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SWEDISH ACADEMY

Swedish Academy in ‘crisis meeting’ after turbulent week

The Swedish Academy held crisis talks this weekend after its first ever female permanent secretary resigned last week.

Published: 15 April 2018 18:26 CEST
Swedish Academy in 'crisis meeting' after turbulent week
Photo: Ann Edliden/TT

Two members of the body, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, resigned on Thursday evening over a controversy that has divided the Academy into two camps. One of the two was permanent secretary Sara Danius.

The scandal centres on allegations by 18 women that they had been subject to harassment and physical abuse by Jean-Claude Arnault, the French husband of Academy member Katarina Frostenson. Arnault denies the allegations.

Frostenson also announced she would no longer take part in the Academy's work.

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“We will have crisis talks this weekend, which I will prepare for,” Academy director and acting permanent secretary Anders Olsson told newspaper Expressen.

Olsson declined to give further details.

“I do not have time to give further detail now. But we will get back to you,” he told the newspaper.

The Academy is on Monday expected to present a lawyer-led investigation into the issue, Olsson said on Friday.

According to previous reports by Swedish media including Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, the investigation includes details over allegations that Arnault leaked names of Nobel Prize winners. He has denied those accusations through his lawyer.

The Academy has come under considerable scrutiny since Thursday, when Danius resigned as permanent secretary. 

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METOO

‘When I said no’: Danish women in campaign against sexual assault victim blaming

Women in Denmark have joined a social media movement responding to victim blaming of women who have suffered sexual violence and harassment.

Published: 20 July 2021 14:37 CEST
'When I said no': Danish women in campaign against sexual assault victim blaming
Illustration file photo: Issei Kato/Reuters/Ritzau Scanpi

Using the hashtag #dajegsagdefra, which translates loosely to ‘when I said no’, women have described assault, attacks, violence, harassment and humiliation against them which occurred or continued after they rejected the advances of an attacker.

The hashtag began to trend in response to social media comments suggesting women can avoid being assaulted simply by firmly ‘saying no’ (ved at sige fra). Such comments have been criticised as an attempt to place responsibility for sexual assault, violence and harassment with victims.

The discussion is linked to Denmark’s #MeToo debate, which remains a prominent issue in the country after thousands of women shared stories of sexual harassment in late 2020.

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 In the hashtagged tweets, the women describe situations of sexual assault or harassment which escalated after they told the aggressor to stop.

Kirstine Holst, the chairperson of support organisation Voldtægtsofres Vilkår, is among those to have shared personal accounts.

“When I said no I was held by the throat and raped”, Holst’s tweet reads.

Another voice in the Danish debate, Khaterah Parwani, is also among those to have tweeted using the hashtag.

Parwani is director of Løft, an organisation which works against negative social control.

She described several incidents in which she was subjected to violence and abuse after saying no to an aggressor, including being “unrecognisable at hospital” after an attack and “beaten up in a car and lying bleeding on a wet pavement”.

A number of Twitter uses in Denmark also highlighted on Tuesday a report issued by police in North Zealand of an incident in which a 22-year-old man punched and kicked a 15-year-old girl after she asked him to stop whistling at her and friends, and told him her age.

That incident occurred in the town of Espergærde.

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