Gender Neutral - Sweden aims to eliminate Gender Differences! Pages 1 2 3 NEXT | |
Well, the maternity ward is going to be an enlightening place for all..... | |
As a Swede, let me correct you in that we are not out to eliminate gender distinction (because there are some obvious distinctions, such as the difference in sexual organs and how they work) but rather create a society where gender isn't a huge determining factor in how you are treated. This is especially true in our pre-schooling system, where the word "hen" (gender neutral person) is replacing han and hon (he and she respectively) in a few of our progressive pre-schools. The idea is to give the children the choice of who they want to be, free from the expectations placed upon them by being lumped into a gender category. It is important to note that most pre-schools are not doing this yet and several people are fiercly against these ideas. Me? I think it is great and hope this idea will spread to more pre-schools and public institutions. Any thing to give the children a chance to do what they really want as opposed to what they think is expected of them. | |
I was actually talking to another Swede about this over on G+ just a moment ago and she was correcting some things from that article as well. (If you read the link some of the ideas expressed would seem extreme to the average American, I just find them fascinating.) I think creating a society where gender isn't a determining factor in how you are treated sounds amazing. Sign me up. | |
Yeah, Sweden is utterly insane when it comes to political correctness, and have no intention of letting small things like reality or the fact that it's simply instating a new set of equally oppressive majority norms get in the way.
I mean, seriously, children aren't allowed to play however they want because the government is pushing an ideology on them?! That's bloody indoctrination, a complete disrespect for the rights of each individual child and parent to choose and live by its own norms. | |
I got to completely agree with you. PC really have gone mad in Sweden. I have no problem with Hen since it actually is useful instead of writing Han/Hon or H*n | |
From what I have heard from most Swedes, though... they seem to say that they like the practice and the idea. (Especially progressive Swedes.) The few women I've talked to say it hasn't made a huge difference and is mostly aimed at allowing kids to decide how they want to be treated - which is the opposite of government imposing an identity on you. And why would having an identity imposed on you by your parents or society be any better? As for things like "removing free play time" - I would have to see what it's replaced with. I don't recall "free play time" being all that enlightening in my childhood. Fun, sure. | |
Are they going to abolish gender discriminatory locations like bathrooms too? We must fight for equality! Only when a man and woman can void their bowels side by side can we reach true gender enlightenment! Sorry folks, until human biology evolves to the point where we're a genderless amorphis blob of identical cells indistinguishable from the next, we're going to have to live with the terrible reality that there are differences between each other. | |
Eh, I'm not sold on the theory that gender is a societal construction. I fully believe that men and women should have equal opportunities, but I don't think you have to go for the full fledged androgynous society to achieve that. When I studied feminism in political science classes, we grouped different feminist ideologies into subsections of liberal feminism, socialist feminism and extremist/radical feminism (baring in mind this is only one unit of my A2 course so we only have about a month to get through feminism, so it was all probably very condensed). I found myself strongly agreeing with liberal feminists (Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor ect) because they all argued that men and women have equal capabilities so should be considered equal in society. However when we later moved onto extremist/radical feminists (Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millet ect) who proposed concepts such as androgynous societies, I just couldn't convince myself that it was necessary for equality. Then again, I am speaking as a 21st Century man who grew up in a country with established gender roles, so maybe I'm simply being conservative. | |
Some places DO have co-ed bathrooms, and they are more common in forward thinking countries like Sweden, actually. Co-ed gyms, nude beaches, showers - everything. Believe it or not, when you live as I do with men and women and you see them naked every day, it becomes pretty "meh" after awhile. You do your business and you don't much care about minor differences in body type. What does going to the bathroom have to do with sexuality, anyway? I know I'm generally not thinking about sex when I'm in the bathroom stall "voiding my bowels" but hey your mileage may vary! I don't care WHO is next to me in the bathroom, my thought is, "Do your business, wash hands, get back to life." Americans are... oddly prudish sometimes, it seems. And I'm American. Just after spending a few years in Germany... and Germany isn't exactly the least prudish country, either. | |
