It was considered to be badly needed because it did to one group what the same group was previously thought to have subjected others to. Had there been an honest analysis of the arguments, we would have avoided the introverted debate on the SCUM Manifesto’s suitability as high school literature or theatre. With an intellectually honest analysis the high school students would have probably got the idea.

The Turtheatre, which during autumn showed Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto, has every right to put on this production, and whatever else it pleases on its stage. Those who have other preferences than the ‘Society for Cutting Up Men’ (SCUM) may simply have not visited said theatre. Those who also think that Valerie Solanas is not among the writers and playwrights who should have priority for Swedish high school students in a time of limited cultural- and Swedish education, can instead debate the issue.

And so it transpired but, beyond some elite feminist commentators, there were just a few. The self-confidence and engagement of intellectual middle class commentators, with a few exceptions, seemed lacking in the debate.

There were many more who defended or praised the Turtheatre’s nostalgically tinted teenage rebellion. Nina Lekander and her friends were thrilled and their excited apologetics resembled an adult’s sentimental defence of a pubertal indiscretion. It was even described as a great, refreshing, and wonderfully different context.

Intellectually, their defence was followed by a well-known but absurd line of argument. When critics problematised the SCUM Manifesto’s hateful messages against one group in society – namely men – they defended this with the same hatred that has all times has been focused on another group: women. The question is how something that was wrong at one time and against one group, can be justified in another time against another group, specifically in terms of the mistakes of the past.

Will history’s misogyny decrease or become easier to live through the same hate crimes being repeated against men? Those who defend the message of Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto gladly go back to Strindberg and his works, which express a contemptuous view of women. Hence, they say, there follows a logical obligation to express from the theatre stage the same contempt for men. What you believe to be incorrect in Strindberg is justified in Solanas with reference to Strindberg’s hostile approach.

For those who believe in revenge theory, namely that a society reaches harmony only when collective guilt has been met with collective punishment, SCUM Manifesto’s message is absolutely relevant. For the rest of us, the Manifesto, like the debate on the Turtheatre, provides an indication of the poor health of the national feminist and gender equality debate’s performance.

The highest echelons of the capital’s intellectual elite defend such radical feminist cultural expressions on the grounds that they are refreshing and necessary to balance the patriarchal autocracy. Though increasingly marginalised, and with obvious problems in formulating their own agenda, it is the elite feminists, more than any other group, that set the agenda of the Swedish debate on gender equality.

But even the elite feminists are misguided. Perhaps their newly awakened delight at having revived the SCUM Manifesto is a sign of just that. Their internal debate, conducted on the arts pages, about the emptiness of the feminist agenda, reinforces the image of an intellectual elite with no sting. Kajsa Ekis Ekman writes in The Daily News on January 7 that ”feminism has lost touch” and that ”the debate that occurs is often based on the spinal reflexes of past injustice.” Ekman seems to feel herself part of a feminist movement that is fumbling for new issues. She hopes to have found an answer in Nina Power. In The One-Dimensional Woman Power writes, amongst other things, about consumerism, and Ekman likes what she reads: ‘‘Here is the critique of consumption right in centre stage and I say ‘at last!’” Her article contends that feminism needs new issues, and that a critique of consumerism can be one.

If I were a member of the feminist elite, I would be concerned about what their own debaters are fumbling for. It is not to renew its agenda by expressing criticism of consumerism, or engaging in the nostalgic excesses of Solanas’ work. Consumerism is already criticised by most. Even the lifestyle magazines reflect consumer scepticism and delve deep into authentic environments and styles where materials products are long lasting – wear and tear is out. Quite unintentionally, Ekis Ekman also joins forces with the church, which often returns to the description of short-term consumer euphoria as an impediment to spiritual well being. At the last Conservative Party (Moderaternas) conference last November, even Fredrik Reinfeldt in his opening address used the criticism of consumerism as one of his main themes.

It was not radical, therefore, to choose consumerism as the new big issue. Does this mean that leftist-feminism has become all-encompassing in its beliefs or that it has lost its space in the public debate? Probably the answer is, typically for the 2000s, both. Through the lack of interest and self-development of ideas in the field, the middle class has completely accepted the Left’s ideas of what gender is. Both the concept and its solutions have been gratefully received by unimaginative gender-politics spokespersons of government parties. While the concept of gender power structure and structural oppression have become useful expressions for the mediocre middle-class members of parliament, the elite feminists gasp for air and new expressions. Just under the misguided elite pundits, we see a middle class that sits comfortably and correct, happy with the media elite’s assessment.

