Do Sweden's Rape Laws Infantilise Women? (Regardless of Julian Assange)

Dec 9, 2010

I have no idea whether Julian Assange is guilty of rape or not.  If he is guilty, he should be tried (and not in a kangaroo court) and duly punished.  What worries me more is a strange silence on part of journalists about a more bizarre twist in this tale. That twist is about Sweden's distinctly odd rape laws and the generally uncritiqued but dangerous corollary of the infantilisation of women by those laws.

The only reason I have noticed Sweden's rape laws is because of the current case against Wikileaks' founder.  The facts are murky but at least this is much is clear: Assange had sex with two different women within a three day period, and behaved in general promiscuously and as a cad.

Frankly, two is less than many rock stars get up to, but then Assange apparently was far more interested in his computer than in the second woman with whom he had sex (her statement).  The rock star comparison is not out of the blue.  Whether we agree with Wikileaks or not, Assange has become a sort of internet, geeky version of a liberal, crusading rock star.  If you think about it, he is the ultimate geek fantasy: a lap-top toting Luke Skywalker singlehandedly battling the Empire. Are we surprised that, unlike the PG rated Hollywood version, this geek not only has a sexual appetite, but also willing candidates lining up?  Hell, even a killer and wife beater gets celebrity status and wild fans these days; remember the Moat saga?  Assange, in contrast, has the added advantage of a liberal international halo to boot!

But neither Assange's sexual escapades nor his rock star status are of particular concern for this blog post. Instead what is more worrying are the epic twists and turns of Sweden's rape laws which appear to be applied at discretion.  Already this case has gone from being upgraded to rape, then downgraded to molestation, changed to rape by surprise, rape because the condom broke, and finally, yesterday's he "used his body weight to hold her down," (which is definitely rape, but strangely brought out only three months in to the legal process).

Of more concern is a rather odd point, not discussed in the ad nauseum articles about rape in the mainstream media: that the Swedish prosecutors themselves have asserted that the consent of the women is not in question.  Over the past week, as a result, my feeble feminine brain has been trying to understand how consensual sex is rape.  Surely the term applies to lack of consent?

Then the accusers' lawyer Claes Bergstrom explained the contradiction of a crime of non-consent committed with consent by declaring: "they (the accusers) are not jurists.”  As one of Assange's lawyers (and therefore to be taken with a grain of salt) pointed out: "How the Swedish authorities propose to prosecute for victims who neither saw themselves as such nor acted as such is easily answered: You’re not a Swedish lawyer so you wouldn’t understand anyway."

The problem here is more worrying than simply of the prosecutor or even the entire Swedish government caving into foreign (presumably US) pressure.  The issue here is of a supposedly developed, socially progressive nation - which can't stop itself from taking on the mantle of moral superiority on all global issues - assuming that a rape victim cannot decide whether she has been raped.

Isn't this precisely the sort of infantilisation that feminism fought against?  Isn't this infantilisation insulting and demeaning to all women, and not only those who have been raped?

As a long time feminist, a sometime volunteer for abused women, and most importantly, a woman myself, I need to say this loud and clear: a woman KNOWS when she is raped.  Taking the power to identify her own rape from a rape victim is the most derogatory act that any state can perpetrate.

There is another under-reported aspect to Sweden's worrisome infantilising of women in context of its rape laws. Assange's lawyer, Michael Caitlin points out that the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny is also involved in "reforming" Swedish rape laws.

Already, as part of that infantilising women as creatures who obviously need to be protected by their nanny state against men, the Swedish rape law apparently considers consensual (albeit regretful in the morning) sex without condom a "sex crime." Not agreeing to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases - as far as I can make out from press reports - is also a "sex crime."  But apparently, these laws are not strict enough for the Swedes. (An aside: are we surprised they have such a high suicide rate? With little sunlight, cold climate and state regulated strictly conformist sex, what else would they do?)

More seriously, the impending "reform" would apparently "introduce a test of whether the unequal power relations between the parties might void the sincerely expressed consent of one party."  In principle that sounds good, right?

