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Some women do I said. I analysed why.

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In the gender issue, government policy does miss half the picture, it misses the half where some women want to be sexy and not necessarily just because society tells them to, but because it’s human nature to want to feel sexy and attractive, female and male alike. Being gay I have a very interesting perspective on this because obviously the gender debate in Sweden is extremely heterosexist. Contrary to what a lot of naysayers complain, it does not assume that men and women are equal and without differences, or should be. It assumes that women are weaker and constantly in need of protection, even from their own thoughts, as Streja shows by assuming that no woman would naturally want to pose in a sexy outfit in front of a camera.

The problem is that gender isn’t all that static. There are guys prostituting themselves online as well as women, who enjoy doing so. There are men who want to feel sexy, there are women who hate seeing objectified images of females everywhere. Reality is much more varied… traditional gender traits are spread out among people regardless of biological gender. There are straight men with various feminine tendencies and straight women with various masculine tendencies, and so on and so forth throughout the gamut of sexuality and gender expression. This is actually ignored in the Swedish debate… in true Swedish fashion women who want to be in porn or prostitute themselves are told they need their thinking to be corrected by society, and the existence of those same two desires in men is completely ignored because it’s assumed that men are always the consumers of sexual gratification and women are always sacrificing their dignity to give that gratification.

Like the drugs policy debate, the official line on gender is based on rigid moralism that ignores human nature and variation.

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PS Congruent as a term used here, therefore is quite an error on the thinking side.

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Thank you for writing this article. It helped me clear up some things I think about quite often.
I understand that it can be difficult to question the ’status quo’ of how these issues are treated, but it is important to challenge these attitudes otherwise no real progress will be made.

To address just a couple of the things you’ve brought up here, I appreciate the point about equality – what type of equality, for whom. Indeed there seems to be an inherent paradox in current policy about this. On one hand, we have the cultural biases you have mentioned – women as kinder, more peaceful, etc. These biases seem to create, for me, a divide in humanity. Two things happen for me: one, as a man they make it appear that there are things that I cannot be (kind, peaceful, agreeable), and two, it separates the genders so that each sees the other as “an Other,” or at least as two creatures that are innately separate and irreconcilable.

The paradox being that, while these biases are in place, there is policy that states that no, there are no differences, and everyone must be treated equally. The short-sightedness of these policies is that they are not capable of seeing that there ARE differences and the acknowledgment of that does not in any way mean that equal treatment is impossible.

It seems that we as a society focus on the wrong differences – we make some up, and we ignore the real ones. Both genders are damaged in the process. I for one have been twisted by the impression that, as you put it, as a man I naturally commit moral strangleholds and coercion on women. This isn’t true of course, but the doctrine I have been raised on certainly has suggested to me that it is, and that is hard to live with. How are we supposed to have normal relationships if we are told we’re bad by nature? How are we supposed to feel we can do any good with our lives?

The policies make such a great confusion because they ignore real problems facing women, or at least the full breadth of problems, and they also ignore the effect of these on men (Violence Against Women is after all a problem for all of us). It is ignorance of similar differences and different similarities, not recognizing them and not treating them. That is, each sex does have differences, but each sex are still both human and are participating in the same life.

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Who claims that women have a gene that makes them wanting to be photographed naked? But you can’t blame “society” for that some women find it comfortable and enjoying to do so. One can, in that case, also claim that “society” is to blame for that some people dislike those pictures (because society has learned them to think so). But does it give them the right to decide for others in a political “correct” way? What right have you or “society” to condemn such pictures when there are lots of people enjoying them? And who has the right to stand up and say “I know what is right for everyone, my opinion must be followed by everybody”? I dislike campaigns that scientifically wrongly points out men as evil and violent and women as victims and peaceful (or, to talk about TV-shows, soap-operas), and I’m definitely not alone having that opinion. But does it give us the right to demand regulations and prohibitions against such campaigns (or soap-operas)? (Beside that we can question if tax money is to be used for such campaigns). Tolerance is to accept that humans are different, not to rise yourself to some elitistic “best knowing” level that gives false legitimacy to decide for everybody what is “right”. And why is your definition of what “humans” want more correct than mine?

I agree with Laura.

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