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METOO

Swedish school puts #metoo on the curriculum

A school in Sweden has put the #metoo movement on the curriculum, with all 15-year-olds given a two-hour lesson on the global campaign against sexual harassment.

Swedish school puts #metoo on the curriculum
Tullbroskolan decided that #metoo should stay part of the curriculum. Photo: Tullbroskolan
Anna-Karin Nilsson and three other teachers at Tullbroskolan in Falkenberg spent about six hours each developing the lesson, with the first Class 9 students in receiving it this week. 
 
“They know quite a bit about the Metoo movement already, but what’s hard for them is to understand is that it applies to them as well,” Nilsson, a civics teacher at the school, told Swedish broadcaster SVT
 
She said that boys and girls were split for part of the lesson, with male teachers working with the boys and female teachers with the girls. 
 
“We have male teachers working with those who identify as men so that they don’t feel that they’re just being blamed, and realise that we should instead talk about how to have a more equal society,” she said.  
 
“It can easily happen that the boys feel ‘everyone is blaming us’, when it is in fact more about the structure of society.” 
 
 
Oscar Ljungström, a pupil at the school, told SVT that the lesson had made him look at the #metoo movement in a different way. 
 
“We hadn't really understood before how big this is, that there were so many people hit by this,” he said. “It made you think about how you behave yourself.” 
 
Hilma Eriksson, another student, said she through the lesson might help reduce the low level sexual harassment she witnessed at the school. 
 
“There are a lot of jokes, and you hear a lot of ugly words in the corridors, and I think that if everyone has this lesson and everyone takes it on board, it will reduce this.” 
 
In the months after the #metoo movement came to prominence last autumn, the subject was brought up in all the school’s classes.
 
But earlier this year Nilsson and her colleagues decided that the story of the movement should be made a more permanent part of the curriculum. 
 
“I think we will work on this for many years,” she said. “It might not continue to be called #metoo, but we will have to work on it for a long time, if not forever.” 
 

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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.

'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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