Landskrona in southern Sweden will be the the first municipality to randomly drug test 8th and 9th graders. 20 percent of the students will be randomly selected for the testing. The tests will be administered by the school nurse, and the student’s parents or guardian has too consent as well before the test is administered. The student is allowed to say no, but then a letter will be sent home to the parents. That’s how “voluntary” this is. Of course students who say no will be pointed out as potential drug users and/or troublemakers, disrespectful of authority and refusing to buy the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of”-rhetoric.
Many people are critical, including the Swedish National Agency for Education. Although they are saying that the tests are not against the law, one of their lawyers asks whether it is really the school who should administer these kinds of tests, and also questions how the tests results will be handled with regards to confidentiality.
You know, drugs are definitely a societal problem which should be taken seriously. But blanket testing, disguised under some false voluntariness, is not the solution. I don’t think treating everyone as potential drug users, cheaters (not the sexual kind), criminals etc. are the way of creating a just, equal and thriving society. But what do I know, I’m just a bleeding-heart, terrorist-loving, Sweden-hating, tree-hugging communist.
Due to budgetary cuts, many schools nowadays do not have school nurses or counselors, or only have them very few hours weekly. In total, the number of adults in schools per student has gone down. And now the school nurse’s time will be clogged up from administering and following up and and filing drug tests. Is this wise use of seriously constrained budgets? I ask, wouldn’t it be better to spend the money on real preventive measures instead? (And by that I don’t mean the ridiculous scare-mongering propaganda that I was subjected to in school, the “if you smoke pot once you will end up a heroin-injecting homeless criminal”-kind, which was so easily debunked.)
I haven’t heard a single word about what kind of support would be given to the student who have given a positive drug test - it’s like this that I wrote about screening for partner violence among pregnant women: when you get the results, exactly what are you going to do with it? Report the student to the police? Kick them out of school? Offer them counseling? Enforce mandatory counseling? No-one has said anything about that. Probably they don’t know.
This is another of those measures which sounds good (making sure kids don’t get caught up in drugs, I’m all for that), but which merely paints over the real problems and doesn’t solve anything in the long run. It seems the preferred way of conducting politics nowadays, and I guess anything else would require quite a revolutionary remake of society. And we can’t have that. But now at least the politicians can pat each others backs and say that they are “tough on drugs”.
The debate article I wrote about the other day has gotten a reply from Göran Lantz, professor in health care ethics. It’s well formulated and well reasoned. Anders Svensson has been given the opportunity to reply directly. This time he manages without references to military dictatorships like Burma and North Korea (even though North Korea can’t really be called a military dictatorship, it’s more a personality cult taken to the utmost extreme, but Svensson is a lawyer, not a political scientist, so he’ll get a pass for that one). But he still invokes the image of a country where people are hindered to say and think what they want, and where conversations fall silent in fear of repression:
I was gladly surprised by the positive tone which go through much of Göran Lantz’s contribution. he says, though, that those who want it have freedom of speech. That is actually not the case any longer in Sweden.
Freedom of speech is not that which is marked by the new ground of values of political correctness. On the contrary, freedom of speech is being subjected to serious attacks.
I often think about a headline which struck me already years ago. It says: “When conversation fall silent”. This has already begun in Sweden.
There is only one thing to say about that:
Seriously though, it would be becoming to Svensson and his ilk if they for once would produce any clear examples on how this silencing works and how freedom of speech is being infringed. Also, I am very interested to learn, in clear reasoning, how same sex marriage would affect freedom of speech negatively. Svensson has been allowed two articles in a big and highly regarded newspaper now. Countries in which freedom of speech is truly repressed (like Burma and North Korea) don’t usually let people complain about how they are being repressed. I would like Anders Svensson to talk to some Burmese and North Korean refugees about how Sweden is just as bad as their countries when it comes to freedom of speech. I think they could give him a useful lesson on the subject of what true repression looks like.
(I promise, the headline will make sense if you read on!)
Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet publishes a tired old same-sex-marriage-will-destroy-society tirade in their debate section today. It’s written by Anders Svensson, who says he’s a lawyer and law teacher at Stockholm University. I pity his students (and hope they take him on tomorrow):
Imagine a country were the legislators re-interpret human rights according to a value-neutral ideology, where dissidents are violated and where media censors unfit opinions. The military dictatorship of Burma or North Korea? No, it’s the country of Sweden.
Dear Anders Svensson: If you write a long opinions piece about a contentious issue and then get it published in a really large newspaper, where debate ensues and people are allowed to have different opinions and counterarguments are raised and you get support from some and critique from some, and all this happens without the police knocking on your door or you losing your job or getting imprisoned or tortured or threatened - that’s usually a sign that you’re not living in a military dictatorship.
