Abstract
Sexual
violence of various forms, be it sexual harassment or sexual abuse,
perpetrated by male professors against their female students has gained
societal visibility through media broadcasts. This article tells the
tale of the 2013 recruitment to the University of Iceland of a former
political party leader, minister and ambassador. He was publicly called
out in 2012 for his alleged sexual offences, perpetrated some years
earlier. The story is told from two different viewpoints: from that of
the media and from the article author’s own standpoint as assistant
professor in gender studies with co-responsibility for his
de-recruitment. In the media story, opinion leaders from the political,
judicial and media spheres take centre stage. The author thus utilizes
the concepts patriarchal homosociality and influencers.
Based on the findings from the media analyses, the author lays out her
defence and justification, using embodiment as the core of her argument.
She draws on black feminist knowledge validation processes, more
specifically, the ethic of caring and personal accountability.
Furthermore, she explores affective feminist pedagogy, i.e. connecting
mind and body through self-actualization. By contrasting the two
accounts, that of the media and her own feminist standpoint, the author
sheds light on the role that influencers play in preserving patriarchal
power and the status quo against ‘fire-raising feminists’ in academia
and society at large.
Introduction
The purpose of this research is twofold. By addressing questions about embodiment in academia, specifically in the classroom, my first aim is to explore what happens when cases of sexual violence are acted upon. This story takes place in Iceland, but my focus is not on its ‘Icelandic-ness’ but on how studying this particular case can expand our knowledge of and insight into gendered and sexual power relations inside and outside academia, which is my second aim. The incident recounted here thus poses the question of what happens after allegations have been made, whether or not a case is brought to court:
It
serves no purpose and solves no problems to paint sexual offenders as
monsters. It is often against the wishes of the victims who are closely
tied to the perpetrators, and also know their good sides … We thus need
to weigh different interests and society – we need to find ways to
accommodate victims’ needs without banishing perpetrators. Special
attention needs to be paid to positions of power and circumstances that
invite abuses of power. (Pétursdóttir, 2013: 23)
These
assertions will serve as a point of departure. They are the closing
lines of an opinion piece I wrote in Iceland’s most widely read
newspaper in response to an editorial in that newspaper. This was
subsequent to the University of Iceland’s decision to de-hire Jón,1
one of Iceland’s most influential elite men. He was recruited to the
university a few weeks earlier, and had one and a half years before
being called out on his alleged sexual offences (Tómasdóttir, 2012a, 2012b).
Jón has an impressive career in media and politics, with an initial
career in teaching. He was a headteacher at an upper secondary school, a
newspaper editor, member of parliament, minister and ambassador (Tómasdóttir, 2012a). He has lectured and has served as guest lecturer at 15 universities in the US and Europe (Arnarson, 2014).
He is also known in Iceland and Lithuania for being the first foreign
leader to recognize Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union in
1991, a move considered quite bold (Björgvinsson, 2013).
According to a member from the Association of Lithuanians in Iceland,
‘Jón [] is a hero in Lithuania and all the Baltic States’ (Þórarinsson, 2013: 72).In what follows, I tell the story of his recruitment and de-hiring, for which I am co-responsible, from two intertwined locations – from my perspective as an assistant professor of gender studies in the Faculty of Political Science, the faculty of his initial recruitment, and as a survivor of sexual abuse. My account is followed by the re-telling of these same events by opinion leaders presented in the media, thus bringing to the fore the idea of patriarchal homosociality (Gabriel K, 2014). In light of the views presented by the opinion leaders, in the latter part of the article I defend and justify my actions. For this purpose, I draw on insights from various scholars who can roughly be grouped together under the umbrella of teachers’ embodiment. In the spotlight are embodiment and its special significance in cases in which a teacher has been outed as an alleged sexual offender and the reactions this summons.
