It's been a few months since I had a conversation with two of my male friends over a beer at the pub about sport - and I still think about it often.
Actually, 'think' is too mild a term. I bristle with annoyance and anger about that conversation, often.
You see, my two 'woke' male friends, who are both in their 30s, who are in loving, equal relationships with women, who live in the centre of Sydney, and who consider themselves relatively progressive on topics like equality in the workplace... have a huge blind spot when it comes to women's sport.
Watch: The fact that ads like this even have to exist, is proof of how far we've got to go. Post continues after video.
As they told me on that Sunday afternoon at the pub: "Women's sport is just not as interesting as men's sport, it never will be - it's just a fact."
Their reasoning was that they like to watch athletes at the "top of their game" and biologically that's always going to be men. "That's just a fact", they reiterated.
A few drinks in by this point, I tried to argue with them. But it was two against one, and the more flustered I got, the more insistent they got that my "argument was piss-weak" and a "cop out".
Our patriarchal society might be slowly letting equality seep into certain spheres. But it seems there are lots of men who aren't quite ready to let the 'ladies' in on 'their' sport.
How as a society can we expect to move towards true equality for men and women when even the younger generations are blind to the double standards they're vocalising?
My two 'woke' friends weren't even ready to listen to my argument. They consider themselves set in their ways.
If that's where their heads are at, I fear we've got an even longer road ahead than I naively thought.
Is equality for women's sport going to be something I witness in my lifetime?
I'm holding out hope.
Feature image: Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images.
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