Is Australia worse than UK for 'woke' agenda

So, @Lizzypet have you managed to draw any useful conclusions from all this? Apart from that feelings run very high on the perennial 'Oz vs UK' debate? Not that it's a competition. Being able to live in both is a huge privilege.

Online community and parent groups in the area you might move back to could give you a flavour.

Regarding blokey Australian men, I live in Australia and my husband is an Australian man and a lot of people did assume he was gay when he as young because he wasn’t the Aussie stereotype.

Great. Then we have had different experiences.

As I have said, I have found the men here in the UK to be no better and no worse than those in Australia. sport, misogyny and abuse and all.

By ‘east coast, I mean far north to Canberra and working regularly with men across Australia. And seriously, “maybe you were the 5ft10 school sports captain and you could drink blokes under the table and you were fine with being a token bloke and bantering away like a bullocky.” what the actual fuck? Just for pointing out I don’t agree with your blanket description?

As I have said, I have also moved back and forth from Australia to UK and back and forth, most recently 5 years ago. So pretty current. I was also there when Gillard changed the anti-discrimination act that organisations and seemingly state governments are relying on now to make excluding male people impossible. I guess it will come down to having to be tested, but I would not be absolving Gillard of the harm of that significant change.

I will leave you to your negative generalisations.

@seishonagon I really agree with you and what you describe is very familiar. I found the aggressive banter hard to take. Happy to accept that others have had a different experience.

oops, my use of the polite asterisk in my last post resulted in some unintended bolding.

Disagree, I remember when I first moved to the UK being surprised that I was unaware of the FA cup final or the big Premier League games - that wasn’t possible in Melbourne. Just look at the size of the stadiums in Oz relative to the population and compare them to Britain. I don’t believe there is any stadium in Britain which has the capacity of the MCG (happy to be corrected) and that’s one in one city.

Yes the Euros and World Cup are huge but they are only ever few years.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Oz but I love Aussie women more than the men!

Come on, British men and football is next level (I’m neither Australian nor British (well, I do have a British passport due to living there for over a decade, but don’t feel or consider myself to be British) - so no skin in the game.

Perhaps Melbourne was different but I found the obsession with Aussie Rules just completely dominated life.

Sorry but I haven’t seen any female politician in the UK treated the way Julia Gillard was. Also, Gender self id was introduced in Victoria - I’m happy to say that won’t happen in England thanks to so many wonderful women who won’t be silenced.

And Julia Gillard was treated any worse than female MPs in Westminster?

And can you tell me what you found obsessive with sport please? Is it because you found people were busy with sport and therefore hard to catch up with outside of sport, or that they enjoyed their sport and you felt excluded because you could not speak about it? Frankly, I watched some friends play live sport but never really spoke about it with family or friends and was not once 'shamed' for not following a team or for not knowing about it. And I have found the same degree of 'obsession' here with football / cricket / rugby etc.

The issue seems to be people are very quick to make negative general statements about Australia relative to the UK that I disagree with having spent large periods of time moving back and forth to both countries. Both have good points and bad points and frankly I was sacked for being pregnant here in the UK whereas I would not have been in Australia and there is quite a bit more I could say about the misogyny and sexism I have found here in the UK in men but to what point. What does it prove? That both countries have issues? What country does not?

I suspect it does make a difference. I grew up in a mining town, but it was mixed with agriculture as well. Many of my family are miners. I am not saying they don't have their moments, however, I really don't recognise the extreme 'drinking beer by the decilitre or watch football, that's considered strange' or that 'femininity is despised in women' is as widely spread in Australia or that it is worse than I have encountered here in the UK.

Just look at the way Julia Gillard was treated as an example. I found the blokeishness and obsession with sport overwhelming in Australia.

I absolutely recognise it.
I lived there for two years, however it was 20 odd years ago, and I did live in Kalgoorlie and work in loads of small town all over southern WA.
I expect where you live makes a massive difference.

Having spent much of my life along the East coast of Australia, I actually cannot reconcile your statements with my experience at all. And considering my family would probably fall into what is very much considered the type you would describe as very 'blokeish' types.

And having then also worked here in the UK for two decades as well, I find the men here no different to those in Australia.

You must have really come across some real shockers for you to have formed that opinion. But then, what is chivalry in your eyes?

@seishonagon Ha ha, I had exactly the same experience and thought all the British men I was meeting must be gay!!

Spot on.

I've lived in both countries, and misogyny in Australia is distinctive in that women are judged negatively, by men, not only for being women (obvs the rubbish option) but for not being more like blokes, e.g., if you don't want to drink beer by the decalitre or watch football, that's considered strange. Femininity is despised even in women. Blokishness is the human standard.

Chivalry is non-existent. When I first came to the UK, I was absolutely gobsmacked by how polite men were.

On the ABC website, people who question gender ideology are referred to as 'anti-trans'.

Not comparing just giving my perception of how it is in Australia. And that the thing with these sorts of questions - they’re so subjective. I’m aware from friends and family back in UK that lots is going /has gone down the sh*tter.

I guess there might be some similarities to comparisons between England and Scotland back when I moved between them in the 80s and 90s. Misogyny existed in both, but was much more open in Scotland, though there it was mixed with paternalism, which I don’t get the impression is the case in Australia.

So while the reality is that misogyny exists in both, it’s publically much less acceptable to admit it in England?

Though I might be out of date.

Are you comparing that to the UK? I really don’t think the UK is better and I have now spent time flipping back and forths in large chunks of time. Perhaps you don’t keep up with Westminster’s news. zhuchi?

Except sport and money.

I have lived in Australia since 1999. I am born and raised in Uk. Moved here when I was 24. Australia is incredibly misogynistic. But you’d know that having lived here. Australia is definitely a man’s country. If the opposite of woke is a backward thinking, cultural wasteland, with politicians that think it’s ok for staff to be sexually assaulted in parliament, then Australia is your place.

Never hear it here- there are other equally unpleasant words which shall be nameless but not that one.

What’s the ‘n’ word for goodness sake? I don’t know what you’re talking about.