How to give zero f*cks with Gina Chick, Jessie Tu and Anna Broinowski
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ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hey ladies, it's been a couple of years of doing Ladies We Need To Talk from inside of a dark, quiet studio with just me, my producers and several kilograms of snacks. But earlier this year we were invited to do a live recording at the Adelaide Festival.

To set the scene, it was a sold-out show. There was a queue to get in that stretched around the building and when everyone was finally seated, the room was full of the most excited, revved-up audience. Fans of the show had turned up in vast numbers. On stage we had three kick-ass women, Gina Chick, Jessie Tu and Anna Bronowski, talking about three different experiences of what it means to live a rebellious life.

And it was wild. The energy in the room is utterly electrifying and all three women had such different and fascinating experiences of what it means to live dangerously. So come with me into this room full of excited, smart women live at the Adelaide Festival.

It feels like we're at a critical time for women in the world. There's a new generation of young women who are empowered and smart, a young army of feminists raised on a diet of Beyonce, Alone, Matildas, and ladies we need to talk.

but at the same time, we're watching authoritarian male governments taking over, rolling back freedoms that we thought were entrenched. We're having to fight for the right to have birth control, the right to be paid equally, the right to go jogging or leave a domestic relationship without being murdered.

Our rights, like our safety, are not guaranteed. It is, it seems, a time for women to mobilise and stand up for what's fair, stand up for what's right and try to live as best we can without apology, but doing so involves risk. What does that risk look like and what is the cost? What's the price we must pay when we live by our own rules?

I'm Yumi Steins. Ladies, we need to talk about how to live dangerously. So, let me introduce our guests today and I want to hear a roar of approval for Gina Chick.

So, Gina Chick became an instant icon when she won the first season of Alone Australia. In her memoir, We Are The Stars, she shares the vivid details of her extraordinary life. Once again, please give it up for Gina Chick. Now, I know our next two writers did not star in a reality TV show where they lived in a fur coat for 67 days, but please welcome Anna Bronowski!

Who is a writer, Walkley Award-winning documentary maker. Her memoir, Datsun Angel, asks whether a female rebel could make the same art as a male given that she is continually under threat simply because of her gender. Please welcome Anna Brunovsky. And in the middle, Jessie Tu, who is an Arbia Award winner. Give it up for Jessie Tu.

She won the Arbyer Literary Fiction Book of the Year in 2022 for A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing. Her new novel, The Honey Eater, once again proves her talent for capturing the tangled, messy realities of being an ambitious Asian woman in Australia. I wouldn't know anything about it. Jessie, please give it up one more time. Jessie Tu.

Now, let's unpack this idea of living dangerously, because in each of your books, there is a version of danger, of taking risks and living dangerously. Gina, what's your idea of living dangerously? So my idea of living dangerously is actually living through my internal reality rather than through external authority. So rather than outsourcing my authority and taking

when my culture or a billboard or a parent or a teacher says you should think this way, be this way, live this way, look this way, should, should, should, should, should. For me, underneath should, which is not in my voice, is a need which is. And when I listen to that need, when I constantly like,

feed that voice. That grows strong enough so now I know that I can rescue myself. And when I know I can rescue myself, it means I can go to those edges of risk and take that extra step over and actually have faith in my ability to solve the challenges myself rather than expecting someone to rescue me. So should is a

a word about duty, isn't it? Well, should is saying how you are is not all right, which to me is complete bollocks. And the other thing I'd think I'll probably say in my experience is

To be able to teach ourselves how to be able to risk, we need to be able to be in our discomfort. And we live in a world that pathologises discomfort, don't we? As soon as we feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable, there are 10 million distractions. We can go to our phone, we can go to our addictions, whatever they are. And we don't teach ourselves how to be uncomfortable and our world gets smaller and smaller.

Jessie Tu, your characters in your books do dangerous things. They take risks, often engage in sexual connections that are risky. What's your idea as Jessie Tu, not as one of your book characters, of living dangerously? I guess responding to what Gina said, my relationship with discomfort is quite warped and...

Also, my intuition is quite warped. Growing up as a woman, I mean, we all know if you move through the world in a female body, we have no idea how to trust our intuition because the world tells us how to be from the age of five. So that's been quite a challenge. But living dangerously, I think for me, the question I think about is like, dangerous to whom? Dangerous to men? Dangerous to myself? I think for me, living dangerously is...

refusing, like resisting a lot of the models of female happiness that we're brought up to, you know, believe in, like marriage, children, real estate, all these things that I've had to like consciously really push back on. If you are a woman in her late 30s and you don't have a child or you have no intention of having children or doing any kind of caregiving in this world,

I think you're judged. I still feel it. Like, I really do feel it. And we live in this world where women who don't embrace any kind of caregiving, like believing that that is what makes us pure, that is what makes us whole, that is what makes us worthy as women. I think that's a really messed up narrative. And I think to live dangerously is to just really consciously refuse those things that genuinely you don't desire. I love that. What do you think? Saying a big fat no thanks.

