Saturday, August 09, 2008

Did the Vikings Set Sail for Greener Pastures and Happier Women?

Fjordman sent a link to Dr. Helen’s blog, a link with an intriguing title:

“Where Have all the Vikings Gone?”

Since Dr. Helen is a forensic psychologist, and since Gates of Vienna often deals with things Scandinavian, her post was bound to be entertaining.

She says:

Looking for Happy WomenThis morning, I read the magazine “What Is Enlightenment” that Glenn picked up for me from a local health food store because the cover had a number of articles about men including “Constructing the New Man,” “19 Powerful Women Tell the Truth about Men,” and “A Scandalous Look at Scandinavia: Where women are women and men are too.”

[..]

Due to time constraints, I will tell you about the main article that caught my eye--the one on men acting like women in Scandinavia. The author, Elizabeth Debold, sets out to Scandinavia to find out how “gender equality” is playing itself out in that culture. She starts out the article describing how in Sweden, for a man to pee standing up is increasingly considered to be “the height of vulgarity and possibly suggestive of violence.” Debold seems surprised to find out that gender equality is not all it’s cracked up to be, especially when she discovers that the new equality is nothing more than “patriarchy in drag.” Despite progressive sources that suggest that Scandinavians, particularly Danes, are the happiest people in the world, possibly because they are so egalitarian, Debold finds out that men there are not doing so well.

Apparently, relationships and having a good sex life is of the highest value in places like Denmark. Yet, Denmark has one of the world’s highest divorce rates. In eight out of ten cases, the woman ends the marriage. Debold attends a men’s group in Copenhagen and notes that “the men speak about a vague, almost inchoate experience of victimization.”

[…]

A guy named Bo states, “We end up relating to women in a way that is more like woman to woman, not man to woman. We are feminized in our relationships, and they don’t last.”

Well, Scandinavia is ahead of the curve in so many areas that this article is not surprising. What I read and hear in the US media is not that different from what Dr. Helen’s article described. Except for Islam, whose rules are a caricature of what should pertain between the sexes, most Western men express a similar dissatisfaction about intimate relationships with women. Men increasingly find themselves in a sea of mean girls.

These meanies, often called “Alpha Girls” grow up to be foolish women whose fundamental failing is a kind of social blindness. They cannot see for the life of them or their children that real maturity means coming to terms with the necessary differences between men and women. Not only is it necessary to come to terms with reality, but in order to reach any kind of contentment, one must honor the differences. Stamping one’s foot in vexation is not cute past the age of five or so.

The constant news articles in The Local about how women are cheated in life gives the outsider some clues regarding the life-and-death struggle these women have concocted. No doubt about it -- Scandinavia is so extreme that some of the new rules for the war between the sexes (and yes, there always will be a war; we’re too different for lack of conflict to reign) are pathological.

Dr. Helen’s post reminded me of something I’d read in The Local. At the time, I think I sent it to a Swedish friend, but he never replied. Now I understand why. This garbage is for real.

After a lengthy search, just when I thought I’d have to rely on memory to explain how disturbing that “study” was, it finally popped up in a search of news stories from 2006.
- - - - - - - - -
The creepiness begins with the title:

“Swedish women about to overtake ‘stupid’ men”

It is troubling to see this kind of balderdash being passed off as reality. I remember turning away in disgust back then, but obviously since the memory stayed, the story had made an impression:

Swedish men are less intelligent, lonelier and fatter than their female counterparts, a new study claims. Boys have fallen way behind in school, and there are more women than men studying some traditionally male university subjects.

“In twenty years men’s dominance will be broken and women will have more power in society. There will be more female CEO’s and the wage gap will favour women,” researcher Ingemar Gens told magazine Att:ention.

Experts have also observed that smart women are struggling to find common ground with members of the opposite sex.

“There will soon be a large collective of uneducated, low-paid men who don’t have any friends, and are unmarried and alone - as well as uninteresting for women looking for a relationship.”


“This is already happening, but the problem is beginning to accelerate. This is a huge danger for men,” said Gens.

[…]

While reaching consensus about a sort of ongoing male crisis, not all those Attt:ention spoke to were certain that this would eventually lead to women assuming greater control.

“The power of the patriarchy is so great that education and similar factors are not so important.

