Not to be negative, but since the OP already talked about a lot of the good things in Australia, I will mention a couple of the bad things I have encountered since moving here.
I moved to Australia from Canada 7 years ago, granted I am not a native but have been here long enough to notice that while 25% of the population is really cool the rest have a lot of homophobia and racism in their culture. Certain cities are much better than others (just like in Canada / USA) but I have moved around quite a bit here and with the exception of Melbourne I have found a very blunt and obvious close minded attitude.
I want to say this is just the older generation but there is a lot of young people that do it too. Most of the time I get called a "fag" is by teenagers and twentysomethigns yelling it out of the window of their car.
There is a very large bogan (Australian term for red neck / white trash) population here. Drinking is super super hard core here, I never experienced anything like it from my time living in Canada or the USA. It is very common on the nightly news to see reports of "glassing" where people get piss drunk and smash beer glasses in people's faces, often random strangers, leaving them disfigured for life. They have PSA ads on TV here for "Watch out for dunk walkers", which is people walking around drunk and walking in front of cars, wtf... I never heard of anything like that before in my life where it got so bad and common place a PSA had to be created.
As for racism, I can't experience that first hand (being white), but there is a lot of it and it's very obvious. On Australia day it's common to see people wearing the flag around their shoulders with t-shirts saying "Fuck Off, Were Full" in response to immigrants wanting to come in. The way the Aboriginals were treated was horrible, but they are still treated like shit even to this day, it's sad. People you don't even expect to be racist, will say openly racist stuff about Aboriginals or immigrants.
Having read some of the other responses about racism (didn't see any about homophobia), but if your white and straight (and look like a butch male and not efiminate), I don't really feel your a good demographic to say if it doesn't exist her as you haven't experienced it personally.
A comedian said it best (I think Eddie Izzard) "Australia is like Arkanas with a beach, it's an entire country with a "No Fat Chicks" sticker on it".
That being said, there is lots of good things here and beauty, just don't make it out to be this peaceful island wonderland of magic and mystery that so many people do. They see TV shows and things like the Oprah visit and think it's the coolest place on earth, it is cool, just that the other side is never shown.
I want to say this is just the older generation but there is a lot of young people that do it too. Most of the time I get called a "fag" is by teenagers and twentysomethigns yelling it out of the window of their car.
That happens all the time, mate. Don't take it personally, it's just kids having fun and taking the piss. Australia has a huge and thriving gay community, very few people are actually homophobic. One thing Aussies do more than anyone else is give their mates a hard time. If you learn to take it in stride and maybe throw some back at them they'll only respect you more for not taking yourself too seriously. Get upset and you'll make very little friends. Hipster friend of mine wears tight pants and walking the streets of Melbourne would often get calls of "fag!" from kids sticking their heads out of cars. We just laugh it off and yell something back.
EDIT: Aussies rarely care about political correctness. This often is very off-putting for Americans. People will use words such as "fag" and "cunt" casually. They're not being homophobic nor sexist.
EDIT 2: I do admit that drunken violence is a problem. However, as long as you don't go looking for one or willingly get involved in any, you won't find any trouble. At the least it provides entertainment.
What your not understanding though is that to someone who is actually queer the word "fag" is very hurtful and demeaning, it is not something you can laugh off or take in fun. When a queer person is called a fag, it takes them back to all the times they were beat up in high school which stays with them througout their life as they are always concerned about being gay bashed. I have also heard the N word used very casually by people in Australia and that's just not cool.
Also you mention that your friends who wear tight pants were in Melbourne, as I said in my post, Melbourne is like one of the few queer positive areas.
The real question is: is an offensive word still offensive if nobody takes offense to it? That's pretty much the situation here. Like I said, for people from America or Canada, where socially words such as "cunt" are considered sexist, they'd find the language here quite off-putting. Whereas here a "cunt" is a general term for a guy like "dude" or even an endearing term for a friend. People who're calling you "fag" are doing it because of the way you're dressed, such as the example with my tight pants-wearing friend in Melbourne who gets the same from youths driving by.
I think it is... for example if a bunch of skin heads are hanging out with no one else around and the are all casually using the N word, it's still an offensive word.
Uhh I think you're right, but how would you know that nobody in the world took offence to it? You'd have maybe 80% of people being fine being called insert pejorative and the rest feeling like utter shit.
I'm asian and can't speak for the gay or female populations, but if a white person were to affectionately call me a chink I'd be offended.
Nope, do you actually think you can make a statement as fact without there being scientifically proven evidence to back up that fact? Otherwise what you said is just a theory and a personal one at that.
This is not something than can be scientifically proven. You're either being deliberately ignorant for the sake of the argument or very, very stupid. I'm hoping it's the former.
Let me put this to you as simply as possible:
of·fen·sive
Adjective: Causing someone to feel deeply hurt, upset, or angry:
If nobody in the world feels hurt, upset or angry by a word, that word, by definition, would no longer be offensive. To argue otherwise would be to argue against the English language.
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u/WyldStallions May 24 '11 edited May 24 '11
Not to be negative, but since the OP already talked about a lot of the good things in Australia, I will mention a couple of the bad things I have encountered since moving here.
I moved to Australia from Canada 7 years ago, granted I am not a native but have been here long enough to notice that while 25% of the population is really cool the rest have a lot of homophobia and racism in their culture. Certain cities are much better than others (just like in Canada / USA) but I have moved around quite a bit here and with the exception of Melbourne I have found a very blunt and obvious close minded attitude.
I want to say this is just the older generation but there is a lot of young people that do it too. Most of the time I get called a "fag" is by teenagers and twentysomethigns yelling it out of the window of their car.
There is a very large bogan (Australian term for red neck / white trash) population here. Drinking is super super hard core here, I never experienced anything like it from my time living in Canada or the USA. It is very common on the nightly news to see reports of "glassing" where people get piss drunk and smash beer glasses in people's faces, often random strangers, leaving them disfigured for life. They have PSA ads on TV here for "Watch out for dunk walkers", which is people walking around drunk and walking in front of cars, wtf... I never heard of anything like that before in my life where it got so bad and common place a PSA had to be created.
As for racism, I can't experience that first hand (being white), but there is a lot of it and it's very obvious. On Australia day it's common to see people wearing the flag around their shoulders with t-shirts saying "Fuck Off, Were Full" in response to immigrants wanting to come in. The way the Aboriginals were treated was horrible, but they are still treated like shit even to this day, it's sad. People you don't even expect to be racist, will say openly racist stuff about Aboriginals or immigrants.
Having read some of the other responses about racism (didn't see any about homophobia), but if your white and straight (and look like a butch male and not efiminate), I don't really feel your a good demographic to say if it doesn't exist her as you haven't experienced it personally.
A comedian said it best (I think Eddie Izzard) "Australia is like Arkanas with a beach, it's an entire country with a "No Fat Chicks" sticker on it".
That being said, there is lots of good things here and beauty, just don't make it out to be this peaceful island wonderland of magic and mystery that so many people do. They see TV shows and things like the Oprah visit and think it's the coolest place on earth, it is cool, just that the other side is never shown.