Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
Listen. I really do need to acknowledge Mickey's hard work here in the studio. It has been a busy week for me. That is my only excuse, and therefore I didn't really get that much time to prepare for the show.
Let's just how many Let's just do a headcount. Since Mickey has been our producer, how many of Frooms's break have actually been in Mickey's break. There's a reason why people say Flex Frooms and Mickey, let's just do a headcount. Would you say it's half of your breaks?
I'd say one third?
What am I doing your dirty? Their babes, Oh you're doing you dirty? I hope it. It's like fifty five forty five, who forty five fifty five?
It's giving industrialization of the flecs and from show.
It's giving. This is how this is people's fear about if women ran world and just just be like patriarchy. Why do we have an all woman show and yet the youngest woman here has been unfairly Anyways, keep it cashing. What's happening, Micky? What have you prepared for us today? No? I say this all.
I just wanted to thank you, you know, because I imagine some people in my position would take all the credit.
This is true, the producer. Often people go, what do they actually do? Exactly? Well, now home on, no, no, no, every now and then I'll use Mickey freaks to bolster my own But I do my job. Thank you very much is a boster, some would say.
Now anyway, something that Mickey brought to my attention was a story from the ABC which I believe it will be very interesting to our demographic. The title is Australia's first female pilot at major commercial airline, Deborah Laurie opens Sydney Airport bridge named in her honor Hut.
The story is as follows.
The New Southwal's government has announced the Deborah Laurie Flyover, part of the Sydney Gateway project, which will open on November twelfth, to improve access to the domestic terminal and take pressure off the intersection outside the airport. Captain Lowry, who's seventy still flies for Virgin And said she was honored to be recognized as a trailblazer for women in aviation.
It's difficult to.
Find ways to explain how excited I am about this, she said, The irony of flying over the top of reginald Anset Drive makes me smile no more than that laugh. And why Debra, Because in the late nineteen seventies, Debora Laurie won a landmark sexual discrimination case allowing her to work as a pilot for Anset. So Reginald Anset, the airline owner, had never hired a female pilot. An Anset appealed all the way to the High Court to try and stop Captain Laurie, who had flown since she was sixteen,
from working there. What happened Guys an Set loss, Captain Larry's career in commercial aviation began, and then what happened to Anset guys redacted. And I thought that was quite a sad loss of an Australian company. I mean, I wasn't around for Anset days.
But yeah, I was going to say, I don't know anything about an It might have been before my time.
So I will personally never forget the first that I heard somebody like talk about women pilots when I was working at Yundai.
I didn't know it was Ynda, I didn't know. I didn't know that I did not know that. Come on you just knowing.
Ynday Melbourne City, Yunday, let me know. And it's in South Melbourne. Every day I'd go to work in my jeep driving from out in my.
Jeeps coming out and this is coming out for the.
First time, drive my little Tonka truck jeep all the way down the freeway.
Yeah, babes, it was sick. What happened to him?
I sold it, which is the biggest kept because that stuff would be expensive. Now is silver Jeep Wrangler a boxy, boxy car? Pretty sure it could have a soft top roof, but I never took it off. I never discovered. But I loved my cars. Huh soft tops, Yeah, they don't eat, do they.
You're buying a whole car. Buy a whole car, and they're not giving you a discount for the soft top. Not enough.
So when I was working here and day, I was like making coffees amongst also selling tint and whatnot. And remember this man came in with his son and they were talking about how they got on a plane to Melbourne earlier that day and that it was a woman pilot and how they were like, I didn't want to get on the plane because it was a woman pilot. And I remember really sitting there, eighteen years old all the time feeling furious, what is this sexism in the
wild that I'm witnessing. It was like obviously not the first sex and sexism moment that I'd seen, but in the workplace it was giving outlandish sexism areas, and it's just always stayed in my mind. And I've always like wanted to have a woman pilot, so I could, you know, experience that. I feel like I don't see that many women pilots have you? Have you ever seen one? Biki?
I don't think I'm really looking seeing the pilot.
For really, I love having a little ganda as I'm walking off, give him a little lieut thank you for your service, like if your servants. But it kind of like I wonder how good it actually is to work in an industry where you are so clearly not respected, Like this is a really beautiful moment for her, but she's seventy, Like for how long did you have to have to put up with like.
Bloody proven people wrong? Like that would just be exhausting.
Yeah, and we don't talk about that like six yet of bridge, But like I don't know, feels like a lot of work for a bridge.
What do you recomplex? Ah, I think it's always a good time to be given your flowers. I don't think that there's an even I don't think there's a bad time for people to acknowledge what you've done. I think it's kind of like it's exactly what the patriarchy wants you to think. Like you, as a woman sees another woman get validated, you're kind of like, ah, but what's the point. It's like, this is the point, Like there should be a thousand statues of women who've done exceptional things,
and there isn't. And I think it's incredible. I mean, it would be frustrating for her to be the first of many, but I think that's the point. We need the first, so it isn't frustrating for the next person, the next person, the next person, and so it isn't a narrative when we're kind of like, wait, what would have been the issue? Like, you know, even the fact that we can think of times where people have how
do I explain this? We know that in the English language especially, man is neutral, right, Like you hear man, it's neutral, you hear woman? You hear other, and who knows how long it's going to take us to get to a point where you hear woman and you're not thinking of her in relation to a man either, just being like, oh sick, it's just a pilot. And in your head you're picturing a woman. Oh it's a doctor, and you pictured a woman not the doctor. Oh, Like it's a trade and you pictured a woman.
Like.
I think we need more of these instances, and we need it done in very obnoxious ways. So everybody has to reckon with how uncomfortable it makes them in an obnoxious way. So when people say like, oh, she was the first black person, everyone's like, don't, don't alienate, but it's like, no, we need the alien It has to work in people's favor because that's how ostracyite. That's how being ostracized works. You are othered, but now be othered
because you're exceptional. Don't be othered because you are the exception to the rule. Cool. Yeah, I'll feel for her. It'd be so frustrating because think about the people who now get to profit of what she did on her own, Like all this stuff she had to do on her own, had to overcome and now whoever has erected this statue in her likeness gets to be looked at like some amazing persons. That's what I mean, Like where were you when she was in the kitchen cooking? But for real,
it must be done well. I'm excited to take the bridge really reflection through. You've been listening to the Flex and Frooms Daily podcast.
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