Reykjavík Grapevine - jun. 2021, Side 10

10 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 06— 2021
Iceland’s #MeToo
Movement:
Breakin! The
Cycle
How can we move from reaction to education?
Last month, the greater Icelandic public
was reminded that the MeToo move-
ment never really went away.
This was kicked off when two women
came forward on May 5th saying that
the well-known podcaster and media
personality Sölvi Tryggvason had sexu-
ally assaulted them. Sölvi used his plat-
form to make a tearful denial of what
he termed slander aimed at ruining his
reputation. Another media personality,
Sigmar Vilhjálmsson, in turn posted a
video of himself watching the video of
Sölvi crying and exhorted the general
public to consider how Sölvi must be
feeling. This prompted untold many
Icelanders, most of them women but
including some men and nonbinary
people, to take to social media and
employ the #MeToo hashtag to talk
about their own experiences with sexual
assault. There has also been an upswing
in people reporting to the Stígamót
crisis centre. Many of these testimo-
nials urged men to talk to other men
about consent and boundaries. Some
men seconded this sentiment, encour-
aging other men to examine their own
behaviour.
Considering that this is a cycle we
re-visit, with or without hashtags, on a
fairly regular basis, the main question
that arises is: how do we end for good?
At the risk of being utopian, can we as a
society ever have a healthy understand-
ing of and relationship with consent?
Different this time around
For !órdís Elva !orvaldsdóttir, an
author, playwright and gender equality
activist, it’s something she’s thought
about—and spoken very frankly
about—for years. She recently penned
a column for Stundin, ‘An open letter to
the good guys’, and told the Grapevine
that she also noticed the familiar cycle.
"I would say that consent isn't
being taught enough in schools,” she
says. “I do not have 100% insight into
the curricula, but I have children who
are preschool and elementary school
age, and my gut feeling is that we're
not doing enough to teach healthy
approaches to bodily integrity. I also
think that we go about it a bit wrong.”
Whose responsibility is it?
That said, there is also the question of
upon whom the onus of consent lies.
For !órdís, this distinction is crucial.
“We still haven't shifted the empha-
sis enough, so that we free the child
from that burden of having to be the
gatekeeper of their own bodies,” she
says. “That relates back to this victim-
blaming culture, that if you are not the
one who is stating those boundaries
entirely clearly, so that it is in accor-
dance with the law, then basically you
have no rights and a crime against you
is not a crime, according to these sets
of rules. That is, of course, why it was
great that our authorities passed a
new rape legislation three years ago.
That sent a clear message that we need
consent for something to be considered
sex and not abuse."
Porn and more
Another contributing factor to the
poor understanding of consent among
far too many, !órdís believes, is the
proliferation of porn and the effect this
has on young minds who have not yet
developed a healthy relationship with
sex and boundaries.
“Given that we have such enormous
access to porn, in so many cases it
erases the distinction between what
is sex and what is abuse,” she tells us.
“With such material so readily available
to children, I feel that we're definitely
not doing enough to counter those
blurred lines and undo the harm that
such material risks doing to children
that have no comparison, as they have
no sexual experience of their own. We
risk setting them off in a direction
where consent isn't as stated and as
involved as it should be."
Where that is concerned, it was strik-
ing that the first public reaction that
the Icelandic police had to the latest
resurgence of the MeToo movement
was to announce that they intended to
go after content creators on OnlyFans,
which was most likely due to the fact
that one of Sölvi’s accusers met him
through the platform.
Íris Ellenberger, a historian and
assistant professor at the University
of Iceland School of Education, cites
the history of such legal approaches to
sex and porn and who is hit hardest by
them.
"I'm a historian, so I come to these
things from a historical perspective,”
she says. “From that perspective, you
can see throughout history people
trying to regulate sexuality. To make
some sort of laws or rules around sexu-
ality. The people lowest in the hierarchy
tend to suffer the most from these laws,
while people higher up in the hierar-
chy tend to be able to use their social
position or the capital that they have to
avoid sentencing or otherwise get out
of the situation easily. With everything
that has been going on ... it brought
these historical facts back to me."
Change starts at home
For Íris, if we are to seek any kind of
broad social changes we cannot rely on
the police and the courts.
"I think we, as a society in general,
need to have these conversations with
each other; not just the teachers,” she
says. “To be able to recognise the power
structures that are dominant in these
conversations. So much depends on the
power position of the people involved,
if the people who have been trespassed
upon are to get any justice. Sex educa-
tion needs to take power structures into
account as well."
The education of each
other
!órdís sees education as crucial, believ-
ing that it should extend beyond the
walls of the school. This notion touches
on so many aspects of parenting,
including teaching that even some-
thing like tickling needs to be consent-
based. Teaching these lessons to the
next generation of Icelanders would, by
!órdís’ estimation, have a great positive
impact.
"It's such an intimate relationship
when you're raising kids,” she says. “It's
important to always keep the onus on
the person who's seeking to engage,
whether it's sexual activity or physical
activity of any sort. If we have that, if we
just have that one thing down, it would
make a tremendous difference."
"órdís Elva and child
Íris explores the historical context
“I think we, as
a society in
general, need
to have these
conversations
with each
other; not just
the teachers”
“It's important to always keep
the onus on the person who's
seeking to engage, whether
it's sexual activity or physical
activity of any sort.”
Words:
Andie Sophia
Fontaine
Photos:
Art Bicnick
and
Andrea Ludovice