the night there was to everybody there that that was kind of just what was going to happen it was a bit yeah they're together tonight yeah that's their thing yeah and it's only with the lens of retrospect that I look at that experience when I think I would have been 15 or 16 and I go wow that's that was fucked absolutely fucked I like I haven't seen the girl in almost 20 years do you know what I mean like that's how long ago that experience is for me. I even have friends now in conversation still as grown, intelligent, mature women that will say that they're in a situation. I actually had this conversation four nights ago with, with a friend

and she's like, she ran into the guy and she, she got a little bit triggered and I was like, are you okay? And she's like, yeah, long story short. She's like, I had sex with him, but I didn't want to. I was like, what? Why? She's like, oh, it was just, it was just there. It was in the moment it was easier to just do it than not and she's like it was almost like she didn't want to cause a scene and I just had this feeling and of course I knew we were speaking to you and I just had this feeling of how many women out there don't realize that just because you've gotten to the point that you're in the bedroom like and we've said it before on the podcast you could have his penis inside you and change your mind and that is a change of consent and that is something that

obviously women still need to learn as well as men too that it's not causing a scene you're entitled to change your mind at any time and that consent changes there's some really interesting studies on when they were trying to like stop like when they were measuring race sexual assault and rape and trying to cite to encounter sexual coercion and all these sort of statistics they started changing language in surveys to pressurize sex or force sex instead of rape and like race skyrocketed because people felt much more comfortable associating with that description than they would the word rape well and i think sometimes because rape we think that it has to have violence attached to it. It has to be like, like you're walking down a dark alley and a guy drags you

into a corner. You were completely sober and you screamed no. Like we have grown up with a very fixed version of what that is, but over time, and I know the conversations I've been seeing happening more so in the media, like what you're doing within schools, the conversation around what actually constitutes consent has been a lot more defined for people to be able to see where they stand within that conversation. So how did it go from your Instagram with a couple of hundred people, Paul, to just your school, to you literally now changing the curriculum around Australia, around the country? Because congratulations, that is huge. I remember when the petition came out, I signed it. I shared it and we spoke about it on the podcast. We were like, this girl, I mean,

like, we're like, how incredible is this? This young girl is making these huge waves and we took our hat off to you but how did you get from just this girl in a room being like fuck you i'm putting you on my gram to change to changing the way schools teach because it's huge i think it just happened because of how many people started supporting it and getting behind it and sharing it on social media and signing the petition and having conversations with principals and friends and family and parents and everyone i think it was literally just like the masses that pushed into that space which just meant like slowly and incrementally i kept meeting with people in higher in higher positions of power and the reason they were accepting these meetings was because of

public pressure being put on by mainly young women on instagram which is pretty phenomenal i think to the point of you know finally meeting with the prime minister of australia to have this sort of conversation and yeah education ministers from around the country like slowly one by one getting in contact with them working with them but yeah i really just think it was because it was the masses that pushed this into a public priority a political priority you're like holy shit i don't have a choice now you're like this is my this is what I'm doing gotta do this yeah and it jumped really quickly so my Instagram poll was like sitting a single sex education whatever and then as soon as I realized that testimonies were coming in from everywhere and I thought like oh maybe this

could be something more the launch of the website was for Australia wide so the petition on the website was all schools in Australia so it was a very quick like oh we've got people on this let's do it. I also feel like 2021 has been, it was like a real year for shift in perception. It was like a year of reckoning when it comes to sexual assault survivors and the sexual assault conversation. You know, we had Brittany Higgins, we've had Grace Tame being Australian of the Year, and then we've had your incredible changes in legislation around consent conversation in schools. Why do you think that this has all come to a head at the same time? Like, what do you think has happened that in 2021 has really forced the conversation around sexual assault survivors