Anna, what about you? What's your idea of living dangerously? Well, I've never felt that I have, but people often tell me I have. And so I guess for me, living dangerously is giving into my insatiable curiosity. If society's telling me there's something I shouldn't do or a place I shouldn't go, so it's actually external for me. It's throwing myself sideways to places like North Korea, the Middle East, apocalypse cults in Waco, Texas...

if someone says there's no way you should do that, I will bloody well do it. I'm going. And so I guess what motivates me is really, are these places really dangerous? Are these people really dangerous that we're being told to fear? Or is it possible that

Often, the less we know about a place or a people, the more likely we are to regard them as dangerous. So given that you've been to so many dangerous places, Anna, when have you felt closest to danger? When I was giving birth, and anyone who's given birth will relate to this, you face death when you give birth, and once you've done that...

Anything else that's dangerous pales by comparison, but... Well, probably in the book, when I got kidnapped by truckies at 19 and was separated from my companion, my bodyguard, really. They played a ruse on us, the truckies, and a reader contacted me recently and said, this ruse is still played. Stop it. Yeah, so what happened? I'm hitchhiking with this six-foot-two friend...

platonic friend. We agree to accept every lift that gets us closer to Darwin. This is the 1980s. We're on Death Highway in the Northern Territory. Women were going missing all the time. Two road trains turn up. The first one goes, hey, tits, where are you going? They called you tits. Oh, yeah. But to me, that was, oh, that's curious because I, you know, I'd only just got tits. Like,

What? Okay, this is... I thought that that belonged to Playboy's centrefolds, but oh my god, they're interested in my breasts, you know, I thought that was kind of cool. I mean, I was a complete virgin idiot. Nink and poop. Anyway, where are you going? We're going in convoy. No room for your boyfriend. We'll take you in the first truck, him in the second. We're meeting up three and a half hours north for lunch.

And I immediately went, "Oh yes, you know, I'm like Kerouac, of course I'm going to do it. I'm writing the great female road trip. I'm Huntress Thompson with a vagina." And my bodyguard went, "I don't think that's such a good idea." And that sealed the deal. What did I say? If they say it's dangerous, I'll do it. So I did it and sure enough, the second truck slams the door in his face.

And then we're on the road and they're pretending he's in the second truck to keep me compliant. So a reader emailed me recently and said exactly the same thing happened to her on the same highway. Shocking. It's a really good read. Jessie, do you want to talk about when you've been, when you've felt closest to danger? Whenever I'm around men. Like I'm joking, but also not. I think moving through the world as a straight woman is inherently dangerous.

And unfortunately, like, as a straight woman, we desire men. And unfortunately, there are dangerous men out there. That is still something that I feel like we need to explicitly talk about with women. I haven't really figured out how to do that, but just even acknowledging the fact that, you know, being a woman who desires a man... And that sexual availability maybe makes you more at risk? Totally. Gina, danger and you. For me, when I feel in danger,

It's when I'm in a situation where the unknown has teeth, you know. And I feel like everywhere in the world for me at the moment, I feel like there is insanity. For me, disconnection is insanity. Like it's not a sane way for humans to be and yet it's the world that we live in. And so in a way, I feel probably most...

in danger, endangered at the moment because I have such an awareness of climate and of nature. And to me, it is just like I can't believe that we are still having this conversation where we're having to say, this world, this life support system that we're all a part of,

It's not going to last. I feel endangered by what's happening with women, like with the walking back of women's rights and the changing world order. And then for me, the challenge is do I collapse, which is what happens when I'm overwhelmed? Do I just kind of go, well, fuck this, I'm just going to watch Netflix and eat chocolate and hide under the doona and make it all go away. But how do I then take myself to the edge

where I can say, okay, I can't save the world, but I can save my world. I can do the bit that's in front of me. How can I stay in my discomfort and also increase my resilience? The hypervigilance is exhausting. It's knackering. We're all rooted over here. Oh, my God. In my case, sadly, not physically. Given the opposing forces to women's freedom in particular, what do you think that we can do as individuals to push back?

Give zero fucks. Honestly, we don't have time anymore to play the old game of being appeasers, of being nice women, of making ourselves sexually attractive. And I have to say, when I turned 50, I just went, "I'm giving zero fucks now." And I just want to share a good news story with everyone. You can do this as a woman.