Per Schlingmann smiled wider than usual when he came out as a quota advocate and was hailed by Business Week (VeckansAffärer) (21/1/2010). But Schlingmanns move contained more than a zeal for quotas. The Party’s analysis had, according Schlingmann, gone from having an individual focus to being based on structural models: ”We have gone from a clearly individual perspective to that we are now seeing significant structural problems that mean that women have less power, earn less, own less than men, and all the consequences arising as a result (—) But if you also do the social analysis that there are structural problems, then one must also consider structural solutions.”

With the stipulation that Per Schlingmann is not the Conservatives, his gambit in Business Week is a sign of how the middle class has taken the plunge and incorporates both the Left’s concept and its analysis of the gender equality issue. One abandons the individual perspective and talks about structures with a glow that makes Schyman pale in comparison.

Intellectual, middle-class feminists with a gift for analysis are missing, however. One example is the author Susanna Popova, and it is in this context typical that she never received the support she deserves from her middle-class colleagues. Possibly Popova found herself on an intellectual level that made the middle-class gender equality politicians uncomfortable in the discussion. For a long time they contented themselves instead, in the traditional middle-class1900s fashion, with an analysis of what middle class politics was not.

Middle-class politics was for a long time only negative towards the social democratic way of thinking, and middle-class politicians saw themselves always in relation to their colleagues on the other side of the dividing line. Emil Uddhammar has described this in his thesis The Parties and the Great State (Partierna och den storastaten) (1993). For many years, middle class politics were synonymous with the Social Democrats – only the level of ambition and pace of reform was slightly lower.

In 1976, Thorbjorn Falldin received, from the Speaker, the task of forming a ”non-socialist government.” Ola Ullsten’s task two years later was the same. Yet in 2002, the term that was used was ‘bourgeoisUntil now I have used ’middle class’ instead of ’bourgeois’, because in English it can sound a little pejorative, but on this occasion I think its use is justified because the nature of the term itself is the focus of the sentence.Until now I have used ’middle class’ instead of ’bourgeois’, because in English it can sound a little pejorative, but on this occasion I think its use is justified because the nature of the term itself is the focus of the sentence.’. When Maud Olofsson and her middle class colleagues in SVT’s election debate were asked to come up with a common election slogan, it was a resolutely centrist leader who took the pen and wrote: ”For a non-socialist politics.”

Slowly, and with growing confidence, has today’s middle class succeeded in formulating a value-based middle-class politics? The comprehensive tax reform, implemented in one-and-a-half terms, is highly ideological. Power has been transferred from the state to the citizens and the independent and self-sufficient citizen has been strengthened.

When it comes to gender issues the opposite has occurred. From being the Left’s negative, it has now become its middle class interpreter, and debaters such as Popova need not apply. On January 7, the presidents of the three middle class women’s associations presented their policies on gender equality at a DN debate. Their texts bring to mind the much more elegant Taube text of The Archipelago Wife (Skärgårdsfrun): ‘‘Keep to port! Keep to starboard! Steady as she goes!” The poetry, rhythm, and composition convince everyone of the importance of finding the right course between the islands, something with which the article’s authors obviously had major problems.

Even the liberal channel, where the educational policy instruments that attract the Left and the Conservatives are missing, seems not to have been an option for the leaders of the women’s federations. Opinion pieces in The Daily News are often overestimated, but the one jointly authored by the women’s associations on middle class equality policy is an excellent example of how politicians who are not led by their own values end up completely wrong. Instead of making their own analyses, the authors accepted the premise that the Left formulated long ago for the gender debate. The overall objective is, with political leadership, to create a condition where the outcome of people’s choices will be as equal as possible.

It is no surprise that the women’s associations, before their common problem solving work, invited representatives of industry, trade and academia for guidance. The overwhelmingly most popular approach is to first listen to what the voters think and then decide how as a politician one should respond, and this is not unique to the women’s associations. For those who lack analysis and a solid foundation of their own value system, it is obviously much easier to listen to the debate than initiate it.

A common thing when gender equality policies are being formulated is to fall for the false benevolence of those who facilitate. Women are often considered to have various forms of support in reaching their goals as formulated by politicians. For example, there are feminists who advocate special banks for women because the commercial banks are considered too complex and demanding. This article proposes in the same spirit that state support for business should be divided evenly between men and women and that women in leadership positions should be offered special support in addition to the usual. ”To be offered an assistant or domestic help are benefits that can mean more than a company car” for women, onewho?who? explains.

