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Malmö teen fined over graduation slut shaming

A Swedish school leaver has been ordered to pay 10,000 kronor ($1,112) in damages to a female pupil he described using a sexually explicit term inspired by Norwegian teen show Skam.

Malmö teen fined over graduation slut shaming
Swedish high school students hold graduation balls in May. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT
The 19-year-old man pulled the girl up on stage to give her the “fuck-girl of the year” award in front of 100 fellow pupils, at an event in a Malmö restaurant. 
 
He defended his actions in court by arguing that the word was meant humorously and was intended to describe how popular the girl was, a little like calling her an “enchantress” or a “man-killer”. 
 
The court, however, said it was “far from convinced” by the explanation. 
 
“It must be obvious to each and everyone that the expression … has powerful negative connotations,” the judge Fredrik Landgren and his three lay judges ruled in their judgement, which has been seen by The Local. 
 
The male student also read out a poem which included several sexual insults, and played a sexually explicit song which the court stated “could hardly be interpreted as anything other than painting (the girl) as promiscuous”.
 
“You can't count on either your fingers or toes how many things have slid in between your thighs,” read one passage in the award citation. 
 
According to the victim, the audience had at first been uncertain how to react. 
 
“First it became silent, as if people were shocked that it was so severe,” she told the court. “Then he shouted out my name and called me up on stage. They put a sash around me and gave me a framed copy of the citation. People pointed and laughed. I felt completely humiliated.” 
 
At the trial, the 19-year-old insisted that he had not intended the award to be insulting, noting that it had come directly after a similar award for “fuck-boy of the year”. 
 
The school's headmaster backed him up on this, defending his decision not to report the boy at the time by describing how the award's male recipient had taken it as a badge of honour. 
 
The boy explained to the court that the male moniker had been taken from Skam, a popular television series about Norwegian teens, and so was an in-joke at the school, where the show had a cult following. 
 
When he had written the text, he added, he had not known which girl at the school would be given the award. 
 
In court, the boy's lawyer Natalie Medina pointed out that all pupils in the year had been sent an online poll in which they could nominate pupils for ten different accolades.
 
The plaintiff had therefore known that the award would be given when she attended the graduation event and may even have voted in the poll. 
 
Medina argued this constituted a sort of consent, but the court rejected this. 
 
“The court cannot see that [the plaintiff's] actual participation in the vote should lead to the conclusion that she consented to the crime in question,” it concluded. 
 
The 19-year-old was also ordered to pay a fine of 3,000 kronor.

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French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts

A French court has ordered Twitter to give activists full access to all its documents relating to efforts to combat racism, sexism and other forms of hate speech on the social network.

French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts
Photo: Alastair Pike | AFP

Six anti-discrimination groups had taken Twitter to court in France last year, accusing the US social media giant of “long-term and persistent” failures in blocking hateful comments from the site.

The Paris court ordered Twitter to grant the campaign groups full access to all documents relating to the company’s efforts to combat hate speech since May 2020. The ruling applies to Twitter’s global operation, not just France.

Twitter must hand over “all administrative, contractual, technical or commercial documents” detailing the resources it has assigned to fighting homophobic, racist and sexist discourse on the site, as well as “condoning crimes against humanity”.

The San Francisco-based company was given two months to comply with the ruling, which also said it must reveal how many moderators it employs in France to examine posts flagged as hateful, and data on the posts they process.

The ruling was welcomed by the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), one of the groups that had taken the social media giant to court.

“Twitter will finally have to take responsibility, stop equivocating and put ethics before profit and international expansion,” the UEJF said in a statement on its website.

Twitter’s hateful conduct policy bans users from promoting violence, or threatening or attacking people based on their race, religion, gender identity or disability, among other forms of discrimination.

Like other social media businesses it allows users to report posts they believe are hateful, and employs moderators to vet the content.

But anti-discrimination groups have long complained that holes in the policy allow hateful comments to stay online in many cases.

French prosecutors on Tuesday said they have opened an investigation into a wave of racist comments posted on Twitter aimed at members of the country’s national football team.

The comments, notably targeting Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe, were posted after France was eliminated from the Euro 2020 tournament last week.

France has also been having a wider public debate over how to balance the right to free speech with preventing hate speech, in the wake of the controversial case of a teenager known as Mila.

The 18-year-old sparked a furore last year when her videos, criticising Islam in vulgar terms, went viral on social media.

Thirteen people are on trial accused of subjecting her to such vicious harassment that she was forced to leave school and was placed under police protection.

While President Emmanuel Macron is among those who have defended her right to blaspheme, left-wing critics say her original remarks amounted to hate speech against Muslims.

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