Before dawn

There is no other way around this wall of fear and anger than non-violence. There is no other option than the most basic principle of love. No more bombs, neither on civilians nor fighters, no more gunning down of anyone—anyone! No more hate speech, kidnappings, rapes, brutality towards children. It must stop. We must demand a moratorium on violence in all its forms. Immediately! Stop the drones, pick the bombers and the tanks apart, help those hurt into the bone and depths of their selves to heal. Every single one of us must accept our responsibility for the well being of every other single individual on this planet. We must reach beyond our deepest fears to hold on to our humanity.

Så kom du då till sista, du var en främling,

en mytgestalt som jag hört talas om.

Så många hade målat dina bilder

men det var bortom bilderna du kom.

We have for too long told ourselves that our behaviour is righteous. That we must fight evil with evil. That brutality is justified—in the name of profit, development, war, or God. We have sold out our innermost Selves for the sake of false securities.

Vi trodde du var användbar, till salu,

vi skrev ditt namn på våra stridsbanér.

Vi byggde katedraler högt mot himlen


men du gick hela tiden längre ner.

For how many centuries have we accepted what no one should ever—ever!—accept? For how long have we refused to listen to the instinct of care and love, which we, as humans are born with? For how much longer will we continue to reject what is our most basic behaviour? We depend not on violence, but on each other. Without Other, Self is nothing, without Self, Other is lost.

Du är ett barn som ligger på ett jordgolv,

du fryser om vi inte griper in.


Du rör vid kroppar, hatar orättvisor,


Du bjuder älskande på moget vin.

The choice is ours. It has always been ours. We are offered the option of a different decision again and again. We need to stop and ask ourselves which choices will lead us in another direction, than the ones we are currently striding with fierce boots.

Du stiger ut ur alla tomma gravar

Du är en vind som säger: det blir vår.

Du kommer som en flykting över bergen

Du följer oss dit ingen annan går.
Du är den sång om livet som jag glömde

den sanning jag förrådde dag för dag.

Jag svek mig själv;
den spegel som jag gömde

bär dina bråddjup, dina anletsdrag.

I believe in the Difference. I refuse to be caught in the maelstrom of hate and fear. I know that we can change this if we wish to, if we dare.

Kom närmare, bli kvar hos mig.

Det mörknar, och kanske ljusnar det på nytt igen.

Ditt liv ska bära mig;
jag hör en koltrast
som sjunger timmen innan gryningen.

Je suis Ahmed—the revolution betrayed

This day, as the two before it, is a very sad one. We have witnessed fear and its massive shadows. Eighteen dead. At least two of whom had parents from a former colony, heavily disgraced and violated by its coloniser. After the second imperial war. Most likely all of the killers in this drama have experiences of exclusion, and have most likely grown up with parents who have felt racism into the bone. Whether in France or outside of her. We are all victims. What differentiate us is how we react. Ahmed Merabet, one of the police officers killed in the French drama, was French, with Algerian decent. He was doing his job, as the other police officer who was killed. They had both chosen the French, democratic state, rather than an opposing, globalised resistance group. The woman expressing her fears of 'what's going to happen to France.' The journalists. The cartoonists. I. I am a victim. And an accomplice. We all are. The French Revolution is betrayed. We disgrace the very basic, deepest human rights of of us all: the right to live in dignity. The right to show and experience respect. The French Revolution betrayed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNy4Lli83-I

Children in focus!

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has made a very interesting choice of laureates this year; Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai. The focus is thus on the child's right to a decent childhood and to education. It is also given to two persons who represent conflictual identities; Indian hindu and Pakistani muslim. Finally, it centres on girls and women's rights to education, in a world where girls and women are discriminated against generally, and particularly in Southern Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh). From a peace and conflict perspective, this year's choice of laureates attends to the central realisation that structural violence leads to direct violence—the exclusion of children, particularly girl children, from social development is obviously part of the conflict scenarios of our times, as well as times gone by.

Read-It!

I just read Glosswitch comment on "Sex-positive" feminism on New Statesman's website (http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/03/sex-positive-feminism-doing-patriarchys-work-it). Guess how Google ad's understood my clicking on that text. I had this ad popping at me: "9 Powerful Words You Can Say That Remind Him Why He Needs You." How ironic!


The article is very, very interesting and timely! The global gender equality project  is but a patriarchal reshuffling of androcentrist interests.

About strong women

As a teen and young adult I was told that strong women are rather unpopular with young men—a view expressed within a highly heteronormative sexual discourse of course. I have by others been defined as 'a strong woman' since before I was legally a woman. I am still unsure whether the comments I received were affirmative or of the more raised finger/warning kind. What I experienced seemed both to confirm and negate the idea of the scare strong women create in men. I tend to believe that the difference between me and those among my friends who were not defined as 'strong' was rather that I was picky. I wanted to decide for myself, not being gracefully chosen by someone. I'm still like that—these days even in my professional life, refusing to go with what the research funders want me to do, instead doing what I want to do. Freedom is essential to my very constitution as a person it seems.