“Other things play a bigger role, such as short-cuts and networks for example,” said Malena Rydell, managing editor of feminist magazine Bang.

Are the people who do these studies (and the fools who fund them) really this ignorant? Do they think that men and women live in different worlds and have no effect on one another?

Look at the way this has been structured: it’s a win-lose game, and the men are losing while the women claim that things still aren’t “fair.” Such whining is not only embarrassing to watch, even more so it is ultimately harmful to the whiners themselves. Imagine seeing men as needing to be "broken."

In an article that abounds in cluelessness, this sentence is particularly ignorant about the effects of unintended consequences:

“There will soon be a large collective of uneducated, low-paid men who don’t have any friends, and are unmarried and alone - as well as uninteresting for women looking for a relationship.”

Do these people not know what happens when you have “a large collective of uneducated, low-paid men” in your midst? Can you say “gang”? Can you spell testosterone? Are these smart women intelligent enough to know that men shunted off into groups without women have a higher level of testosterone?

Sweden created this mess and they’d better start attempting to work mindfully toward a solution. Slamming men for being men is not the way to create a harmonious culture. And making sure that they are isolated into groups, separate from their female betters means what, exactly? Will these superior, educated and brilliant women have to hire bodyguards to fend off the groups of lonely, knuckle-dragging cretins who stand up to pee?

Misogynists are a bane, but we’ve always had them. This new crew, the one which hates and look down upon men, is much more disturbing.

I suppose they can make individual social decisions similar to those of the Chinese and Indian populations, but the mirror opposite - i.e., they can abort the males fetuses so they aren’t forced to raise stupid boors in their own homes. And they can use sperm donors for the cause. But eventually, they will have to deal with the ugly monster they create.

And what if their daughters someday have to deal with the vast cohort of lonely Asian men who sweep ashore in their long boats, looking for women? Come to think of it, was it that motive which impelled the original Vikings to sail for other shores in the first place?

Women will never be 'free' from the laws of human society; their foundations are cemented in biology. Those who rail on about their much-vaunted equality are umm...micturating into the wind (a very different experience without the anatomy usually conjured up by that metaphor).

In the fullness of time, these foolish women will be hoist by their own petard and left to swing in that cruel northern wind. It won’t be dignified or pretty…and being smart won’t save them.

Won’t keep them warm, either.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Given the difference in social power between men and women, what incentive do women have not to be mean and condescending towards men? It's not as if any halfway attractive woman (and there are more attractive women as a percentage than attractive men as a percentage) has any real problem acquiring candidates for dating and marriage, even if her personality flaws eventually drive them away. And with new legal theories like "palimony" allowing women to directly steal wealth from men who aren't married to them, welfare laws allowing women to indirectly steal wealth, and grossly biased child support and custody law, men are eminently disposable resources.

kepiblanc said...

Maybe our ancestors just tried to escape the stockade called "home"? - Just like we do today.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Randian, sometimes I long for the times when the ability to make a pretty penny was respectworthy in itself...

Now that the State guarantees all kinds of good things, that's not appreciated any more. Taxes makes saving up for a Porsche pretty foreboding, too.

Actually getting rid of bad personality traits is a bit out of fashion, unfortunately. I think we're going to pay a hefty price for this, colletively.

Whiskey said...

Dymphna, what women in these feminist camps want is pretty obvious.

No social controls around restricting their ability to pursue the few Alpha, high status and high power and high testosterone men. The John Edwards in other words.

Throughout most of history, 20% of men have mated with about 80% of the women, a state of affairs most satisfactory to most women, but creating a violent response by most men.

What feminists seek to replicate is the patronage networks of agricultural societies, where women as mistresses and so on of powerful men soak up excess wealth. The Egypt of the Pharoahs, Ancien Regime France, Babylonia, and so on are the model. Explicitly NOT in the model are Anglo-Saxon rough equality where every man has a chance at a mate and the Big Man cannot have a bevy of mistresses and Queen Bees.

What is telling is that feminists are not going out and creating power on their own, by having women become wealth-producing engineers, technicians, and so on. Instead their model is Marie Antoinette.

Such a society can be stable in that the pattern will persist over generations, but unstable that it is characterized as you point out by extreme violence. The trump card of the men excluded from relationships by lack of wealth and power is simply extreme violence turning women into sex slave chattel.

