Swedish Feminist Party Wants To End Marriage
By: Matt Rosenberg · Section: Culturehttp://www.redstate.org/story/2005/9/16/153355/278In a social welfare state such as Sweden, the continual urge to tinker becomes irresisitible. Although this might qualify as a bit more than tinkering. The Copenhagen Post highlights a report that a new political party, The Swedish Feminist Initiative (Swedish, "Feministiskt initiativ") has announced as an aim the legislative abolition of marriage.
This party is successfully making its way onto the national stage in Sweden to advance its theory that women are systemically subjugated. The recently-formed group intends to run candidates in the 2006 elections. Along with an increasing profile in the European media, I see guest lecturer positions for party members at The New College in San Francisco.
Now, more.
Sep 16th, 2005: 15:33:55
The Post:
The Swedish Feminist Initiative has called for the abolition of traditional marriage, as we know it. Instead, the party wants to implement a modern idea of cohabitation, where neither gender, sexual orientation, nor the number of members are defined.
...the feminist organisation had met over the weekend for its annual general meeting, and come up with some radical solutions to what it sees as many fundamental problems in modern society.
"We want a new legislation for two or more people, who live together, and have joint finances and belongings," said Tiina Rosenberg, one of the women spearheading the group. "The history of marriage is not about love and living together, it's about ownership," Rosenberg said, pointing out that regulations covering inheritance rights and ownership only applied to married couples or registered homosexual partners.
"More than two should be able to live together. One example would be a divorced couple, who have new partners and where everybody wants to take financial responsibility for the children, who could all live together," Rosenberg said.
But Rosenberg, a professor in gender studies at Stockholm University, also said it was nobody's business whether two, three, or more, had a sexual relationship. "In a free country the law shouldn't decide how people's sexual relationships are. No law can affect feelings," she said.
Is it now anybody's business (besides that of those involved) when a married person cheats on their spouse in Sweden? I don't exactly think there are monogamy police patrolling the streets in Stockholm. Is Rosenberg (no relation AT ALL, BTW) saying the institution of marriage is inhibiting sexual expression in Sweden? People have a choice, as anywhere else: get married and be faithful, get married and cheat (and live with the consequences), stay single, or get divorced.
But because some radical Swedish feminists cannot commit to the societally optimal alternative of monogamous marriage, and because they condescendingly presume to speak for all Swedish women by claiming marriage is inherently about "ownership," ergo marriage in Sweden should be abolished?
Phew! The liberal policy impulse slithers back to its punitive, narcissistic roots yet again.
Yet abolishing marriage is not all The Swedish Feminist Initiative wants.
Amongst other proposals put forward by the group were a six-hour workday and completely individualised parental benefits to force men to take off as much time as women to care for their children. The all-female board also says it wants to introduce gender quotas on company boards.
The Feminist Initiative political party in Sweden formed only this past April, from the ashes of a similarly named pressure group, and intends to run candidates in the 2006 election. Lately, though, there's been a bit of discord. More here:
On 13 September 2005 another of the 15 founding members of the Executive Committe, Susanne Linde, resigned from the party. Linde was the only member of the founding group who had previously been active in a right-of-centre political party, the Liberal People's Party. She gave as her principal reason the treatment she had received from another committee member Tiina Rosenberg, who, among other claims, had criticised her for being a heterosexual and for being a "middle class old woman". Linde was unhappy with Rosenberg's "reverse homophobia".
A founder was current Member of Parliament Gudryn Schyman, a fomer Marxist-Leninist who served as leader of the Swedish Left Party from 1993 to 2003, but had to leave that post after tax fraud charges. Last year she proposed a "man tax" in Sweden to to cover the costs of domestic violence, saying, "we have to have a discussion so that men understand that they have a collective financial responsibility." However, she has left the Feminist Initiative because it became too radical for her.