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Swedish city kisses goodbye to homophobia

Swedish business people, politicians and cultural icons have been snapped smooching with members of the same sex for a poster campaign in Umeå, designed to 'kiss homophobia goodbye'.

Swedish city kisses goodbye to homophobia
Councillors Anders Agren and Hans Lindberg on one of the posters. Photo: Utopia
The giant images are being displayed around Umeå's main indoor shopping centre, rather fittingly named Utopia, ahead of the northern Swedish city's Pride festival over the weekend.
 
“It's a great honour to have these participants offering themselves, and undoubtedly promotes our campaign against homophobia,” said Mona Liden, Utopia's manager, in a statement.
 
Municipal councillors from the centre-right Moderate Party and from Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's Social Democrats are among those who have been photographed for the Kiss Homophobia Goodbye project, as well as ice hockey coaches, university staff and the director of the city's Women's History Museum.
 
With temperatures of around 14C and rain predicted on Friday, some of the Umeå Pride festival will take place inside Utopia rather than outdoors.
 
“It's important for us to support the forces that seek to preserve diversity and act against hate and intolerance,” added Liden.
 
“We have chosen to help Umeå Pride to reach out with its message about the right to love all kinds of people.”
 
Meta Tunnell, one of the organisers of the Pride event in the famously open and tolerant city described the shopping mall's involvement this year as “priceless”.
 
“We work with an almost non-existent budget and 'Kiss Homophobia Goodbye' gives us the opportunity to reach out with our message far more than we usually do.”
 
People living in Umeå and elsewhere in Sweden are being invited to take part in the campaign by posting pictures of themselves kissing someone of the same gender on social media, with the hashtags #kisshomophobiagoodbye or #khg.
 
Linnea Risinger, a spokesperson for RFSL, the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Rights described the initiative as “an awesome campaign” when contacted by The Local.
 
Sweden is hosting a record number of festivals aimed at the country's sizeable LGBTQ community in 2015.
 
In 2013, the Spartacus International Gay Guide ranked the Nordic country the most gay-friendly nation in the world and earlier this year it scored highest in Scandinavia and fourth in Europe in a review of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people experience human rights across the continent, by campaign group ILGA-Europe.

GENDER

Berlin activists show manspreaders who wears the trousers

Manspreading is annoying for everyone on public transport. Now Berlin-based activists are trying to raise awareness and stamp it out.

Berlin activists show manspreaders who wears the trousers
Feminist activists Elena Buscaino and Mina Bonakdar on the Berlin subway. Photo: DPA

A man lounges across two seats on a crowded Berlin train, oblivious to his surroundings – until the two women opposite him suddenly spread their legs, revealing a message on their trousers: “Stop spreading”.

Feminist activists Elena Buscaino and Mina Bonakdar are on a mission to stamp out manspreading – the habit that some men have of encroaching on adjacent seats without consideration for their female neighbours.

“It is perfectly possible to sit comfortably on public transport without taking up two seats by spreading your legs,” said Bonakdar, 25.

The two female activists’ provocative stunt is part of a wider initiative called the Riot Pant Project featuring slogans printed on the inside legs of second-hand trousers.

READ ALSO: How much do women in Germany earn compared to men?

Bonakdar and Buscaino, both design students, came up with the idea as a way of helping women and LGBTQ people reclaim public spaces often dominated by men.

As well as “Stop spreading”, the project’s slogans include “Give us space” and “Toxic masculinity” – which, in a nod to the behaviour of those they are aimed at, are only revealed once the wearer shows their crotch.

“It is only through imitation that the interlocutor understands the effect of his or her behaviour,” said Buscaino, 26. 

Ancient phenomenon

But she also admits that very few men immediately change their posture when confronted with the slogans, as observed by AFP on the Berlin underground.

“They are often just astonished that women are behaving like that in front of them,” she said — but she hopes the project will at least give them food for thought.

For Bonakdar, simply wearing the trousers in itself allows women to “feel stronger and gain confidence”.

Although it may seem trivial to some, the problem of manspreading has existed almost since the dawn of public transport.

“Sit with your limbs straight, and do not with your legs describe an angle of 45, thereby occupying the room of two persons,” the Times of London advised as early as 1836 in an article on bus etiquette, as cited by Clive D.W. Feather in “The History of the Bakerloo Line”.

The term “manspreading” was coined in 2013 when New York subway users began posting photos of nonchalant male passengers and their contorted neighbours on social media.

According to a 2016 study by Hunter College in New York City, 26 percent of male subway users in the city are guilty of the practice, compared with less than 5 percent of women.

The US metropolis was one of the first in the world to try to start curbing the behaviour.

In 2014, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched a campaign featuring signs with the message: “Dude… Stop the Spread, Please”.

Gender roles

Similar campaigns have also since been launched in South Korea, Japan, Istanbul, and Madrid, where manspreading has even been punishable with fines since 2017.

The campaigns have sparked a backlash on the internet, with men citing biological differences as a way of justifying the need to spread their legs even if no scientific study has yet proven their argument.

Instead, the phenomenon has more to do with “gender roles” in society, Bettina Hannover, a psychologist and professor at the Free University of Berlin, told AFP.

“Men sit more possessively and indicate dominance with their seating position, while women are expected to take up less space and above all to behave demurely,” she said.

By David COURBET

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