The media analysis consists of 130 pages of media coverage spanning August 2013 to February 2014, including 15 media outlets (printed, web, television and radio), 126 published stories, editorials and opinion pieces. The analysis focuses on news in which the original sources are (personal) blogs; all the entries from three men and three women vary in content and are, despite the equal numbers of men and women, presented by the media with different connotations. These entries capture the most striking themes of the overall media discussion, and they yield insight into where the power to influence public opinion lies and how this interplays with the media, what Wedel (2009) calls influencers in flex-nets of power.
Outed, recruited and de-hired
The publication elicited strong reactions, and opinions were mixed. There were sentiments of the nature that the motive for the story being told at that particular moment was to land a political blow to the former head of a left-wing party (Rúv.is, 2012) and to quash his plans for a comeback to the political scene. In 2009 he tried to revitalize his political career in the aftermath of the economic collapse (Hannibalsson, 2009). I opposed the narrative of ulterior motive by writing a sharp piece about powerful men and sexual violence in Iceland’s most widely read newspaper (Pétursdóttir, 2012) and received some oppositional commentary in return, one from a former member of parliament, published in the same newspaper, who accused me of extremism, lack of objectivity and academic credentials (Gunnarsson, 2012).
The next turning point in the story comes about one and a half years later in August 2013 when the newly recruited sessional teachers were introduced at a faculty meeting. Among those introduced was Jón. As I relive the moment, I feel my throat contract. What followed was a flush of emotions: disbelief, anger, feelings of betrayal and profound shame. As feminist philosopher Linda Martín Alcoff (2014), who situates herself as a victim/survivor of sexual abuse, notes:
A
personal history that includes rape or sexual abuse can indeed color
our perception, not necessarily causing us to jump to conclusions, but
perhaps yielding insight into likely outcomes. We may be more aware of
the signs of abuse, more distressed at what we know will be a long term
trauma, even more willing to accept the long process of meaning making
we can guess a survivor will have to go through. (2014: 457–458)
I
immediately reacted upon my emotions and in a follow up meeting with
the faculty head and the professor who initiated this particular
recruitment I made a statement to the effect that Jón should be de-hired
from the faculty. I did not do this in the composed manner I had hoped
for but in a very feminine manner: I cried. By so doing, I suspect that I
contaminated the space and aroused disgust in my colleagues. My
experience is echoed in those of others who stir trouble in the ivory
tower. Armato (2012: 78) writes: ‘Academic forms of interaction are supposed to be rational, reserved, and impersonal’. Stockdill (2012)
elaborates on his own experience of troublemaking in academia and
contemplates the contradiction he sees as inherent in the system, i.e.
we have the image of academics as ‘open minded, free thinkers’, while
‘many in higher education assume the same reactionary stances as other
elites’ when faced with ‘the ugliness of the world’ (2102:
155–156). The ugliness I pinpointed with my claim was one of sexual
abuse. Throughout this article, however, I apply the term used in the
aforementioned articles. I thus refer to Jón as an alleged sex offender.
Following my affective outburst, and the consequent events which I am
not at liberty to disclose, Jón was de-hired from the faculty. My
initial reaction played a crucial part in that regard. I now turn to the
portrayal of these same events by the media with a contextual
background into Icelandic society and my theoretical framework.Circling the wagons and preserving patriarchy
On a somewhat similar note, the anthropologist Janine Wedel (2009) describes today’s power holders as composed of influencers, whom she calls flexians, that form what she calls flex-nets. Johnson et al. (2013) utilize Wedel’s theory to describe the Icelandic equality paradox, i.e. formal gender equality in a society where power has shifted elsewhere, an analysis that might also yield insights into the high rates of sexual abuse versus the low conviction rates. In their gendered analysis, they describe Iceland as a dual state, a constitutional state and a prerogative regime. One of the elements that sustain this dual state is a weak and dependent media characterized by self-censorship, ownership concentrated in the hands of a few and an orientation towards conglomeration, which means that if you are fired, it is difficult to find work elsewhere in the same field. This affects how stories are presented. For instance, press releases (or blogs) are often presented as news with little or no independent analysis (Árnason et al., 2010). It comes as no surprise that the world of media is male biased and male dominated (Van Zoonen, 1994), and Iceland is no exception (Hálfdánardóttir, 2014).