But how will this "unequal power relation" be established?  Is it money? If a man buys me dinner, is he coercing me? Or will a Swedish man, by dint of history, gender, race, all of which position him as "more powerful" be considered a rapist simply for having sex with a non-European woman like me, despite my express consent?  Or will the imbalance be because of age? Shall Sweden prosecute all couples who are not exactly equal in age? What happens to not only men who like younger women, but the newly emergent breed of cougars? 

Perhaps it shall be based on intelligence, with a surgeon accused of rape should she have sex with a carpenter?

Or is it temperament? Will all of us going to Sweden be required to carry insta-psychometric tests to see if each partner is of the same psychological ability?  What if a woman had sex with her partner while the latter is suffering from the horrific man-flu,  would the Swedes believe that she were being coerced by his whinging?
On a more serious note, are these "reforms" actually yet another racist law meant for immigrants but couched in "liberal, protect European culture" vocabulary? 

Back in my riotous days of student protests in the US, we demanded that "government get out of my womb."  But in Sweden, it seems that the government is present in the beds, vaginas and wombs!  All in such a benign big brotherly fashion that even Orwell would have trouble imagining it.

To be absolutely honest, Sweden is welcome to infantilising its women.  This isn't the feminism I fought for, definitely is not the feminism I support, and will not be one I will teach to the young girls of my family.

The Name of Julian Assange’s (WikiLeaks) Other False Rape Accuser is Sofia Wilén

 Looks like the Feminazi's are trying to bring down WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, naturally the Obama Administration would like this, since they are the funders of the Feminazi's. Its all looks a little fishy.  Fake rape charges easy way to get WikiLeaks out of the US governments hair.

Dec 5, 2010

by Ferdinand Bardamu

A reader emailed me to tell me that Julian Assange’s second rape accuser is named Sofia Wilén. She’s the “Woman B” in this article, the stalkerish groupie who slept with Assange but got mad at him after he turned out to be an inattentive geek. There are a bunch of articles confirming Wilén’s involvement in the case, including her friendship with Assange’s other accuser, the psychotic feminist Anna Ardin:

STOCKHOLM/MELBOURNE (Rixstep) — The charges against Julian Assange were indeed trumped up. Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén planned it all. They went to the police station asking for advice, knowing the police would turn it into an accusation of rape. They’re also the ones who leaked the story to the tabloid Expressen.
This was revealed in a letter written by Assange’s Australian barrister to the website Crikey.

A bit of a recap first.
Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén approached the Klara police station in Stockholm on the afternoon of Friday 20 August 2010 to ask questions of the police, purportedly about forcing someone to submit to STD/HIV tests.
The policemen on duty rang up prosecutor on duty Maria Kjellstrand even before the formal interrogation had begun. Kjellstrand - working with no paperwork at all at this point – issued an ‘APB’ for Assange and had the police search the Stureplan district of Stockholm for Assange, ostensibly to bring him in for questioning (and a tour of Swedish isolation cells).
The formal interrogation of Sofia Wilén was only concluded hours later and the interrogation of Anna Ardin didn’t take place until the day after - by telephone.
As seen from Anna Ardin’s SMS history, Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén made the whole thing up - and even decided to leak the story to notorious Swedish tabloid Expressen. The story reached Niklas Svensson and others at Expressen at 19:52.
A colleague of Svensson’s rang up Maria Kjellstrand to find out if the story was true - and Kjellstrand, violating the rules of her office, told the reporter that it was.

Wilén is apparently a photographer by trade. Here are some pictures of her:

This one I found thanks to Legion, at Unfrozen Caveman’s blog:

Here’s another from Advocatus Diaboli:

I ask you to spread the word – Julian Assange’s lying rape accusers are Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén. These women need to be exposed for what they have done. Link to my posts and/or any others you please in blog comment sections, forums, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and the like. Tweet them, Facebook them, email them to your friends. If you have a blog, write your own post on the situation. Bloggers and forumites are welcome to re-publish any and all of my original posts on the debacle in their entirety (aside from this one, you can find them here and here) provided they follow these rules:
1) Attribute the post(s) to me, since I was the one who wrote it/them.
2) Don’t modify the post(s) from its/their original form in any way.
3) Provide a link back to the original post(s).