Sakine Madon, editor of the debate site Newsmill and columnist in the newspaper The Express (Expressen), wrote in her chronicle on January 7 about such misguided benevolence: ”A few years ago, the Liberal Party’s women’s organisation distributed leaflets ’specially tailored for women’, with simpler language, about the EU and EMU. How else would poor women understand such complicated things as economics and politics?” Madon gives an insightful and entertaining analysis of large parts of the feminist debate.

The classic feminist demands for equal rights have been replaced by demands for special treatment, and this fundamental shift seems more or less to have passed unnoticed by the middle class. The feminist movement has assumed that equal rights are always right, and demanded equal treatment. Women should have equal rights with men: voting rights, property, education and access to all positions. There should be no distinction between men and women in either a moral or legal sense. But while classical and liberal feminism demanded equal rights, contemporary feminists are calling for special treatment and specific legislation in support of their demands.

When equal rights did not directly lead to equal outcomes, some began to require special rights to modify the outcomes of people’s free choice. Now the middle class is making precisely the same mistakes in its analysis and goes into a spin when it outdoes left-wing politicians in the art of presenting special solutions. They have said goodbye to an individualistic view of people and embrace, whether consciously or not, the analysis that women and men are (or through cultural influence have become), essentially different and therefore must be given different conditions.

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Conservative commentators who, for some reason, throw themselves into the feminist debate, tend to ask the rhetorical question about feminists who claim equal rights but who really do not have sufficient life experience to see the obvious differences between men and women. Of course there are differences between the sexes but, beyond the obvious physical differences, the differences between individuals are greater than the differences between the sexes. That which distinguishes biology from other things is the notion that the differences will also be inherited and not come exclusively from one’s environment. Anyone who has ever been inside a clothing store for children know that the social education begins early, and is clearly painted in pink and blue, on the princess dress and the Superman costume. It doesn’t follow that gender-neutral toys and clothing should be subsidised, or that parents should boycott Hennes & Mauritz’s adorably cute baby clothes. On the contrary, everyone is free to choose both the toys and the kind of upbringing they give their children. (Over time, it has even become the right of parents to choose the type of school for their children.) But to deny that social upbringing exists would be naive.

One does not need to have a one-year-old to have a rigid idea of how men and women are. Anyone who has endured a number of seminars and conferences on themes such as female skills and female leadership soon discover a recurring feature. First, women’s so-called underrepresentation at different levels is set out, thereafter come the theories about why the statistics look as they do, and the session concludes with a passionate appeal to women’s innate competence and unique properties.

On one occasion, the organisers invited a respected banker who, during his time as president of Sparbanken, had been very successful in recruiting women. He described how he, during his time as president, was focused on recruiting women and justified his action on the grounds that women think and work differently, and thus brought with them special feminine skills. On the direct question of whether the banker’s approach meant that every woman could be replaced with any other woman at any time, he declared himself misquoted and misinterpreted.

Talk about underrepresentation, as with talk of invaluable female expertise comes from the very specific nature of feminist analysis. When a woman holds a post she is almost always referred to as a female representative. In political assemblies the concept of women’s representative becomes particularly misleading. A politician never represents anyone other than his or her constituents. Never does a male MP represent other men and neither do his female colleagues represent all Swedish women.

While middle-class gender equality politicians write articles, ”listening in” or debating with each other, radical leftist feminists sit side-by-side with conservative reactionaries chuckling contentedly on the veranda drinking punch. With the focus on men and women’s differences, they fall for the stereotypical images of the sexes and, with these in mind, our personalities shrink for the benefit of the collective.

On the same veranda there is no room for, or interest in, the ism that claims every woman’s right to be judged, famed and treated as the person she is, and not as part of a collective. Both our shortcomings and our talents will be attributed to us as individuals and not diminished in the templates of typical women and typical men.

If the middle-class wishes at all to claim to be an essential part of the feminist debate, it requires slightly more effort than borrowing big-sister elite feminist’s slogans – the issues are just too important for this. It takes a great deal of thought for the middle class to win, or at least survive, the debate about what feminism actually is. Any discussion of equality compels the liberal commentator to defiantly answer nothing to the question of what to do to change the outcome of people’s free choice. To give such an answer requires some preparation. The very premises of the discussion must be fundamentally questioned, and that is precisely what the middle class has missed. It has been more convenient for it to accept the Left’s formulation of the problem. Few amongst the politicians of today have sufficient imagination or courage to declare that less politics is the best response to a societal problem.