There, now that we are just among us guys let’s talk about something you really want to know about – the women of Australia! The sheila’s of Australia were like a breath of fresh air after six weeks in the cultures of India and Japan. Not that those two countries lacked beautiful women, they possess just as many stunning beauties as Australia. The distinction is cultural and this difference is something the men of western cultures should be proud of! More about that later.

The difference hit me as soon as I was walking off the plane after we first landed in Australia. Outside the cabin door, a dozen Australian women of a wide variety of ages were lined up ready to clean the plane after the passengers left. To be honest I don’t remember if they were attractive or not and they were dressed in maintenance overalls so no provocative dress came into play. No, what hit me was seeing, for the first time in six weeks, women who appeared alive. Women who were bright eyed, friendly, chatty, even flirtatious. What they were not is submissive. I bet most of these women would beat me in a bar arm-wrestling contest.

Women’s roles in Japan and India, by contrast, struck me as very different. In Japan, particularly, a woman’s subservience is embedded in many facets of culture and language, even down to the syntax and the tone of the spoken language. Many external critics of western cultures criticize western women and focus on the way they dress. I seriously doubt their real objection is to “provocative” dressing habits. I think the real objection, when you peel away the layers of bunk, is that western women tend to think and act for themselves. In Japan, a lot of young women dress as women dress anywhere in the west, but the cultural tendency toward subservience still often governs their interactions with men.

Not that I am complaining about the lack of conservative dress in Australia – they tend to flaunt what they’ve got. In addition I read in the Sydney papers that the city has a serious shortage of available men since, they claim, Sydney has a greater percentage of gay men then San Francisco. I read this to Catherine and said we should give serious thought to moving here. Catherine just chuckles bemusedly when I make such comments. She knows that I lack the courage to approach any of the young women of Australia. Should I by some miracle develop such courage, being the ugly toad that I am, I would be slapped silly or, worse, laughed at mercilessly (if not by the young woman then by my wife.)