Gudrun Schyman

All men are like the Taliban! - just ask Gudrun!

© Zak Keith, 2010
May not be reproduced anywhere without the express permission of the author in writing

Gudrun Schyman, the former Swedish Member of Parliament, once proposed a special sexual harassment tax—a tax on all males to compensate for gender-based inequalities and the sufferings of all women in general. Incredible, but true!

In 2002, the Swedish Marxist Member of Parliament, Gudrun Schyman, suggested a bill to collectively tax all Swedish men for violence against women. In a speech that followed, she posited that all Swedish men are just like the Taliban: “The discrimination and the violations appear in different forms depending on where we find ourselves, but it is the same norm, the same structure, the same pattern, that is repeated in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, as well as here in Sweden.”

Not surprisingly—if you know anything about Swedish society, that is—male columnists from several newspapers such as Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet and even the Swedish Ombudsman for Equal Opportunities, Claes Borgström, chimed in, saying that Schyman was right: all men are indeed like the Taliban.[1]

Gudrun Schyman—feminist and former Swedish Left Party leader—had no problem promoting a culture of Victimhood for Economic Gain. She wrote the motion which reads, in part:

“When the costs of this aspect of socially-destructive male behavior are added up, it becomes clear how much money men’s violence costs society—money which could be used to increase women’s income, for healthcare, improved working environments and so on. It’s then only natural to ask how men collectively should take economic responsibility for men’s violence against women...”

In Schyman’s convenient worldview of black and white, all men are perpetrators and misogynists; all women are victims. The Left Party put themselves solidly behind her Philosophy of Victim Entitlement, stating that the idea of men collectively paying for the social costs of violence towards women is similar to the principle of poor people paying less tax than the rich. In other words, the more victimized you are, the higher you belong in the entitlement hierarchy.

Now there’s collectivism for you, down to a tee!

Am I missing something, or isn’t assigning people to groups and dealing with them collectively, what we used to call such bad names as racism and sexism?

Swedes often seem to believe more in collective than individual responsibility. And why would they not? For if the ideals of group conformity as outlined in the ironic Jantelag are taken to their extreme, the need for any individualism is removed. This mindset is often blamed on decades of upbringing by the left-of-center Social Democrats. Yet, Swedes across the political spectrum, including those vehemently opposed to the Social Democrats, tend to deal with people in collective terms.

Issues of collectivism aside, as a politician, Schyman ought to know better. What she had in mind may not have been value-added tax but rather sin tax,[2] but unless we are still living in the Dark Ages, there can be no taxation without representation.

According to the benefit principle of taxation, taxation<=>rights.[3]

If men were to pay taxes for violence against women, they would then also be entitled to stand up as taxpayers and demand their rights to commit acts of violence against women. One could just imagine the scenarios that would have followed if such a bill had been passed:

• Increased sexual assault: men molesting women and saying, “Hey, I’ve paid my dues, I have a right to this!”
• Legitimate demands for scaled and equitable taxation: “Hey, I shouldn’t have to pay as much as frequent wife beaters because I’m only into pinching butts on occasion!”
• An explosion of the “gay” population: men applying for tax exemptions declare themselves gay and therefore having no inherent inclinations to sexually harass women.

If wholesale generalizations about gender and groups are to be the order of the day, why not return the favor and postulate that Schyman, like  many typical  all Swedish feminists, is into emasculating men? It might not be that far from the truth so claim that Swedish society supports the suppression of men—ever notice how the central theme of Swedish TV commercials is that all men are fools and the joke is always on the men? Perhaps men should demand an Emasculation Tax for the disempowerment of all males caused by the defeminization of women?

Dare we upset Schyman's applecart with politically-incorrect debates about women-on-women violence, or female manipulation of men to commit violence, or how some women are addicted to victimhood, or how they might be enablers of violent men?

Why bother to take Gudrun Schyman seriously?

Perhaps I’m going about this all wrong and taking Schyman too seriously. Perhaps I’m just amazed anyone else continues to do so at all.

Schyman’s political career should have ended years ago, when she urinated in a public theater and then and tossed her urine-soaked panties at the audience. But in the ensuing media storm, she took refuge in the “I’m a victim of alcoholism” excuse and Sweden bought into it and she simply lingered on as a credible politician. The question begs to be asked: is victimhood vogue in Sweden?

Schyman, like a typical politician, talks out of both sides of her mouth.

Following her man-tax proposal of 2002, the pro-tax Schyman had to resign the very next year as leader of the Swedish Left Party on charges of tax fraud. Schyman then conveniently announced that she was leaving membership of the Left Party (rather than being “ousted”) because she had better things to do, such as focusing on feminist issues, and launched the Feminist Initiative Party. And she lingered on...

Then in 2010, Schyman exposed her callous mercenary heart by burning SEK 100,000 in small bills as a protest against unequal pay for women. In the ensuing uproar, she tried to silence critics who said the money could have been put to better use—such as buying 69,930 vaccinations against polio—by retorting, “we are not a charity, we are a political party!”

