Ladies, We Need To Talk - No more nice: Amy Remeikis wants you to stop people-pleasing

0:00I'm Belinda Smith. From mysterious illnesses to flesh-eating bacteria, outbreaks can push scientists and health systems to their limits. There's a growing sense of a very serious situation that's unfolding and we don't know the cause. A new series from Science Fiction, we revisit the disease outbreaks that shaped Australia. Science Fiction Outbreaks. Search for Science Fiction on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:30ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hey ladies, just a warning. This episode includes a reference to sexual violence. This form of niceness is actually destroying society and I think we need to tear it down and actually start being decent to each other. Amy Ramekis has been called many things in her life. The political journalist and author has been accused of being a bitch, a propagandist, An idiot. But do you know what she really doesn't want to be called? Nice. Amy sees niceness as a tool of compliance used by the powerful to silence debate and dissent. Nice women don't cause a fuss. Nice women don't speak up. Nice women don't make other people feel bad no matter what they've done. Nice women also don't make change.

1:35But change is exactly what Amy wants. Her new book, Screw Nice, is a rallying cry to push back on the so-called politics of civility that hold us back and keep power structures in place. Amy reckons the only way to shake up the current political and social systems that are veering further to the right is to get messy and uncivil. I'm Umi Steins. Ladies...

2:01We need to talk about flipping the middle finger to niceness with Amy Ramirez. We're not born nice. We come into this world screaming our heads off, demanding what we need. We certainly don't start life saying, hey, only if you have a second, it would be so great to get some milk right now, but obviously only if you have time and no worries if not. Even though we're born instinctively knowing how to scream to get what we want, That instinct is quickly smothered. It is just something that we absorb. Some people are explicitly taught how to be nice, usually by their mothers but also by the males in their life where they see what men will and won't accept and what is expected of them. Women teach young girls to be

3:06very aware of other people's comfort, even if it means taking some discomfort of your own. So we all run around being taught to, you know, keep things clean, keep things nice and tidy. We police our outfits. We police the tone of voice that we use. We police how we raise concerns. And then we make sure that, oh, God, if the power in the room, usually the men is upset, how to make sure that that is smoothed over.

3:35everybody has a lovely experience. Can you tell us how you were taught as a young star not to upset the apple cart? Yeah. I mean, when I was like, you know, running around like a wrap bag around my neighborhood and there was a group of kind of like, you know, slightly older boys and one of them wanted me to lift up my top.

3:55And I didn't want to do that. I was nine or so and I didn't know why it just felt wrong, right? And what they were doing kind of felt wrong to me. And so we're getting into it and one of them kind of lunges at me to try and force me to do it and I shove him down and I scream at him like that's sexist because that's what I'd heard on television.

4:14this concept of sexism. I didn't fully understand the term but I knew that it was a powerful word and so I run home and I'm so proud of myself and I tell my dad what had happened and I get to the point where I screamed that sexist and my dad was furious and not at what had happened to me, but that I had used in his words, politically correct language. He was like, what's this political correct bullshit you're going on about? Where did you learn that? Who taught you that?

4:45I was just kind of, I don't understand what's happening, but I do understand that you are more angry at me defending myself because I have used language you don't agree with rather than what has happened to me. And it was sort of the first time when I was like, oh, so we're meant to be quiet and we're meant to just take this and we're meant to be nice.

5:08It wasn't just her dad though. Amy's mum also expected her to contort her own self-expression in order to stop the neighbourhood boys from harassing her. When I would complain to my mother that I was being, you know, language I would use now, like objectified, she would tell me that I just needed to buy longer shorts. I needed to buy, cover up more. She bought my clothes. You know, I was a kid, but she was all like, well, you need to cover up. What are you doing going out like that anyway? And I was like, how is this on me? That like, you know, these creeps are like looking at me in this way.

5:42But I was raised to be nice. I was raised to be quiet. The worst thing you could ever do, according to my mother, was talk outside the family or bring up something that was happening in the family that was worrying you to outsiders. That was a huge sin. And my grandmother, who was a formidable woman and gloriously difficult and I love her, basically just kind of was like, well, screw that. Tell me more about Oma.

6:09Oma Otaciana was like incredible. She used to start every day with half a grapefruit and a water glass of brandy that she slowly drained throughout the day. So by the end of the day, you know, she's sitting there speaking in five or six different languages, you know, all at once, cigarette hanging out of her hand. She never smoked, you know, in the same room as children. She would go into her smoking room, which was the laundry with the door open and you'd have to stand in kitchen while she gave you her thoughts on the world. She would constantly interrogate me on why I thought something, where it had come from, why I believed that to be true. Can you give me an example of that, Amy? So we were at the shops one day and she saw a man dragging a little toddler around and the toddler was like screaming. The toddler had dropped there.