His main argument against same sex marriage is not “won’t somebody please think of the children!” or “horses and box turtles and forty wives oh my!” but this:
It is not hard to see how a gender neutral marriage law would be yet another weapon of censorship against traditional values.
Oh really? What would be censored? How would this censoring work? Would legions of newlywed same sex couples invade newsrooms, lecture halls and kitchen tables everywhere to make sure everyone follows the “homosexual agenda”? Svensson, of course, doesn’t tell. But he sure is censored and oppressed, the poor little sod, sitting there at Stockholm University and getting his writing published in a large private newspaper. Yes, you can really feel the Swedish military dictatorship at work here.
But if the GLBT folks are so powerful that they can impose a brutal military regime à la North Korea on us unsuspecting Swedish citizens (they’ve done a great job of masquerading it as a pretty decent democracy, I can tell you), you would wonder why they haven’t managed to get that gender neutral marriage law passed in the parliament yet. Maybe they forgot to squeeze it in between brunch and facials.
A good society must rest on stable ground of values which are reflected in legislation. What does this ground of values look like? Well, it can’t lack values. In Sweden, we have abolished this ground of values and are traveling down a road of lack of norms. How can the legislature accept this?
If people aren’t allowed to think and speak freely, a democratically stable ground of values are missing. We don’t need any more laws which despite good intentions create a fearful society where conversations die out. I want to warn the Swedish parliament of taking further steps down this road of silence and censorship. The parliament should say no thanks to this sophisticated form of euthanasia for marriage.
As often with these kinds of articles, there’s no substance. No explanations, no examples, no logical arguments, not any arguments at all about why a “good society” can’t coexist with same sex marriage, why same sex marriage hinders people from thinking and speaking freely, which values will be destroyed and how and why conversations will be silenced. No explanation on how man-woman marriages will be “euthanized” if man-man or woman-woman marriages are allowed. No line of reasoning to follow. Just fluff and a lot of words.
Also, note this lovely allegory, used to rail against anti-discrimination laws and policies. As a metaphor for gay people, he uses a weed.
A dandelion isn’t discriminated against because it can’t call itself a tulip.
So, uppity gay-dandelion-weeds should be satisfied with the civil unions they have today (which people like Anders Svensson raised all kind of hell against when they were introduced in the 90s because they would destroy society, but which they now present as a great “separate but equal”-solution) and not destroy the lovely garden of heterosexual tulip-marriages. Dandelions can also silence conversations and turn countries into North Korea. Or something.
Tor of Antigayretorik takes on the train-wreck article here, tireless and to the point as always.
Decriminalization, ending demand, and choice: Feministe interviews the Sex Workers Project
- a very interesting post over at Feministe, where Sienna Baskin of the New York City based organization Sex Workers Project is interviewed. The interview deals with the societal response to prostitution, a question which is very much in the focus in the US right now due to the Spitzer scandal. It also discusses the “Swedish model” i.e. the criminalization of the buyer, not the seller.
Go read!
Background for non-Swedish readers: a few days ago, the Swedish police performed searches at members of Svenska Motståndsrörelsen, SMR (the Swedish Resistance Movement). Weapons and explosives were found, and three men are detained for illegal possession of weapons and preparation to inflict serious damage (I guess that means blowing stuff up).
SMR is a neo-nazi organization which wants to abolish democracy and create an authoritarian national socialist society, hates Jews, Muslims and homosexuals, and struggles for the ultimate victory of the national socialist ideology and the creation of a new world order. (More in Swedish at Expo here.)
They have organized paramilitary training camps for their members, they idolize people like Hitler (obviously) and William Pierce, they want racial war, obviously store weapons and explosives, and their leader, Klas Lund, has been convicted of bank robbery, assault, illegal possession of firearms and manslaughter.
So, my gut feeling is to agree with Per Gudmundson when he says that the SMR members should be charged using the law on terrorist crime. Because that law says that terrorism is (big disclaimer about me not being a legal expert and knowing how to translate legal text accurately) to seek to “instill grave fear in a population” or “to seriously destabilize basic political, constitutional, economical or social structures in a state”. And that seems to fit pretty nicely with a movement that wants to destroy our society and install a dictatorship.
But.
Just as Svensson, Christian Engström and Mårten Schultz, I think that we should be careful to use the terrorism rubber stamp. Individuals can be guilty of acts of terrorism, but to label a whole movement or organization as “terrorist” is problematic. Especially when the organization or group is incoherent and multifaceted - that may not be the case with SMR, but it is certainly true of other organizations that we, in the era of the “war on terror” have put the terrorist label on.
