As an Australian: this is about as true as the idea that we all ride kangaroos to work and live in constant fear of dropbears.
That word in Australia is just as offensive as anywhere else, and I wish people would stop perpetuating the misconception that it's fine.
It's certainly not "part of our culture" or "just a normal word", and it's a little ironic that you would call out GP for "forcing cultural norms onto foreign countries" while in the same comment spreading falsehoods about Australian cultural norms.
Hard though it may be to believe, we're generally fairly civil down here.
>That word in Australia is just as offensive as anywhere else, and I wish people would stop perpetuating the misconception that it's fine.
That is completely untrue. You may not like it, plenty of Australians don't especially upper class people, but it is nowhere near as offensive here as it is in America. In America it's a full on slur that is never socially acceptable in any context. Here at worst it's a vulgar way to say something unless it's specifically directed at a woman (if it's directed at a woman in anger it is generally treated the same as Americans treat it), and at best it is actually just a normal thing to say to your friends. "Are you cunts ready or not?" is a very normal thing for working class Australians to say to their friends, same as "This cunts not like that, leave him alone" or "Are you serious cunt? You were gonna eat them all?" or "What are you cunts up to?". It can also be said in a non-endearing way even to people who aren't women, it has a pretty similar word distribution to "mate" (not completely identical, "My cunts and me wanna buy a ticket please" makes zero sense). Mate can be a very offensive word to use in context, or a completely benign word. Cunt is similar, it just has more offensive use cases than mate does.
The first paragraph of the linked Wikipedia says “In Australia and New Zealand, it can also be a neutral or positive term when used with a positive qualifier (e.g., "He's a good cunt").”
It's a neutral or endearing term pretty much anywhere in the country outside of places with too many gated communities and golf courses. You'll find more people (maybe enough to count on one hand) feigning offence than people actually being offended.
I call my friends cunts, they call me cunt, strangers call me cunt. It's vulgar, but vulgar and offensive are two different things.
Is this really a good argument for casual sexism for the sake of shock value? If we're going down that road, there are plenty of racial and homophobic slurs that are culturally acceptable (and encouraged!) in other cultures.
The key here is that in a lot of Australian culture, "cunt" is on par with "fucker" or "asshole" - there's nothing gendered about it as an insult. It's acceptable to use precisely because it's NOT sexist, racist, or otherwise any sort of slur.
Equally, we're not going to ban Spanish posters from using their word for "black", are we?
Ireland, from a cursory check of their profile. But it doesn't invalidate your point, I don't think it's gendered their either.
> ban
Words in my mouth. I'm not advocating a ban, we're discussing whether a word is appropriate on this forum.
> their word for "black"
A bit of a stretch, considering _that_ word isn't on par with "fucker" in Spanish. So ironically, yeah, I think we would ban a Spanish poster for using it in this context?
But I concede your point that if it's not gendered, the intent isn't sexist.
I strongly disagree it's sexist, casual or otherwise. Is "dickhead" sexist? These types of insults are based on taboo (sex, blasphemy, diseases, things like that). It's completely different than some racial epithet.
You can perceive it to be sexist, but I'm fairly confident that's a minority opinion.
I concede that it's regional, and I apologize for moralizing. However, I contend that in North America it's a majority opinion. "Cunt" is much more strongly gendered here.
> "dickhead"
Would you consider "whore", "slut" or "tart" sexist?
"Slut" and "whore" describe behaviour, so I'd say that's rather different. I don't know about "tart" – I can't recall ever using or encountering it, except for one film (where a guy calls guy bloke a "tart").
Look, I don't want to tell you how to perceive words because that's always a personal thing, but in huge parts of the world it's just a strong but generic insult. And in the end context and intent always matters, not words. "You dirty person of colour" is of course profoundly racists in spite of not using any racial epitaphs. It's not the words themselves that are problematic, it's the intent with which they're used. It seems pretty clear the intent of my comment was not sexist.
Might be trying to force your cultural norms onto foreign countries.