For my analysis, I pay attention to certain aspects of Wedel’s (2009) flex-net theory. I show how opinion leaders juggle roles and representations in order to inform the public of their understanding of this particular incident.
The media first captured the story in late August 2013 with the heading ‘Right-on-target speech leads to lecturing’ (Fréttablaðið, 2013a: 8). It tells of Jón’s planned teaching and his receipt of a millennial medal in 2009 from the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs. The news was followed five days later by a story summarizing a post by two women, Hildur and Helga, referred to as ‘feminists’ or ‘blogger[s]’ – not by their respective work titles – one of whom is well known in society for her fight against misogyny. The blog was originally posted on a feminist website but was immediately taken up by three media outlets and followed upon that same day with news about the University of Iceland revoking its previous decision and again quoting the blog, thus linking the two together. The blog concludes:
We ask
that the University of Iceland and the School of Social Sciences explain
this recruitment. We feel it is humiliating for Jón’s victims and
victims of sexual violence all over the globe. We’re not going to sit
silently through this decision. (Dv.is, 2013)
This
opened the floodgates, and what followed was a heated media debate with
three prominent interrelated themes: (1) human rights and the
constitutional state, (2) fire-raising feminists and (3) effeminate
university leaders.
Human rights and the constitutional state
Jón wrote four opinion pieces in Iceland’s most read newspaper over the period 31 August to 21 September.2
In the first piece, titled ‘University of Iceland: Talibans in an Ivory
Tower?’, he tells how his recruitment was revoked because the
university and faculty leaders lacked courage to stand their ground
against the gender studies personnel and the feminists in society,
referring simultaneously to Nazi Germany and berufsverbot
(employment ban). This link was reinforced by Egill, an influencer from
the media, who wrote on his blog site: ‘Jón [] is an experienced and
highly qualified scholar in the field. The University should not ban him
from teaching for his reprehensible conduct many years ago. If he is to
be punished, berufsverbot is not the way to proceed’ (Helgason, 2013);
this was echoed in one other news outlet. One of the ways that
homosociality and ‘masculinity-as-power’ manifest themselves is by
minimizing the deed and focusing on Jón and his qualities, as does
Egill. He has multiple roles within the media; his own blog site ranked
no. 2 among the most read blogs at the time (Blogggáttin, 2013),
and he had two shows airing on the national broadcasting service. His
most famous show dealt with political affairs, and many consider him the
voice of reason.Jón’s point of view was also taken at face value and was most fiercely voiced by a long-standing member of parliament who wrote a blog post that instantly made the news in three separate news outlets:
‘This debate is not about
individuals, it is about fundamental rights in a constitutional state
that wants to refer to itself as a human rights society. With its
decisions the University of Iceland has violated human rights and we
must demand that it revises its decision,’ says Member of Parliament
Ögmundur Jónasson in a post written on his home page. He is one among
many who have criticized the university’s directors’ controversial
decision to hinder Jón [] from teaching at the University … ‘Now we hear
on the news that an individual recruited to teach a course has had his
recruitment revoked because the self-administered judges in the hallways
of the University have ruled him out’. (Eyjan.is, 2013b)
Ögmundur
is a former Minister of the Interior and Justice. He is a member of the
Left-Green Alliance, the only self-proclaimed feminist party in
parliament. During his time as a minister, he was outspoken about the
harms of sexual violence: ‘These crimes entail the most severe human
rights violations that can never be ignored’ (Skarphéðinsson and Jónasson, 2012: 19), and has been in dialogue with feminist activists on the issue (Ministry of the Interior, 2013).
