Sometimes people from the television do things like make podcasts called Stick To Your Knitting and we are faced with the conundrum of whether to listen to them (add to the clicks) or pretend they don’t exist (sleep soundly).
But, for the greater good, and because you all kept asking (no one asked), we went ahead and listened to said podcast, which has been aptly renamed Mike Gunner’s Podcast after its former MAFS contestant creator AKA man who knows things because he has a penis.
That’s right, we trawled through the episodes on YouTube and spent hours we’ll never get back looking at this multi-coloured graffiti feature wall:
You’re bloody welcome.
Here, we reveal to you the six most bizarre and problematic statements to come out of it. Buckle up.
1. When he claimed his podcast was going to change the world.
Let us take you back to why this podcast was created in the first place.
It seems that not only is 44-year-old Mike Gunner, the MAFS contestant who just won’t go away and take his sweeping, archaic statements on gender with him, he is also an expert on how women are different from men.
He’s actually got his sights set on changing the world.
Changing the world. The whole world.
Let that sink in.
No, really, the bloke who started his fair share of wine-fuelled MAFS trash fires recently told The Courier Mail that the motivation behind the podcast series is to “change the world”.
YEP.
It went a little something like this:
No one*:
Mike: “Can one man, in one podcast, change the world?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’d like to find out,” he added, and we’d like to take the time here to point out that no, no they can’t.
“I’d like to tackle some of the world’s issues. I’ll interview people of interest to me – everyone from sportspeople to people in the media, academics, historians.”
Then he went and casually dropped:
“I’m not on a crusade to win back the balance of power to men, but I’d like the scales to be in balance. Equality is what I’m striving for.”
Righto.
*(OK, The Courier Mail asked).
2. That time he talked about how women exist purely for making babies.
This particular problematic musing was dropped casually in a chat earlier this month with former MAFS star Bella Frizza and Mike’s new girlfriend Jessica Williamson, where Frizza said she thinks women first go into relationships from an ’emotional’ point of view, while men are more ‘physical’.
From there, Mike basically told her to sit down and be quiet while he explained exactly what men and women look for in relationships because excuse me, he once married a stranger on the television and therefore knows all the things.
“I think that guys, I can only speak for me. You need chemistry, you need attraction,” Mike began.
“Maybe it goes back to, you know, we have to choose a partner or a mate, to sound a bit more primitive, where she’s able to carry our children, and that we’re going to be attracted to her and want to have more children with her.”
Um. Should we walk around with the diameter of our wombs tattooed to our faces?
He then explained the female point of view, because while men (from Mars) and women (from Venus) are very, very different, Mike understands the intricacies of both genders.
“Girls do the same. They want a big, strong guy that can protect her and her baby and provide for her and that hasn’t changed,” Mike said.
Hang on… what year is it?
3. The episode he spoke about “man stuff”.
Sex. He and his housemate/producer and another random man talked about sex. Specifically when a man decides to sleep with a woman he’s seeing. Man stuff.
Why? Because, and I quote, “We never get an opportunity just to chat about what’s on our minds.”
In an episode where they speak as though women are an entirely different species made up of a code that desperately needs to be cracked, the three men talk about how women tend to make up rules for when they decide to have sex with a man, but sometimes, there’ll be a woman who doesn’t follow the lady rules we’re all supposed to be following in life according to Mike and how confusing is that.
He recalls a time he encountered a woman of this variety:
“That particular woman had no set agenda… she was up for whatever, and I respect that,” he said with a hint of surprise in his tone.
4. That time he expressed deep dismay that there’s a woman in the world who farts.
In the first episode, a man wrote in to share a tragic tale of woe.
He was sad because he thought he’d found ‘the one’ but to his horror, soon discovered that she farts.
“That’s a shame. You’ve come so close to finding the one and she’s a farter,” Mike said with genuine sympathy.
A farter. Because there is literally nothing worse than a woman whose body releases anything other than little puffs of perfume from her bum.
Nothing.
5. All the times he mentions being considerate to women.
On that note, there isn’t a single episode where Mike doesn’t remind his listeners how considerate and respectful he is to women as he braves the fight against “toxic femininity”.
We’d like to remind him of the time he forgot to buy his MAFS wife Heidi dinner, leaving her to watch hungrily on while he ate his own meal in front of her. Or the time he used every single one of her towels. And of course the time he told her he’s “not her therapist” when she talked about herself for more than 30 seconds.
Before his podcast even dropped, he talked to the Sydney Morning Herald about the plights of being a man in a woman’s world.
“What we are looking at here is a shift in consciousness of the public toward men which favours women,” Mike said.
“Unfortunately, that’s the double standard that seems to be occurring at the moment and I personally take umbrage to it, and I refuse to accept that I cannot use words [like ‘sweetheart’, ‘darling’ and ‘dear’] that were terms of endearment only a couple of years ago that now are suddenly seen as something offensive,” he continued.
“Are you telling me that men can’t stand up for themselves?” he added.
Literally… no one’s ever said that, but OK.
It’s nice to know you’re ~considerate~.
6. That time he continually referred to women on Instagram by the years they were born.
Because women are like cars or expensive bottles of wine. You need to know what year they are. Duh.
“1979… oh er that makes her 39, OK there you go, so er that’s good,” he mumbled awkwardly about a woman who has written in, as though he’s not quite sure what to make of this information until he’s taken a test drive.
Later on he added about another woman: “Another 79 model, beautiful,” before tapping at her low mileage on the dashboard approvingly and popping her hood for a closer inspection.
We could go on, but we don’t… want to.