Back in september, ran the Swedish music festival Statement of the place in Gothenburg. The special thing about this festival was that it was only women, non-binary and transgender people that was closed in or was allowed to occur.
It had the festival decided in response to the many cases of sexual harassment against women, which has occurred over the last few years at festivals around Sweden.
The Swedish singer Jenny Wilson was one of the female artists who optråde on the ‘male-free’ festival Statement. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix
The Swedish diskriminerings ombudsman has investigated and concluded that the Statement-the festival’s decision to exclude ‘cis-men’ is a violation of the diskrimineringsforbuddet.
It writes several Swedish media, including SVT, Göteborgs-Posten and Aftonbladet.
There is, however, nowhere in the decision, whether there actually are any people who have been discriminated against in connection with the regulatory framework.
According to the Swedish news agency TT comes DO’s decision to oversee the festival not from any individual person. There is also no talk about what punishment the festival gets to break diskrimineringsforbuddet.
– We have no sanctions to resort to. It is supposed that it must be an indicative supervision of similar events, and not only the Statement-the festival, says the DO’s media responsible for the TT.
The Swedish comedian and tv-host Emma Knyckare is not impressed with the DO’s decision. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix
Emma Knyckare, who is the founder and organizer of the Statement-the festival writes in a message to the Kulturnyhederne, that she of regret over the decision:
‘It is sad that the 5000 women, non-binary and transgender people (lgbt) experienced as a fantastic festival at the same time get a few ‘cis-men’ to go crazy. The success of the Statement-the festival shows that there is a need for us, and it changes the DO’s decision not to. In addition, we have no comments – we are busy changing the world’, she writes.
Cis-men is the name of the type of men whose biological sex and the gender they identify with, correspond with the sex they were born as.