to the forefront of not just media but also in politics i think that i mean obviously we've been this is built off decades and decades of work in this space like centuries you know a lot of it spearheaded by intersectionally marginalized communities like you know women of color i think there was just like a good interaction between grace and britney and teachers consent showing you know this is a problem that stems all the way from school kids all the way to parliament all the intricacies in between it's an abuse of power that crosses generations it's abuse of power that's peer-on-peer it's abuse of power that's in the workplace and i think that just kind of like kept it at the forefront well you're right this has been a fight that's been going on for decades

and centuries that's absolutely right and i don't think anything has changed in that sense there's always been women fighting for these rights but now they're to have a voice but well now and and as much as we can be against social media things like social media help this situation so what does consent look like what does the new curriculum thanks to you look like so it's not a public document yet but it basically starts teaching consent as young as kindergarten in a non-sexual way asking for permission denying permission help seeking strategies and then slowly builds on this information until finally sexual consent is explicitly addressed in the early years of high school rather than well actually before it wasn't in that curriculum at all but yeah nine and ten

where if schools choose to do it they usually put it in the end of year 10 brings in concepts such as power and gender and age to understand the intricacies of consent more wholly how do you attack the conversations around virginity in schools in terms of like my not even consent conversations but sex conversations at school it was all around virginity how is that then factored into this conversation of consent virginity is an interesting one because virginity is also a core concept that plays into rape culture because it puts a lot of value on a first sexual experience and what that kind of physically has because virginity is a social construct but we like imagine it as like oh it's when your cherry pops you know when your hymen breaks but really that

happens you know that can happen doing anything it can happen exercising it can happen horse riding can happen using a tampon it can happen getting fingered whatever but we associate that with virginity but ironically there is then no way of testing virginity in males so virginity is actually quite a hefty policing tool on female bodies to like a different extent and again it's this like strange idea of like virginity and purity and acting as if having any sort of control of your own sexuality is something to be ashamed of and it's something that you're meant to like hide and keep and save for someone and you know I read testimonies of people saying that their sex ed included like sticking a piece of sticky tape on three different surfaces and seeing how dirty it

got and how it wasn't sticky anymore and no one's ever going to be able to love you anymore because you don't have the stickiness after you've slept with people before them like it's insane insane stuff and doesn't surprise me at all like I mean abstinence is still taught in many schools my mom personally was always like really worried about my virginity and would like constantly make sure that you know there was never any conversations about positive sex it was always about like abstinence preventative yeah it's a really weird thing because it's also just kind of like it's not a defining moment of someone's being to have something inserted in you so like why are we putting so much social pressure on that and why is there so much pressure to pick when that happens

or how it's done and no and i agree and i just think back to like the conversations that we had in school around sex education which was done in PE from memory it was one class and it was a banana we didn't even have that we it was just it was one class in PE and it was around not getting pregnant it was around all the STIs that you could catch there was nothing positive about the conversation of sexual experiences and there was nothing around taking agency of your own body it was all around preventing it from happening for as long as possible but this is this is brings us to another part of the conversation and but hats off to my mum my mum I remember her it was never negative obviously it was like a you know sex can lead to pregnancy you're not going to really want

that as a teenager or when you have sex but I remember her just saying sitting me down and saying I know what she's like I was a teenager once I had a boyfriend she's like I know that there is nothing that I can do or say that's going to stop you from having sex when you want to have sex all I can ask is that you come to me when you do and maybe we can go to the doctor and put you on the pill or you know she was just very she was very not encouraging of having sex by any means but she she was aware enough of teenagers situations I was in a relationship you know I had this serious boyfriend of a year she's like I know it's going to come I would rather you just come to me and tell me and we'll make sure that you have condoms and you're on the pill and

everything else that you need so it was very positive and that sort of takes us into this another conversation and I know a lot of teachers there was a certain level of pushback from what I from my understanding everyone is on board with the consent conversation but there were a lot of people saying it's not up to the teachers constantly to be taking more on board there have to be these conversations at home as well did you find a lot of pushback from teachers at all or was everyone just like ah fuck put it in we'll we'll just deal with it or I guess the other part of that that I would like to know as well is why is the onus for this to be taught in schools so important rather than it to be taught at home I don't know if I would call it pushback because

