One million Europeans have signed against Strasbourg

Each year 200 million Euro are spend on moving the European Parliament between its two seats in Brussels and Strasbourg in France.

Today the European campaign 'Oneseat' reached its goal: one million Europeans have signed a petitition for a permanent seat in Brussels.

Now it will be interesting to see what will happen. The webpage of Cecilia Malmström (Swedish member of the parliament), who started the petition, explains:

"... when commissioner Margot Wallström said that she, in the framework of her plan D (for democracy, dialogue and debate), hopes to see a few citizens’ initiatives land at her desk, the idea of letting the Strasbourg issue become subject to a campaign started to grow. The citizen’s initiative, as described in the article 47 on participatory democracy in the proposed Constitution, allows for the EU citizens to become more active and to participate on European issues. If any petition collects one million signatures, the commission promises to raise the question. Mrs Wallström’s statement that she considers this initiative valid, independently of what happens to the constitution, is to be welcomed."

In spite of good will there is a limit to what Wallström can do. Legally, the Council of the European Union has the final say in the debate about Strasbourg. Meaning, it will be Europe's heads of states that will make the decision in the end. And whether they will be able to reach an agreement on the matter is doubtful. For sure Chirac will oppose the idea. Strasbourg is the symbol of peace between France and Germany and the seat is far to prestigious for the French to let go of it.

The monthly Strasbourg trips are a waste of time and money. Even a waste of space if you consider the suggestion that the Strasbourg building could accomodate a prominent pan-European university.

Danish media are run by men

A report from the weekly newsletter A4 (published by The Danish Confederation of Trade Unions) reveals that more than half of Denmark's nationwide newspapers does not have a single woman in the editorial management. In spite the fact that 40 percent of the members of the Danish Journalist Union are female it is still to a very large extend men who are in power in the media business.

Media expert Rasmus Jønsson says to A4:

"It is a men's club of old friends who see things from the same perspective, move in the same circles, are raised by each other and have followed the same career path. The problem is not just that there is an overrepresentation of men - these men are also alike. And that has a consequence for the way they shape media."

Ask Rostrup, chief editor at MetroXpress (part of the Metro chain) seems to agree that more women are needed:

"It is about having the best blend of people because it reflects the society media are to describe. When you have to develop ideas it is a problem if everyone relate to the same reality."

Good point. Still Rostrup has hired two men as his closest colleagues. Both of them having worked as journalists at MetroXpress a long time before they were promoted - one even being Rostrup's old fellow student. And as with most other editorial positions the vacant jobs were never advertised. The editor-in-chief explains:

"They were both obvious candidates."

Key to better representation in the media business must be that editors begin to hire people that are not mirrored images of themselves. For example by recruiting from outside the "men's club".

This could also be an effective way of expanding readership. According to A4 consumers of newspapers are the same as those who produce them: Middle-aged men.

Jane Fonda visits Swedish feminist party

"Come on, vote for the feminists!" said American movie and aerobic star Jane Fonda yesterday. She visited Sweden in connection with the national elections that will take place this Sunday and to give her support to the Swedish feminist party "Feministiskt initiativ".

It seems Jane Fonda has really understood what modern feminism is all about. She says to the Danish newspaper Politiken:

"To some the idea about a feministic party may appear threatening. But it is not about turning the patriarchy into a matriarchy. It is about turning the patriarchy into a democracy. That is what feminism represents."

At the moment, though, the Swedish feminist party is far from victory. They need 4 percent of the votes to enter the parliament. According to polls they are to get only 1 percent.

Go, F!

Famous feminist #4

Merrill Beth Nisker (born 1968), better known as Peaches, is an electroclash artist. Her songs are mainly concerned with sex. Before she became "Peaches," she was an elementary school teacher and librarian.

She plays almost all the instruments for her songs, programs her own electronic beats and produces her records.Her songs have been featured in movies such as Mean Girls, My Little Eye and Lost in Translation. Her music has also been featured on Showtime's The L Word television series. Peaches performed guest vocals on Pink's album Try This, on the song "Oh My God." She has been invited to lecture at the Contemporary Music Academy in Berlin. Her most notorious song, "Fuck the Pain Away," is also the name of an electro night club in Brighton.