Homophobic Horse said...

We seem to be undergoing a further degeneration from the secular culture of the democratic word to an image-based, sentiment-based, and sensation-based culture-drome which in some curious respects resembles the culture of the late Middle Ages. Far from expressing Christian truth, however, the images and sounds of this new culture communicate the New Age cult of human self-worship and victimhood, the cult of Pop-Cultural, Multicultural Man, the religion of Sexually Liberated, Totally Compassionate Humanity. President Clinton, Barack Obama, coke snorting, faceless, no-longer-human David Cameron and Tony Blair with their shameless yet empathetic persona, are the perfect representative's of this new culture.

The cause of this is democracy. Because democracy is permissive it encourages the creation of a man who enjoys things that are necessary and unnecessary - meaningful and meaningless, productive and unproductive. Naturally, unproductive and unnecessary appetites that appeal to the senses only (such as music, art, drugs, television) overcome the healthy appetites. This degraded new man than displaces all other good characters in the polity. (This is the great moral decline that right-wing tabloids constantly militate against)

Democracy declines into tyranny because this democratic man is unable to defend the traditions that made the polity stable enough to sustain democracy, the democratic man lacks the moral and intellectual acumen to address complex problems, the democratic man has absolutely no principled grounds on which to oppose the tyrannical, criminal, woman armed with a myriad of ad-hominem pseudo theories, a rhetorical rat-bag and a malignant gender hatred who demands power and privilege she feels has been stolen from her.

costin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
costin said...

Somebody was saying on the GoV comments that being in a country in Asia he was constantly robbed. He told this to some Swedish tourists over there and they said to him that he shouldn't complain so much for being robbed. He is rich, he should get used to the concept of sharing wealth.

Then I read again and again in The Local articles like the one Dymphna is talking about.

You know what? I feel that I will soon stop giving a damn about what happens in Sweden. What is going on there is so mindblowing and at the same time, a free market, pro-jewish, pro-American party like Swedish Democrats is seen like Nazi by most of the people. I understand that all the press and mass media is preaching this going for the extreme left but did all the people buy into thit crap?

If they care so little about their country and are willing to throw everything away, why should I care?? I see no hope in their situation anyway.

laine said...

So women prove where they gain the upper hand they are in fact no better than men at fairness, maybe even worse.

Men have always been at least dimly aware that women have abilities that differ from them and have their uses. Maybe the hard biologic fact that women are needed to produce an heir to inherit whatever wealth and property a man builds up kept them somewhat realistic.

Women on the other hand have bought the feminist mantra that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Yes, these women are smarter in their own minds than biology and thousands of years of human development where the pair bond was the foundation of all successful societies.

Too many women think that because some of them are capable of being engineers, doctors etc., men have become an optional accessory, like a purse, or Ken to Barbie.

Too few women process or even accept the information that overwhelmingly they shun certain fields of endeavor and congregate in others, no matter how much affirmative action is put in place because they have preferences and limitations.

The denial of actual biologic physical constraints is completely ascientific. Women have guilted their way into the armed forces, police and fire departments etc. where the standards were lowered to accommodate their weaker physiques and frankly lower rate of risk taking/bravery.

You're a desperate armed criminal. Two police women show up. Give us all a break! Police women are usually paired up with men and may well put that male partner at greater risk than if he had another man backing him up. Of course, it's not all physical strength, and drawing smarts from 100% of the population instead of half may mitigate matters but we don't really know, do we? The research just isn't allowed. Everything is just predicated on assumptions. If someone makes up half the population they have a "right" to apply for half the positions in any discipline, whether they are qualified for it or not with the (false) assumption that all talents are equally distributed between genders and among races.

Women who think they can talk their way into an eternal state of peace in the world if they run things and the leftist men who think the same way are history illiterate or just have hubris up the wazoo.

There are always barbarians at the gate and they're not interested in negotiating. They only understand power, up to now backed up by physical combat or the realistic threat of it. OK, a woman can press a button for nuclear detonation as well as a man, but will she? Or will she or her whipped male counterpart dither until it's too late? Will they fritter away their technologic superiority by being afraid to use it, too concerned by what "other people" might say, like some featherbrained high school coed forever in a popularity contest?

