Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.06.2016, Blaðsíða 8

The villain of the issue this issue is com-
petitive poker. We at the Grapevine love
playing cards as much as the next per-
son with a pathological compulsion, but
watching competitive poker combines
the worst elements of athletic competi-
tion—: crass commercialisation, over-
inflated egos, and ingrained sexism— -
and it’s not even fun to watch. And that’s
before we talk about people who play
cards while wearing hats and sunglass-
es. Where I come from, you try to play
some cards wearing sunglasses and you
can expect to get shown the curb fast.
And do we really need to glamourize an
activity that causes people to lose bil-
lions of dollars every year? Other sports
have their share of problems, to be sure,
but here’s a “sport” that barely qualifies
as such, and is likely the only sport that
people can end up losing their life sav-
ings and going to 12-step meetings over.
Poker isn’t a sport any more than com-
petitive slot machines would be, and it’s
for this reason that competitive poker is
the villain of the issue.
The hero of the issue this issue is Ice-
land’s women’s football team, a
criminally under-reported-on squad
who have nonetheless made some stel-
lar advances. Most recently, after beat-
ing Scotland 0-4, they later went on to
trounce Macedonia with an astonish-
ing 0-8 final score. We’re not implying
they’ve been ignored because they’re
women or anything, but imagine for a
moment the nationwide jubilation that
would ensue if the men’s team got a win
like this in a crucial game that made the
difference between probably going to
the Euros or not. At the same time, while
there have been considerable advances
on the gender equality front, football
is still largely targeted at boys, and the
men’s teams (of pretty much any sport,
really) get coverage by default, whereas
the women’s teams seem to have to con-
vince reporters that they’re worth cover-
ing. Even with the deck stacked against
them, the Icelandic women’s football
time has been kicking some serious ass,
and it’s for this reason that they are this
issue’s hero of the issue.
HERO OF
THE ISSUE
VILLAIN OF
THE ISSUEWomen's
Football
Competitive
Poker
Heads-Up PokerJoao Castro
STRANGE
BREW
Getting Schooled
Feminist discourse: Two sixteen-year-olds on gender inequality
Words KELLEY REES Photo JÓHANNA PÉTURSDÓTTIR
Many great people start young. bell
hooks wrote about encountering ad-
versity in the newly integrated public
school system. Malala Yousafzai was
the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
at the age of seventeen. And although
they have yet to appear in The Atlantic
Monthly or be nominated for a peace
prize by Desmond Tutu, Margrét Snor-
radóttir and Una Torfadóttir, both six-
teen, are great.
The high schoolers recently gave a
TEDx Talk on feminism, emphasiz-
ing the importance of utilizing any
and all available platforms to project
your message. They won last year’s an-
nual Reykjavík-wide Skrekkur talent
competition with ‘Elsku Stelpur’ (“Dear
Girls”), a choreographed spoken-word
performance, written by Una, balking
at societal gender norms and question-
ing patriarchal standards. Margrét be-
gan Ronja, a feminist group at Hagas-
kóli, their high school, and organized
#ronjaferátúr (“Ronja has her period”)
to confront stigma surrounding men-
struation. The club has a membership
of ninety in a school with roughly five
hundred students and although only fif-
teen or so members are male, Margrét
and Una think the boys are catching on.
“I feel like, if I were a boy and listening
to the whole conversation about femi-
nism it’s so easy to fall into this trap of
following the rules of feminists and not
breaking any of them, like, ‘Don’t objec-
tify women, don’t do this, don’t do that,’”
Una says. “And it’s really important that
they try and do this, but I also think they
have to realize that these are not rules
created to make them feel bad or to limit
them. They’re made for all of us to feel
better. And to make these changes last,
boys have to realize how good these
rules are and how good they are indi-
vidually as well. I think that’s really the
only way we can make lasting change–to
have boys have their own impact on the
movement as well.”

Talk the Feminist Talk
The two are extremely personable, wise
beyond their years, and still, in many
ways, endearingly sixteen years old. It
was their vice principal who broke the
news that TEDx wanted the two to give a
talk. “She called us up and was like, ‘Have
you heard of this thing called “Ted”?’
And we acted very casual but inside we
were screaming,” Una says. They were
given guidelines but left pretty much to
their own devices. “It didn’t take us very
long; the hardest part was deciding what
we were going to talk about and how it
was going to come across,” Margrét
says. “And then when we started, we just
took one night, we ate ice cream, and for
three hours we just wrote it.” The two
were in the midst of exams as rehears-
als for the TEDx program took place. As
a Ted Talk rule, no paper is allowed on-
stage, so they would need to know their
lines by heart. This meant studying and
sitting for exams, practicing their piece
in between, and coordinating with the
TEDx dress rehearsal all during the
same period. The culmination was a
seamless routine.
Una and Margrét are both thought-
ful and candid in their assessment of
feminism in their homeland, an outlook
which lends itself to unassailable frank
assertions. “Feminism is trendy in Ice-
land and the coolest people in Iceland,
the rappers and the musicians, are all
feminists,” Una says. “They’re saying,
‘Yes, I support equal rights and every-
thing,’ but then these same people are
not acting like feminists. They don’t
speak up when they see inequality, they
themselves may slut-shame or objectify
women without even thinking about it.
It’s so difficult when it becomes okay to
act that way but also call yourself a femi-
nist.”

The Best-Laid Plans
Like any good adolescent, the pair are
uncertain what the future holds. “The
original idea was: Go to college, become
a doctor, and move somewhere and it’s
been like that since I was ten,” says Mar-
grét. “Ever since I’ve gotten involved in
this, that’s become less and less a solid
plan. I want to do more things in our so-
ciety. I want to stay involved.” No matter
the path, the outcome is sure to be great.
SHARE: gpv.is/tedfem
“Feminism is
trendy in Iceland...”
“...But then these
same people are
not acting like
feminists”
INTERVIEW
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 8 — 2016
8