most people who like for example feedback saying the school system is stressed enough especially public school teachers this is a whole nother thing for them to do blah blah blah I still don't think anyone thought it was a bad idea to teach consent they just again that's kind of another comment on a different structure that we're not putting enough value on education and funding teachers and like respecting that job more is highly valued in our society but yeah I mean the conversation of if parents should be having this absolutely like 100 million percent because that's really what's going to make the real difference right the way that parents are engaging with this sort of content at home because you know they really shape you have a large impact

on your values and but the problem is we can't control how this is taught at home at all there's millions of families around australia there's no way of standardizing that information anyway or making sure that it's the right information that's coming out so you can hope for the best in that way and hope that parents are complementing what students are learning at home and hoping that there are parents like yours Brittany who are having you know open conversations with children to create like safe environments but ultimately the reason it was so important for me for this to be focused in the school system was because I just see education is such a transformative tool and Australia has so much potential in our education system that I thought yeah that's

where it should focus so that we know that every single Australian child from this age has been to live this content it's kind of like no more excuses of I didn't know I have two little girls and it fills me with so much like pride and hope and just gratitude that there has been changes in this because I think that even though so many of us recognize that this is something that was lacking I feel like all of us failed to put our finger on what that was and all of us kind of failed prior to you failed to really sit down and assess well why does this keep happening why has this been okay for so long and why is this almost just like part and parcel of going through adolescence and being a teenager and then figuring out sex like why did these experiences keep on

perpetuating and I truly feel like the experiences that you've had in the school that you went to and the conversations you've had with your girlfriends are the real catalysts here that's made everybody else on looking go you found the words for the things that we've all experienced in our upbringings as well thank you that's right kind of like that's yeah i mean i think consent education is something that women's organizations have been asking for for so long but um yeah i think exposing exposing that culture and it's hard to question the norm and that's the reality sexual violence was the norm for us chanel you did just recently a few weeks ago meet with Prime Minister Scott Morrison. What was that meeting for, about and how did it go?

So Prime Minister Scott Morrison, following the announcement that consent education would be mandated in Australia, which is something that he endorsed prior to that, which was great. I met with him to request funding for a national school survey. So I want to survey 150,000 Australian high school students so that we have a better understanding of not just beliefs attitudes and prevalence of like sexual assault and consent and relationships and all that but also measuring have you previously received consent education what did that look like that sort of thing so that we can start measuring the impact of this kind of monumental change to the curriculum where it will not be taught in schools so we can start making sure that it is being standardized it is

being rolled out and understanding which sectors are lacking in it and which ones are doing well and blah, blah, blah. And that was really successful because we got the funding. Oh, congratulations. $5 million to the Australian Human Rights Commission. And I'll be a special advisor on that project. It was amazing. And the other, like for most of the meeting, actually, I used it to kind of educate him about rape culture. So I spoke to Scott Morrison about what rape culture was and what it looked like and some kind of key factors in it that contributed to that. Chanel, I have a question that's just going back a little bit, but in terms of the testimonies

that you've collected and we did say that you now have over 6 000 testimonies from women who have experienced sexual assault who have experienced rape in many cases what do you do with those testimonies or how do you i mean it must be such a huge toll reading through the things that other women have written sharing in their experiences like how do you process that and what is the end goal with with bringing and taking and collecting all of these testimonies well i guess the goal was to emphasize the need for this education and amplify the petition but yeah I feel like I've definitely taken on a lot of that there's definitely lots of like vicarious trauma I've experienced over the last year especially last year and like when I actually stopped for a second

