I don't like political correctness because it's a load of old bollocks, but sometimes I still come across instances of it which just blow my mind.
Sweden's insane anti-discrimination laws have created a generation of lost women
By Thomas PascoePolitics and societyLast updated: November 26th, 2012
470 CommentsComment on this article
One thousand years ago, this boy would be a Viking. Now he is a girl.
Boys will be girls, as they say in Sweden, especially if you're Toys R Us. The firm's Swedish franchise has been through its Christmas catalogue and made it gender-neutral. Boys now pucker up to the camera clutching baby dolls. Girls wave guns at the reader to reassure us that females can be violent too.
It is difficult to be surprised. Sweden's anti-discrimination laws are as bizarre as they are magical. Hairdressers are not allowed to vary their prices based on gender, putting up the price of a short-back-and-sides towards the £50 mark. Taxis which used to offer special rates to single women going home late at night have been told to stop. Women can swim topless in public pools unless there is a law to require men cover their nipples. Stockholm District Court recently ruled that pregnancy was an illness. Activists are pushing to end gender specific pronouns in the language. More men than women now complain to the discrimination ombudsman.
How effective is this? Well, men still earn 35pc more than women at 20, which narrows to 24pc at 60 years old. This is despite women being better educated and a culture which strongly discourages stay-at-home mothers. Women face the highest rate of rape in Europe and a high rate of domestic violence (although lower than the British rate).
The point is not that the Swedish experiment of treating women as men has been a failure, but that it has succeeded. As Natasha Walter argued persuasively in Living Dolls, the result of stripping women of their social roles as mothers has not been the development of a new balance in society which still respects women, but rather a sexual nihilism with which most women are instinctively uncomfortable. When all other points of differentiation are stripped away, what is left between the sexes is purely physical. As a result, we see a rise of a tits-and-ass culture that emphasises the physical because there is nothing else left. Women should have no doors barred to them in life, but a relentless focus on image does them no favours.
No boy grows up dreaming of being a princess. I find it hard to believe many little girls grow up wanting to shoot people. This make-believe may salve the conscience of the Left, but it does society a great deal of harm, both here and there.
Sweden's insane anti-discrimination laws have created a generation of lost women
By Thomas PascoePolitics and societyLast updated: November 26th, 2012
470 CommentsComment on this article
One thousand years ago, this boy would be a Viking. Now he is a girl.
Boys will be girls, as they say in Sweden, especially if you're Toys R Us. The firm's Swedish franchise has been through its Christmas catalogue and made it gender-neutral. Boys now pucker up to the camera clutching baby dolls. Girls wave guns at the reader to reassure us that females can be violent too.
It is difficult to be surprised. Sweden's anti-discrimination laws are as bizarre as they are magical. Hairdressers are not allowed to vary their prices based on gender, putting up the price of a short-back-and-sides towards the £50 mark. Taxis which used to offer special rates to single women going home late at night have been told to stop. Women can swim topless in public pools unless there is a law to require men cover their nipples. Stockholm District Court recently ruled that pregnancy was an illness. Activists are pushing to end gender specific pronouns in the language. More men than women now complain to the discrimination ombudsman.
How effective is this? Well, men still earn 35pc more than women at 20, which narrows to 24pc at 60 years old. This is despite women being better educated and a culture which strongly discourages stay-at-home mothers. Women face the highest rate of rape in Europe and a high rate of domestic violence (although lower than the British rate).
The point is not that the Swedish experiment of treating women as men has been a failure, but that it has succeeded. As Natasha Walter argued persuasively in Living Dolls, the result of stripping women of their social roles as mothers has not been the development of a new balance in society which still respects women, but rather a sexual nihilism with which most women are instinctively uncomfortable. When all other points of differentiation are stripped away, what is left between the sexes is purely physical. As a result, we see a rise of a tits-and-ass culture that emphasises the physical because there is nothing else left. Women should have no doors barred to them in life, but a relentless focus on image does them no favours.
No boy grows up dreaming of being a princess. I find it hard to believe many little girls grow up wanting to shoot people. This make-believe may salve the conscience of the Left, but it does society a great deal of harm, both here and there.