7:04toy, the little teddy bear in another aisle. And the father was, you know, speaking horrendously to this child about, you know, how the child needed to shut up and all the rest, like abusive language. And every other shopper was like turning away or just trying not to notice this grown man screaming at this two or three year old. And my Oma just marched up to this guy who was twice her size and just basically in a very normal tone of voice just was like, you are abusing a child. You were screaming at a terrified child. How did you get to this point? Have you tried listening to them? Like, that was it. Wow. And then the man was shamed and the child was able to say that they'd lost their teddy and the teddy was found. And then as we get to the checkout, she just said, your words matter. He will remember this forever. An incredible person.

7:58An incredible person and that courage of being an active bystander is what's required in this day and age. Just wanted to go to your mum's experience. She grew up.

8:11exceptionally poor, oldest of six kids, and was made to leave school pretty much straight after year seven to go and start earning money for the family. Her dad, like his dad and his brothers and stuff, were violent. And my dad was a bigger wolf at the door. Like, you know, my dad in his prime was quite an intimidating man who didn't take a backward step when he thought he was right. And I think my mother saw more safety.

8:40in someone like my dad, then she did her family. And she had learned that... being quiet, not being seen, not making a fuss was safety. And it absolutely is in those situations. You don't want to upset the person who can harm you or inflict immense violence upon you or your loved ones. So you do try to make sure that everything is neat and clean and there's nothing that is going to upset them. And that means making yourself as small and as compliant as possible. Amy's mother tried to teach her to be compliant as well.

9:14I think it terrified her that she had on her hands an exceptionally mouthy daughter who like blundered in into all sorts of situations inspired by her grandmother and it terrified her that I was out there having the fight, speaking back to my dad when he was in a mood, raising issues in public spaces, talking about things that were happening in my family. She just couldn't understand it because to her, I was making it unsafe for myself.

9:49And she was like, I want to protect my daughter and the way that I'm going to do that is to try and make her quiet and to try and tone police her into behaving in the ways that I was taught because that is safety. And I just remember saying to her at some point when I was a teenager where I was like, you know, mom, it didn't work for you. What makes you think it's going to work for me? Because what has changed that this sort of behavior would protect me because it didn't protect you?

10:19And I don't know if she ever really reckoned with that, but I think she maybe understood why I was, you know, so difficult and why I was so mouthy and why I did pick these fights. Yeah. A story from your book that I found very chilling was you were being assaulted on a street corner and eventually a couple...

10:37pulled over and they were originally going to drive past, but they pulled over and stepped in. Do you mind going back in time and just explaining what was happening? Sure. I mean, I often walked home from work. I was living in Brisbane and I often walked home from where I lived in the city to where I lived just outside the city. And it was about, I don't know, a 40 minute walk or so. And I kind of got to the end of that block and sort of noticed that there was this guy who'd sort of been following me. Every woman knows what that.

11:07like you kind of get your hackles up so I crossed over the road a couple of times and he followed and it was you know like I don't know like eight o'clock or like nine o'clock or something like not entirely late and so there was still heaps of people on the street and I remember being comforted by that because I in my head was imagining the danger zone which was the last stretch that I did which was just before I got home and so that's where I was kind of focused on what am I gonna do when I get to that point. But he grabbed me before that. He was very, very drunk. I'd injured my arm so I wasn't fully mobile. So I wasn't able to fight back with all of my strength. And he managed to wrestle me to the ground. He tried to pull me into the darkness and I'd managed to hold my ground, but he managed to wrestle me to the ground and he was pulling at my clothes and trying to pull my dress open and

12:02licking and kissing my neck and my face. And I was screaming. I was screaming because there were people around. And I was like, surely see people are seeing this, like someone is going to help me. And I remember I actually managed to get my hands onto his face and I had my thumb at his eyes. I just, I.

12:24I was trying to scream at myself to gouge and I couldn't do it. I was fighting with myself to try and overcome that block that I had to not grievously harm another human while fighting for myself. Amy was screaming, struggling with her attacker when she saw a young man in his youth stopped at the traffic lights close by.

12:49And we locked eyes because he was watching and I was pleading with him and he turned away right before the light went green and he was staring and I could see that he was staring trying not to see what was happening in his peripheral and he just drove off and something in my heart broke when that happened. I still see his eyes when I close mine.

13:13you know, at night sometimes, because I understand why he did it. He was a young guy. He didn't know what was going on on the street corner, but he made an active decision to ignore it. And I saw that moment in his eyes when he made that decision that it wasn't his business. And that is what has stuck with me more. Thankfully, a couple who had driven past came back to the scene and drove their car up to the footpath.

13:42Amy's attacker ran away and the man from the couple tried to chase after him. But then something the woman said to Amy unnerved her. She said to me, we drove past because we thought it was a domestic. But then my husband said to me, what if it was our daughter? What would you want someone to do? And so even my saviours who I am so immensely grateful for still had that moment of this is not my business.

