Saturday, February 12, 2011

Aussie Males & Scandinavian Females...

Because my words have been taken out of context and remixed into something that doesnt really reflect how I think, i am going to set things straight in relation to this whole Australian Male chauvinist issue.


What i said to the journalist last summer, was along the following lines while trying to explain why that could have happened in Sweden: 

One has to bear in mind the cultural differences between people from Australia and Scandinavia. Australian men often experience Scandinavian females to be feminists in a negative way while Scandinavian females experience Australian men to be a bit of a male chauvinists. This can often lead to massive misunderstandings - the problem might also be caused by that deep cultural differences can not be detected on the surface but something people gradually discover after a while.

I have lived in both Australia and Sweden and experienced how these misunderstandings develop because of different cultural acceptance of roles and power. I did not mean to insult the entire male population in OZ. Just trying to explain cultural differences early on in the Swedish case. 

But of course as always happens when words are recycled through many paths, people and media  - they tend to loose the context and are no longer a part of a larger picture and dont reflect at all what one said to begin with.

I do think compared to Scandinavian males that Australian males often come across as a bit of a male chauvinist and I think compared to Australian females Scandinavian females often come across as a bit of a female chauvinists. 

1 comment:

NingúnOtro said...

Dear Birgitta,

This whole Aussie Females & Scandinavian Males affair (yes I know, I switched roles) is going nowhere, the way it has been and is being handled, because the issue is not what exactly you did say or mean to say... what has to be understood (and not everybody is able to, much to our dismay) is the different logistics of on-line speech versus traditional media coverage versus small-scale neighborhood divulgation. In each case, a different magnitude of divulgation is involved and an inverse magnitude of control about what exactly is being transmitted.

People have different interests, different ideologies, and different levels of understanding what they consider right or wrong... and on the internet, they are all just one click away of telling you what they understand you said and how they think about it. Unfortunately, those that understand most the perils of on-line dynamics are the least inclined to post irreflexive and spontaneous reactions, and tend to be like the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Asimetric one to many communication is increasingly combersome when everyone in the haystack expects one to one recognition levels without regards to the dynamics of the particular medium they use without knowing its pitfalls.

Many grow frustration because they feel ignored, not understanding the mere imposibility of one to one public relations on the internet. I've seen many posts receive thousands of comments in a few hours, but people simply do not understand that if it takes you five minutes to write one simple meaningful comment... you can never cope with a queue that receives even two or three comments every five minutes. It's nobodies specific fault, it is merely the mediums dynamic.

Spend your time wisely, trying to avoid creating useless polemics from the very start, and not fighting any battles you can't win.

Most people need to increase their awareness of many merely logistic mechanics as these if they want to be useful for any purpose or contribute towards the reaching of any goal at all... because the few with good ideas are too thinly spilled to have to play the nannies role to all the rest.

Once they said the one-eyed was king in the land of the blind... but nowadays, more and more, those desperately seek to obtain a loan to pay for the surgery to have that one removed too.