And, as Christian Engström writes - the law on terrorism has mostly been used against non-Swedish citizens. It has allowed the state to deport them to torture and to freeze their assets, all in breach of human rights and rule of law. Even though it is tempting to put an equal opportunity spin on it and for once use the terrorism law against shiny white very Swedish people, we’d better not. Terrorism can and should be addressed using our perfectly fine “normal” laws.
And I really don’t want something like this in Sweden - The law HR.1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which is being passed in the USA. It defines “homegrown terrorism” as: the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
This is what the American Civil Liberties Union have to say about it (they’re not too excited, as you can imagine). A snippet:
“Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme.”
So true. So even though my gut feeling tells me that of course the SMR members should be tried as terrorists, the implications, real and possible, makes me think that it might not be such a good idea after all.
Via Isabella Lund, I find out that the Swedish government are conducting a hearing on prostitution and on trafficking for sexual purposes. A number of organizations have been called to participate, from Save the Children and the Red Cross to the Swedish Association for Victim Support and The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights.
Do you think something is missing? As usual, sex workers themselves are not invited to participate. Not a single sex worker organization, such as SANS, on the list. Renegade Evolution file stuff like this under “typical”, and so do I. Why do they think that sex workers, current and former, have no useful knowledge about the subject? Why aren’t sex workers allowed to take part in the conversation about themselves?
For crying out loud, even if you don’t agree with sex work/prostitution, can’t you at least listen to what the people who are actually in it have to say? How is that going to hurt you? Dear Swedish government, why do you think an organization like Män för jämställdhet (”Men for equality”) have more useful insight about the subject prostitution and trafficking than do an actual real life prostitute?
Well, to answer my own question, it is because what they might hear from people like Isabella Lund does not fit in their preconceived notions on what sex work/prostitution/porn is. And it is because it will not score them any political points from the people who set the agenda on this subject in Sweden.
I self-ID as a feminist (cue disclaimer about not being a hairy-legged man-hating ugly lesbian, and for the Swedish crowd, about not agreeing with Gudrun Schyman), and you know, a big thing in feminist discourse is the word choice. Now I’m going to borrow some rhetoric from belledame222 at Fetch Me My Axe who writes, with address to the anti-pornstitution (sic. they do call it that) radfem crowd:
Seriously, let me ask you this. I assume you’re “pro-choice” when it comes to reproduction? (If I’m wrong, ignore what follows). Okay. Putting aside the irony of “choice” being an acceptable feminist concept when it comes to reproductive rights but not when it comes to sexuality (for pay or otherwise) (or even personal adornment and modification, depending on who you ask, but that’s another argument, maybe)
…putting that aside, do you, you know, -like- abortion? I mean, are you like, “yay!abortion!” Are you gleefully advocating that women just go out and have abortions for shits and giggles? Do you claim that “choice” means the -correct- choice is always to get an abortion? Is the “abortion industry” a heartless sinister machine to which you’ve pledged your allegiance in exchange for a mess of pottage and your immortal soul?
Ridiculous, right? Well, funny thing, because this is pretty much how a lot of let’s say non-nuanced pro-lifers see the pro-choice folks.
What she’s getting at, of course, is that just as the anti-choicers see the pro-choice crowd as “yay! abortion”-shouting maniacs, the anti-pornstitution crowd also often come across like this. With the demonization of people not agreeing with them and the tendency to see everything in black and white: a sex worker is either a brainwashed victim in need of rescue, or a patriarchy-enabling sellout in cohorts with the enemy.
I can assure the Swedish government that if you would expand your list to include just one group who speaks for actual real life sex workers out there, you are absolutely not going hear them say: “Yay! Trafficking! Let’s have more 16 year old Moldavian girls who are kept drugged down and locked in apartments in Stockholm suburbs!”. Neither will they tell you “Yay! Selling sex is for everyone and should be a mandatory female experience”.
You know that.
So what are you so afraid of?
For the sake of my own sanity I really regret that I did it. But I browsed Söderbaum’s blog a bit more (see previous post for context). And found this gem that I just can’t keep from you. If you want to read it yourself the Swedish title is “Verka politiskt mot heteronormen är trams” (I’m not linking to him). And I am very tempted to create a new category for this, because the “stupidity”-category doesn’t really cut it. Here we go (translation mine):
If homosexuality would be completely normalized, it would inevitably lead to an even more explicit sexualization of society - all those “a bit too long” looks from a stranger are seen as a potential sexual invitation, which immediately makes us all sexual objects as soon as we are out among other human beings. Today we talk a lot about how terrible it is that girls are seen more as sexual objects than as persons. Yes, that is terrible - and imagine how it would be if that would happen to an entire population!
