Many months later and the #MeToo movement is going strong. But I have to admit, many times the stories rubs me the wrong way. In Sweden a bunch of women, for example, yelled sexual harassment because they had to wear skirts at a trade show! It infuriated me, it minimizes the experience of women that really have been abused! Like myself. In my mid twenties I had a new job and a new boyfriend in Stockholm. We planned to get married and had just bought an apartment. One Friday evening working late I was sexually assaulted by a colleague at my office. I told my boss and my boyfriend. The result? I got fired and my boyfriend walked out on me leaving me with the apartment and mortgage . 

Today the Swedish government, according to themselves, has the first feminist government in the world. But it is not about universal sisterhood or spreading sexual equality around the world. It is ‘intersectional feminism’ an academic concept sensitive and culturally relative, recognizing that so-called victim groups, usually people from less feminist minded cultures, are higher up on the grievance ladder than women.

This brand of feminism exists in the US too, but nowhere has intersectional feminism become as huge as in Sweden, internalized and endorsed by the political and cultural establishment. In March 2018, for example, a Muslim man was acquitted of an alleged assault against his Muslim wife with the motivation that it was not uncommon for a woman to falsely claim they had been assaulted in order to get an apartment. The judgement also said that the man came from a better family than the woman, and that she should have resolved the dispute in her family and not go to the police in the matter of spousal abuse.

The judgement is not unique. A Swedish court ruled against the parental rights of a female Swedish citizen and handed over her Swedish citizen children to the Iraqi husband she married as a 13-year old. This despite Swedish law outlawed forced marriages in 2004 stating that a person have to be 18-years old to get married, even if the marriage is entered into abroad.

It doesn’t stop there. According to Swedish government statistics from ‘Nationella Trygghets Rådet’ 1.4% of women 16-24 years old had been victims of sexual assault in 2012. In 2016 4.1% in the same age group had been victims of sexual assault, a 300% increase.

So please, don’t ever equate wearing skirt at a trade show with sexual harassment!