14:10the nice thing to do is to not get involved. We all think we would want to save someone, but there is something about civility politics in terms of what we have been taught that happens, particularly between men and women, particularly around minorities too. If the people that we see fighting don't look like us, we're like, oh, we can't get involved. We don't know what's going on there. Rather than the someone is being subjugated, someone is being assaulted, I have the power to do something.

14:43and I'm not doing it for whatever bullshit civility niceness reason. Amy, your book is a rallying cry to women to stop being nice, but there are consequences for us when we do, which I've experienced. I don't know if you remember when I was on a guest host on Studio 10 with Carrie Ann Kennelly, and there was a conversation around January 26 protests.

15:08and I suggested that Kerry-Ann was sounding racist. Now one of the consequences of that is that I haven't worked at Channel 10 since. I think that's a perfect example of civility politics because the industry and society rushed to support Kerry-Ann Kennerley, a powerful white woman.

15:28you know, institutionally powerful rather than you. That absolutely was an empower imbalance. And I think that we really need to reckon with those power imbalances and why it is so, so much more terrible to accuse someone of being racist than to actually be racist. That is just a fact in this country that the moment that you say, hey, that sounds racist, you are the problem.

15:55Not the person who has said the thing that sounds racist. And I often reflect on that moment and other moments where you have spoken up and the lack of support that you have received from others. And that is crucial here because there are people for whom niceness is safety.

16:15And if niceness is safety for you, if it means you keep your job, you know, manage to keep some sort of agency in your life or autonomy in your life or in your family or access to areas where someone like you would not usually have access, then sure, you do what you have to do to survive. But the rest of us who have a little bit more institutional power, that's when it is incumbent on us to say, actually, she's right.

16:41Or what do you need me to do here? Do you want me to say something? We do tend to leave the people who have the most to lose to take the brunt of this rather than lose our own comfort. And again, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, ladies, because it's the only way we change things.

17:02It's very punk rock too and just as an aside the people who really stepped up in that case in defence of me were Indigenous women. Yep the ones with most to lose. The ones with most to lose. Can we talk about the cost of you refusing to play nice in both your personal life and in your career? I mean it's hard to quantify because again like as you would know people know your trouble.

17:29And so you tend to stop being invited onto things into spaces where you could potentially cause some issues or cause some trouble. And so I, you know, I already have a lot of institutional power and I am a educated white woman who has experienced social mobility to the point where I am now middle class. And with that, does come some power. So I am able to go into spaces that people who do not have that sort of institutional power find it exceptionally hard to get into. I'm just a little progressive, mouthy, difficult person who like experiences it in a way of it's just easier not to have her on the show or it's just easier if we don't include those sorts of views because someone might complain and

18:19That does come at a professional cost because I'm constantly fighting for legitimacy in spaces where if I did just kind of shut up and toe the line I would probably be quite wealthy and quite successful and and not have to work You know three different jobs to cobble together a living in terms of personal life It's difficult because you lose friends and people who were dear to you and I reconcile that when it happens of like, well, it turns out our values weren't in the same spot. So you've lost friends by refusing to play nice. What can you win by screwing nice other than like being on the right side of history, a little bit of high horsing? What are there any advantages? There are. You make friends. You make beautiful community. You find, I suppose, your people. You can look at yourself in the mirror.

19:12you can look at your kids or the kids around you and know that you're actually doing something to make their lives better, hopefully. There is so much to be gained when you start learning how to be un-nice and to start being decent and how you can start learning how to be comfortable with discomfort. If the only risk to you is that you're going to be uncomfortable with causing a smaller bit of a scene for a moment, I don't think that's good enough.

19:41to allow the wrong to stay in place. Sure. I think a little bit of discomfort is probably really good growth. It's an indicator that something good is happening. And it's going to happen anyway. Anyone's going to go through menopause eventually and just be like, I don't have time for this. OK, final question. Amy, what is one thing that women can do today right now to screw being nice?

20:09I think to examine what is happening in their own world and their own life and where they materially have power to make something better. If that is just telling a man in your life to go jump.

20:24when they expect you to do something and you just are sick of doing it. If it is supporting someone you know is being targeted, if it's not moving out of the way on the bloody sidewalk when somebody is coming towards you and is like expecting you to yield when they're in your path, if it's not apologizing to a chair that you've bumped into, if it's just one little bit of agency that is based you saying society expects me to be small here and I'm not going to be then just use that as your first little bit of growth and then go forth and you know recklessly do good. Just be like comfortable with causing discomfort for good.

21:16You do not have to yield. You do not have to yield. What a great sentiment. Thank you so much, Amy and Ramika. Thank you. Congratulations on your book, Legend. Thank you so much. And you know, I hope people do find a little bit of discomfort in there that fits them. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gadigal, Moenina and Durarwal people.

21:41Ladies We Need To Talk is mixed by Anne-Marie DeBettancourt. It's produced by Elsa Silberstein and Sarah Mashman. Our supervising producer is Emma Morris and our executive producer is Taymar Kranzwick. This series was created by Claudine Ryan.