Have you ever read Cordelia Fine's excellent book, Delusions of Gender? She argues quite persuasively (and with almost 100 pages of footnotes linked to research studies) that gender is a cultural construct, largely. Biologically we have sex differences but they are minimal when compared to what culture does to us after birth. Here's the link to some info on the book - http://www.cordeliafine.com/delusions_of_gender.html And I agree with you about feminist thinkers of the past; I was more comfortable with the liberal ones (Wollstonecraft was a favorite of mine) and less so with the more... extreme ones. Some even went beyond androgyny, as you know, in favor of a "let's just eliminate/hate on men" philosophy. Still I don't think this is about forcing anything on to anybody. It's about using neutral terms and letting people find their own identity. | |
what is so wrong about unisex bathrooms? they are pretty common the places I go, never encountered a problem with them. | |
I'll check the book out, see if Fine is capable of changing my mind. Thanks :) And yeah, some of the feminist we learned about in the extremist/radical section had some....coulorful ideas on where to take feminism. Mary Daly and Miller Gearhart spring to mind. | |
Well, a silver lining is that Sweden will be unable to uphold policies that are this far out of touch with how the majority of its people actually talk and live out their lives forever. Though it's probably an immense backlash when the hysterical hypersensitivity concerning immigration policy eventually blows up in its face that'll hit it first.
Yeah, I doubt you've been in touch with a representative part of the Swedish population, and given its current political climate it'd be hard for opponents to voice their opposition anyway, for fear of being branded sexist.
It's your parents job to raise you, and whatever identity they're "imposing" on you is part of the care and concern they shower on you out of love for and intimate knowledge of their child. A state can't love anyone, certainly not for the individuals they are, it can only impose its ideological beliefs. Which kind of undermines the whole idea of democratic control too, since the views of voters are basically formed by the government.
Yeah, doing what the children themselves find "fun" is being replaced by regulated forms of play, deliberately designed to promote particular beliefs on gender policy in them which it has been decided they should be indoctrinated with. It's the GDR all over again. | |
Well considering that most people expect SD to get more votes next election, so yeah.. and still our bigger parties refuse to talk about immigration (except that it wonderful and the solution to all our problem) | |
Meh, just so long as they aren't making arbitrary stances on it, I don't really have a problem with it. Accept for the gaggles that go together, I'd really like to avoid that if possible.
American's are many, many things. Sadly I don't feel like bashing on my own kind at the moment, but yes, many of them are prudes. ***** In general, I don't see the point of issuing policies which intend to eliminate distinctions between people based on any criteria. Humanity will simply draw new distinctions which to deem socially acceptable and/or apprehensible. Any amount of social conditioning to the contrary merely forces the adaptation and evolution of new social constructs to compensate. It's like watching a game of whack-a-mole. I get the intention, and sure it's a "noble" one, but it's like trying to force social evolution on a specie that still seems a few thousand years behind from a psychological standpoint. That is, if it ever manages to change at all. Fish gotta swim, Birds gotta fly, and all that jazz. | |
Ehhh, a very vocal minority (mostly consisting of crazy people and media personas) use hen. Nobody else does and what will happen is it will pass away once the before mentioned people stop thinking it is fun and hop onto their next pet issue, like men being able to pee standing up better than women. Rest assured, Sweden is not a gender-blind country where a father will compliment his son on his impeccable taste if he comes home in a newly bought dress before telling his daughter to cut her hair and get a job and find some nice gal' to marry. Our men have man names and our women have woman names. And we use him and her not hen. We certainly press the issue harder than many countries, but to claim that sweden is gender neutral is about as misleading as stating that america has discovered to grow pizzas in an agricultural miracle. | |
I see a bit of a hype in that. 200 teachers listening to something on a congress doesn't equal all schools copying that idea, and one magazine writing about it doesn't mean the public will do it, or even want it. Coincidence happens it to be I had a good two hour scrap in the gym last night, and one of the best women in the training happened to comment being jealous of boys, because they seem to have a natural aptitude for fighting, and for girls it comes less naturally. True enough, most girls besides herself were swinging it ridiculously and there was a good reason the group was divided based on gender.
