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Iceland tells the patriarchy to fuck off
Icelandic feminists protest outside soon to be closed strip club
In case anyone missed it Julie Bindel wrote an excellent article in The Guardian on Friday’s about the impressive feminist revolution which gone on in Iceland since the political defeat of the right after last year’s financial collapse. A few days ago the country took the radical step of outlawing all strip clubs, or rather banning all businesses from profiting from the nudity of their employees. Last year Iceland also became the world’s third country after Sweden and Norway to outlaw the purchase of sex and they’re also, as far as I know, the only country in Western Europe never to have legalised porn. The left government has in addition introduced tough new laws to tackle trafficking and domestic violence and have also imposed gender quotas within company boards.
This latest bill to close down strip clubs was introduced initially by Left Green MP Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir. As she says “It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold.” And Guðrún Jónsdóttir of Stígamót, an organisation which has worked tirelessly against all forms of male violence for the last two decades, points out that “The Nordic countries are leading the way on women’s equality, recognising women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale.” Within the space of just a year Iceland has, I think we can say, systematically worked to dismantle the patriarchal ideology which has gone on for thousands of years and which sees women and their bodies as being placed on this world in order to serve men.
That Icelandic women have for the first time won real political power is, of course, hardly unrelated to these radical moves. The left advance last year also saw a significant increase in the percentage of women in parliament, due to the much more equal gender balance on the electoral lists of the Social Democrats and Left Greens. Women now make up 43% of MPs in the Icelandic parliament, more than in any other European country except Sweden. And let’s not forget that they also have the world’s first lesbian Prime Minister, Johanna Sigurðardottir from the Social Democrats. Johanna is herself a strong feminist and, while her government has been criticised over some of its policies on Icesave, she cannot be said to be a politician who lacks conviction or who isn’t motivated by a desire to make things better for those she represents.
Feminism is hardly new to Iceland of course. Between 1983 and 1998 they had a feminist party, called the Women’s List, represented in parliament and which was set up due to anger over the lack of the other party’s efforts to promote gender equality and equal representation. And on the 24th of October 1975 90% of Icelandic women went on strike for the day, refusing to cook, clean or go into work. Today organisations like Stígamót and the Feminist Association regularly engage in various forms of activism and campaign work and have gained increasing political clout.
As can maybe be expected the strip club ban has received significant attention internationally on blogs and various news sites. A few people are supportive but most of the comments I’ve seen are something along the lines of “oh my god, how awful, that’s Iceland permanently off my list of travel destinations”, or “what a bunch of puritanical, sexually-repressed, militant lesbian, man-hating prudes”. Others, while claiming to be no fans of strip clubs or prostitution, cannot possibly imagine a world where they cease to exist. Well let’s hope Iceland can show that such a world is indeed possible and that sitting back and adopting a defeatist attitude to everything is never going to help us change things for the better. To be radical is to dare to take on and challenge patriarchy at its roots, not to simply manage and regulate it so as to hopefully make it just this little bit better.
Read Julie’s Bindel’s article in full at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/25/iceland-most-feminist-country
Here’s also an excellent article in English titled “Women and crisis” by Left Green member Drífa Snædal: http://www.vg.is/frettir/eldri-frettir/nr/4543
This isn’t a go at you at all Stuart, it’s just that when folk quote Julie Bindel I like to make sure people are aware that she is really quite extremely transphobic.
There may be some truth in what you say however I also think we can’t automatically take everything that the transgender movement claim as fact. There is a danger, in my view, in some of it contributing towards the biological essentialisation of gender (which of course clashes with the radical feminist view that gender is purely a social construction). So Julie has every right to question that – not every criticism of the transgender movement from a political perspective is the same as promoting hatred towards those individuals who identify as transgender. Whether or not she has made comments which are insensitive or which potentially contribute to some of the stigma which transgender-identified people experience is of course a different question and one which can maybe be discussed elsewhere. It doesn’t obviously have anything to do with this particular article she wrote on Iceland.