Oh noes! If we accept homosexuality then yucky fags might look at me as a sexual object!!! Sexual objectification happens to girls and that is bad, but it would be so much worse if it would happen to manly men like me! What if I catch teh gay from them?!?
Newsflash to Jakob E:son Söderbaum: gays might give you “a bit too long” looks today too. Hell, there’s even a close up picture of you on your blog, have you thought about what kind of activities that may inspire? And you know what: women can look to! (But of course in your universe no woman ever looks at other people with sexual interest unless they are married to them.)
Now, I have a practical idea for you: If you’re so scared of being oogled by someone of the same sex, you can just print out copies of some selected blog posts of yours and give out to those men you suspect of having an interest in you that goes further than discussing the wonderfulness of the Swedish monarch and other manly subjects, and they sure as hell will be running in the opposite direction!
Oh sweet Blind Io and all minor deities!
In today’s Dagens Nyheter, there is a letter to the editor signed Jakob E:son Söderbaum. Now for some reason DN doesn’t publish their readers’ letters on their website, but fortunately Jakob E:son Söderbaum has a blog (that I don’t want to link to, but if you read Swedish you can google his name and go on an adventure in a parallel universe). Jakob E:son Söderbaum is a “progress friendly conservative” (by “progress” he means returning to some unknown decade when we honored the king, kept our hands above the covers and our women in the kitchen), in his upper twenties or lower thirties. If you thought that Sweden was free of the “sex is gross, ewww icky icky icky”-crowd, think again.
Some background: a few days ago, Folkpartiet (the Liberal Party of Sweden) suggested repealing the law that makes it legal for parents to take their children out of certain lessons at school, such as sex ed or PE, due to religious or cultural reasons, and to force all children to take all classes. There has been some discussion on whether the Liberal Party’s idea is the best way to address the problem that some children aren’t allowed to learn about their bodies or to be seen in a bathing suit. I’m not sure how I feel about their proposal, but let’s leave that aside and focus on Jakob E:son Söderbaum.
He does not agree with the Liberal Party’s idea. No, he wants to excuse all children from sex ed. And he’s not even in with the abstinence only-crowd. He’s in the no mention of gross icky sex in school ever-crowd. Some of his arguments, put forth in the letter and in the ensuing discussion on his blog, are (with extra-craziness in bold, and my snarky responses in brackets):
- Sex ed teaches girls that they need to spread their legs for anyone, otherwise they are abnormal. (Because telling girls that they are not sluts or hoes if they like sex automatically means that you encourage them to do it anywhere with anyone. There can be no balance.)
- Sex should be taught by parents, only then can the serious nature of sexuality be properly conveyed to the rising generation. (And the parental version of sex ed should go “sex is gross and disgusting so you must save it for someone you love”.)
- Sex is for procreation only and sex ed teaches how to avoid procreation (Yes, let’s conveniently forget about reality: that the majority of adults will have sex a number of times without wanting to get pregnant. And that it could be a good thing to learn how to avoid STDs. And that not all people are heterosexual. But to base education on reality is such a bad idea.)
- Sex ed teachers are raping our children because talking to young girls about sex if you’re not their parent is akin to raping them. (He trivializes rape. What a surprise.)
- Sex ed teachers must be perverts, how else can they stand there talking about the subject day in and day out. (Yes, just like language teachers constantly mumble verb declinations and home ec teachers are unable to have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around pie crusts and cleaning products. Ohmigod, imagine what it must be like for OB/Gyns. They must be the most perverted people out there ever, staring at women’s icky parts all day and talking about stuff related to teh sex!!!!11!!!!eleven!)
- There’s too much sex in today’s society, it was better when it was a shameful secret. (So why are you discussing it? Doesn’t that add to the sexual fixation too?)
- Girls enjoying sex are almost whores. (And there he throws in some slut shaming to. Lovely.)
- Sexual pleasure is the lowest form of human feeling, and to acknowledge and seek sexual pleasure will lead you to become a sex addict who constantly think about and seek sex. (Oh, me thinks someone doth protest too much. Söderbaum says he’s in a “steady relationship”, but he doesn’t say he’s married, so he must be a virgin. For someone who’s not married, he seems awfully focused on sex. Doesn’t he know that subject is reserved for married people? Oh, I see, it’s only unmarried girls who aren’t allowed to think about sex. If you’re an unmarried conservative man - then it’s a-okay!)
