sweden

This is one of the images some feminists objected to in an H&M advertising campaign a year ago. The object to be sold is underwear, so there’s no way to advertise it without showing flesh. I’m thinking about this in relation to the idea of Gender Equality, taking the case of Sweden, where H&M has its home. While I intuitively understand the concept of equality as a general principle, I don’t when it applies to sex. I have never understood how we think we can absolutely measure the sexual experience or know when people have enjoyed themselves ‘equally’. Lots of people know when they haven’t had a good time in bed, but in fact many people also don’t know because they haven’t had enough experience to be able to compare. And taste comes into it, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.  As well as the fact that we indisputably are trapped within patriarchy. That’s the direction I’m taking in my exploration of the meaning of hegemonic Gender Equality policy at The Local, a Swedish news site in English. And here’s the underwear one commentator thinks might be ‘equal’ enough to please some feminists:

Violence Against Women: Too much of a bad thing? 

Laura Agustín, The Local, 10 November 2009

It might sound odd to talk about silences on the topic of gender equality in Sweden, since discussions of it seem to run non-stop. But that is how hegemony works: a constant bombardment of words, most of which reiterate the opinions of a single powerful group. Differences of opinion are usually quibbles over details to a central idea that’s accepted as being indisputable because it’s supposed to be normal.

Gender equality in Sweden is a perfect example. Voices that want to question its foundations are not heard, which is what Maria Abrahamsson, a veteran editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, meant when she said that ‘open discussion’ is missing about certain aspects of gender law and policy.

Some of what you hear from state feminists refers to assuring that women are represented in government and paid as well and have the same opportunities to work as men, and that men have the same opportunities to be good parents that women do. These are the policies for which Sweden ranks highly compared with most other countries. When the word jämställdhet is heard here, chances are that the details of these issues are being discussed. I say details because the policies have been in place for some time, and no one questions the need to make citizens in general more ‘equal’ in a democratic-type society.

The problem is that much of what state feminists say centres around the concept of Violence Against Women (våld mot kvinnor, often referred to as kvinnofrid, the legal protection of women). The mantra is ‘We have a big problem with violence against women’. Repeated over and over, it becomes a truth difficult to break into questionable pieces, rather providing a reason for endless conversations about how to stop men from committing aggressions against women. A point of view that says ‘Wait a minute, all those things you’re talking about shouldn’t be called violence!’ is rarely heard in public discussions.

It’s not that people in Sweden, feminists and non-feminists alike, never discuss this exaggerated notion of violence in bars, cafes, emails, blogs and occasional seminars. The issue is that the basis of policy, the quite extreme definition of violence and the reductionist idea of what’s ‘good for women’ is so rarely questioned in any visible, public way, whether the mainstream media or parliament. And by questioning I don’t mean the occasional online article with its cloud of comments; I mean a sustained conversation.

Violence Against Women (often known in English-speaking countries as VAW) is problematic when it relies on the idea that women are always, innately weaker than men. More than physical strength is at stake, although the words heard most are abuse, assault, battering. VAW has come to signify different sorts of coercion, threats, and moral strangleholds men are conceived as naturally committing on women, just because men are born that way. Women’s bodies are conceived as inherently vulnerable to men’s invasion and use, which oddly doesn’t produce a demand that women be granted full autonomy over their own bodies.

Partial autonomy is granted: women shall be allowed to have abortions and be listened to when they say No to sex. These are great as far as they go. But on other issues, women’s bodies are conceived as objects for government policymakers to decide about: a contradiction that drives many women, the world over, round the bend. Gender policy is also problematic when it assumes that women are innately better than men – kinder, more peaceful, more capable of love, less capable of violence, preferring certain forms of balanced, meaningful sex.