You're in your prime, you know, you really do enter a certain kind of combination of wisdom and having been around the block a few times and being able to read certain situations. These are all wonderful things that are coming your way if you're not 50 yet. They are coming for you, embrace them. And they're not what society tells you is coming for you. It's the opposite.

The second thing is believe in something bigger than yourself. Put out whatever stone you can, tiny pebble in the pond. The ripple effect will have an effect. Everyone in this room could walk out of here and do something. Well, I wanted to bring Jessie into that conversation. As the youngest person on our panel today, Jessie, the characters in your books are still very much under the influence and at the mercy of their elders.

And part of the story is about understanding how to push back on that power or how to navigate the world while being at the mercy of those powers. Do you think that this is something that you have to navigate as a younger woman? Most of what I consume...

I consume things very consciously, be it books or TV shows, whatever, conversations, friends. Most of what I consume are material written by older women because I'm nourished by the voices of women. They reflect my life. They give me wise words about what to look forward to. But one thing I resent is that I would love to move through the world like I don't give a fuck, but I don't want to wait till I'm 50. I don't want to have to wait till I'm that age.

to feel so liberated in my body is I really resent that we still live in a world where a young woman is valued.

in terms of her physical beauty and her sexual currency. I really hate that. And like whatever way in which I can push back on that, even the tiniest things like I don't shave, I haven't waxed in years, I don't wear a bra, but like even like tiny little anti-patriarchal things like refusing to shave my underarms is such a huge thing. You know what I've been seeing on my social media feed too is women weaponising their farts.

What, does that mean they just light them or what? No, like, some guy will say, hey, give us a smile, love, and she'll go...

How good's that? Fabulous. So, okay, here's one of the things I wanted to make sure we covered today, which is, yes, we want to live dangerously. Yes, we want to take risks. We want to say get fucked. We don't care about your opinions. But it comes at a cost. Gina, living like that, tell us about the cost you've paid. So, one of the things that I have learned to do is how to say no.

I'm really, really good at saying no. And I've spent a lot of time teaching women how to say no. And it's amazing what we run into when we make the, like, the choice to have a clear boundary. People say to me, "You're angry. Why are you so angry?"

I'm not angry. I just said no. And I don't say no with energy. I don't say no with anything other than supreme clarity. And I don't explain my no. It's not no, I'm sorry, it's because of the da-da. It's like no. And from a lifetime of practicing this, this is what I've found. If I am super clear in my no, people have got nowhere to go.

But when it's an apologetic, "No, I'm so sorry. But I just can't because I'm really busy." And then there's the thing that people can Velcro in on. And so to get to the point where I'm just super clear in the know, I've lost friends. And I'm not very good at friends anyway.

You know, and I was definitely on the very much on a neurodiversity spectrum somewhere. And so for me, finding a way to be able to be safe in myself with this boundary has meant that I've run into all of the cultural pressure to not do that. And I think the thing that I would really love to offer is that your no is beautiful.

Your no is sacrosanct. The time that we get to say in any small way, no, thank you, and not explain it. Every time we do that, we bring ourselves home just a little bit more. And it takes practice because all of our nervous systems are geared around making everyone else happy. Anna, I wanted to ask you about the cost of taking risks, the cost of living dangerously. I mean...

I wouldn't regard myself as a very sorted out, functioning person, but I have no regrets. I have no regrets. I mean, I've loved every risk I've taken because it's taken me somewhere else. But more importantly than that, it's enabled me to capture some kind of truth and

that I can then share with the world, just being a conduit to share different perspectives from the people I've been lucky enough to have access to. North Koreans, Jordanians, Palestinians, people who are not often given a mainstream window. So no regrets about that. But what I said before, zero fucks, okay? I love that. Thank you, Anna Bronowski. Thank you.

Can we circle back to you, Jesse, just on that idea? Because something Gina keeps bringing up is sitting in discomfort. And for my life, a lot of it, my life is trying to avoid discomfort.

Jessie? Me too. You too? Yeah, totally. Because I think I have only come into my being after turning 30 several years ago. I'm now in my late 30s. But before then, I lived in constant discomfort and I had to be okay with that. But I didn't know that that shouldn't be the default.

Also, as an Asian woman, like, it's a way more repressive culture than here in the West. There is no expectation that there's a benchmark of, like, a feminist narrative being acceptable. I think now I'm actually just actively trying to be more...

Pleasure-centred. And when I mean pleasure, I don't mean necessarily just sex, but I mean just, like, feeling OK in my body because it's been such a foreign idea for me. Like, even seeking pleasure is not a worthy pursuit, according to a lot of the stuff that I grew up learning about. I get it. But what about the Gina chick flavour of discomfort, where Gina will wrap herself in her coat and go and sleep by the river just for a laugh? Yeah.

