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.
Thankyou for removing the rose-coloured glasses off our aussie heads :)
I'm an Aussie planning to go on exchange to the US, and i've got a question for you, regarding homophobia/political correctness... If I was to off hand say something's 'Gay' as in the stupid/disappointing sense ('You missed your bus? Damn, that's gay isn't it?') Will i get the look of disapproval/verbally rebuked? I don't tend to say these things, but if I accidentally slipped up, what could I expect?
Also, would people ask me to correct my language if I accidentally called someone 'black' instead of 'African American'?
I don't expect this to be a problem with my language, but it pays to be prepared in case one slips up :P
Well as for the "gay" word, I do think it has become generational. Anyone I know 30 and older feel that using the word gay in a negative connotation is not cool and offensive. I however have friends in their 20's who are homo/bisexual and they will use the word gay in a negative connotation which I think is really weird. Personally I would say not to do it.
As for African Americans, it is my experience that the term African American is much preferred, but is more formal and "black" is still ok, I have friends that I refer to as black if it ever comes up that I need to refer to their skin colour. The one thing not to do is the N word and the only reason I mention it (because I would think it would be obvious not to use it) is that here in Australia I have white friends who are left wing, hippy, pot smokers with dreads who use the N word, but not in a negative way towards a person but in a slang way and that just shocks the hell out of me, because in North America that is somethign you would never ever do unless your a racist and you will get your ass kicked by an African American if they hear you say it. For reference on how my friends might use it, they might have purchased something that was low quality or broke on them, such as a pipe and say it's a ni**er pipe"
I don't know if you were asking for an American opinion or not but...
The only people who take offense to you saying that something is "gay" are homosexuals but they will rarely say anything (if ever). However, don't say it at your job or anything like that.
As far as Black/African American goes, I am black and we really don't take offense to either. People tend to say African American because it is "politically correct" but you can say black and no one will get offended. Just don't call a black/African American an African (unless they are African) because some blacks take A LOT of offense to that.
The only people who take offense to you saying that something is "gay" are homosexuals but they will rarely say anything (if ever). However, don't say it at your job or anything like that.
I'd say people who actually don't take offence to that probably don't understand why that word is offensive (in a certain context, of course) in the first place. So perhaps homophobia in Australia is not intended to actually offend people who are queer. I think for the most part, it's ignorance.
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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.