Louise Persson’s blog frihetspropaganda is the best place I know to hear the other point of view in Sweden. Blogging since December 2003, Persson is the author of Klassisk Feminism. Discussing an H&M advert that showed a woman wearing underwear in her home, which one state feminist, Gudrun Schyman, not only denounced as soft porn but also equated with hard porn, prostitution, trafficking and slavery, Persson complains that Schyman presumes to speak for All Women. In the case of the underwear advert, we can ask: What about women who want to wear sexy lingerie at home, or be photographed wearing it, or make money being photographed wearing it or wear it as a prelude to selling sex?

It was a rare occasion the other night when Aschberg brought Abrahamsson together with Schyman to discuss how gender-equal Sweden is. Abrahamsson said yes, Sweden is gender-equal, especially relative to the rest of the world, and would like to stop talking about jämställdhet and switch to jämlikhet – another word for equality that hasn’t got the baggage of gender and sex. Schyman said no, Sweden isn’t gender-equal and, interestingly, complained that she has no one to discuss the problem with. (Would she like to talk with the model in the H&M ad?)

I’ve got questions about the idea of equality in the first place. Must it mean sameness, exact balance, symmetry? Especially in the area of sex and bodies, that will always be impossible. The core complaint against Sweden’s version of gender equality is that the diversity of women’s mental, spiritual and sexual desires is not recognised and that women who conceive of their bodies differently, who feel empowered in other ways than VAW hegemony recognises, are ignored.

This difference of vision is the subject of exhausting, resource-wasting battles all over the world – which I wrote about some years ago under the title Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes? The conflict, if possible, has only grown more venomous since then. How is it that Sweden, with its cultural value on avoiding conflict, can reconcile causing so much of it?

After living in the south of Sweden for the past year, I’m opening up a new blog at The Local, Sweden’s English-language news website. I’ve called it The Other Swedish Model. Here I’m going to think about the current politics of gender, sex and culture in the context of Sweden, whose legal prostitution regime is being debated all over the world. From very early on I realised that people outside Sweden are generally wrong about what Sweden is and does, as why wouldn’t they be? We get such cartoonish impressions of things from the media. I called this introductory post

The pleasures of dissent: Not?

The Local, 28 October 2009

At a drinks reception not long ago I referred nonchalantly to the fact that Sweden is supposedly the world’s most gender-equal state. A shiver was felt; eyes rolled. Had I said supposedly? Was I actually questioning Sweden’s version of Gender Equality – jämställdhet? That, it seems, is practically taboo in Sweden.

A spate of articles on ‘the Swedish model’ appeared during the recent US debate about health care. The term usually refers to a generous welfare state funded by high taxes that is not ’socialist’ but free-market: tricky. But another aspect of Swedish government and culture captures the imagination of many round the world: contemporary gender policy, ideas about sex and equality. According to several important statistical indicators, Sweden leads the way in promoting equal rights between women and men – important achievements. But in other ways that can’t be captured by statistics the picture is not so clear. There are doubts and disputes, and those happen right here inside Sweden – not to mention between Swedes wherever they live, as Anna Anka bizarrely showed.

The word consensus is often used to describe how issues like gender equality are understood in Sweden. This has bothered me because the word seems to imply that all Swedes have participated in marxian study groups to discuss social questions in depth and come to reasoned general positions. This is not the case: Gender policy is government policy, no more and no less, even if it was the cornerstone of Social Democratic government at its shiningest hour. There are Swedes who feel that this policy has become a rigid ideology that goes too far, but their opinions are rarely seen in the more highly respected mainstream media. This means that most people in Sweden don’t know there are disputes and may frown heavily when hearing them. This is too bad, because the issues are thorny, interesting and worthy of public debate.

By saying that, I clearly reveal my own bias towards interesting disagreement that can push us forward to new ideas. In the many countries and cultures I’ve lived in, differences of opinion are viewed as potentially productive. Even outright dictatorships believe that, which is why they forbid free speech. In Sweden, however, I am told again and again, conflict is considered negative; the goal is to coexist together agreeably. Vara sams: to be on good terms. Osams is bad: being at loggerheads, falling out. ”We just want to exchange the same ideas and tastes,’ said Åke Daun, author of Svensk Mentalitet. Swedes are said to suffer from konflikträdsla, fear of conflict, and therefore feel uncomfortable when dissenting views are aired.

