Australia's Culture of Rape and Exploitation

White Australians like to promote a certain image of themselves. The reality is significantly different…

I am a Berliner, but an Australian by birth. I thrive in Berlin culture; i am a scientist, a Burlesque performer, a BDSM Domme (actually a Hofdame, where i assist my adored Domina whore friends in their sessions). None of these things, which are all essential to my happiness, exist in Australia, where science is scorned and one couldn't possibly hope to assist a Domina without being a "full service" sex worker. I'll leave you to work out what that charming euphemism means, but as an asexual woman who is not into men in that way, that would be utterly impossible for me.

Dyke culture in Australia seems impossibly sexualized: the only places i have found are bars where lesbians pick each other up. In Berlin, my lesbian community has a cat team, a knitting craft team, a bushwalking team, a science nerds team, dinner nights where sparkling conversations flow…you get the picture. Dykes hanging out sharing everyday joys of life together and if sparks fly and sexual encounters happen, that's a bonus — it's not the main gig. I think this is partly owing to the difference between Dyke culture in both places, but also partly to the differences in how the two cultures approach neurodiversity, and ADHD is a thing for me.

Two homes on opposite sides of the world

I loathe the winter in Berlin, whereas the drier, bluer sky weather of Australia is much more suited to my mood. Both Australia and Europe near me have breathtaking natural beauty. My fave places in the world are the south of Bayern, the stunning forests and mountains of the west of Czechia, as well as the south coast of New South Wales with its magnificent Eucalypt forests. Indeed, these areas of Australia, Czechia and Germany have much in common in their stunning natural beauty. To spend summer days in any of these places fills my soul. For nature, Australia has the very slight edge in that it offers shallow water scuba diving, which i enjoy much more than the fewer, and much deeper, German and Baltic opportunities. I am highly sensitive to nitrogen narcosis and there is less life to see with less color in deep water. However, it is very cool to say that i have dived the fresh water lakes at Füssen, even if it is a little boring!

But Australian culture represents a lifetime of pain for me. The culture simply made no room for me whatsoever to be myself.

Two contrasting cultures

Australia is a brutal culture that is hard to describe to Europeans. Europeans, particularly Germans, have been forced to confront their atrocities, and my home town Berlin has known the misery of the Nazi years ending in complete and utter destruction by allied bombing and then the grief of the Trennung that irrevocably, forcibly separated families and loving relationships by capricious category of “Ost” and “West” alone. As i say to friends, Berlin does chaos. It’s had to deal with so much, and, as a result, there is a definite layer of kindness and understanding in its soul.

In stark contrast, Australia has never had to own its brutality. It loves to cultivate a progressive, puerile Paul Hogan “put a shrimp on the barbie” (which i swear i have NEVER once seen) friendly image. But it’s a flagrant lie. White, European Australia was grounded on the ideals of rape and exploitation, where God-entitled Europeans landed here to plunder the land. Anyone or anything who stood in the way of this rape was ruthlessly thrust aside, crushed, annihilated and exterminated. Our first people, the aboriginal Australians, were exterminated. The wholesale genocide of aborginal Tasmanians effaced Truganini’s people more than a century before the atrocities of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

But Australian culture represents a lifetime of pain for me. The culture simply made no room for me whatsoever to be myself.

Ancient and fragile lands were farmed with no forethought in the European farming tradition. Australian soils are amongst the oldest on the planet, leading swiftly to widespread ecosystem collapses in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The vast majority of our native forests are gone in Victoria, clear felled for transient production of charcoal, fuel, and paper exported elsewhere. As a result, Australia has been environmentally devastated by European occupation far more ruinously than the Old World.

Nature’s beauty is violated by entitled Australian culture

Further to Paul Hogan, another persona was Steve Irwin, aka the Crocodile Hunter. He exuded a faux ruggedness and, like Paul Hogan, a hammed up accent and Australian stereotype, and his faux character is emulated by a good many Australian men. However, as the writers of South Park keenly understood, there is an aspect of Steve Irwin that is quintessentially Australian — his propensity to violate in cultivation of a sick sense of power and mastery of the natural world.

Steve Irwin died exactly as above, parodying himself by violating animals. The abject fool swam directly over a short tailed stingray from behind. Anyone who knows the tiniest whit about these gentle animals, their nature and their ecology, knows that they have a terror of any large, dark shadow looming over them, especially since several species of shark are their predators. One would never swim over a ray, especially from behind. The one danger from these lovely creatures is a facial or thoracic stabbing from their only defense — their tail barb — if they are attacked or think you are their predator.

Humans are pretty much the same size and shape as the sharks that threaten them, so we are very frightening if we wear dark colored wetsuits. I myself wear a bright wetsuit (currently orange) out of consideration for animals who might otherwise mistake me for a shark. I genuinely believe that it seems to make underwater animals less afraid of me. Not only rays, but many animals like gorgeous parrotfish, Loligo squid, octopusses and the sublime cuttlefish. I am especially fond of cephalopods on my dives.

I'm dwelling on stingrays both because they are definitely a fave animal for me but also because they have an utterly false reputation as dangerous animals that must be exterminated in Australia. It is almost impossible in Australia to raise the subject of rays in conversation without someone referring to the evil of Steve Irwin's death. This attitude is the quintessential exploitative, entitled mindset very alive in Australia that believes the world belongs to us and that the animals who have made their homes here forever must give way to us.