However… I have lately come to think about 'strong women' in a more critical sense. Maybe because of the upsurge in feminist debates, maybe because of tomorrow's Afghan elections. What is, really, a 'strong woman'? Would I say that my friends mentioned above are not strong? Would I say that the women I have interviewed in my research were not strong, or the women reflected in feminist research over the last decades? No, I would not. They are  all, all, very strong individuals, making choices based in experiences and norms. The norm tells us—across the globe—that women who openly express a strong, personal will, refusing to be dictated what to do, say or think are dangerous. To men that is, and other (properly behaving) women. They cannot be controlled, or as my dear brother once defined it; 'tamed' (grinning as he decided that I had been 'tamed' by my husband). What's so interesting about this? Well, guys, male counterparts and dearest friends: you are fooled! No woman I have ever met, or heard about has not been strong. The difference is that some women choose to be open (honest?) about their views, wishes, passions, or have a spirited personality that cannot easily be hidden behind a screen of soft, likeable docility and compliance. In patriarchal societies, that is all the societies we actually know of, women playing the game according to the myth of female amenability are often more successful than those refusing to play according to the rules. But they are no less strong!

The world is populated by strong women. And men. Surviving your early childhood will leave you strong. Some are much more open about it than others. That's the diff!

A Feminist Crash Course on International Women’s Day

Confusion abound. What is feminism? Why do we celebrate a women’s day? Are there any limits to who may claim to be a feminist? The ‘regular Swede in the street’ seems basically to have a very limited idea of what feminism and feminist are. Maybe that’s not so strange though. Most political ideas are not well known or understood generally. How many know anything really about the differences between social liberalism and neo-liberalism? What separates Social Democticism from Socialism, or from National Socialism? How many know that there exists no such thing as a matriarchal society anywhere, that we know of, neither historically nor contemporarily, and that those societies, which are pointed out as matriarchal are actually matrilineal patriarchal societies? How many among those with tertiary education know that feminism is nothing new, or that it is not really one –ism but several?

I have just watched the Swedish Television series of 3 episodes called Fittstim—Min kamp (in translation Pussy Shoal—My Struggle) by a so-called media-feminist of some status in the Stockholm based cultural elite. Then I watched the debate, which was televised directly after the first episode. Now, I watched this on the net, since I don’t really watch tellie as others do (not structured enough to have week long pauses between shows!). It was weird—both the series and the debate. It was so full of no-nothing stuff. It left me with… nothing, really, apart from a very clear understanding that this woman really struggled to understand feminism. Which is really a bit strange since she is a proclaimed (self- and by others) elite feminist. It dawned on me that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. That’s why she needs to get on good terms with the Father figure (Ulf Lundell) she’s stalking with no result through the three episodes. That’s why she picks up on issues of limited importance, while surfing the central stuff. She’s got no idea, but apparently her mother-in-law does have a very clear idea! As has Gudrun Schyman whom she interviews in the first program, and who seems puzzled by the questions from this younger, un-educated and confused woman. She’s a sad figure really. She’s as un-educated when the series end and the debate starts, as she was when she started filming it. Unfortunately, she is not the only un-educated (self-?) proclaimed feminist, not among the general public, nor among the relatively well-educated elite, as became very, very clear during the debate. 

Therefore, a crash course:

1) The common denominator of feminisms is the normative strive for a society in which women and men are considered equally important, and equally respected. There it ends.
2) Thence, fascists can also be feminists. How? Mussolini and Hitler defined women as extremely important to the creation of their envisioned new societies: as mothers and homemakers, of the same importance as breadwinning men-cum-fathers. For the very same reason also religious extremists may consider themselves feminists—as long as women are perceived as equally important as men through filling different but equally important functions in society. If you’re not very right wing this may give you an uneasy feeling of discomfort. The theoretical underpinnings come from Difference Feminism, and Gender Complementarity Theory.
3) The idea of equality between men and women, in the sense of both sexes having the same (often defined as natural) rights and access to the same resources, be it economic, political, social, cultural etc. are basically located in the Liberal Feminist Tradition. The demand for women’s human rights is a long, liberal struggle—Mary Wollstonecraft (Frakenstein’s ‘granny’) was a Liberal Feminist outraged by the decision of throwing women out of the revolutionary French Parliament—while the Suffragette’s and other women’s movements finally won the fight for women’s right to the vote, also a typically Liberal cause. Many of the ‘classical’ or ‘oldies but goodies’ feminists will locate themselves in this category, and generally as researchers they will focus on women and the study of women’s life conditions, circumstances and experiences.
4) On the other end of the left-right political scale we find those who will define women’s struggle for their rights (i.e. liberal heritage) as intertwined with class (and to some extent race) struggles, locally as well as globally. These may be clustered together under the heading Radical Feminism and Socialist Feminism (they will not agree with me in this lumping together however). To clarify a point: if you find any proclaimed feminist stating that men are ‘the enemy’ or that men are by definition to be hated, they tend to be Radical Feminists, but this does not hold for all Radicals! Not at all!
5) Then we have those who may claim to be Gender Feminists, those who are interested in both femininity, masculinity, class, race, sexuality and who will often have Intersectionality as their point of departure, those who tend to focus on the relations of power, on that, which doesn’t fit the general understanding of sameness and difference within and between gendered categories. Those are labelled post-modernist or post-structuralist feminists.
6) And to round off: there are a number of other varieties in-between these very broad categorisations. However, as stated in the first point above: a feminist is someone who strives for a society in which women and men are considered equally important, and equally respected.

Having said this I might add that the Swedish party Feminist Initiative has presented an interesting list of candidates for the EU election (and also for the parliamentary this coming fall),  and a highly interesting political agenda! Check it out! (says a post-structural feminist…)

http://feministisktinitiativ.se

Art for Peace

Last week a Syrian-French artist flew in from Marseilles to Malmö to contribute to the exhibition Syrian Art for Peace, arranged by our Peace and Conflict Programme students. During 12 hours Rohan Houssein painted 'Zenobia is crying'. In the video linked below, the process of painting it is presented and Rohan explains all the symbols making up the painting. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/FOUm3YXARNs