Women who do not understand that the two genders have different gifts and are complementary, two halves of a whole when they pair bond, the absolute best care-giving unit for offspring are foolish beyond belief. Single parents and same sex parents cannot compare with the input a child gets from his biologic parents - one as a role model and the other to teach thinking outside one's gender box.

Mothers typically hug their infants close, facing each other. Fathers typically hold their children high, "launching" them outward. Both skill sets are needed - to instill a strong sense of security in a child, yet release him into the world when the time is right. How something so basic and commonsense gets lost in a supposedly evolved society is a question for the ages.

Actually, we're the first generation in the history of Mankind who has managed to mess even this up.

The declining birth rate is a direct result of it. As Mark Steyn has written, the winners in the long run are those who show up, i.e. have kids. Westerners are MIA reporductively and will soon be cleared off the field.

Anonymous said...

1. Re: "the war between the sexes (and yes, there always will be a war; we’re too different for lack of conflict to reign)"

Men and women are not simply different, but, rather, complementary.

2. I guess I shouldn't make generalizations, since I haven't met every Western woman, but I'd rather be alone for the rest of my life than slowly waste away hooked up with an American or European ball-and-chain. Castration would be faster and perhaps less painful.

Who wants to be at war 24/7?

Western men pretend to be so supportive of women who act like they don't need men for anything, but will run off with Asian women the first chance they get.

Western women like to act as if they're 100% independent, and try to turn Western men into eunuchs; and then run off and make complete fools of themselves for Muslim or African men. [Yes, I already said I'm making huge generalizations]

How many times have you seen American or European women demean themselves for more "primitive" foreign men who behave in ways that the women wouldn't tolerate from "their own" [i.e, their own culture's] men?

I rest my case.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Diamed said...

laine: You're so wise! Well said on every point. Nothing to add after that tour de force.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Western men pretend to be so supportive of women who act like they don't need men for anything, but will run off with Asian women the first chance they get.

Yup. Asians are cute, and they don't suffer the neurotic impact of various 'psykologies' that has infected the West. Certainly have a lot of good things going for them.

Unfortunately, many have minds like antelopes, jumping around and unable to focus for the longer term...

Fortress said...

Ah, one of my favorite subjects. Mostly because I and damn near every guy I know has been immersed in this very problem for my/their entire f'n life, but I have to admit, this is a rather nifty perspective on part of the situation.

In reference to the 'mean girls' article, to whit, guys know that's going on. A lot of times, we're quite often useful idiots in this, despite the knowledge. This is true, because even the most self aware guy on the planet can be made a slave to his hormones with the proper prodding, and this is especially true at the age mentioned in the article. Some of us gain the 'reward' of companionship/sex, often times with all the consequences that accompany it, but for the most part the mere promise is enough.

I'm guessing that's part of the problem with the Scandenavian men. A lot of promise, but not only are women (in general, there are exceptions) as they exist now not really capable of fulfilling what we really want, but truly had no intention of it anyway. Worse, when a taste IS offered, it becomes a means to enslave the man...this is especially potent in those who were always the useful idiots who never received anything. Used, humiliated, rejected, ignored...even by the girls outside the clique box...ah, good times.

Had a fiancée once. Girl led me on a merry little chase for seven years of my life, before the proposal. Given my past I should have known better, but remember that prodding just right thing. Also when what you've always wanted, what you are driven to want, seems so close you can reach out and touch it...you tend not to see too clearly, cliché as that is to say. I endured...well, what I endured I should not have. At the end of which, when I'd finally been burned up...used up...she finally confessed to me, that not only was she not capable of fulfilling the promises she'd made me believe, she never had any intention of doing so in the first place. Interesting feeling, I must admit, finding out that the net sum gain of the entire experience with someone you love was...in fact, absolutely zero...a total loss.

Had a girl previous to this one do similar. However, rather than leading me on for seven years, she literally abandoned me...had to find out from a friend in another part of the country what happened there. Kinda funny what happened later; I still get a good Megatron (G1 variety) laugh over that one.

Mmm...damn good times.

