Fuck yeah Sweden!
The Swedish toy company Leklust (note: site is in Swedish) has in its new catalog reversed the traditional gender roles in its pictures, including showing the world’s most adorable Spider-Man pushing a pram:
Shown: A small boy in a Spider-Man outfit pushes a bright pink, flowered baby pram; a girl drives some kind of construction toy (?).
Elsewhere in the catalog, apparently, a boy is depicted standing in front of a toy stove and making a make-believe meal. The CEO of the toy company, Kaj Wiberg, says:
“I’m 71 years old, and those of us who have worked in this industry for a while know that boys play with doll houses. We know that boys can play with Barbie dolls,” Wiberg told the paper.
Fuck yeah they can. Sweden, you are THE COOLEST and I want to be you when I grow up.
That’s true, FlyingKal. And maybe I shouldn’t even have said that “Sweden isn’t misandrist” – there’s misandry here, and misogyny, just like in any other country. What I wanted to object to was rather the idea that Sweden differ from other countries by being extra misandrist.
What I meant with my previous comment was just that it’s impossible, as a country, to have every private citizen, public person, company, government and legislative assembly, alwasy do “the right thing”.
For every “good” thing that happens, you can always dig up at least twice as many questionable actions. it’s just a choise of where to look.
Glad to hear that, Eagle34. 🙂 And I totally agree that one shouldn’t throw blame on individual boys/men for the opression of women (unless, of course, that individual has actually done something for which to blame him).
Dvärghundspossen, thanks for being very informative on your country as a Swedish citizen. I’ve actually gained some knowledge thanks to your statements on what its like for men and women over there.
It’s just that the story of those boys being left in the lurch, any story featuring boys being subtly blamed for women and girls problems, just rankles me as someone who’s struggling to get his story of hurt out there in a society that just refuses to acknowledge girls and women are capable of harming people, even boys and men.
Btw, it’s terrible that you still need to be sterilised if you want to legally switch gender, BUT it seems like things are finally about to change. The christian democrats (conservative party) wanted to keep the forced sterilisations, and the other right wing parties in the government sort of let the christian democrats have their way in this issue. But a few weeks ago the leader of the christian democrats published an article in Sweden’s biggest morning paper where he wrote that he had changed his mind on this issue. (All the left-wing parties have been against forced sterilisations for… Read more »
That was Gudrun Schyman, and she was totally flamed for it in all media. But yeah, many Swedish feminists (though far from all) tend to present men as both strong and bad and dangerous, and women as poor victims and weak and helpless. That’s problematic for BOTH sexes. This does not necessarily lead to only men being held responsible for sexist structures in society – a few years ago, for instance, the government started a project called “girl”. The idea was that young girls as a group are oppressed by, well, media and society, which leads to them being self-destructive… Read more »
Well, whatever. As a feminist leader said a couple of years ago, The structures are the same everywhere, so we (us men, that is) are basically just Talibans anyway.
You win some on the paternal leave and spider-pram, but lose out on reproductional rights to all.
@Tamen: Thanks for correcting me!
Dvärghundspossen: The double shift for women have been a myth for quite some time in Norway and appear to be so for Sweden as well. It is simply not true on an aggregated level: Translated from Swedish by me: The total amount of time spent on paid work and unpaid household work are the same for men and women, ca. 7 hours and 20 minutes per day. http://www.scb.se/Pages/PressRelease____319925.aspx If the double shift myth holds any truth then we should see a discrepancy where the total amount of time spent on paid and unpaid work were higher for women than for… Read more »
@Eagle: I don’t assume that the situation for men is great. As I said, I don’t want to claim that everything in Sweden is hunky-dory. Maybe things are equally bad for men and women but in different ways. Like women have to work double shifts since they almost always (in this country anyway) have a job outside of home, and then they’re still expected to do most of the homework. But men on the other hand more often go with undiagnosed depression and live shorter lives on average. To just name two examples. I’m not questioning the idea that men… Read more »
I must also add that I’m speaking from a Western perspective so I’m sure much of the things I talk about probably don’t apply in Sweden or in a different way.
However, the main argument still stands: Men have struggles.