it like kind of all hit me because I think I could be like I'm fine I'm fine I can keep reading them I can keep doing it blah blah blah and then when things slowed down I was like oh this is really fucked up but I mean yeah I guess just channeling it into like wanting to change things I guess and And also, I just feel like I have such a unique perception on what rape culture looks like in Australia from these thousands of little snippets of people's lives, of their experience in it, which I'm really thankful for. And I just feel like at all times whenever I'm in a room with a politician or a decision maker or a policymaker or whatever, I'm thinking of all these little stories I've read before and thinking about how something would be good or bad for that experience for that person. them it's just kind of like almost having like a little 6 000 survivors in my head at all times it's a huge toll that i think it's a factor that a lot of people probably don't think about that you are you've taken on over the last couple of years and i do hope that you are looking after

yourself as well because you can't just look after everyone else all the time and you know you it's as a true saying you need to take the oxygen mask for yourself first so you can help someone else what are we going to see next for you have you got plans to continue taking over the world or what is yeah so i mean the survey i hope that i hope we have the results of that as soon as possible before consent education is meant to start being implemented in australia which i think will be i think we're going to find some jarring things out of that i mean i don't think i'm going to be surprised by what we found out of it but i think the general population will i'm sure lots of women won't be and young teenage girls and yeah then also teachers consent will be working with our

watch to create consent education resources for those kind of like few little changes in the curriculum that we got added in and then i'm also meant to be going and working at the australian institute so i'm going to be launching a center for sex and gender equality there hopefully continue to working towards like more structural high level transformative change and like more wider policies like things in the pay gap and all that sort of stuff because i mean sexual assault it's just a manifestation of gender inequality but all those structures interact with each other and when you're fixing something that makes gender equality you know progressive gender equality you're fixing it's interacting with everything else we are 100 gonna have to get you back on

there are so many more things we can talk about but chanel contos you have done absolutely inspirational and incredible things and i just feel like on behalf of every single woman in Australia, we want to thank you for what you have done. And I hope you realize the impact that you have had, because it's probably easy for you to sit back and think it's just for you. It's a day to day job. It's a nine to five. Today I'm going to do this. But you have made such a monumental impact in the way we're going to move forward, the way we view consent and sexual assault. So from the bottom of our hearts, you're a bloody legend. And thank you for doing what so many people have wanted to do for a very long time. Thank you so, so, so much. That's really, really

guide well it is that time you know we don't finish an episode without sucking sweet our highlight and our low light of the week laura burn kick it off what is your suck woman my suck now i had something it is actually i'm very sad about this still so my mom made lola an incredible crocheted blanket when she was born like it is beautiful it is this big hair knitted mandala blanket and there's something so sentimental about getting a real hair knitted blanket for your baby it's the one thing that I have had for Lola's whole life that I desperately wanted to give her when she was older that I was like this is going to be like an heirloom blanket she did I know I've spoken about gastro so much on this podcast for the last couple weeks last week she had a blowout

she had a blowout poo which got all over it and so I had to put it into the washing machine I put it on a wool wash I followed all the instructions that my mum told me to follow and it came out and it was completely fucking ruined, like absolutely just felted together. And it it's so dumb because like, I never cry. Like, I feel like I'm pretty good with things. Like I never cry over things that get broken or damaged. I'm kind of like, ah, c'est la vie, like things come in and out of your life. But this was one thing that I felt so sentimentally attached to. And I called my mom and I was in tears and I was like, I've ruined the blanket. I just did. I so desperately wanted to have something from the time that she was born. But there's also nothing you can do about that

because a hand wash would not have helped that poo situation like it had to go in the machine it was yes it was I was between a rock and a hard place but anyway I just I don't know it's it's like there's always going to be something in life that you and it's and it's surely it's an inanimate object but like you just have there were so many memories loaded into it it was the one thing that she's had since the day she was born we brought her home from the hospital in it like it meant so much to me and I still like even just thinking about it I'm so sad that it's not like Anna and You know, my mum spent like weeks making it. It was just such a beautiful item and now it's gone.