However, radical feminists are notorious for extremely poor theorizing skills, making impossible assumptions, confusing correlation with causality and sweeping generalizations. My wife has a similar book called Beauty and Misogyny also with pages and pages of notes being cited, but that didn't stop the book from being trash. For instance, did you know fashion is a conspiracy by gay men to destroy women, whom homosexuals hate because they fancy men? Yeah, I also thought straight away that there's female homosexuals as well, but the author wasn't bothered by that one second it seems. And did you also know high heels are a torture device invented by men to restrain women so they can't walk as fast as we can and we can always chase them down? Yeah, I kind of haven't seen men chasing and raping girls who walk on high heels either, and the bit about girls wanting to appear taller is conveniently omitted, but hey, feminist writer and facts.... This site also does a pretty good job at smashing Fine's assumptions: For instance they point out the huge difference in crime rates between genders. This can't be explained culturally, as nobody, well almost nobody, teaches their kids how to be good criminals, so it's not like boys are taught crime and girls to be nice. So Fine's theory sinks. Also, there have been experiments in the past that placed gender totally on nurture, and they turned out a disaster. I remember a documentary about a boy who underwent religious genital mutilation, but lost his penis entirely due to complications. Impressed by a doctor who, like Fine, claimed gender was totally nurture, the parents consented to a sex change operation. The child grew up as a girl. Problem assumed to be solved. But what happened? She was deeply unhappy about it. At the last bit, the documentary makers look 'her' up in the present day. Guess what, she changed her name and now calls herself David, and lives as a man, wearing men's clothes and everything else. Proof that gender is not nurture. Also the existance of transgenders as a whole debunks Fine's assumptions, because if there are no biological differences between boys and girls, how is it possible that people are born in the wrong body and crave nothing more than to be a member of the opposite gender. Those feelings originate before puberty even. | |
Right, because these differences in society clearly have a lot to do with biological differences. Like names and which bathroom you use. It's just biologically impossible to name a boy Lisa =O | |
Whenever I hear this kind of reasoning, it is almost as if I am not living in the same Sweden as the person saying it. It wasn't that long ago that FP pushed for culture and speech exams for new immigrants. And Sweden has one of the harshest refugee processes in Europe, seeing as how we reject over 90% of all refugee appeals we receieve each year. Not to mention that we are about to face an extremly severe shortage of labour force in just 10-15 years. The only way we'll ride it out is to have people immigrating, otherwise we'll be facing a society that can't provide basic functions like health care to its' people. But yeah, let's talk about how bad immigration is instead of how we could make our integration better. | |
One problem with that reasoning: the immigrants one receives are mostly economic refugees with little education and few skills. The shortages are ussually exclusively skilled labourers, and ussually very specific ones too. And considering the extremely problematic integration of most non-western immigrants, it's likely to be a huge net loss to allow more immigrants to try and fix up a job market. | |
A quick read of that blog (reliable source indeed) suggests that the blogger in question actually agrees with Mrs. Fine. I quote the fourth paragraph in full: "Fine makes a convincing case (well, it convinced me) that the various scientific findings, mostly from the past 10 years, that seem to prove biological differences, are not, on the whole, very strong, and that even if we do accept their validity, they don't rule out a role for culture as well." And as we all know on this forum: Anecdotes do not make for good scientific evidence, in fact it isn't evidence for anything at all. That is in conjunction with the fact that transgenderism might be a sign that gender is a social construct and we don't know the exact causes of it. Even so, if we accept some biological differences between the sexes what difference does that make? Should someone be raised differently simply because that person can/can not become pregnant? | |
Good. We are getting even closer to total equality. Go Sweden. | |
