No other country has implemented more radical feminist ideology and made it into law than Sweden. No other country has sacrificed more equal rights in the name of radical feminist ideology than Sweden. No other country has invested so much time, energy and money on politically correct tokenism than Sweden. The feminists have taken the political scene in that country hostage and somehow established a national consciousness around their wacky agenda. In that country, they seem to face no opposition.
This is strangely frustrating to write. For one thing, there are so many examples of Swedish dingbat-ism, it's hard to know where to start. And as the born pisstaker I am, I feel my writing skills are almost redundant here, because truth is not only stranger than fiction, it's frequently also funnier. You will find me uncharacteristically gobsmacked, dear reader, positively lost for words.
Anyway, where to begin? Let's begin in the eastern Swedish town of Uppsala, where a local policy on pedestrian crossing signs has caused a scandal. Back in 2007, the town of Hässleholm was the first to introduce a sign depicting a female pedestrian in the interests of gender equality. Fair enough. Whatever makes you happy. Perhaps it helped more women get across the road. Anyway, they didn't have to feel left out in that town any more. In 2008, this became national policy and a standard design was approved for the new sign.
The woman on the sign, known as Fru Gårman ('Mrs. Walkman'), is a gender-sensitive version of her male counterpart, Herr Gårman, a name that translates both as 'Mr. Walkman' and 'This is where you walk.'
But somehow, in Uppsala, they put up the wrong sign, thereby falling foul of the national policy regarding the correct depiction of a female pedestrian. It has to be taken down again - at no small expense to the taxpayer - and replaced with the approved version. What's wrong with Uppsala's alternative Fru Gårman? She is simply 'too feminine'. More specifically, the breasts are 'too perky' and the skirt too short. Women who cross roads in Sweden are somewhat frumpier, as the official sign (below, right) indicates.
Personally, I don't see how either of these signs is a benefit or a danger to road safety. And to give them their due in Uppsala, none of the residents have complained.
Street signs are one thing. Personal pronouns are another. The swedish kindergarten Egalia has cancelled the use of the pronouns 'han' (he) and 'hon' (she) and replaced them with the genderless 'hen.'
"We use the word "Hen" for example when a doctor, police, electrician or plumber or such is coming to the kindergarten," said school director Lotta Rajalin (52). "We don't know if it's a he or a she so we just say 'Hen is coming around 2pm.' Then the children can imagine both a man or a woman. This widens their view.
Right.
This is part of a wave of gender neutrality sweeping Swedish society these days. Apparently, the first children's book has just been published in which the gender of the leading character is not specified. I bet that's an exciting read. It's also reported that the younger generation in Sweden is most likely to take on board the new neutral pronoun. Perhaps the reasoning is that if we pretend it's not there, gender will go away. Experience doesn't seem to suggest it, however.
Uralian languages traditionally have gender neutral pronouns: The third-person singular and plural personal pronouns are hän and he in Finnish, tema (ta) and nemad (nad) in Estonian and ő and ők in Hungarian, respectively, which always refer to persons or animals. But this traditional linguistic trait has not done anything to diminish gender roles in the societies where these languages are spoken. But hey, ideas don't have to make rational sense or be supported by evidence to become policy in Sweden. They just have to be popular amongst feminists!
In 2009, 26 year old father Ragnar Bengtsson began pumping his breasts to see if he could produce breast milk. I have no problem with this enterprising experiment. Had it been successful, it might have made modern men even more independent of women than we already are. Among feminists, the argument went that if fathers could breast feed their children, their mothers could return more quickly to the workplace. Yeah, why not? Why do men have nipples anyway? Answer me that. Mine are a bit hairy, but if the kid doesn't have a problem with it....
The funny thing about this particular news item was the dingbat commentary that accompanied it.
"Men often have trouble finding things. And if the mother is out, the child is screaming and they can't find the pacifier I'm sure there are a lot of men who give their baby their breasts," says professor of endocrinology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sigbritt Werner.
Do men have trouble finding things? Do women have trouble with reality? Perhaps men will be giving babies their breasts some day. What surprises me is that this dingbat thinks a lot of men do it already. What planet does she live on? Or is this a realistic scenario in Sweden?
One is of course naturally curious as to whether Bengtsson actually managed to get milk out of his tits. No. Apparently, all he got was sore breasts.
They do seem to be trying very hard in Sweden, don't they? I don't know if I find them charming or chilling. One can't help but wonder what they're actually trying to accomplish. I wonder if they even know, themselves. Why? What's the problem? What is it with Sweden? I don't pretend to know why, but The Stranglers had a stab at it back in 1978:
Fluctuations at a minimum
Hypochondriac tombstone
Sense of humour's gone astray somewhere.
Too much time to think
Too little to do!
Cos it's all quiet on the eastern front
(Sweden by The Stranglers)
That's enough samples of Swedish lunacy for now. There will be more. In the meantime, let's keep fucking with those feminists!
No comments:
Post a Comment