I have no interest in setting up a cultural hierarchy in which Sweden loses status in favour of some other, supposedly better culture. I’ve never lived anywhere that didn’t have very good points and very bad ones simultaneously. No, I’m  interested in ideas about gender and sex and how Sweden got where it is – a sort of anthropological point of view.

For those who wish each nation to be left to itself by outsiders, it’s important to note that the Swedish government itself doesn’t do that on this topic. In contrast to 1969, when Susan Sontag wrote that ‘Swedes were not disposed by temperament to export aggressively what they practice,’ today’s government speaks of the Swedish ‘mission’ to enlighten the world’s policy, for example in the Swedish Institute’s project, Equal Opportunities – Sweden Paves the Way, an exhibition available for use in international conferences and seminars. Projects to export ideology always bear watching.

I’ve lived here for a year and meet Swedes all the time who don’t agree with some aspects of national gender policy. They would like to see much more diversity in mainstream media discussions, including arguments, with the possibility of changes to policy. They  feel marginalised by the mainstream exclusion and disapproval of their views. I live in Malmö ( the subversive south to some) but the disgruntled Swedes I know live all over the country. 

I’ll link when I can to Swedish writers’ work, in books and articles and blogs, and take a historical view when possible. Policies and values that made wonderful sense at one time can seem oddly outdated only a decade later, rather like hairstyles. Zeitgeists are funny things; cultural contexts shift; a word that once seemed self-evident now rings untrue. Originally, jämställdhet referred to equality in general (jämn numbers are even numbers), particularly the goal of abolishing social class. Now when the word is used it is understood to mean, overarchingly, gender equality.

My own first ideas on Swedish gender policy appeared in The Local earlier this year as Is rape rampant in gender-equal Sweden? Read the rest of this entry »

As regular readers know, I’m trying to figure out how the lovely utopian goal of Gender Equality landed us in a future I never expected, where ‘progressive’ and ‘feminist’ could be associated with policies that position women as innately passive victims. Activists interested in sex-industry legislation usually cite Swedish prostitution law as the fount of all evil, with its criminalisation of the buying of sexual services. This law is a cornerstone of an overall Swedish policy to foment Gender Equality, and so is rape legislation that has led to bizarre statistics commented on in this story published the other day in Sweden’s English-language daily The Local. 

The Local, 11 May 2009 

Is rape rampant in gender-equal Sweden?

Laura Agustín

from okejsex.nu

Rape is a complicated crime. A research project funded by the European Commission’s Daphne programme reveals that Sweden leads Europe in reports of rape. At 46.5 per 100,000 members of the population, Sweden far surpasses Iceland, which comes next with 36, and England and Wales after that with 26. At the same time, Sweden’s 10 percent conviction rate of rape suspects is one of Europe’s lowest.

The report’s comparative dimension should probably be ignored. Instead of assuming that there are four times as many rapes in Sweden as in neighbouring Denmark or Finland, as the figures suggest, to understand we would have to compare all the definitional and procedural differences between their legal systems. It is significant that Sweden counts every event between the same two people separately where other countries count them as one. Most of Sweden’s rapes involve people who know each other, in domestic settings.

The countries reporting highest rates of rape are northern European with histories of social programming to end violence against women. In Sweden, Gender Equality is taught in schools and reinforced in public-service announcements. Should we believe that such education has no effect, or, much worse, an opposite effect? Raging anti-feminist men think so, and raging anti-immigrant Swedes blame foreigners. Amnesty International says patriarchal norms are intransigent in Swedish family life. Everyone faults the criminal justice system.

In contemporary Sweden, women and girls are encouraged to speak up assertively about gender bias and demand their rights. Public discussions have revolved around how to achieve equal sex: Gender Equality in the bedroom. We can consult okejsex.nu, an official campaign whose homepage shows pedestrians obliviously passing buildings full of scenes of violence, suggesting it is ubiquitous behind closed doors. Okejsex defines rape as any situation where sex occurs after someone has said no.