Right, ok, I can accept having the discussion elsewhere, but I will allow myself a few replies to some of your points. Transgender folk aren’t a movement, they’re people, and some of them spend their time campaigning for their rights. Also, I would call writing an article called “gender benders beware” and saying that transgender women have “their beer bellies sliced open to make a vagina” pretty vicious and bigoted. I’ll leave off there, but suffice to say I like to consider myself an ally of the T in LGBT.
I hadn’t seen these particular comments but would of course agree that they’re not acceptable and could contribute to the discrimination experienced by transgender-idenitified people. What I meant when talking about the ‘transgender movement’ is that there are some individuals who claim to speak for all others who consider themselves as transgender and who have their own particular interpretation of gender which I personally would not support. It is unfortunate that some of these individuals are so quick to automatically denounce all criticisms as an example of ‘transphobia’. Gender identity is of course a very complex area and it’s absolutely wrong to dismiss the real personal experiences of transgendered people – I just think the reality doesn’t always tally with some of the claims made by the organised transgender movement.
Probably most of the journalists whose articles are linked to on this blog have said things that are disagreeable at one point or another in their journalistic careers.
Back on topic – I think this is really interesting and inspirational.
I love that 90% of the women went on strike, that’s amazing.
What is happening in Iceland just now is fantastic – they have a real tradition of feminism in Iceland, the patriarchy always held on with it’s very finger nails in Iceland as their traditions were matrilinear and marriage was never really enshrined as the norm, not only is Icelnad the first country in the world to have a lesbian leader, they were also the first (and probably the only countryin the world) to have an “unmarried mother” as Prime Minister.
Julie Bindel is a leading feminist writer and a good friend to the SSP and bravely stood up for women comrades when other journalists haven’t, her campaigning is tireless against violence against women and the work she did in Justice for Women changed women’s lives particularly women like Sara Thornton who won her appeal with support from women like Ms Bindel.
yes she has spoken out and sometimes provactively and even distastefully against transgender people however those involved in that “movement” have been both sexist, homophobic and even misogynist towards her including suggesting violence.
I think gender identity is extremely complex as we learn is not just about XY and XX chromosomes – if only life was so easy.
The issue for me is what is going on in Iceland and what is going on is clearly amazing – go the Icelanders!
I wonder what was going through the minds of the 10% women who didn’t go on strike or were they not able to, the fact that 90% of women were able to go on strike tells you much more that it seems!
Just read the Women and Crisis article at last – love it! I definitely recommend everyone reads it, it’s really interesting and has lots of good stuff about socialism and feminism.
I’ve seen other feminist perspectives on this that are a bit less positive…
I am absolutely against strip clubs and the sex industry, but I hope this new law isn’t leaving women high and dry. Do you have any more information about the logistics of it? Is it accompanied by any other measures to make sure women currently/previously in the sex trade are supported?
Criminalising the companies that are profiting from the sale of women and criminalising the men who buy and sell women’s bodies is a positive step, so long as it comes with adequate support for the women involved.
I saw these other posts too – mostly from American feminists it would seem. I think it in many ways stems from a free market, ultra-liberal ideology in which everything is reduced to individual choice and in which making money is associated with freedom and liberation. Radical feminists and feminists from the Nordic countries on the other hand are more concerned about the place of women as a group within society and how this is affected by things like the sex industry and the message it sends out.
I also think that a harm reduction strategy (ie. advocating legalisation and regulation in the hope that it will make things safer) is highly flawed since the buying and selling of people’s bodies will always involve inequality and abuse. All the evidence has shown that when the sex industry is legalised it massively increases in size and that the organised crime around it doesn’t diminish either. There’s also no evidence of legalisation resulting in a significant reduction in the amount of violence and abuse which prostitutes and other sex ‘workers’ are subjected to. So the Icelanders are absolutely right to dream of a world in which the sex industry ceases to exist and to do everything they can to reduce the demand for it.