Among his many ministerial duties was to preach in a church to a group
of police officers on the harms of sexual violence in relation to drug
abuse. On that occasion, he said:
Journalists
conduct interviews with known abusers and make ‘heroes’ out of them. But
this alleged heroism is about grabbing young girls, removing them from
their peer groups, getting them into the best parties, taking sexual
advantage of them. (Jónasson, 2011)3
It
is difficult not to think about the 10-year-old girl who is taken under
the wing, or in the language used here, grabbed, by an older, powerful
man. What we see here is an example of an influencer juggling roles and
representations. Ögmundur has a favourable reputation as a feminist ally
and as a former ‘human rights’ minister, used his influence to create
male consensus.
Fire-raising feminists and effeminate university leaders
The
second and third themes, fire-raising feminists and effeminate
university leaders, were most strongly voiced in the writings of
Brynjar, a member of parliament for the right-wing Independence Party:
‘If
we are going to continue to give matches to arsonists then our society
does not have a bright future, it will go down in flames … The case of
Jón [] is not a unique incident when it comes to buying peace by
negotiating with the fanatic mob,’ writes Brynjar, saying that the
‘arsonists’ have, in an organized way, attacked the state’s fundamental
institutions such as the police, the judiciary, the state church and the
University of Iceland. ‘I’ve said it before, it is not to universities’
advantage to foster political groups that define their political
ideology as a science and topic of study’. (Alfreðsson, 2013)
Brynjar
is a former head of the Icelandic Bar Association. He is a Supreme
Court lawyer and ran his own law firm prior to his appointment to the
Icelandic parliament (he is listed as an owner of a law firm on the
parliament’s conflict of interests webpage, see Althingi.is, 2015).
He has previously been very outspoken about the harms of feminism, for
example: ‘I think the ideology is bad and harmful: in fact a Marxist
political leftover’ (Níelsson, 2011). Brynjar was recently considered a candidate for the Ministry of the Interior and Justice (Bítið, 2014), his blog was cited in three media outlets, and he continued to bring us back to the third theme:
‘People of my generation read in high school a book by Max Frisch titled Biedermann und die Brandstifter [Biedermann and the Fire-raisers].
It’s about Biedermann’s (the petty bourgeois) cowardice and the
self-deception of those who try to please the strong ones. Biedermann
wants to be considered a good person but, as is often the case with such
people, he is a coward. In the end he becomes so co-dependent that he
is willing to give the fire-raisers matches.’ (Eyjan.is, 2013a)
On
similar lines, summoning up Brynjar’s writing, was a piece of news
under the heading ‘The masculinity at the University of Iceland’ (Hauksdóttir, 2013b:
28) in which it was implied that the university’s decision in the
matter in fact lacks masculinity: ‘At some point in the past it would
not have been considered masculine to hide behind one’s fear of women’s
anger’ (Hauksdóttir, 2013a),
implying that the university revoked its decision because it was afraid
of the gender studies personnel. The university is thus feminized as a
group of co-dependent cowards. The news is based on a blog written by
Eva, a well-known anti-feminist activist who has previously been
lionized in the media for her views (Bergþórsdóttir, 2014).Jane A Rinehart (1999) claims it is a known strategy to bring forth women who oppose feminism as it is more difficult to claim that they are sexist. She further contends: ‘We live in hard times – hard for feminists, hard for educators, even harder for feminist educators. The first blush has worn off women’s studies, and there are numerous critics of this educational project, both inside and outside the university’ (1999: 64).
I have quoted three men and three women whose blogs were quoted on various news sites. The men’s (Egill, Ögmundur and Brynjar) views were published because of their status in the political/judicial/media spheres, and what they have in common is the preservation of the status quo. The women (Hildur and Helga, and Eva) play important but auxiliary roles: (1) as ‘fire-raisers’ who serve as a call to arms for the influencers; (2) as legitimator and mouthpiece for patriarchy.
Jón threatened to take his case to court, stating it was a human rights issue (Fréttablaðið, 2013c). This came as no surprise considering the encouragement he got from the influencers. The case was settled out of court at the end of January 2014, and Jón was paid ISK 500,0004 for the inconvenience he suffered, while the University of Iceland did not ‘acknowledge liabilities for damages’ (Stefánsson, 2014a) – a statement ridiculed by a former member of the Supreme Court of Iceland and a known opinion leader (Stefánsson, 2014b). The case is however not settled. At the end of September 2013, the media published accounts of Jón’s sexual misconduct dating back to the 1960s when he was an upper secondary school teacher (Guðmundsson, 2013).