For the most part my reaction is that this is just plain silly. I fall in with the liberal feminists where men and women are morally and legally equal and should have equality of opportunity. I'm not in favour of social engineering to destroy conceptions of gender entirely in the hope that it will establish some sort utopian society were gender doesn't exist. Why do we need to do this? Few people in the liberal Western world are being harmed or having their human rights violated on account of their gender. Victims of sex-traffic perhaps? But that's illegal anyway. Wife-beating? Illegal. Transexuals? Yes i'd say they probably face oppression because often they're socially ostracised- which of course they shouldn't be. But for the most part people are perfectly happy with current gender rolls and i don't see why gender rolls should be socially re-engineered for the benefit of a small minority of people who don't fit into conventional gender norms. If you don't wish to adhere to conventional gender norms, good for you, you have a right to do so, but i disagree with any moves to impose gender re-engineering on the general populace who are perfectly happy with the way things are at the moment. By the sounds of things this idea isn't generally popular in Sweden, and i certainly don't see it taking off elsewhere in Europe, least of all the UK. If we were to invent a gender neutral pronoun in the UK and started using that in some nursery's I'd love to read the Daily Mail take on it. Political correctness gone mad? You bet they'll say that, and a lot more. However, the scientist in me is inquisitive as to wherever this will have any effect on how children regard gender. I'd love to read some studies on this ten years down the line. | |
Clearly your last comment is a good indication of your misunderstanding of the point I was making and potentially your ignorance to the subtle nuances that gender plays in developing children in various societies. Opting for a completely gender neutral stance in raising a child can have some questionable affects when they begin to develop biologically noticeable toward their physical sex. Suddenly everything they have been taught takes a dramatic shift. The linked article even (if briefly) mentions the potential issues resulting from enforcing this on a legislative level. Besides the point, none of this makes a difference if the parents choose to raise their child through an alternative way. What's preventing Swedish parents from naming their girl Bob? Am I mistaken in the assumption that this entire notion supports that idea that parents want the government to raise their children? Just seems like a few people are overstepping their bounds and attempting to enforce their way of thinking on everyone else. Unless someone can explain the inherent damage in raising a boy as a boy and a girl as a girl? I'm going to echo Nickolai77's thoughts. | |
Fp is a small party compared to Moderaterna and socialdemokraterna. And if we have such a hard refugee policy then how come that we accepted more people fron irak then US did during the war? And oh no they are forced to learn our language... Wont somebody please think of the children? And I would hardly say that 101.000 a year is little http://focus-migration.hwwi.de/Sweden.6245.0.html?&L=1 And this is off topic and I'm sorry for starting it so if you want to continue arguing I would "happy" to do in PM. | |
Damn dude, your first comment made laugh so hard I almost peed myself! OT: as a Swede I must say that I like the idea and dislike it at the same time! I like it because it gives you the freedom to choose who you are, but to be honest how many pre-school children know who they are? I like the purpose of the word Hen but not the word itself. I just think it sounds ridiculous, since in my head I automatically translate it in to a picture of a Hen (female chicken)! What I really dont like about the word Hen is what it can become or already is (depending on how you see on it), a bit to close to the word It wich we like to use when we talk about animals or things and not a person!
C'mon man your gonna hold the one pre-school with an idiot to pedagogue as example! | |
Well as far as I know you cannot name your kid whatever you want. Our government has to approve the name or something like that. "1. Sweden Enacted in 1982, the Naming law in Sweden was originally created to prevent non-noble families from giving their children noble names, but a few changes to the law have been made since then. The part of the law referencing first names reads: "First names shall not be approved if they can cause offense or can be supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it, or names which for some obvious reason are not suitable as a first name." If you later change your name, you must keep at least one of the names that you were originally given, and you can only change your name once." | |
Of course not. Though talking to several Swedes it seems that they have started to at least introduce the gender neutral pronoun in many schools (compared to a year ago, when the idea was relatively new) - and people are starting to get used to it. My purpose wasn't to say I am radically for or against the idea; more just to see what other cultures (and hopefully another Swede or two) think about it.