But as you say it’s also extremely important that new laws are followed up with adequate support for everyone concerned. I’m not sure about all the measures in place in Iceland and can only rely on what’s been written about it in English but I do know there’s been a fairly comprehensive anti-trafficking strategy which the new government has adopted. The vast majority of women working in the sex industry in Iceland are of foreign origin, some being brought there by human traffickers, so making the country a less attractive destination for the sex trade should significantly reduce the numbers involved.
The “patriarchy”? If any group of people are being exploited, coerced & generally psychologically controlled by the sex industry, it is MEN, not women.
A simple way to end lap dancing clubs, pornographic websites, Page 3/Nuts/Loaded/a.n.other “lads mag”, sex webcam sites, escorting, etc. etc. would be for women to cease being a part of them. No “patriarchal” force compels an adult woman to choose to earn a living by dancing naked, posing naked, be filmed having intercourse, stream herself masturbating via webcam or advertise herself on the internet as available for sex for money…yet hundreds of thousands of women do precisely this.
The need is created…no man “needs” to visit lap dancing clubs, no man “needs” to subscribe to pornographic websites, no man “needs” to buy magazines featuring naked women, no man “needs” to pay a woman £200 to have sex with her for 1 hour.
Whenever the sex industry is discussed, words like “trafficking” are bandied about…it is a BILLION dollar industry, not an underground criminal network. The overwhelming majority of women employed in the sex industry do so of their own volition.
The real victims are men, whose income is exploited for the sake of cheap, masturbatory trade. I don’t expect women to appreciate or care about this, nor do I expect them to stop using their bodies & sexuality to degrade both themselves & those who pay to witness it.
*facepalm*
You’re like a parody of everything that’s wrong with the world. Your views are actually so reprehensible I don’t know where to begin
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the men!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!2121211!
Dom, your head is clearly up your arse, but I do agree on one thing I think you might be getting at. Strip clubs, lads mags etc are rubbish. Men shouldn’t waste their money on them.
That’s not to distract from highlighting the harm caused by prostitution, strip clubs and the porn industry. Of course we need to continue the work of countering the narrative of ‘sex work’ as empowering.
But another front of attack is pointing out that as a man, you’ll end up skint, more stupid and less happy if you get into this shit.
“No “patriarchal” force compels an adult woman to choose to earn a living by dancing naked, posing naked, be filmed having intercourse, stream herself masturbating via webcam or advertise herself on the internet as available for sex for money”
That is utter bollocks. Involvement in the sex industry starts off with childhood abuse in a large percentage of cases – the average age of entry to prostitution is 14.
I recommend you check out the documentary Hardcore if you want to know the realities behind the porn industry – it’s hard to find online, but there’s an article about it here:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2001/04/hardcore
Basically it shows how women who work in porn have to be habituated to the abuse they suffer by being degraded and raped by those responsible for making the product.
Even in cases where physical and psychological abuse has been used as a form of force, do you think people would be choosing to participate in the sex industry if it wasn’t for the need for economic surivival in a capitalist world? And the capitalist world is also a patriarchal world, where women are trained to believe that they only use they have is as a sexual commodity, the only value they can contribute is as sexual receptacles.
The tone of your comment is really weird, and I think you should consider what you’re underlying motivation is. To me what I get from what you wrote is a misogynist sense of women as inherently immoral, sexually exploitative and evil that’s derived from a patriarchal Christian worldview. It’s a bizarre and warped way of looking at the world that is horrendously divorced from reality. Confronted with the mass sexual and physical abuse of women in pornography and prostitution, your response is to claim that women are exploiting the men who bankroll and consume that abuse – how fucked up a sense of priorities is that?!
It’s quite tiring having this argument over and over again on multiple article threads, quoting the same statistics over and over. It’d be good if we could get a general recognition from commenters that this is the site of an explicitly pro-feminist organisation, and men who want to come and disagree could at least do us the courtesy of engaging seriously with the arguments we’ve made over and over again.