Affective feminist pedagogue defends and justifies her actions
Drawing on his experience as a white heterosexual man in the classroom, Ron Scapp (2003) maintains that what we present as teachers/educators is always received through the person presenting it: ‘I had the additional task of assisting them read me. How I spoke, how I dressed – in short, how I acted – informed and influenced the content of the course in important and necessary ways’ (2003: 131). His experience further led him to conclude: ‘the demand that teachers must begin to consider their actions in and out of the classroom is as much an ethical demand as it is a political or a pedagogical demand, and we ought not be daunted by the intersection of these three domains of action’ (2003: 131). These three domains of action – ethics, feminist politics and pedagogy – form the three intertwined streams of my mind/body argument. I start with ethics.
Patricia Hill Collins (2000) uses the terms ethic of caring and ethic of personal accountability to theorize about black feminist epistemology and the knowledge validation process, which aptly coins the point made by Scapp above. She describes an interaction in one of her classes in order to explain her concepts:
During
one class discussion I asked the students to evaluate a prominent Black
male scholar’s analysis of Black feminism. Instead of removing the
scholar from his context in order to dissect the rationality of his
thesis, my students demanded facts about the author’s personal
biography. They were especially interested in specific details of his
life, such as his relationships with Black women, his marital status,
and his social class background. By requesting data on dimensions of his
personal life routinely excluded in positivist approaches to knowledge
validation, they invoked lived experience as a criterion of meaning.
They used this information to assess whether he really cared about his
topic and drew on this ethic of caring in advancing their knowledge
claims about his work. Furthermore, they refused to evaluate the
rationality of his written ideas without some indication of his personal
credibility as an ethical human being. (Collins, 2000: 265)
The ethic of caring also expands beyond the teacher–student relationship into the structure of academia as an organization.I have taught gender studies for a decade, covering a broad array of topics, one of which is gender-based violence. Each semester, I read assignments or have students coming to my office who situate themselves as victims/survivors of gender-based violence and, more specifically, sexual abuse. Saundra Gardner (2009) writes about teaching a course on domestic violence and concludes that about one-third of the class are aware of their experience, as victims/survivors of intimate partner violence, upon enrolment, and another one-third ‘come to this realization’ (2009: 151) halfway through the course. That being said, I have no reason to believe that my students’ experiences differ from those of the student body as a whole.
My experience with the student body relates to Calderon’s transformative pedagogy for excluded individuals and groups as well as to betrayal and disconnection within a community, as, in this case, the academic community of teachers and students. Calderon (2012) employs transformative pedagogy in working with underprivileged students in the US. Transformative pedagogy is ‘rooted in a passion for overcoming systemic and historical injustices’ (2012: 103). When applied, it ‘can determine whether historically excluded individuals and groups can survive the traditional walls of the academy and can play a role in advancing long-term structural changes in the larger society’ (2012: 103). Betrayal and disconnection within the community refer to social institutions that, for example, place value judgements that create a disconnect between what its members experience and the values put forth by the institution (Platt et al., 2009). These values are explicit or inexplicit. When members of my faculty recruited an alleged sexual offender, they made a value judgement – a political statement – saying that his previous (the published letters) and alleged deeds did not matter when it came to teaching in a classroom. In my view, their actions created a disconnect between lived experience and the feminist theories and transformative pedagogy I have been advocating and practising.