Sure, but it could be argued that this is also cultural and that girls are culturally groomed to be less prone to violence. In an amazon-warrior woman society where women were raised to fight and men were raised to perform childcare tasks, do you think this might be different? Also, many pacific island cultures have... interesting ideas of gender. Several have what they call a "third" gender being very common, for example. Do I think that there are any biological differences? Perhaps, perhaps not - but it is interesting to try and figure out what is nature and what is nurture.
You do realize that stating "radical feminists are prone to X" is making a sweeping generalization, yes? Maybe some are, some aren't. Cordelia Fine's book has been called by some to be among the most important books of the past decade; personally I have mixed feelings on it. (And would you even call Fine a "radical feminist...?") Delusions of Gender is currently shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction 2011... Delusions of Gender was shortlisted for The Best Book of Ideas Prize 2011 and the The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2010.... Patrick Kingsley, writing in the Guardian, included Delusions of Gender in his "ten years of brain food" - the books which have most influenced thinking over the past decade, alongside Freakonomics, The Tipping Point, No Logo and The Black Swan... Obviously, all these people can be wrong and the book could still be utter crap but I'd give it a read before I rush to judge it. ;) You might be surprised at Fine.
Of course footnotes don't make a book; you have to look at where the footnotes lead you. And that's horrible. Amusing and it made me laugh (the gay men/fashion conspiracy thing) - but horrible. ;) Look, I'm no radical feminist. At all. Please don't get me wrong. If anything I'm a humanist and I think men get the short end of the stick in many, many areas of life. (In the US being a guy automatically gets your foreskin cut off in many cases and you're eligible to be drafted; two things, for example, women don't have to worry about. The Atlantic wrote an article called "The End of Men" which goes into more detail on a lot of places where women have overtaken men.)
I'd have to look at the exact citation and see what she was saying. Did it have anything to do with neurological gender differences? It's perfectly acceptable for Fine to have one opinion and still cite somebody with a different opinion, depending on what is being cited and the relevance. Only citing people who agree 100% with you sounds equally dangerous.
I love that blog! But did you read your own link? He wasn't "smashing" Fine's assumptions and he said this: Fine makes a convincing case (well, it convinced me) that the various scientific findings, mostly from the past 10 years, that seem to prove biological differences, are not, on the whole, very strong, and that even if we do accept their validity, they don't rule out a role for culture as well. So it sounds like you posted a link to a neuroscientist who... respects Cordelia Fine?
Well, read that again. What he says is this: But this doesn't mean that young men are always violent. In some countries, like Japan, violent crime is extremely rare; in other countries, it's tens of times more common; and during wars or other periods of disorder, it becomes the norm. Young men are always, relatively speaking, the most violent but the absolute rate of violence varies hugely, and that has nothing to do with gender. It's not that violent places have more men than peaceful ones. And then: Gender, in other words, doesn't explain violence in any useful way - even though there surely are gender differences. The same goes for everything else: men and women may well have, for biological reasons, certain tendencies or advantages, but that doesn't automatically explain (and it doesn't justify) all of the sex differences we see today; it's only ever a partial explanation, with culture being the other part. But overall what he SEEMS to say is that overall, perhaps we have been placing far too much emphasis on biology and not enough on culture when it comes to gender?
Erm, nobody is discussing cutting off penises here. And "I remember a religious documentary" isn't relative to this discussion at all, unless you want to link to the documentary so I can take a look and see how it applies here. As far as I know, no large scale studies like this have EVER been done. Please, prove me wrong - I would like to add such a study to my collection and increase my own knowledge.