Scary thing? My story is not unique. Nor is it the worst...I could have been married, and I thank whatever power it is that denied me that for denying me that every single day. It's becoming more and more common. Not just to the, heh, 'losers' like me who've lived with it all their lives, but also to the better performing...the 'near alphas' if you will. The ones who, while not harem masters, tend to have one or two girls at all times...even they are feeling the sting of this.

Seems to me what's becoming common over here has hit the Scandenavian men like a nuclear f'n bomb.

Henrik,

Yes, Asian girls are cute and cuddly. Typically they don't suffer the neurotic tendencies of their western counterparts, but one must be careful that they weren't raised in the west. Take it from someone who lived with that sort of thing for seven years...they may be full blooded whatever, but if they're raised here, they're American (or Canadian, heh). And you know what that means.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Democracy declines into tyranny

... when the respect for private property is suspended. Tyrants can't do their thing if they're unable to rob citizens of the fruits of their labour.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Who wants to be at war 24/7?

Well, when I've spent the day making money and battling stupid ideologies from the Middle East, I certainly can use something else than more fighting...

Now that we are into mindless stereotypes, remember the Polish one: Since the country has been run over from the east and the west several times, the ones who survived were the ones who'd take the assault with no opposition, and then come back with a gruesome revenge when they see their opportunity.

I've tried it, it holds :(

Bilgeman said...

Dymphna:

"Women will never be 'free' from the laws of human society; their foundations are cemented in biology. Those who rail on about their much-vaunted equality are umm...micturating into the wind "

What a sexist thing to say! /sarc

Heh...speaking from a very, very, male dominated work and living environment, I have long held that the Gender Feminist movement,(as opposed to the Equity Feminist branch), is very much a "Jedi Mind Trick" practiced on women by OTHER women.

Let's face the facts that the life of "Natural Man" was nasty, brutish and short, and frankly, not much has really changed in that regard.
Ergo, the life of "Natural Woman" was long, lonely and miserable.

I strongly suspect that this cockamamie delusion is simply a very effective thought mechanism by which somw women induce the dimmer bulbs competing for mates and wealth to arrive at the "lonely and miserable" bit sooner...and stay there until menopause, when they're no longer in the running.

Y'all got more games, and fight dirtier, with each other than ever we scrap across the gender line.

Dymphna said...

@laine
OK, a woman can press a button for nuclear detonation as well as a man, but will she?

oh, dear. Do you really believe women are somehow "softer?" More sentimental perhaps?

Just to choose one small example, I propose that not only would Hillary push the button, but she'd push it before a man would and she'd keep pushing.

Women in such positions have more to prove, and prove it they will. They also have zero humility as Hillary and Pelosi have so thoroughly demonstrated.

BTW, Pelosi has disproven the theory that women are smarter. Or maybe what she proved is that leftist women from San Francisco aren't real smart.

Mean girls have their opposite -- mean boys who join gangs in increasing numbers.

What this seems to illustrate is Newton's third law...when will we ever learn that we are all irretrievably connected? Nothing happens in isolation.

The folly of the kind of woman that The Local specializes in featuring is that they believe they can operate in isolation, despite the endless lessons of history...

...oops, forgot. That's "herstory" (yes, I do know the roots of histoire and how stupid that word is). Herstory is all about gender bias and breaking men. The Local's article about the growing fatness and stupidity of men is just one small sample.

Makes you want to ask who raised these men? Did they have mothers or, being (yuk) boys, were they banished to the woods to raise themselves? No wonder these beasts pee standing up.

What is ironic is that this kind of thinking is in full flower as the risk for infidel women being assaulted by immigrant men seems to be on the rise.

Until parents teach both sides to cherish the differences in one another this idiocy is not going to stop.

This reminds me of a ten-year old boy I knew who went over to play with some friends. For the first time there were girls present and the interaction wasn't fun. His summation of this event? "Girls in groups are scum."

A quote worthy of Charlie Brown, who knew female machinations better than he ever wanted to.
_________

A reminder for anyone who thinks I'm bashing women: I worked with battered women for years. After counseling about three thousand of them, I know how rough it can be to find your way to freedom. Especially if a man is determined to hunt you down.

Each side has its own sad war stories. My point, however, is that what these whingeing women are doing makes it worse.

Dymphna said...

whiskey--

I disagree with your premise about what women are trying to do. Read some of the feminist literature. They would hang Marie Antoinette; a role model she is is not.