Peaches' music is preoccupied with gender identity. Her lyrics and live shows self-consciously blur the distinction between male and female; she appears on the cover of her second album Fatherfucker with a full beard. When asked if she had chosen the title for shock value, she commented:

"Why do we call our mothers motherfuckers? Why do we stub our toe and say, "Aww motherfucker!"? What is motherfucker? ... We use it in our everyday language, and it's such an insanely intense word. I'm not one to shy away from these obscene terms that we actually have in our mainstream. Motherfucker is a very mainstream word. But if we're going to use motherfucker, why don't we use fatherfucker? I'm just trying to be even."

She disputes accusations of "penis envy," preferring the term "hermaphrodite envy" since "there is so much male and female in us all." Nevertheless, she does not shy away from identifying herself as a sexual being, although she rejects the sanitized portrayal of women in popular music.

Source: wikipedia

This is a more controversial choice of 'famous feminist'. I chose Peaches because she gave a concert in Copenhagen yesterday. She must be crazy on stage (I've never seen her so I just imagine) but still cool. Politiken wrote in their review:

"It is an interesting, feministic style when this pale, chubby, not very attractive woman again and again in hotpants and bra exhibits her sexuality and appears strong and cool by doing so. You are fascinated and repelled at the same time. At times she looks like a nervous school girl, other times like an ugly transvestite. As she sings: "You love it when I'm bad" - and we do. Because she breaks our ideas about what a woman is and what she does and should do."

Mr. feminist

"The goal of a 'man book' is not to oppose gender equality or to create a manifesto against feminism. On the contrary the idea is to turn feminism into a joint project where both genders fight against gender roles and gender prejudices that for no good reasons keep us from living our lives as we wish. Such a feminism, that is also is a matter for men, will of course have to reflect men's experiences and perspectives as well as it reflects those of women. Such a feminism will have to break female feminists' monopoly power over interpreting gender and gender roles."

- Danish author Niels Ulrik Sørensen in the antology 'Pikstormerne' (2000).

Danish sex photographer II

A new kind of journalism is thriving in Denmark.

"The media is the new court system and you're the judge!" as stagisblog puts it.

Morten Spiegelhauer and his programme "Operation X" is a good example of journalism that turns your living room into a court. Two weeks ago he revealed the sex crimes of a 'paedophile hunter', effectively collecting evidence and doing interrogation on-screen. Afterwards all footage was handed over to the police who then - rather undramatic - arrested the suspect. What the real-life court has to say will not really matter. Rudy Frederiksen has already recieved his verdict. All those who followed Spiegelhauer's investigation from the sofa have delivered their sentence: guilty.

The thing I have most against "Operation X" is its moralism. One thing is to uncover illegal acts or immoral deeds. Another is to expose the guilt of the perpetrators into endless details. In an earlier episode of "Operation X" Spiegelhauer took a close look at trafficking and sex slavery in Denmark. Here he confronted a pimp with the immorality of sex trade by repeatly asking questions resembling "how can you bring yourself to profit on sex slavery?"

I find this kind of 'moral porn' repulsive. We all know that it is wrong to exploit other people and that there are very few morally acceptable motives for doing so. Why do we need this pillary in prime time?

Danish sex photographer I

Recently a Danish 'paedophile hunter', a was revealed as a sex photographer of young girls. Rudy Frederiksen worked as a school consultant and was one of Danish media's most used experts in paedophilia. The Danish TV programme 'Operation X' exposed his "side business"; recording and selling videos of himself having sex with girls younger than 18.

Rudy Frederiksen found the girls he had sex with on the web. He promised them careers as models and they agreed to meet, have sex with him and have the act filmed. But why on earth would they say yes to do a sex video with a 40-year-old man? Why is there some (very) young girls who accept such sex offers when they appear to be easy to refuse? After all - it is just typing in "no thanks!" on the keyboard. In Information (9-9-2006) Kuno Sørensen from Save the Children Denmark gives an explanation:

"The young girls are part of a culture where the physical plays an important role. Here the chat rooms - where they use their profiles to exhibit themselves - is part of generating a competition that might pressure the girls to go overstep their boundaries."

Another expert, Anna Lynge, says:

"It is difficult for the girls to say no because it is an unknown and exciting territory that they are entering. At the same time they naively trust that adults know what they are doing. And then it should not be underestimated that it is attractive to get attention and compliments from a grown-up man if you are 13-15 years old."