Perhaps this explains that "third gender" I was speaking of in pacific island cultures, and why every culture has transgender people; biology. But surely nurture has a lot to do with why there are so many more transsexuals in certain cultures as opposed to others. TL;DR - I personally feel that both biology and culture are parts of gender; however I think we have placed far far too much emphasis on biology and not enough on culture in determining what constitutes one's gender identity. The neuroscientist you linked to seems to be saying the same thing. As I said, even he seemed to like Fine's book - you should read it. She's no radical feminist in the sense that she will tell you gays are out to destroy women. I promise. | |
Separate gender identities doesn't have to mean inequality. This is just dumb. | |
Truthfully man I am fascinated by this cultural/political lesson on Sweden. I have nothing to add but reading the back and forth is interesting. | |
That is my take on it, Nickolai. I can't wait to see this generation of children raised and to start getting examples of some people raised "gender neutral" ... | |
Do you have spies in my country? THE PIZZA TREE WAS TO REMAIN A SECRET... | |
See, I have a problem with that line of thinking. I don't see it "bashing my own kind" when I point out a perceived flaw any more than my wife telling me, "Gnome King, you're being an idiot because of X" is "bashing" me - she loves me, I love my own kind. When we see a problem, we speak up. When did "politeness" and never pointing out problems become a replacement for what is Right and Good in the USA? This is part of why social change is so hard for us. Saying that America is a prudish country isn't "bashing" it; it's pointing out a sorry state that I wish was different. I also happen to wish Americans were a bit more politically involved and better educated; does my pointing this out mean I am bashing my countrymen?
Oh, I think technology and many, many things are rapidly speeding up our evolution as a species. People will either transcend or deteriorate with the growth that is happening. I am taking a science-oriented view on this, myself - I want to see these children in 10 or 20 years down the road, raised gender neutral; and then see for myself what kind of adults this produces. That seems prudent, yes? What harm can there be in calling a child by a gender neutral pronoun and letting them pick their own toys / style of dress / mannerisms? And when you, as a parent, see them gravitating towards something, simply encourage them to explore it? I don't believe a parent's role is to impose anything on a child; but rather to simply provide love, support, and guidance through earned reason and respect. In this type of environment, I think a gender neutrally raised child might do quite well. | |
We can all play BATTLE SHIT together! | |
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Came across a fascinating post today in the Double X blog over at Slate:
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_sweden_s_new_gender_neutral_pronoun_causes_controversy_.html
Basically, Sweden is taking radical measures (or is prepping to take radical measures) to completely eliminate gender inequality - or even gender DISTINCTION - entirely. Boys will be allowed to have names like "Lisa" and girls names like "Nick" ... clothing will no longer be separated into "boys" and "girls" sections; all will be unisex.
I am fascinated by this and I think it is actually the wave of the future and the way to one day end gender discrimination entirely. I also happen to think that gender is a cultural construct anyway, but I don't want to get into that here. If you are interested in reading about the "gender as cultural construct" theory, check out this book:
http://www.cordeliafine.com/delusions_of_gender.html
But, back to Sweden. From the article:
The Swedish Bowling Association has announced plans to merge male and female bowling tournaments in order to make the sport gender-neutral. Social Democrat politicians have proposed installing gender-neutral restrooms so that members of the public will not be compelled to categorize themselves as either ladies or gents. Several preschools have banished references to pupils' genders, instead referring to children by their first names or as "buddies." So, a teacher would say "good morning, buddies" or "good morning, Lisa, Tom, and Jack" rather than, "good morning, boys and girls." They believe this fulfills the national curriculum's guideline that preschools should "counteract traditional gender patterns and gender roles" and give girls and boys "the same opportunities to test and develop abilities and interests without being limited by stereotypical gender roles."
What will be the fallout; good or bad; from a country that decides to do away with gender identity altogether?
I, for one, am quite excited about this. It will allow people, I believe, to form more natural and internal personalities for themselves instead of being railroaded into "proper" societal behavior; ie., the boy that wants to play with dolls will get to, without being looked at oddly - and so will the little girl that wants to play with toy guns.
Humans will see each other as human first, before male or female.
At least, that is the Utopian idea.
What say you?