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Swedish feminists trip up on man tax
 SPARE a thought for Swedish feminists whose newly formed party is disintegrating after hardliners presented a manifesto advocating a âman taxâ, the abolition of marriage and the creation of âgender-neutralâ names. Sweden already boasts one of the highest levels of female participation in the workplace and some observers questioned the need for a feminist party in a country whose women account for half the seats in parliament. When it was founded six months ago, polls showed that a quarter of voters would consider supporting Feminist Initiative in elections next year because of rising domestic violence against women and higher salaries for men. That goodwill seems to have faded after the partyâs recent founding congress, however, when radicals such as Tiina Rosenberg, a professor of gender studies, appeared to have secured control of the agenda. The resulting platform included proposals for abolishing marriage and changing the law to let people who undergo sex change operations legally alter their names. | You may wonder, 'why would it be a problem to change one's name?' Keep reading ... |
The party called also for the creation of more âgender-neutralâ names such as âRobinâ or âNorvaâ that could apply to a boy or a girl. At present parents must choose names from an official list for boys or girls. | An official list of names. How Swedish. But it gets better ... |
| At least you never run into any Swedes named "Floyd" or "Shakaleisha"... |
Gudrun Schyman, a founding member of the party and a former Swedish Communist party leader and author of erotic verse, advocates what she calls a âman tax to cover the cost of violence against women in the homeâ.
| I'd like to see an erotic verse tax, myself. But limericks should be exempt... |
In a recent television documentary called The Gender War, she proclaimed: âMen are animals.â The documentary noted that the shelter had printed excerpts of an extremist American feminist manifesto called Scum, which stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men. In it, women are urged to âdestroy the male sexâ and seize the chance made possible by science of giving birth only to females.
| Millions of Swedish men shake their heads and wonder what took them so long to get divorced ... |
Posted by: Steve White 2005-10-26 |