Dvärghundspossen: “If you look at what happens at a divorce and paid parental leave for dads, it seems like in some areas anyway men are better off here than in many other countries.” I repeat, they are still blamed for ridgid gender expectations. That doesn’t make their lives all rosy either. Dvärghundspossen: ” And it’s still the case in Sweden that almost all heads of big cooperations are males, men earn more on average than women do, and we’ve never had a female PM.” What about the men at the bottom of the rung, then? You think because men in… Read more »
The threats being made to the journalist on footage are kind of hard to interpret in any kind of positve light. Generally it seems to me that in the scandinavian countries the positive aspects of feminism has achieved great penentration into the mainstream it has resulted in explicitly feminist groups becoming more radical and more focused on more fringe concerns. Hence for exemple why the only large 8th of march event here in Norway this year was a feminist demonstration to defund the country’s largest support group for sex workers
I’m not saying everything is hunky dory in my country, I just say it’s absurd to claim that “feminism has taken over the country” and misandry is somehow the norm. If you look at what happens at a divorce and paid parental leave for dads, it seems like in some areas anyway men are better off here than in many other countries. And it’s still the case in Sweden that almost all heads of big cooperations are males, men earn more on average than women do, and we’ve never had a female PM. That’s hardly what the country would look… Read more »
Dvärghundspossen: The government encourages fathers to take parental leave as well as mothers. At my job, all men who became fathers had several months of payed parental leave. Shared custody is the NORM when couples divorce.
More like throwing them a bone since there’s still a lot of radical feminists proclaiming those fathers are responsible for ridgid gender expectations that are still influencing government policies.
Maybe your government should start seeing this radical branch for the bigoted people they are and take a more gender netural stance in the future.
Dvärghundspossen: You do relize that the sources you quote are MRA, right, and not exactly neutral fact gatherers? And? Just because they have flaws doesn’t make the information they gathered any less valid you know? So I’ll ask you: Is it right to give girls self-defenses classes only rather than girls and boys? Is it justifiable to have boys coming home from school repeating the kind of shaming their teachers teach in the classroom to the male gender? We’re talking boys here and they already have a tough time as it is. Being exposed to that kind of shame on… Read more »
Although I do agree with Billing on some points. Many feminist initiatives from town councils, the government etc tend to portray all women as small and helpless and all men as dangerous and assertive. This is i disservice to BOTH genders.
@Eagle and Daylete: You do relize that the sources you quote are MRA, right, and not exactly neutral fact gatherers? The site Daylete quotes from says “take the red pill” at the top… And then goes on to claim that the Swedish state is all in favour of having kids grow up without a father. This is an absurd claim. The government encourages fathers to take parental leave as well as mothers. At my job, all men who became fathers had several months of payed parental leave. Shared custody is the NORM when couples divorce. And biological parents have ridiculous… Read more »
I’ve heard that Sweden is overflowing with misandry…
http://www.daddys-sverige.com/3/post/2011/3/the-truth-about-swedish-feminism-do-not-watch-this-film.html
And it’s spreading, in forms such as the Swedish Model, etc.
Sorry but I find Sweden really backward in how it treats its men and boys there. This spider-pram thing and any other efforts to be gender neutral comes from their governments belife that all men are responsible for sexist gender expectations. Even boys, for example: http://www.pellebilling.se/2011/10/en-vanlig-svensk-skoldag/ Mind you, the story is all in swedish. Here’s a translation from Pelle Billing himself: http://www.pellebilling.com/2011/10/swedish-mother-tells-a-frightening-tale/ One thing that gets me is the girls are offered self-defense classes in school sometimes. For boys, it’s classes where they identify the negatives of the male gender role. Like boys don’t need self-defense either in their opinion.… Read more »
@anotherperson and birdman: Can you *really* tell that the truck-riding one is a girl? I mean, truck-rider is definitely presenting more feminine than spider-guy is masculine, but they’re kids; you’re assuming that “she” is female based on what, a haircut and some vaguely feminine clothing? Not all boys “look like boys”, and not all girls “look like girls”.
Sorry, I meant “afro-SWEDISH” of course. Not “afro-american”.
Yep, sterilizing of trans people is really a terrible thing. Seems though like the law is finally about to be rewritten on that one. But that cake thing… The minister of culture is a total douche generally speaking, but in that particular situation I think she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. Suppose she’d stood up and announced “NO, I will NOT cut into this cake, I think it’s RACIST!”. Then people would have attacked her for daring to presume that she knew better than the afro-american artist behind the cake what’s racist and what’s not.… Read more »
Yep. Sweden, you are occasionally terrible. >:( Stop with the sterilizing of trans people and the racist cake, and get back on the awesome toy ads, I say!
Ah Sweden. You’re so awesome! Except for that whole thing where you forcibly sterilize transgender people. And that thing where your minister of culture cut into a cake made in the form of a black woman, starting at the clitoris, while giggling. Mm-hm.