In many countries, and in many people’s minds, rape means penetration, usually by a penis, into a mouth, vagina or anus. In Swedish rape law, the word can be used for acts called assault or bodily harm in other countries.

That may be progressive, but it’s also confusing. You don’t have to be sexist or racist to imagine the misunderstandings that may arise. If younger people (or older, for that matter) have been out drinking and dancing and end up in a flat relaxing late at night, we are not surprised that the possibility of sex is raised. The process of getting turned on – and being seduced – is often vague and strange, involving looks and feelings rather than clear intentions. It is easy to go along and actively enjoy this process until some point when it becomes unenjoyable. We resist, but feebly. Sometimes we give in against our true wishes.

Sweden is also proud of its generous policy towards asylum-seekers and other migrants who may not instantly comprehend what Gender Equality means here, or that not explicitly violent or penetrative sex acts are understood as rape. That doesn’t mean that non-Swedes are rapists but that a large area exists where crossed signals are likely, for instance, amongst people out on the town drinking.

Discussions of rape nowadays use examples of women who are asleep, or have taken drugs or drunk too much alcohol, in order to argue that they cannot properly consent to sex. If they feel taken advantage of the next day, they may call what happened rape. The Daphne project’s Sweden researchers propose that those accused of rape ought to have to ‘prove consent’, but attempts to legislate and document seduction and desire are unlikely to succeed.

What isn’t questioned, in most public discussions, is the idea that the problem must be addressed by more laws, ever more explicit and strict. Contemporary society insists that punishment is the way to stop sexual violence, despite evidence suggesting that criminal law has little impact on sexual behaviour.

We want to think that if laws were perfectly written and police, prosecutors and judges were perfectly fair, then rapes would decrease because a) all rapists would go to jail and b) all potential rapists would be deterred from committing crime. Unfortunately, little evidence corroborates this idea. Debates crystallise in black-and-white simplifications that supposedly pit politically correct arguments against the common sense of regular folk. Subtleties and complications are buried under masses of rhetoric, and commentaries turn cynical: ‘Nothing will change’, ‘the police are pigs’, immigrants are terrorists, girls are liars.

Is it realistic or kind to teach that life in Sweden can always be safe, comfortable and impervious to outside influences? That, in the sexual sphere, everything disagreeable should be called rape and abuse? Although the ‘right’ to Gender Equality exists, we cannot expect daily life to change overnight because it does.

A search for ‘webcam girls’ just bought me 4, 470, 000 hits in google. I was investigating the following story from The Local, a news source in English about Sweden. I noted a couple of suggestive points in bold in the text and made further comments at the end of it. Note that the statistics treat Sweden alone. And what about webcam boys?

Swedish taxman chases webcam strippers 

Charlotte West, 8 April 2009

The culprits are primarily girls who take off their clothes and offer sexual services in front of a web camera. The Swedish Tax Agency, Skatteverket, estimates there are between 300 and 500 individuals who earn money this way. So far the agency has identified close to 200 people. What the majority have in common is that they have neglected to declare their income.

“Young people are usually seen as poorly informed about how to file their taxes. That might be one explanation, but another reason is that their clients don’t want to be identified,” Dag Hardyson, project manager for Skatteverket’s investigation of online businesses, told TT.

In the last three years, Skatteverket has looked into three different areas: pills, poker and porn. During the course of their investigation, they noted that paid pornography sites have had an increasing difficulty peddling their wares as so much free content is available. But they also discovered that the demand for “webcam girls” has increased. At first, Hardyson and his team didn’t believe the phenomenon was particularly widespread in Sweden. “But our colleagues in Holland said, ‘We have a problem, so it’s obvious that you have a problem’,” he said.