Except for her marriage to Billy Boy, Hillary is the model. That's why women like her...and that's why you can expect fireworks at the Dem convention. Hill and Co. are not planning to go quietly. I do hope Obama is wearing his codpiece because Michelle is no match for these women. They will have her for breakfast.

Panday said...

I'm not up on my recent Scandinavian history. Can someone please tell me when and how they went from being the Vikings to being socialist, limp-wristed pantywaists?

Even in the 1700s they were still kicking ass under Charles XII. They were still to be reckoned with under Bernadotte. What happened between 1814 and 1939?

How did this people then cheerfully walk to the gallows in the years since 1945?

Henrik R Clausen said...

Do you really believe women are somehow "softer?"

Yes, I do. If all women try to be like men, the world will end up in a state even more terrible than it is in now.

Even if *proven* wrong, I'll stick to this :)

I propose that not only would Hillary push the button, but she'd push it before a man would and she'd keep pushing.

Since her husband set an all-time record for American interventionism (44 events in 8 years vs. 8 events in the previous 44 years), she would be able and willing to do that, just out of fear for being perceived as 'soft'.

I think it's good she's out of the race.

They also have zero humility.

That, too. Would be percieved as 'soft'.

With Obama I fear that his inexperience and fairly obvious lack of talent might send him down a similar path, where in fear of being seen as 'soft', he'll overuse all kinds of power, and eventually become the Strong Man, seduced by the lure of power and lack of criticism.

Still, not as bad as the cunning Clinton.

'Herstory' is all about gender bias and breaking men.

The term smacks of it. From my point of view, I'll consider it a Bad Thing to be avoided.

Whiskey said...

Dymphna -- I think we are on the same page.

Nancy Pelosi, Hillary, and Marie Antoinette are all the same person, really. It's just that Marie now has a lot more power as mistress/wife.

Look at: Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, etc. Things that generate lots of buzz, hype, attention appeal to the innate desire among women for status, power, glamor, etc. A somewhat updated version of Versailles before the tumbrels.

It's a fantasy career/job, where no real sacrifice of job versus relationships takes place. Possession pornography, with glamorous clothes, apartments, etc. Children as an annoying afterthought not fulfillment, and rotating relationships based on which guy is hot and which is not.

Feminist consumerism.

Panday said...

oh, dear. Do you really believe women are somehow "softer?" More sentimental perhaps?

Yes.

That's why they hide behind their men when intruders break into the house, no matter what kind of fantasist tripe they show in film and television.

Baron Bodissey said...

Henrik et al.--

Men possess a natural advantage when it comes to the use of violence, and this includes not just physical strength, but also all forms of weapons, including firearms. We are instinctively more attuned to and comfortable with modes of physical violence.

When that advantage is artificially removed, women actually turn out to be more ruthless than men.

Years ago a psychological experiment was conducted along these lines; I think it might have been by the Pentagon. It’s been a long time, and I don’t remember the details.

Both men and women were trained extensively in modern wargaming, and were run through a series of simulations that included the option of pushing the nuclear button.

The researchers discovered that women were more likely to push the button than men. They resorted to it earlier, and at a lower threshold of conflict. They were more likely to bet with nukes, even when the stakes were lower.

The conclusion? Women are at least as ruthless as men, when biological restraints are made irrelevant.

Men may be more reluctant to choose the deadliest courses of action because we have been trained all our lives in the consequences of violent conflict, and have learned through bitter experience to exercise prudence and sober judgment. When the barrier holding women back is dropped, they take to their newfound power quite readily, and embrace it without as much restraint.

Ever since Hillary first appeared on the scene, I have thought about that particular experiment.

Henrik R Clausen said...

When that advantage is artificially removed, women actually turn out to be more ruthless than men.

That makes a lot of sense...

I'll send my boy to learn martial arts when he's old enough.

X said...

I'm not up on my recent Scandinavian history. Can someone please tell me when and how they went from being the Vikings to being socialist, limp-wristed pantywaists?