And it makes me really sad. It was a real suck. Can you not just keep it even though it's not perfect? It looks like shit. It's literally like a board. It turned all of the wool felted together and it's just become this thick, hard piece of blanket, which I can keep it. Keep it.

But it's not cute. Keep it and tell other stories. It's even more sentimental. This is your poop blanket. Anyway, my sweet for the week, guys. It's a sweet and it's a recommendation. I am so proud of Matthew Johnson. Matthew Johnson has been-

For wearing a dress? Matty J. No, he has been working so hard on his own podcast over the last couple of, like literally six months, he's been working. It's called The Penny Drops. It has dropped today. It is-

Is that money? It is a finance podcast. It is for anybody who wants to go out there and get financially literate, sort out their finances. Maybe you're saving to buy a house. Maybe you want to learn about investments or shares or compounding interests or superannuation. It is all of that stuff.

and I just know how much work and love and energy he's put into this podcast. So it is my recommendation and it is also my sweet for the week. Cute. The penny drops. Okay, I'll have to go and have a listen. Yeah, you already have. What are you talking about? Yes.

All right, what is your suck, Brittany Hockley? Do you know what? You're going to hate me. I just don't really have a suck this week. No, I love that. Oh, great. You always tell me I have to have one. No, I love that you have had such a great week and that you're happy.

Oh, it wasn't great. There were some low points. But like, I just don't think they're anything to like, no, I did. Okay. Transparency. I had a fucking hard day. I had a really low day. I didn't get out of bed.

It was the first sunny day we had. And I was full. I was low. I was crying. I was really upset. I had a really, I'm going to cry thinking about this, actually. I don't know why that happened. Okay.

Now I'm getting emotional. Oh my, Britt, I like that you were like, I haven't had any sucks this week. And you're like, I spent an entire day in bed crying. Because I like to pretend. No, I had a really hard day, but that's life. my sweet what's this i think it's like it's so life's hard for everyone at the moment but it's also so fucking understandable like if you were like yeah my week has been awesome i haven't had one second of being sad no one would believe that you know like you've you've gone through some

really big stuff in the past couple of weeks like you know and also like going through that huge transition and going through a breakup it doesn't just happen and then it's over like no and i'm fine on you yeah you know you think you're fine fine fine fine fine fine not fine. So fine. Then so fine. And that's just what happens, you know? And so like, yeah, I mean, I'm glad that you don't have one significant bad thing that's happened this week, but I think it's really healthy that you can acknowledge that you're still riding those waves and that that's totally okay. A hundred percent still riding the waves. So that was it. It was a tumultuous ride wave this week. My sweet was that the sun finally came out. Um, and that felt good. I got

some D I went out, got laid at the park. I just felt good. Like to, to do nothing and get outside again because I just feel like I feel bad complaining about the rain but I just feel like it's the world has been so dark and gloomy and for me to go and get an hour of sun I appreciate it so much more and I guess because of everything happening in the world I really just laid there and was present was like this is amazing I'm so lucky to be here happy healthy safe enjoying the sun in this moment such a small and seemingly insignificant suite this week but I can't stress enough how nice it was just to feel present and grateful and I guess that's a reflection of everything happening in the world I think you're so right though like you know just having it sounds

like the simplest thing but having good weather being able to be outside in the sun really is such a shift like a mood shifter and such a game changer for like being able to just feel appreciative when it's dark outside you're stuck inside and you're just kind of everything is ruminating it adds to that feeling absolutely very much anyway then anyway guys that is it from us another episode we will be back on thursday with our ask uncut if you have any questions for ask uncut please slide into the dms at life on cut podcast you can also join the facebook group which is life on cut discussion group and if you've loved the episode we would absolutely love it if you would jump onto apple and leave us a review and let us know your thoughts and on that note

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