Robert Newman
Banned
Scandinavia, Militant Feminism and Social Engineering
With the US Congress about to take up the Federal Marriage Amendment, let’s travel a little and take a look at how marriage is faring in Scandinavia — specifically Sweden, famous as a bellwether of family change. In 1987, Sweden offered same-sex couples the first domestic partnership package in Europe. This led Denmark in 1989, then Norway in 1993, to set up a more elaborate system of “registered partnerships” (with nearly all the rights of marriage), which Sweden adopted in 1994. Some of these changes were discussed and published in 'The End of Marriage in Scandinavia' (2004) and happened since then.
2004 and 2005 saw the growth, collapse, and apparent rebirth of a campaign to abolish Swedish marriage and replace it with instead by law as a 'gender-neutral partnership system' that allows for multi-partner relationships. This story of the drive to abolish marriage in Sweden is bound up with one of the most bizarre and fascinating political tales of recent years: the rise and burnout of Sweden’s first political party built entirely around women’s issues: the Feminist Initiative (FI).
Youthful Polyamory
Our adventure begins in March of 2004, when one of the few conservative papers in Sweden, 'Nya Dagen', reported that a local youth wing of Sweden’s governing Social Democrat party had endorsed the idea of replacing marriage with a gender-neutral, multi-partner-friendly marriage system. Around the same time, the youth wing of Sweden’s Green party called for formal recognition of polyamorous (i.e. multi-partner) relationships. Editorializing against these moves, Nya Dagen pointed out that the leaders of these youth parties would someday be sitting in parliament. Nya Dagen reminded its readers that the public had been promised no further changes in the family after the initial same-sex partnership legislation in 1987, and again after Registered Partnerships in 1994. Don’t believe it! said Nya Dagen. Unless the country reverses course, Sweden will surely slip further down the slope. That editorial prompted an angry letter from, Einar Westergaard, a spokesperson for the Green party’s youth wing:
What we are trying to achieve is a sexual revolution and counteract the hierarchy that gives heterosexuality privileges and represses other forms of social life....The two-person standard is part of society’s heterosexual norm...(whereas it is our) aspiration to make the laws as norm-free as possible....Marriage is not the key to homosexual, bisexual, and transgender liberation. What’s essential is the battle for norm-free, sex-neutral legislation, and a society without heterosexual norms.”
Certainly, a pro-polyamory movement among the youth divisions of Sweden’s ruling left-wing coalition bodes ill for the future. Yet the marriage-abolition bandwagon got rolling a whole lot sooner than Nya Dagen could have guessed. It merely took a little help from Sweden’s feminists. Feminist Pressure
Only a few months after their first pro-polyamory upsurge, in the summer of 2004, Sweden’s feminists grew restive with the apparent failure of their attempt to impose gender quotas on the nation’s businesses. In 2002, Equality Minister, Margareta Winberg, had set a much publicized target of 25-percent female representation on the boards of Sweden’s publicly listed companies. Winberg threatened government-imposed quotas if this “goal” was not reached by 2004. With gender quotas already in place in Norway, Sweden’s businesses had to take the threat seriously. Yet by 2004, Sweden’s companies were nowhere near compliance, with women making up only 11.6 percent of board members. What’s more, a majority of parliament opposed business gender quotas. True, the Left Party and Green party supported quotas, but the key to the governing left-wing coalition, the Social Democratic party, was deeply divided over the proposal. So it looked like a major defeat for Sweden’s powerful feminists was in the offing. They’d promised to impose business gender quotas by 2004 if the “goals” weren’t met, yet Sweden’s feminists seemed unable to carry through on their threat.
To break the log jam, Gudrun Schyman, a charismatic member, and former head, of Sweden’s Left party, decided to form a new political party called the “Feminist Initiative.” As the West’s most secular country, where changes in family structure and gender roles are most “advanced,” Sweden is the center of world feminism. If Sweden’s many feminists could be drawn into a single party, reasoned Schyman, the governing Social Democrats might be forced to bring them into its coalition. The price would be Social Democrat support for a package of feminist legislation, including business gender quotas. This strategy risked splintering the vote on the left and turning the country over to a coalition of social moderates. Yet if a feminist party could draw more than the four-percent minimum of the votes required for parliamentary representation, prospects for a brave new world of feminist legislation were strong.
Feminist Shopping List
A few months before Schyman left the Left party to form the Feminist Initiative, she had stirred up controversy by proposing a “man tax:” a tax leveled only on men, to help pay for the government’s extensive array of feminist-run shelters for battered women. Schyman’s “man tax” idea stirred outrage from more moderate commentators like Liza Marklund: “To declare that all men are guilty of all rapes, that all men are guilty of violence against women — that’s not just offensive and wrong; if the purpose is to get anywhere with this issue it’s just plain stupid.”
Marklund’s comments proved prophetic. Yet the man-bashing had to reach an unheard of pitch before the reaction finally began. So long as the “man tax” and business-board quotas were the issue, Schyman’s promise to “break down the patriarchal order of power” through FI (the Feminist Initiative) enjoyed wide support. Early polling showed that five percent of the public would “definitely” vote for FI, and an amazing 20-25 percent said they would at least consider supporting FI. Numbers like that could easily have brought business-board quotas, a man-tax, and many other feminist proposals into law.