"At the same time there is a lot of focus on being the most sexy and daring. The most beautiful. That is what many TV-shows are about. It is a competition about getting attention by exhibiting yourself."

Sadly, sexuality has - not just for women but also for very young girls - become a very dominant 'tool' to achieve social accept. This is what paves the way for sex offenders as Rudy Frederiksen.

Save me from the baboons

I found a couple of interesting quotes in a commentary in yesterday's edition of the new free Danish daily Dato (collected during a really quick trip to Denmark!). Journalist Esben Kjær comments on a feature in Berlingske: "Feminine values killed the alpha-male" (28th of August 2006). Judging from the headline my spontanious and honest response is to agree with Kjær (he labels it "childish bollocks") but I will read the article more thoroughly later and maybe give a comment. For now I see it mostly as another example that we need a far more nuanced debate about gender roles in Denmark.

But let me pass on two of Kjær's interesting points about gender roles:

"First and foremost women have not made any coups. They have fought openly for equality and modern femininity for almost 40 years - and with great success. Meanwhile the man has more or less done nothing to define a similiar masculine project. So if the women set the agenda then it is the fault of the men - the gender that is presumed to be capable of decisive action. Men need to give word to what the modern man believes..."

"Secondly: men are not 'womanish' ('kvindagtig' in Danish) just because they do not walk around and beat their chests. Because while the women have be talking - and as we know they are pretty good at that - men have been doing what they are good at: acting. Author Bertill Nordahl [...] speaks of a new, masculine identity that builds on more than career. The modern man is an engaged, (almost) equal father - in his own way. He flirts with the feminine (as liberated women flirt with the masculine), is body-conscious and vain, with broad shoulders and a determined look. A many-sided masculinity that we have never before seen so many men have in society."

The need for a new concept of masculinity

"Men are the loosers of the future" states a big headline in today's edition of the Danish newspaper Politiken.

According to the Economic Council of the Labour Movement the Danish labour market will lack 136.000 skilled workers and 66.000 persons with a higher education in 2015. In turn there will be 135.000 unskilled workers in surplus.

"It will be men who will be in trouble," says managing director Lars Andersen from the Economic Council of the Labour Movement. There is a big difference between the educational pattern of men and women: Today half of Denmark's young women goes for higher education whereas only 37 percent of the young men has chosen university or the like. He explains:

"The young women's educational profile is a better fit for the future's labour market than that of the men. The men are in high risk of becoming the future's loosers."

This is sad news. There are of course no good biological reasons for men to have less motivation for higher education than women - so something must be very wrong with the way that men are taught to be men.

The new report is just another proof how crucial it is that we escape traditional gender roles and reinvent what it means to be 'a man' and 'a woman'.

Famous feminist #3

"Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?"

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is a British author who made an original contribution to the form of the novel - also distinguished feminist essayist, critic in The Times Literary Supplement, and a central figure of Bloomsbury group.

Virginia Woolf's concern with feminist thematics are dominant in "A room of one's own" (1929). In it she made her famous statement: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." The book originated from two expanded and revised lectures the author presented at Cambridge University's Newnham and Girton Colleges in October 1928. Woolf examined the obstacles and prejudices that have hindered women writers. She separated women as objects of representation and women as authors of representation, and argued that a change in the forms of literature was necessary because most literature had been "made by men out of their own needs for their own uses." In the last chapter Woolf touched the possibility of an androgynous mind. Woolf refers to Coleridge who said that a great mind is androgynous and states that when this fusion takes place the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. "Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine..." 'Three guineas' (1938) urged women to make a claim for their own history and literature.

Source: kirjasto.sci.fi

I'd rather be a Cyborg than a goddess

What you are about to read is really a curiosity.

Last year I stumbled over the notion of "cyber feminism". American Professor Donna Haraway is the woman behind the remarkable 'ism' and the idea is that feminists and women should consider that machines can contribute to liberation and close the gender gap. She writes:

“Up till now (once upon a time), female embodiment seemed to be given, organic, necessary; and female embodiment seemed to mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric extensions. Only by being out of place could we take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to females”

Read more in Haraway's cyborg manifesto

845.000 Europeans have already signed

www.oneseat.eu

My inner European

Speaking of European integration.