I am incensed by incidents where rays are slaughtered or dragged out onto land to die in "retribution" for Steve Irwin — this was an especially prominent imbecility and atrocity committed the summer after he was killed. A Port Jackson Shark (vaguely similar to a ray and completely harmless) was taken from the water and cruelly dumped, alive, in the main street to die of suffocation in Portland, Victoria in the months after Irwin's death. I was as sickened by that crime as i was by the attempted rape of my aunt in 1978, and the mindsets of people who would do either are sickening and very alike. That was an act of cruelty that i found particularly disturbing and hard to get out of my head.

There have been only five recorded fatalities in Australia from stingrays and all involved a chest piercing when someone either swam over the top of one like Irwin or grabbed their tails. Misfortune is extremely rare and improbable, especially when one considers that they interact with people a great deal. Rays love to live near where fishers and swimmers are so that they can hoover up foodscraps and offcuts afterwards. They are as partial to picnic foodscraps carried into the water at high tide after a crowd visits a beach as they are of the scraps left by fishers! You will almost certainly encounter them if you spend any time wading in the shallows. If you are wearing dark clothes or a dark wetsuit and stand in the shallows where they are swimming, they will almost certainly not approach you or are likely to take flight.

Very, very occasionally an accident where someone walks on the animal happens in poor visibility conditions. A few unfortunate foot or calf stabbings happen each summer in Australia, where both ray and person survive as they were, but with a few aches and pains each for a few days. Stingrays are extremely docile animals, and indeed delightful to observe when you give them the space they need. They are definitely a fave for me. i shall never forget my daughter's first encounter with one when i was cradling her in my arms at the age of 12 months and walking in the shallows. A gigantic ray glided elegantly past us, circling around to check us out thoroughly. When unthreatened, they are extremely curious and show their obvious intelligence. Nakira was positively shrieking with pure delight as this graceful animal peered at us through her big puppy eyes! (lacking claspers and with the beautiful frilly pelvic fins of a girl, she was decidedly a gorgeously feminine creature!).

Stingrays are extremely docile animals, and indeed delightful to observe when you give them the space they need.

Steve Irwin has the dubious distinction of dying twice on South Park — the first time being chopped up by a helicopter blade, the second time by a stingray. He arrived in hell at a costume party being held by Satan, with it stuck to his chest. Satan took offense at the inappropriateness of parodying Steve Irwin so soon after his death. But when Satan learnt that it indeed was the real Steve Irwin, Satan threw him out of the party for not wearing a costume!

Cruelty is always threateningly just beneath the surface

This vicious undercurrent of rape, exploitation and cruelty remains very present barely beneath a gossamer thin surface of shine and appearances to this day. You don’t have to scratch too far below the faux affable surface layer of many Australians to see this brutality. Australian culture is far, far nearer to U.S. culture than to European or even British culture, despite the damage wrought by more than a decade of the Tories in that land. The “left” in Australia, embodied by the Australian Labor Party with its roots in the Union movement, is now decidedly and significantly to the right of the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands) in Germany.

A Maltese friend in Berlin once said something perceptive which resonated deeply with me: “In New Zealand, people come first. In Australia, money comes first.” She had spent seven years, half in Australia and half in New Zealand. As a native Australian, i’d never have thought to put it that way, but it’s eloquent and exactly my impression. The yawning cultural gulf between Australia and New Zealand is as wide as that between the U.S. and Denmark or the Netherlands, respectively.

This attitude is the quintessential exploitative, entitled mindset very alive in Australia that believes the world belongs to us and that the animals who have made their homes here forever must give way to us.

New Zealand at least worked out the Treaty of Waitangi. Australia has not a single institution, with the possible exception of its patriarchal Trade Union Movement, that might count as a civilizing bulwark against its savage culture of rape and exploitation. Unlike New Zealand, it has not a single one of the civilizing, social contract fostering, rule of law institutions that Europe has at long last matured to recognize. Its “constitution” is nothing more than a free trade and power sharing agreement between the eighteenth century colonies, and contains not a single human rights mention, let alone protection.

There are no free speech, due process or right to life protections that are the bedrock of European constitutions in this shriveled, impoverished, joke document. Like many US citizens, Australians on the whole are blinded by jingoistic exceptionalism, and i am sure to get many hate comments for that one, as well as cries of how i’m wrong because the High Court has declared an “implied freedom of political communication” as indispensable to the process of voting.

That’s very, very different from free speech, and means nothing if one is, for example, trying to hold corrupt authorities to account, especially the heavily privatized ones that dominate "small government"-obsessed Australian society now. Quite simply, to claim free speech exists is tendentious bullshit.

Aggressive Familiarity

Although D. H. Lawrence is not a fave author of mine, he did write the novel Kangaroo set in Australia during the early 1920s, and from it i gleaned two phrases that deeply resonate with how i see the culture of my birth country.

He refers eloquently to what he called our “aggressive familiarity” and “grating personability.” These two phrases describe the stultifying aspect of Australian culture that suppresses any tendency for independent thought, reflexion or personal development. It is an amoebic culture, driven wholly by immediate stimulus and gratification.

“Aggressive familiarity” and “grating personability” describe perfectly the background to an episode of violence perpetrated against me by a mainstream Kangaroo character last New Year's Eve and which i describe in another article.

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