Even during this early period of popular support, the Feminist Initiative floated some remarkably radical ideas. FI planned to change Sweden’s rape laws by requiring men to ask women permission for sex (something like the famous rules of sexual engagement at Antioch College). There was also a call for “comparable worth” legislation, to equalize pay between professions dominated by men (e.g., truck drivers) and women (e.g., phone operators).
A central plank of FI’s platform was forcing fathers to take as much time off for childcare as mothers. (Most of the one-year leave allowed to Swedish parents can be taken by either the mother, the father, or both). Determined to eliminate all differences between men and women, Sweden’s feminist wanted to assign half of this leave to fathers alone. That would force fathers to spend as much time on early child-rearing as mothers, or would push children into the day care system at six months of age. (Most Swedish children enter state-run day care at age one.) Either alternative would strike a huge blow against traditional family roles. Sweden’s feminists also hoped to promote androgyny through gender quotas for day care workers, and through attempts to suppress the gender-specific behavior of boys and girls in day care.
Feminist Gains
Schyman’s strategy quickly bore fruit. To stem the tide of feminist deserters, left-leaning parties put forward proposals modeled on FI’s platform. The governing Social Democrats recommended an “equality bonus” for families that took the same amount of paternal and maternal leave.
And as one of many concessions to FI, the government agreed to consider adopting formal same-sex marriage (instead of “registered partnerships”). Together, the three left-coalition parties (the Social Democrats, the Left Party, and the Greens) decided to give lesbian couples the right to receive artificial insemination from the government’s health service. This eliminated one of the sole remaining differences between registered partnerships and marriage.
Lesbian couples were given the benefit of government-supported insemination regardless of whether they were registered partners or simply cohabiting. That is quite the opposite of what the “conservative case” for same-sex marriage would predict, of course. The government was treating registered partnership on a par with mere cohabitation as a setting for parenthood. The government also agreed that both members of the lesbian couple would be recognized as a child’s mother, thereby creating potential claims of triple parenthood and contributing to the notion that fathers are dispensable. The new regulations on lesbian insemination came into effect in July of 2005, along with a number of other measures designed to promote androgyny (for example, a measure that prohibits businesses from charging women more than men for the “same” service — say, a haircut).
By spring of 2005, the Feminist Initiative was riding high. The new cultural mood emboldened Sweden’s feminists both in and out of government. As a result of feminist threats, for example, the Miss Sweden pageant was canceled (for the first time since 1952).
'Men Are Animals'
In the midst of all this feminist success, trouble struck with the Swedish broadcast of a televised documentary called 'The Gender War'. This close-up look at Sweden’s feminist movement exposed a degree of radicalism that shocked even Sweden’s socially liberal public.
The documentary featured prominent feminist academic and activist, Eva Lundgren, claiming that half of all Swedish women are victims of male violence. Lundgren went on to assert that a network of male Satanist groups had carried out hundreds of ritual baby murders in Sweden. (A formal inquiry by Uppsala University has since discredited both claims.) Another segment of the documentary featured Ireen von Wachenfeldt, chair of the government’s women’s shelters. Von Wachenfeldt’s remarks set off what soon became known as the “men are animals” controversy.
Under Von Wachenfeldt, the government’s women’s shelter network had printed excerpts from the “SCUM Manifesto” (Society for Cutting Up Men), penned by a radical feminist in the late 1960s. The SCUM Manifesto urges women to “destroy the male sex” by using modern science to insure that only female children are born. SCUM goes on to say: “To call a man an animal is to flatter him: he’s a machine, a walking dildo.” Asked by the film-maker if she agreed, Von Wachenfeldt said, “Yes, man is an animal. Don’t you think so?”
Lundgren and Von Wachenfeldt’s televised statements set off shock waves in a Sweden perhaps soon to be governed by a coalition that would include FI. After all, the “man tax” would fund a shelter system run by a woman who appeared to despise men. The government’s new Equality Minister, Jens Orback, seized on the controversy to criticize Von Wachenfeldt’s “separatist” decision not to work with or employ men in government shelters.
Thrown off-balance by the controversy, the Feminist Initiative tried to find a “male feminist” to place on its governing board. Unfortunately, their chosen male candidate declined the honor.
Dogged by the “men are animals” controversy through the spring and summer, the Feminist Initiative headed into its critical September 2005 convention determined to emerge with a winning platform. Yet the convention saw divisions emerge. After a bitter power-struggle, several “moderates” resigned from FI’s board. They complained that a “broad-based” program (focused, say, on business quotas and compulsory paternity leave) was being pushed aside by a radical coalition dominated by homosexuals, bisexuals, and the transgendered. One erstwhile FI board member said she’d been “bullied for being a middle-class heterosexual.”
Determined to transcend “patriarchal norms,” FI decided against having official leaders. Yet now the purged “moderate” feminists complained of a “democratic deficit” on the board. The Feminist Initiative had become “much worse” than the traditional patriarchal organizations it was meant to replace, said one. In other words, “man tax” advocate and de facto leader, Gudrun Schyman, was in control, purging the “moderates” (themselves quite radical by American standards) and siding with the radicals. The entertainment at the conference further radicalized the party’s image, particularly the rapturous applause for a song that went, “F***ing man, we’re going to chop you to bits.”
The slope from gay marriage to polyamory and ultimately to no marriage is not slippery by accident, but by design.
(Taken from articles in -
http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/...0602220826.asp
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