If you need pictures of Wilén, Advocatus Diaboli has posted another one to his blog. Pictures of Ardin can be found in abundance on Google Images.

Is Sweden the best place to be a woman?

Read the very last line in this article, that itself tells you women are never going to be happy. When a person has no satisfaction with what they have achieved they are doomed to destruction, and the decay of society. 
Which society is the best place for MEN? 

16 October 2010

Is Sweden really one of the best places to be a woman? That is the view of many women outside Sweden, as well as some of us who live here. But is it a myth or a reality?

Let's face it, we are no longer topping the charts as we used to, when it comes to gender equality. Sweden has gone from the first position to fourth, according to the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index.
Nevertheless, we do stay in the top cluster with the other Nordic countries Iceland, Finland, and Norway.

However, Sweden still has a long way to go. 

The latest edition of the report from Statistics Sweden, Women and Men in Sweden: Facts and figures, hints at various areas of concerns.

Both in education and in the labour market, the genders are not equally represented.
The number of female managing directors in listed companies is just eight out of 269.
Swedish women still earn on average 15% less than men. And one third of women still work part-time, some because they can't find full-time jobs and others because they have family responsibilities which hold them back.

Shall I go on?

In Sweden both men and women are entitled to 480 days of parental leave but the latest Daddy Index, published by the Swedish Confederation for Professional Employees (TOC), a trade union umbrella group, shows that men use only one fifth of their allowance.

The move towards both men and women taking equal parental leave is at a snail's pace.
 
Equal opportunity
 
I can hear the incredulous gasps from women around the world who are not entitled to such generous parental allowance systems. So, yes, I accept that compared to other parts of the world, the parental allowance system does make Sweden a good country in which to be a women.

As does the government's decision, taken in 1972, to make equal opportunities between the sexes a central political issue.
The Danish sociology professor Gosta Esping-Anderson once wrote: "In Sweden, maximum female labour-force participation is a principle of social policy." I agree with that.

In Sweden, society makes it possible for each and everyone to earn his or her own living.

Well-built systems of child care and geriatric care, gender-neutral parental insurance, generous school opening hours and - not the least - individual taxation, have all contributed to this.

And yes, Sweden does have one of the highest employment rates in the world for women. But if you bring out the magnifying glass, you'll see that many women are working part-time in low-paid jobs.

According to a report from the TOC, among blue-collar workers, 50% of the women work part-time in often insecure employment conditions, compared with only 9% of men.
Their earnings are even further reduced when they decide to work less after having children.
This conflict between employment and childcare stops women from becoming economically independent, and reinforces the notion of men being the principal breadwinners.

There is an on-going discussion about how income differences between the sexes can be counterbalanced by equal opportunities at home.

Swedish women - like women around the world - are often still expected to play the lead role on the family stage. Two-thirds of housework is done by women.
So, how to make gender equality work at home?

The government is already providing some tax relief to households for using services for cleaning, laundry and gardening, but should it do more?
Should the government provide more child care?

Or should it allocate parental leave equally between the father and mother and force them to use it?
The debate on this issue is intense in Sweden.
 
Unfinished business
 
Gudrun Schyman, leader of the Feminist Initiative party, claims that there is a political unwillingness in Sweden to see this debate in a wider societal context.

She wants politicians to see this imbalance as a profound societal conflict, which is the result of the power structure that has to be fought and corrected, just like human rights' violations.

The feminist political philosopher Susan Moller Okin once said that a fair society is a society in which men and women participate in more or less equal numbers in every sphere of life.

I would say that equality between the sexes should be the benchmark by which a society is judged as a good or bad place.

And in that sense I suppose you could say that Sweden is a fairly good place to be a woman.

But more needs to be done. It's still an unfinished business.