As the story of the Greek woman in Crete who set alight the drunken British tourist’s testicles hit news websites, people I know started their commentary.
“That’s a bit over the top,” one colleague said. “He was drunk after all.”
Ah yes, because he was drunk, we all have to give him a little bit of leeway in whatever he does, because, well, he was drunk.
Never mind that he was forcefully fondling her and asking her to touch his genitals which he was waving around in full view of everyone in the bar.
The woman has become a hero in Greece it seems and not only, I suspect, because she acted in self defence.
Greeks are disgusted and fed up with the debauched behaviour of Brits in Greece.
As a teacher on the island of Rhodes told me: “They come here and think they can trash the place, behave appallingly and get away with it.”
“Imagine,” his friend, shaking his head in disbelief, said to me in the same conversation. “Being in the company of someone all night and the next day, they have no idea who you are because they were so drunk, they can’t remember.”
A family friend, a man in his fifties who works at one of the hotels in Zakynthos frequented by British tourists understands this experience.
“They come in groups – usually married couples. The husbands get so drunk that they pass out, then the wives start propositioning us. They’re so out of it, they take off their bras and show us their breasts! Don’t these people know how to flirt?”
Don’t these people know how to flirt? That’s a good question and one that I’ve been thinking about since I returned to Melbourne.
Getting plastered in order to have a good time is just as prevalent here as it is in Britain.
There are many examples where Australian men have no capacity to express desire and interest in a woman unless they are literally off their faces and making, at best, clumsy advances which they are often too inebriated to take to their full conclusion, or at worse, acting like aggressive idiots.
A young woman who arrived here from Greece seven months ago as a skilled migrant and with every intention of staying here, phoned me two weeks after I returned, announcing her intention to leave.
She points to her experiences of socializing with her peers as a major contributing factor.
“I find the people here are colourless and restrained in general. I find the men totally straight laced- there’s absolutely no indication that they’re interested in you – then they get drunk and they are completely ridiculous.”
Prior to coming to Australia, she had spent six months in Denmark and had studied in Spain, so it’s not as if she had not lived in other countries and experienced other cultures.
What is it about Anglo-Australian culture that seems to see virtue in repression in daily life with the occasional explosion of drunken fuelled antics?
I suspect that this idiot with burns to his genitals in Crete is thinking that he was ‘just having a bit of fun’.
I suspect a many Australians and Brits will be agreeing with him.
That this was a ‘lark’ that was taken the wrong way. I can see their point of view, having lived in this culture and having witnessed this kind of behaviour.
I remember one night my mother and I were in the car driving to a function in Melbourne when we stopped at a set of traffic lights.
A man crossing the road, with an obvious drunken swagger, looked into the car, faced us and pulled his pants down.
He then shook his penis at us, as if showing off his prized possession.
My mother tooted the horn at him and laughed. “E, spoudaio to lahano,” (big deal) she said. “Na to hairese.”
(I hope your happy with it).
She tooted the horn again, to which he responded by turning around and showing us his bum.
When he wouldn’t move, she fetched the umbrella out of the back seat and opened the door, and ran at him with the intention of whacking him.
Before she could reach him, he pulled up his pants and scampered away.
She didn’t hit him, but she had no hesitation in doing so. And if she had, who knows what could have emanated from it.
The man was a disgusting nuisance and as far as she was concerned, there was no excusing it just because he was drunk.
The British Government has urged Greece to ban ‘bar hopping’ tours and to help stop young British tourists from getting into trouble as a result of drinking too much.
Greek and British police met on the island of Zakynthos to discuss the problem in late July.
While any initiative is good, mightn’t it be a good idea if Anglos stopped deflecting from their own problems or trying to excuse their problems – and this is clearly their problem – and took some responsibility for their own behaviour?
Somebody surely, must be able to tell them there are saner and safer ways to attract the attention of the opposite sex.
Jeana Vilthoukas is a published author, works for a major social policy research company in Melbourne and is a regular contributor to NKEE.