I almost couldn’t quite believe what I heard when I saw the video of Simen Velle, leader of FpU, appear on TikTok last Saturday. A video that has been distributed to the mobile phones of children and young people. We’ve actually gotten to the point where statements like “A very few men have access to all the girls, and most of us guys don’t really get us anything”. Or this one: “All equality policy has been about lifting women up, and it has come at the expense of us men”. Such incel attitudes are pushed forward in the media two weeks before Women’s Day. Velle has since laid completely flat, but receives partial support from Anne Holt in the column “Don’t lie completely so flat, Simen!”. There it is pointed out that it is a social problem that men become bitter about the lack of sex and cohabitation, and although she criticizes that the blame is placed on equality, this chronicle is also as devoid of solutions as the original TikTok video is. At the time of writing, the video has been played 438,000 times, including by an extremely large number of young boys who already have their fyp pages filled with similar content. It is ironic that one moment we are fed an news article where women feel shamed by men for a high “body count”, the next moment a leader of one of Norway’s largest youth parties comes out and thinks it is a shame for men because they do not have “access” to sex. There are rarely any good solutions to the problem. Are there women who have to lower the standards? Do we have to start sleeping with men we are not attracted to? Do women have to sacrifice their own long-fought sexual freedom so that men can “get something”? And we obviously have a long way to go before women will even be able to have sex without being stigmatized. Consensual sex with a partner a woman is attracted to, and who is attracted to her, continues to be problematized. Videos of young boys talking about women being “used up” and “sent around” if they have had a couple of sex partners during their life abound on TikTok, also in Norway. And then we will have this burden of responsibility here in addition? When surveys show that men outside relationships to a greater extent than women outside relationships have had sex in the last month, one can start to wonder if this is a somewhat contrived problem with the intention of harming the cause of women. 74.1 per cent of the men and 83.3 per cent of the women answered that they had not had sex. We need equality, for both men and women. But stepping on the women’s struggle and equality policy is really not the way to go. The women’s movement has meant that men now have to offer more than just being a man. Men must actually be something that women choose, rather than having a nice life alone. It is not a human right for another person to want to have sex with you. To see growing hatred and contempt for equality flourish is downright frightening and ahistorical. There are many important areas in which we must support men, for example when it comes to mental health and how education in Norway is set up in a way where boys become a losing party. These are important topics, and the irony is that I usually hear talk about these topics from feminists, both male and female. In addition, these themes are used to devalue Women’s Day and women’s issues. Why are men’s issues always most important around Women’s Day? Why do some suddenly become very concerned with men’s problems when we talk about women’s problems? It’s what-about-ism at its worst, and it certainly doesn’t lead to anything constructive. Instead of us separately working with two different problems, one problem is used to counter the other. Maybe before we talk about how bad it is for men who are not allowed to have sex, we should talk a little about the great psychological need many men have to have sex? Because where women are looked down upon for having a high body count, men are now suddenly looked down upon for having a low one. We have gone way back in time, and putting a stigma on the number of sex partners, both for men and women, only has major, negative consequences, perhaps especially for men’s psyche. My best tip for men who struggle on the women’s front is actually to get more good and close female relationships, so that you might start to see women as people and not as machines that give you access to sex. If you actually want to help men with “access to sex”, we must start by helping and supporting men to see the value in themselves, and help them to create good relationships around them, with both men and women. It doesn’t help if you are the world’s handsomest man, if at the same time you wave red flags and scare the women away. And a winning personality comes easier if you actually feel good about yourself. I also want a greater, but correct, focus on men’s mental health. And agree, there is no reason to be ashamed of being a man. That was perhaps the only thing in the video we could agree on. Because I am incredibly grateful for all the men I have behind me. Dad, my brothers, my husband, good friends and nice colleagues, who all have one important thing in common: They see women as friends on an equal basis with men, and not as something that should give them “access to sex”.
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Incels can’t control politics – Speech