Your Inner European is Dutch!

Open minded and tolerant.You're up for just about anything.

Who's" Your Inner European?

The heart of Europe

I just spent two great days in Amsterdam where I met up with my fellow students from the Erasmus Mundus programme. I haven't seen them for almost two months so I was of course really glad to be reunited.

After a couple of days of relaxation in one of my favourite European cities I moved on to Brussels where I will stay for about a month to do an internship. I have been wanting to work in Brussels for a looong time so I am quite excited to start tomorrow.

Before leaving Amsterdam one of my friends there asked me if I was an Euro-skeptic. My spontanious answer was 'no'. I have never really been that skeptic about the EU and European integration. I guess I am something as rare as an Euro-optimist.

From today I am an Euro-optimist in EU-land.

Famous feminist #2

Shirin Neshat was born in Iran in 1957, and presently lives and works in New York. The way in which she gives form to her theme makes the tensions between her original background and Western culture visible.
When she was 17 Shirin Neshat moved from the land of her birth to Los Angeles, to begin her studies at an art academy. The Iranian Revolution broke out while she was in the United States, and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. Under his regime women were required to wear the chador. Sixteen years later, in 1990 she revisited her fatherland for the first time. This renewed acquaintance made deep impression on her.
Since then Neshat focused on investigating and commenting on her relation to her homeland and Islam, and in particular the position of women and male/female relationships. For this she draws on two very different cultural backgrounds, using their insights to examine large, underlying social themes.

Source: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Zarin, 2005 (video)

Passage, 2001 (video)

The Last Word, 2003 (video)

Famous feminist #1

Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986) was a French author and philosopher. She is best known for her 1949 treatise Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.

As an existentialist, de Beauvoir accepts the precept that existence precedes essence; hence one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Her analysis focuses on the concept of The Other. It is the (social) construction of Woman as the quintessential Other that de Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women's oppression.

De Beauvoir argues that women have historically been considered deviant, abnormal. She says that this attitude has limited women's success by maintaining the perception that they are a deviation from the normal, and are outsiders attempting to emulate "normality". For feminism to move forward, this assumption must be set aside.

De Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, reducing male consciousness to immanence.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Paternal leave

Today the free Danish daily MetroXpress featured a story about parental leave.

"There is a trend towards fathers getting harassed if they express their desire to take parental leave. We have heard about reactions as 'you can forget all about it' and 'your wife can do that, not you'," says Jane Korczak fra 3F, the biggest Danish trade union.

According to 3F and other trade unions many fathers even get sacked by their employers if they wish to take parental leave.

By Danish law fathers have the option to to take 32 weeks of the total parental leave - but it is only a possibility, not a right.

This is a truly unsatisfying situation for both men and women. Fathers should have the right to take half of the leave - just as mothers should have the right not to take it. Come on, politicians - help the families and earmark half of the parental leave for the father.

Let us move beyond the sex and beauty stuff

After a fun night out with some good friends I stumbled over a stack of free gay&les magazines. With usual curiosity and my fetish for printed things (magazines, leaflets, brochures, posters... you name it, I'll grab it!) I took a copy with me home. After a long night in town I passed out instantly and forgot all about the magazine until my hangover was gone the next day.

But then... it was really an interesting reader! Besides the theme "what is queer?" which was one of the reasons the magazine appealed to me in the first place (my growing feminist awareness have led me to be interested in the notion of 'queer') it was really nice to experience how political it was. These people have their sexual orientation in common, but the publication was not all about sex and how to be attractive - thank god NO!

It made me think about how utterly dull women's magazines are. We lack to see equal pay, women are significally underrepresented in top management and only 1 percent of the world's property is owned by women but still the seven or eight magazines for women we have in Denmark all write about the same things: sex, relationships, the newest self-help books, interior decoration and beauty tips. Isn't it time to try out something new?

Be political!

Imagine Bush

'Imagine this' is an audio mash up of president Bush singing the John Lennon hit 'Imagine'.

Just imagine.

My kind of place

It has been a while since my last post but I have spend the last weeks on moving to Denmark and getting in place for the summer. Until the 1st of August I will be vacating at a friend's place and looking at her humourous choice of bathroom decoration I already feel at home.

(For foreign readers I can inform that the picture is of Pia Kjaersgaard, the leader of the Danish People's Party)