It's quite simple: Scandanavian society was always very egalitarian. In the early 20th century, the income gap between thw richest and poorest earners in Sweden was one of the smallest in the world, not because of progressive social policies or anything, but simply because that's how they wanted it to be. They were... how can I put it... they helped each other. Scandanavian society is based on the home and family, and mutual support. It was not clasically libertarian though it involved a lot of libertarian ideas. it was the sort f society that a lot of people would love. No acceptance of wastrels or freeloaders but, at the same time, a willingness to sacrifice a lot to help people who were in need.

It grows out of the security provided by the homestead, which was a very powerful part of early scandi culture. Everything extended from the home.

Now in the mid 19th century there was a bit of a land crisis in Sweden, caused by a peculiar custom of inheritance there. Rather than give the land to the eldest son, it was divided equally amongst all the sons, which lead to large homesteads being divided up until they were effectively useless. A famine that such tiny farmsteads couldn't resolve drove a great many of the population to depart for the United States, leaving the rest to consolidate their farms and maybe muck around with the inheritance law somewhat.

The egalitarian attitude remained, of course... it was just a little bit further to your neighbour now.

At some point, in Sweden, the social democrats turned up. unlike a lot of socialist parties, that are expressions of the perverse guilt of the idle rich, these were a genuine representation of the entire gamut of swedish society. At the time they didn't have to do much - Sweden was already a society of equals. It didn't need them. Nevertheless, socialism, being what it is, gradually worked its way into government and began to harp about inequality and the like. The social democrats transformed into a more typical socialist party during and after world war 2 and before the 1960s they were adopting radical feminism as the cause they could use to bring about their total control of society.

In the meantime they took credit for the economic and social values that already existed in Sweden, claiming that they were the result of their progressive social and economic policies rather than the natural state of their society for hundreds of years.

That's why feminist theory is so advanced in Sweden and other scandinavian countries. Rather than diverting through the distraction attempting to bring about economic "equality", they jumped straight to radical feminism, got it into the schools as fast as possible and have a whole generation's head start on everyone else. They didn't have to worry about the economic plight of the "working classes" so much, and didn't have to spend time trying to "fix" that problem before they moved onto feminism so they had a huge advantage.

Of course the solutions to all the "problems" revealed are the same: tax things, spend the money, create dependence on the state and then use that power to progressively dismantle and destroy society in order to bring about the "radiant future" of perfect peace and equality.

An extra generation of feminism would have created the same situation in any country. I get to interact with a lot of younger people on the net through my work as a software developer and the basic tenets of radical feminist theory have settled so completely in their minds that they can't see any other way of thinking. Men are told they're rapists and believe it... Those kids are the same mindset as the current adult generation in Sweden, where the rape statistics (suitably laundered to remove any reference to "persons of non-swedish background") appear to demonstrate the "truth" of that statement quite nicely.

Sweden is simply a preview of the next generation in blue state america.

X said...

Oh yeah, you're the second person in as many days I've heard use "micturate" in a sentence. Perhaps unsurprisingly my wife was the other...

Hesperado said...

in Sweden, for a man to pee standing up is increasingly considered to be “the height of vulgarity and possibly suggestive of violence.”

Sharia law mandates that men sit or squat while urinating. That, and the propensity for Muslim men to gang-rape women, debase them and often beat them... oh, and they are brown and exotic, too. No wonder white Leftist Western women are drawn to them! How could they resist?

One_of_the_last_few_Patriots_left said...

Indeed, "micturate" has always been one of my favorite words; thank you for using it.
I am in a somewhat rural area here in New Hampshire and when the bathroom is occupied I will step out into my back yard ( or sometimes into my front yard ) and proceed to... ahem,... MICTURATE.

On several occasions, (American) female friends have excoriated me for engaging in this practice.
And I've never even been to Sweden!

Dymphna said...

one_of_the_last_few...

To be charitable about it, your female friends are uninformed about the facts of country life.

Nothing keeps the deer out of your space better than human urine applied judiciously around the perimeter. Especially male urine. All that yucky testosterone, don't you know.

I specifically request that men do this...

So don't let anyone tell ya men aren't good for anything.

Note: such practices applied to your lawn during a dry spell are not a good idea. Walk toward and aim for the edges of your cleared area. You want those critters to leave before they have a chance to get comfortable.

One_of_the_last_few_Patriots_left said...

Dymphna wrote: "I specifically request that men do this..."


*sigh* Gee, Dymphna, why don't I meet girls like you?