They also explained that the success of the “webcam girls” rests in the fact they can speak Swedish with their Swedish customers, and it is that interaction that is most important. The business is entirely legal, but requires those offering the service to register for a corporate taxation certificate, as well as maintain records of expenses and income. According to Sveriges Radio, only one of the individuals audited by Skatteverket has submitted an income declaration. The businesses are estimated to generate around 40 million Swedish kronor ($5 million), at least 20 million of which is tax revenue.

While people usually imagine the biggest issue for webcam workers to be having the nerve to perform on camera, other problems are more important. As with phone sex, it’s an advantage to be able to work from home, but the question is how clients will find you, which leads to chat rooms, advertising and/or being part of big website agencies. Virtual brothels provide rooms and technology and pay wages. As usual with unregulated businesses, workers can get very bad deals. Recently I was sent a link to Cam-girl Notes, a site that describes itself as a place to ‘discuss the cam life and how people can cope with it.’

Most of the sex industry now uses the Internet in one way or another. Not long ago I posted something about paying to watch brothel sex. Let me know about other new forms you hear about (contact form to the right). I’m always interested in the blurry boundaries between commercial and non-commercial sex. Read about the cultural study of commercial sex here and here.

Dag Stenvoll works on the PROGEMI project at the Stein Rokkan Senter for Flerfaglige Samfunnsstudierin in Oslo, Norway. For all you who thought things couldn’t get worse than the ‘Swedish Model’, welcome to the Norwegian. The British are currently debating the Finnish. For anyone who drops by this website and thought Scandinavian models were tall, leggy women in fancy clothes, around here they are types of prostitution law that criminalise the buying of sex - the punter, the client, the customer. Dag writes:

Since January 1st, paying for sex (or attempting to) has been illegal in this wonderful oasis of gender equality and social democratic sex. Exactly ten years after our blond neighbours, Norway has installed an abolitionist law that reaches further than the Swedish one: Also buying sex abroad is made criminal. In principle, then (disregarding the obvious difficulties of enforcement), a Norwegian citizen can be fined or sent to jail for having made the deal anywhere in the world. No need even to be caught with your trousers down. Selling sex is, as before, not illegal, but all forms of organising are.

On Jan 4th, the first “whore client” (the charming Norwegian expression most commonly used for men who buy sex) was caught in Oslo. According to newspapers, the 44-year old man made a deal with a Norwegian street worker, who, when the car they were driving was stopped by the police, confirmed that they had agreed on a price (no action had still taken place, thank God!!). The man’s photo is shown in the tabloids; his face blurred but he must be easily recognizable for those who know him. He will be fined about €1000 for his crime, in addition to a life in shame. Not more than he deserves, the pig.

As this case indicates, convictions under the new law will depend heavily on either confessions by clients, or on sex workers’ willingness to admit that they’ve sold sex to, or, as in this case, made the deal with someone. Since most won’t admit this, for obvious reasons, a spokeswoman for the Oslo police says that prostitutes (sex worker is not a PC word in Norway) will be informed about their “duty to act as witness”. Reassuring indeed, for those who feared that the new law could turn out to be ineffective.

Whereas the Swedish sex-purchase prohibition was largely defended in terms of women’s equality, the Norwegian one has been framed as a measure against sex trafficking: If there is no demand, then there is no money to make dealing in supply. In this way, Norway confirms its self-congratulatory image as a human rights superpower. Yesterday, the Oslo police anti-trafficking squad announced that eight female Nigerian sex workers had been taken in for lacking legal residency, during an anti-trafficking operation directed at the indoor market. As none of them qualified as victims of trafficking (fortunately, or unfortunately?), they will be expelled, probably to a nice place called “home”, where, according to Norwegian folklore, foreigners are much better off than here.

In short: No reason not to open the champagne bottles and celebrate! Our peaceful streets and glorious consciousnesses will become cleaner than ever, tourists and good citizens will no longer be offended by visible and offensive whoring, and Norway will undoubtedly get an excellent grading in the next TIP report. I have never been so proud as in this very moment of being Norwegian. Let’s only hope that this wonderful policy will continue to spread, so that more and more oppressed women will come to enjoy the unmatched benefits of the Scandinavian model for sex: Always free, always equal, and always mutually enjoying.

