Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.12.2012, Síða 8

8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2012
Iceland | FAQ
Not all Icelandic feminists. Just one
feminist: Hildur Lilliendahl Viggós-
dóttir, who was recently honoured
by Stígamót, the leading Icelandic
organisation against sexual abuse
and violence, as well as UN Wom-
en, a United Nations agency, for her
activism against male on female
violence. Since February, Facebook
has banned her multiple times. Over
the course of the year, the bans be-
came more and more severe, start-
ing with daylong bans and working
their way up to a thirty-day ban.
Oh wow! A repeat feminist of-
fender then. What did she do,
threaten to castrate prominent
members of society?

No, she took screen captures of inter-
net comments disparaging women and
collected them into a picture album on
Facebook called Men Who Hate Wom-
en., She limited herself to comments
left by men who identified themselves
by name in public forums, such as on
newspaper articles, which often require
Facebook logins.
Aren't all comments on news
sites hate-speech towards
women? That is, those com-
ments that aren’t hate-speech
towards people who have a
different skin colour, way of
speaking, or number of toes.
People who spend a lot of time on the
internet are well aware of the cesspool
that is every comments section on news-
paper sites. However, it is quite easy to
go through life never seeing that kind of
thing. So Hildur decided to demonstrate
just how much hate-speech there is. The
picture album outraged many people in
Iceland.
How bad were these com-
ments?
I have no interest in printing terrible
things about women in this column, but
I would like to inform my readers. So
here is one of the comments, but trans-
posed from women to adorable animals:
"Wait a second! Why did he attack the
adorable f luffy kitten like that? ATTEN-
TION: I am ABSOLUTELY NOT excus-
ing violence! But I ask: Had the man
been made so incredibly angry that he
lost control? ALL men know that ador-
able f luffy kittens are geniuses at push-
ing our most sensitive buttons!" Here's
another, from a comment to a news-sto-
ry about a man who sent erotic letters to
his wife's under-age niece: "This is just
something he was not getting from his
adorable sea otter, why isn't the article
about that, goddamn Icelandic Saint
Bernard puppies!"
I'm guessing that at least some
of the words you replaced were
rather rude.
Yes. A lot of the comments are so repre-
hensible that there is no way I will repeat
them, no matter how many f luffy baby
animals I shoehorn in. Threats of sexual
violence are not a joking matter, even if
they are aimed at koala cubs.
Keep your penis away from
imaginary baby animals!
The harshness of the language and the
viciousness of the sentiment shocked
people, so Hildur's picture album was
linked to and reposted all over Facebook.
Many praised her for shining a light on
the festering underbelly of Icelandic
society while others felt that the charge
of misogyny was too harsh for some of
the comments, and a few responded by
criticizing her looks and making violent
threats against her. It caused such up-
roar in Iceland that she was interviewed
at length in a prime time news show.
So she claimed society was rife
with misogyny and in response
she got violent threats. Well,
that sure disproved her point.
She even got made fun of for not being
styled properly—another way in which
the f luffy animal analogy does not work.
No one criticizes a baby bunny for not
getting highlights in its ears. Now Hil-
dur is the main bogeyman of anti-femi-
nists. Whenever anything even remotely
related to feminism is in the news, peo-
ple will write disparaging things about
her, an example of which brought on
the latest Facebook sanction. She took a
screen capture of one of those remarks
and posted it to her Facebook profile. For
that Facebook gave her a thirty-day ban.
She was banned for repost-
ing disparaging remarks about
herself?
The man in question wrote on his pub-
lic Facebook page, "If I 'accidentally' ran
over Hildur, she is probably the only per-
son on earth I would back up over, and
leave the car on top of her with the hand
brake on!!!;) Put this in your 'men who
hate Hildur' folder, Hildur Lilliendahl."
Facebook seems to consider reposting a
comment to be harassment and as such
not allowed, but actually making said
comment is free speech.
So men are free to be mi-
sogynist, but other people
are banned for exposing their
misogyny?
To be fair, Facebook is in a terrible situ-
ation. It is like being the teacher in a
classroom with a billion kids, millions
of whom are screaming and yelling. All
they want is that everyone behaves nice-
ly, so they just tell kids to shut up and sit
down. Unfortunately they do that even
when people are speaking out about the
reprehensible behaviour of others. As
far as Facebook is concerned, this would
all be so much better if we all just sat
quietly and shared pictures of adorable
baby animals.
So What's This Facebook Ban On
Icelandic Feminists I Keep Hearing About?
Words
Kári Tulinius
Illustration
Inga María Brynjarsdóttir
“
This is just something he
was not getting from his
adorable sea otter, why
isn't the article about that,
goddamn Icelandic Saint
Bernard puppies!
„
November started on an unfortunately grim note,
as the commission in charge of
investigating the Catholic Church
over allegations of sexual abuse
released its findings,
and the news was
anything but
good. The most
terrible matter
to come to
light concerned
Landakotsskóli, a
school that was run by the Catholic
Church until 2005. Based on the
testimony of numerous former
students, it came to light that for-
mer headmaster Rev. Ágúst Georg
and a former teacher, Margrét
Muller, psychologically, physi-
cally and sexually abused several
students over a period of years, if
not decades. While current Catholic
Bishop of Iceland Pétur Bürcher
publicly apologised to the victims
for the abuse they suffered, at least
one victim said she has no intention
of forgiving the attackers involved:
“People talk about heaven and hell,
and I'm pretty sure I know which
one he [“Ágúst] is in, and that gives
me some peace.”
Icelandic comedy took a turn for the bizarre when actor
Pétur Jóhann Sigfússon brought his
Asian caricature radio personal-
ity Tong Monitor to television, in
a commercial for channel Stöð
2. For the role, Pétur spoke in a
generalised “Asian”
accent, had his
eyes pulled back
to affect epican-
thic eye folds,
and had his skin
coloured yellow.
Numerous immigrant
rights workers—among them a
Japanese-Icelandic priest—as well
as many Icelanders expressed be-
wilderment and anger at the carica-
ture, arguing that it was backwards
and racist. Pétur defended the Tong
Monitor character, saying that he
didn’t intend to hurt anyone, and
only meant to make people laugh.
Not everyone is laughing.
On a lighter note, a spat erupted between Minister
of the Interior Ögmundur Jónas-
son and television meteorologist
Haraldur Ólafsson. It started when
Ögmundur said in parliamentary
session that "no warning had been
given" for storms which downed
Continues over
NEWS IN BRIEF
NEWS IN ICELAND
DECEMBER