This post would focus on the backlash and public dissent that Sweden has received on some of the more extreme actions its government has taken to curb gender inequality.

Some feel that gender role neutrality is being exaggerated and sweden is taking feminism to a radical level.

• A Swedish politician proposed that men should be required by law to urinate in a sitting position as it leaves toilets cleaner and promotes prostate health
• A school banned boys from standing up and peeing

The public’s reaction was that these limitations were restricting boy’s rights to be boys and innately constricting their freedom and liberty to have the choice to act in whatever way they deem appropriate.

Others deplore that implementing the proposed policy would be taking away the identity of men, in the sense that men would be forbidden from doing what they have traditionally always been doing, which is urinating in the standing position. Many critisize that this policy would essentially be preventing men from being who they truly are. Most see having to “urinate in the sitting position” as men being forced to become more “like a women”, and that men had to change their ways to make women’s lives of cleaning the washrooms easier.

Since 2012, a new gender neutral personal pronoun, “hen” was introduced to the Swedish dictionary as an alternative to the gender-specific pronouns that are typically used (“he” or “she”)

In the face of rising gender inequality and the growing number of people resonating with the LGBTQ movement, the Swedish government introduced the above pronoun. The pronoun ‘hen” was meant to identify with all genders, including those that are under the category of non-binary. The Swedish government aimed at reducing the differences between men and women, and wanted to send across a message to all its citizens: that regardless of your gender identity or sexual orientation, all human being still had the same rights and responsibility to fulfil.

This intiative received much public backlsh as people thought that this new pronoun induced by the government was meant to reduce the inherent differences that exists between the two genders. Others thought that this meant changing girls to boys and boys to girls, eventually removing the identity of either gender.

~by charlotte 🙂