Dag Stenvoll

Late last year I put up some positive pictures of Women Doing Things and promised I would be following up on this idea called Gender Equality. Dag’s comment on the different motivation for the Norwegian versus the Swedish legislation is important, so listen up: Sweden’s law is not about prudishness on the subject of sex - this is a widespread misunderstanding. If you’re not that old, you remember when Sweden was considered a sexual-liberation paradise. No, the goal of many Swedish policies is Gender Equality, and the prostitution law is a centrepiece. Now it’s ten years later, and the Norwegian government uses another justification for its law: to stop sex trafficking. Is the idea of Gender Equality changing?

The Local is an online newspaper published in Sweden, in English, about Sweden.  As some readers of this blog know, legislation that criminalises clients’ purchase of sex but not the sale of it is widely known as the Swedish Model. Two sides of a sociocultural conflict claim opposite effects for this legislation: that it solves the problem of prostitution and that it makes it worse. Research is brought forward to prove both sides and neither is persuaded of the other’s truth.

Sex with animals has, until recently, not been seen as a social problem like prostitution. The following news story illustrates the verging-on-hilarious ease with which THIS topic may be discussed publicly by a government Minister at the same time that talking about the sex industry, sex work and sex workers still causes deep frowns and anxiety for the majority of well-meaning educated Swedes.

My point is that ideas about sex are often not predictable within cultures, as another story, about naturists in Germany, showed. People often dismiss the Swedish law on prostitution as puritanism, but this is not sufficient and explains little. Please note the apparently progressive gender analysis and granting of agency and choice to the female dog who is penetrated by her owner.

Swedish bestiality ring exposed
11 Nov 08 

A Swedish newspaper has exposed a network of self-proclaimed zoophiles who meet regularly in locations around the country to have sex with animals.

The group, consisting of an estimated thirty people, is headed by a 45-year-old father of two, Expressen reports.

The unmarried former managing director is also moderator of a large internet animal sex forum and has a number of dogs and horses on his farm in southern Sweden.

Having infiltrated the network over a period of several months, Expressen eventually confronted the 45-year-old over his alleged mistreatment of animals.

But the man was quick to defend his relations with a bitch he bought online from a city-dwelling family who said they wanted the dog to have a better life in the countryside.

“Any of the times I did anything with her she was the one who backed into me and provoked it. She was in heat and made herself available. There were also times later when she didn’t want to and then I backed out immediately,” he told Expressen.

During the time spent with members of the network, Expressen learned that the group regularly brought along a range of different animals to “sex meetings” at rented premises.

There, members of the group filmed their sexual encounters and distributed them to other animal sex enthusiasts.

At one meeting in a small village in Småland, five men waited for a woman who had promised to bring along two dogs. But when she was unable to make it to the meeting, the men spoke instead of their experiences, including a previous visit to a colleague they referred to as “donkey man”.

“He has a goat and a couple of donkeys. We tried with a donkey but it didn’t work. But we did have sex with the goat,” one of the men told Expressen.

Previous calls for a law banning sex with animals have fallen on deaf ears. Agriculture Minister Eskil Erlandsson outraged many observers earlier this year with a graphic defence of existing animal abuse laws, in which he presented examples of the difficulties faced by courts when trying to differentiate affection from abuse.

“Is it, and should it be, legal to spread something on the genitalia that might smell or taste nice to a dog, in order to allow the dog to lick off whatever is spread on the genitalia?

“Should it be permitted to stroke a bitch’s teats with love, or should it be classified as animal sexual abuse?” the minister wondered.

According to the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency, 115 cases of bestiality were reported in the years 2000 to 2005.

Despite indications that many of the animals had sustained injuries, none of the reports led to criminal charges.  [end of The Local article]