‘It Is Very Hard To F*** With Someone Who Has Been A Single Mum’
Yumi Stynes is a television and radio host, podcaster and author who advocates for women’s rights, consent education, equal pay and active anti-racism. Here she reveals what drives her advocacy.
Different standards
Even as a kid I saw different standards applied to people depending on their gender presentation and their race – like people laughing at a boy’s joke, but not a girl’s, when the girl was way funnier. More recently I see leadership qualities being respected in a male but derided in a female. I’d see it when black women were assumed to not be educated and Indigenous people being othered, as though they weren't part of the conversation. It pissed me off then and it pisses me off now. It annoyed me that being a small person of Asian appearance who was female meant there were some spaces where I wouldn't be safe and others where I would never, ever be taken seriously.
Young girls need empowerment
I used to think that my cause was to improve my own experiences and those of my daughters. However, when I started working on the podcast Ladies, We Need to Talk I realised it was really important to circle my power around as many people as I could. The research I’ve done for the podcast and the books that followed (Welcome to Your Period, Welcome to Consent, and Ladies We Need to Talk), galvanised my purpose: to empower women, you need to empower young girls, an empowerment that needs to encompass the body, health, gender politics, education and race.
I was an outlier
For a lot of my early career I was cast, and cast myself, as the outlier, the misfit. Probably for this reason it took me a long time to realise my advocacy could have any impact or even be desirable. When I was in my 20s on TV, people would contact me and say, “You’re the only Asian person on TV in our house! Keep going!” and so I realised that sometimes just existing is a form of advocacy. Indigenous women understand that better than anyone. I spent two years as a single mum raising my daughters while working full-time on radio and TV. That too was a form of advocacy. And the resilience you build as the person making all the decisions, earning all the money, accepting all the responsibility for your little family is incredible. It is very hard to fuck with someone who has been a single mum.
Power structures frustrate me
It can be very frustrating for women in places where power structures are very male-dominated and full of shit and bluster. Just like the single mum, who knows better than anyone what works for her family, you have to advocate for what you know intrinsically. You have to have your arguments prepared; you have to know your territory, and then your advocacy can become a weapon. I used to believe there were a lot of idiots out there and not to trust anything too popular or too mainstream (I have always loathed authority which has been considered a personality defect by some former workmates). Even as a very young woman I resisted anyone trying to tell me what to do.
Soul benefits
My mother is the youngest child from a big Japanese family. Her father and brother are Buddhist priests. Even though we do not practise any religion, we grew up with a strong sense of ethics, fairness and the existence, maintenance and sacredness of the soul. I tend to evaluate a lot of my choices based on whether or not it will be good for the soul. Will this choice make me feel bad about myself? Does this contribute to society? Do I work to help others? In the tally of my conscience, does the good outweigh the bad? It’s actually pretty simple and it works.
If I was running the country, I would …
Enshrine the Uluru Statement From the Heart into law. Use the New Zealand model to find a way to return lands and pay reparations and rent to Indigenous Australians. Honestly, this idea terrifies a lot of settler-colonisers (of which I am one), but the losses we would experience would be minimal and certainly manageable, while the benefits to Indigenous Aussies would be immeasurable.
Change laws on sexual assault to make pressing criminal charges in cases of rape and sexual assault far less punitive for victims.
Put the onus on recycling on importers and manufacturers, rather than the current model where it’s left to the consumers to figure out. No product would be made or brought into the country without a plan on how to eventually dispose of it.