But I mean, my thing is that everyone's got an edge. And my edge is different to your edge. I think that we can, like, we can judge each other. It's like, well, no, you know, I'm not feeling uncomfortable enough, therefore I'm not worthy. For me, it's not about uncomfortable as a default. What I'm talking about is having a conscious ability when there is a challenge

to find a way to be in the discomfort of that challenge to then, you know, be available to solve whatever it is. But then there's also the part of I love that you're moving towards pleasure. I love that you're asking those questions. I love that there is this movement to say it's okay. To me, that's leaning into the discomfort.

of going outside the habitual, like here's my programming. I'm going to move outside that. I'm going to be radical and move into finding my pleasure. Even though it feels really weird and it's going against everything, it's like, yes, I can make a stand for this. To me, that's the kind of leaning into discomfort I'm talking about. And I'm wondering if the discomfort you're talking about is connected with a lack of control, like that the discomfort is being...

put upon you? And the reason I'm asking this is I actually embrace discomfort if I've chosen the ingredients for it. I love, I love to go outside my comfort zone. I get bored by my comfort zone. But I've made that discomfort happen myself. In other words, I've chosen that. I've chosen that, right? So can I just ask, because I'm really curious about this idea of discomfort, what's wrong with it? I think it's just...

this is totally specific to my upbringing, you know, uber conservative migrant parents, you know, curfew until I was 20s, in my 20s, like really quite insane things.

So I think it just, for me, I've grown up, like the first part of my formative years, in such a restrictive, suppressive environment that now, like any form of discomfort, I just, it's a reaction and I just push against it wildly. For me, it's just like trying to figure out

how to be okay with the choices I've made in my life. And like all those benchmarks in life that every time I've reached them, they have never ever satisfied me in the way that people tell you that will be satisfying. So I have felt discomfort in trying to explore a life where I can imagine being praised in the way that a bride is praised on her wedding day. But I'm like violently against being married myself.

But, you know, I will never get that one day where I can unapologetically say, hey, I'm the star. Everyone celebrate me. In no other time in my life will I ever get that kind of accolade. Can we do that now? Yeah, you're beautiful. Can we do that now? You're beautiful. Jessie, you are amazing and beautiful and worthwhile and incredible. And you are a gift to the world. And can we just love this woman? This is her day right now.

Without being married, without the ritual, this is the power that we have for each other. Thank you. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it. Amazing. Now, I really want to get to something very quickly because I want you to take something with you that you can use to attack your future. They are coming for our freedoms. They are fucking with us, okay? And you need to be armed and prepared to fuck back.

So, I think one of the things we want to arm you with is instinct, trusting it. Understanding this thing that I've talked about in my books about how to give or withhold consent, that if a situation feels off,

You have no rational reason for why you want to say no, but your body is feeding back to say no, that you are absolutely entitled to and must start to listen to that instinct. Gina, can you give us a little wrap up of instinct? Oh, thank you. Oh my God. So for me, instinct lives in our bodies.

It doesn't live in our head. Our head is full of logic and rationalisation and it will say, "Oh no, that doesn't make sense." Right? And our minds don't trust our hearts and our bodies because our hearts take us into all sorts of situations where we become really unstuck. You know, they say, "Trust your heart, you'll be happy." No. Trust your heart, you will make some fabulous decisions but you'll also end up with some skinned knees and some elbows but you'll be wiser. But our instincts live in our bellies.

Have you ever been in a situation where you've made a choice where everyone around you was going, don't do it. And you're like, no, it's going to be fine. And then that choice wasn't fine. And you looked around one day and went, oh my God, how did I get here? And you realised that there was a little voice inside that had been telling you all along. Anyone relate to that?

That is the voice. So whenever you notice that voice, go, yeah, yeah, thank you, whatever the animal is in my belly. To me, it's a wolf. Thank you, wolfy. You know, and to allow that animal voice to be one of your advisors, allow that voice to grow stronger and stronger. And in my experience, the more we listen to our instincts, the stronger they get. Society's voice. Yeah.

The instinctive response to fear for women is to fly away, not to fight. So I think there's this extra thing as well. Listen to your instinct and then fight. Be angry. Don't be scared to be angry. We need to be angry. Anger's righteous or it can be. And I think we're going to need to be more angry as time goes on in this next couple of years. It looks like we're going to need to find that willingness to listen to this.

and to allow it to express in a way that is loud and angry and unfeminine. Let's thank our amazing panel, Anna Brunovsky, Jessie Tu, Gina Chick. Thank you so much for coming. This is We Need To Talk. You've been listening to our live recording of Ladies We Need To Talk for the Adelaide Festival. It was recorded on the lands of the Kaurna people and produced on the lands of the Gadigal people.