Schyman likes to have it both ways.

As a very vocal opponent of tax deductions for outsourced work carried out in Swedish households (known as RUT deductions), Schyman, of all people, should not be one to partake of its benefits. However, it was revealed by the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) that she was in fact among those who claimed tax relief through the RUT-deduction system in 2010. Her subsequent reply to critics was that she saw absolutely “nothing contradictory” about utilizing such tax deductions.

Schyman obviously considers herself quite the victim, high up in the victimhood hierarchy, and as such, should not be made to pay any taxes.

Don’t get me wrong, I do support feminism if it means furthering women’s rights! But with sensationalist, literally piss-tossing, money-burning, hypocritical, tax-fraudster feminists like these, who needs feminazis?

What really baffles me is I've heard Schyman being referred to as “a genius” on a number of occasions.

Only in Sweden could Schyman come up with such a man-tax proposal and actually get taken seriously. There is something very unique about the Swedish approach to dealing with gender issues in Sweden and the unbridled way in which Swedish politicians openly suggest victimizing males in the supposed interest of protecting the welfare of women.

A unique Swedish phenomenon

Swedes certainly have a right to be proud of their country and to think of it as one of the most progressive in the world. They have done a lot for gender equality in terms of parental leave for fathers, female representation in government, etc. They have also taken on more than their fair share of refugees and have done a lot for integration, etc. I love Sweden because it’s full of wonderful, sincere people called Swedes. But sincerity and naiveté tend to go together as a set, and for that reason, Swedes are often as naïve as they are sincere.

Despite their ideals of självdistans (self-detachment), Swedes have some considerable blind spots to their own true nature. And paradoxically, while Swedes have accomplished much in the areas of race and gender, they simultaneously fall short in these very same areas—race and gender.

Racism unawares? While Swedes may decry racism, they still see people as types rather than individuals; they place people in boxes and act as though nationality, ethnicity and culture are inseparable things; ignorance—the precursor to racism—is rife in their ranks. African Americans get asked repeatedly where they are really from because “USA” is not an acceptable answer and “Africa” is what Swedes are really fishing for. And it doesn’t even end there! They follow up such already obtuse questions with really clueless and offensive ones such as, “But where in Africa?” Their bull-in-a-china-shop reasoning goes that since “we should all be honest and proud of our true heritage...” it’s perfectly acceptable to be socially inept and ignore the fact that someone’s ancestry might be impossible to trace due to the horrendous effects of the slave trade. NOTE: Caucasian Americans do not get interrogated in this manner because Swedes evidently subscribe, albeit often unawares, to the Manifest Destiny of Anglo-Saxons. (see Typical Conversations with Ignorant Swedes)

Reverse sexism? While Swedes may decry sexism, they seem to have nothing against what some sociologists have gone as far as calling the “gender neutering” of males and the “suppression of maleness” in the population. Whatever these theories may be, Sweden certainly seems comfortable with having the highest percentage of metrosexuals in the world.[4] What I find particularly difficult to accept though, is when homosexual RFSU and RFSL[5] representatives visiti schools to coax impressionable 11-year-olds to become a statistic, using high-pressure persuasion techniques and phrases such as: “some of you already know you were born homosexual, so you might as well admit it” and “those of you who don't think you are gay, you might actually be gay, only you just don’t know it yet!” Homosexuality, as the persistent black-and-white-reductionist argument goes, is “100% genetic and not cultural,” despite the growing evidence to support the contrary coming from the studies of identical twins .

ADDENDUM: Man-hating is not limited to Schyman

Did I not mention “across the political spectrum” and use apt terms like “Middle Ages?”

In March 2010, the center-right Swedish Justice Minister, Beatrice Ask, suggested that bright color-coded envelopes be sent to suspected sex-buyers: “I could imagine having envelopes of a very garish co lour and sending them home to people suspected of this offence.”

Ask’s idea was to publicly shame suspected buyers of sex, and to inform their family and friends about the mere suspicion. She even referred to the Middle Ages practice of public humiliation, saying it would be “like being shamed in the town square.”

Ask later had to perform a public u-turn in response to severe criticism of her disrespect for basic law—the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Oh, and did I mention that this was from the Minister of Justice?

Is it my imagination, or is there not some truth to the very distinctly Swedish phenomenon of politicians unabashedly calling for the victimization of males in the supposed interest of looking after the welfare of women?

Only in Sweden, folks!

1. Jämo: Ni är ju som talibaner
2. Sin Tax is a sumptuary tax which has traditionally failed to to curb socially-proscribed activity such as alcohol and tobacco consumption.
3. The benefit principle of taxation holds that a truly equitable tax structure is one in which the costs of government services are apportioned among individuals according to the benefits that each enjoys.
4. Swedish men ’not as masculine as they used to be’: study
5. RFSU stands for Riksförbundet för Sexuell Upplysning—The National Association for Sexuality Education; RFSL is the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights. The scenario I describe above is something I personally witnessed on several occasions when working as a school teacher.

Further reading:

• Gudrun Schyman wikipedia