Thank heavens that people like Söderbaum are a minority here and that he is sure to get some serious counter-arguments against him - it has already started on his blog. Now I need to go read some deviant and sex positive stuff before my head explodes.
Hoe-looking man writes too, and titles her piece “hardcore porn pussy anus lesbian sex dicks huge cock fuck ass pictures”, so that Söderbaum will find it when he goes on nightly internet adventures. LOL!
(Update: Here you can read more about the proposal from the liberal party, and reactions to it, in English)
22 years ago, I woke up to the sound of my mother crying. I could hear the radio was on, but it didn’t seem to be that usual Saturday morning chatter. The whole atmosphere was strange.
I was six years old, laying in bed, terrified, because I know something was terribly wrong. if I got up, I would have to face that frightening unknown, so I kept laying there, despite my desperate need to go to the bathroom, and I wet the bed.
That is how I remember the day that Sweden woke up to the news that prime minister Olof Palme had been assassinated. That, and the front page of our local newspaper, which had a black and white photo of Palme, framed by four red roses. Maybe there were words too, but I only remember the picture and the roses.
Some people say that Sweden changed forever on that day. I don’t know, I was only six when it happened. Most, if not all, of my perceptions of Olof Palme are created after his murder, when hearing his often brilliant speeches replayed, hearing him brought up in debates and memorials, reading about the failed murder investigation. I do see what they mean though: a new sense of vulnerability, that something that we only had read about happening elsewhere suddenly happened to us, that our way of life - that the prime minister can go to a movie theater on a Friday evening without needing caravans of police escort - was threatened (feelings which once again awoke in 2003 when foreign minister Anna Lindh was stabbed to death while shopping in a department store).
But it is too easy to assign to a single event, however huge its societal impact, the power to change everything. Contra-factual history writing may be a worthwhile intellectual exercise and the subject of some great authorship, but to say “if Olof Palme hadn’t been murdered, x never would have happened”, is to simplify too much. I’m not at all sure, as some people like to think, that we as a country would have more solidarity with the poor and disenfranchised, or a more brave and outspoken foreign policy, had Palme not been murdered 22 years ago. I wish that would have been the case. But political ideas should be based on reality and visions, not nostalgia for times long gone. Thinking about what might have been clouds the issues facing us today. In the ten years that I have been allowed to vote, I don’t recall that I have ever voted for the social democratic party. Not because I don’t agree with the ideology, but because of the abandonment and distortion of that ideology. I don’t know if I would have voted for Olof Palme, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is now, what we can do now to create a better world. Asking what would have been if only, isn’t a way to create change, if it is indeed change that we want.
Short recap: Early in the fall last year, EU commissioner Franco Frattini (responsible for for freedom, security and justice within the European Commission) proposed that web searches for certain words and phrases should be blocked within the EU. He said to Reuters:
“I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector … on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism”
(Is it only me, or is it really creepy that he said he wants to use technology to prevent people from not only searching but also using words like genocide and terrorism? What the hell did he mean by that?! And how can a word be dangerous? I thought actions and deeds were dangerous. If we say that words are dangerous, we are very close to the idea of thought crime.)
There is much long-term work we are carrying out at European level: from initiatives on radicalisation, bio-terrorism, security of explosives and detonators, and the need to constantly monitor the web. The web remains a fantastic opportunity for education and freedom but also a way for Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists to communicate all around the world, as well as for disseminating information on how to make explosives.
We must also ensure that our counter-terrorism work is underpinned by the best technology we can have. This is vital for us and difficult too because we have to strike the right balance between the right to security and the other fundamental rights of individuals, including privacy and procedural rights.
Frattini did say that he didn’t want to ban discussions about for example genocide and terrorism, only “how to”-sites. But how do you differentiate between the two? Of course, Frattini got a lot of criticism for his proposal (Google Frattini +censorship for an idea).
The Swedish Justice Department dismissed the proposal and it was made likely that Sweden would veto it, as it would violate Swedish law. And now in 2008, it is soon time for a decision in the EU council of ministers on this proposal. And it is no longer likely that Sweden will put in a veto.
The EU website blocking system would probably work like the Swedish filter for child pornography. The nifty thing is that the child pornography filter is not a part of the law, and therefore does not violate the law against censorship. It works like this: internet service providers (ISPs) sign an agreement with the police, and the police tells the ISPs what sites to block, all without any court involvement. The list of what is blocked is secret, and so is the agreements with the ISPs. We just have to trust that the system works.
Be silent. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Step into the time machine, we are going to 1984, where a search on “genocide” can make you a suspect. I better finish reading this book before it gets censored as well.
I hope some other government vetoes Frattini’s proposal, now when my own has no sense of decency.
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