I felt the disconnect they created as ‘affective dissonance’ – disbelief, anger, feelings of betrayal and profound shame – defined by Clare Hemmings (2012: 157) as ‘the judgement arising from the distinction between experience and the world’. Affective dissonance can become the core of transformation or, as formulated by Hemmings, ‘that moment of affect’: the moment you cannot ‘control’ (the rush of uncontrollable emotions) and, in this case (which is not always the case according to Hemmings), resulting in a ‘resistant mode’ (2012: 157) – a mode that leads to my feminist pedagogical and political demonstration for different standards within the faculty, e.g. to validate lived experience as a criterion of meaning in the classroom. As a 41-year-old assistant professor in gender studies, I had the power that comes with the position and the emotional strength to enter the resistant mode, something I did not have as a child and a teenager. This was my occasion to rise and fight the battle others had fought on my behalf in the past. This, for Hemmings (2012), is at the core of the feminist standpoint and hence the feminist epistemology and feminist teaching as Collins’s ethic of caring and ethic of personal accountability illustrate.
The ethic of personal accountability calls for self-actualization: ‘teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own wellbeing if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students’ (hooks, 1994: 15). Self-actualization, according to hooks (1995), is achieved by coming to terms with your circumstances and gaining strength to transform your life (enter the resistant mode) with the help of others; it combines mind, body and spirit and thus ‘allows us to be whole in the classroom and as a consequence wholehearted’ (hooks, 1994: 193). This also suggests that the deeds of the body – touching and writing with hands, speaking with tongue and mouth – cannot be separated from the mind; the body is present in the classroom with all its experiences of violations – and previous deeds etched onto them. This leads us to the various affects that our being in the world has on others.
Bonnie Mann (2012) draws a phenomenology of what she calls creepiness, done by ‘creepers’, in order to understand what underlies our use of the term ‘hostile work environment’ and how it is created. Calling the creator of the hostile environment a creeper is an epistemic way of speaking truth to power: defining as a means to demobilizing. Mann claims that the creeper is a thief. The creeper steals your time as you start to navigate time and space in order to avoid being in the creeper’s presence; second, related to the first, the creeper ‘pre-empts your world-making capacities’ (2012: 27). Gendered power relations feed into the creeper’s sense of entitlement. So, in this case, the question becomes why not rather than why. Jón, the alleged offender, did of course agree to teach, threaten with a law suit, etc. guided by his sense of entitlement, nourished and fed by gendered and sexual power relations: ‘men who harass … simply take the entitlements offered to them in a misogynist culture quite seriously’ (Mann, 2012: 29). My focus, therefore, is on our misogynist culture, ruled by influencers in flex-nets of power of which the alleged offender is of course part.
Mann’s definition of the creeper is again related to hook’s self-actualization, which is fuelled by Eros. Eros is understood by hooks (1994) as a force-provoking passion moving beyond – without excluding – the sexual. Passion allows teachers to give fully of themselves, to bridge the divide between mind and body, become self-actualized and thereby transform theory into practice. By daring to give fully of themselves, they facilitate student learning, a point taken up by Kathie Roiphe (2015) in her argument against professor–student sexual relationships. I would argue that trust is a crucial component when calling on Eros to ignite passion or, as Roiphe (2015) puts it: ‘The power inequity in the classroom should be used for teaching, for the play of ideas, the unloosing of creativity, not for the much more pedestrian purpose of seduction.’ We, teachers and students, need to trust that the teacher will not abuse the power bestowed by the teaching position and will not steal time and pre-empt the student’s world-making capacities. Teachers’ previous sexual violations undermine the foundations of trust and thus make the call to Eros farfetched. As a friend who taught for many years so unambiguously said: ‘You can’t teach with an open fly’.
I have now justified my actions and laid out my defence in intellectual terms. Taken together, I argue that we should not steal students’ time and way of being in the world and risk their opportunities to transform their lives by placing abusers of power in positions of power in the classroom. In the US, there has been a lively debate among feminists about sexual harassment and campus politics. The two camps roughly maintain that, on the one hand, you should not set policies that are too broad in their scope since they might have the unintended results of limiting academic freedom and increasing the power of university administrators, which might have negative consequences for women and other disadvantaged groups (Halley, 2014; Kipnis, 2015). On the other hand, the so-called survivor movement maintains that survivors’ experiences should be acknowledged (Bazelon, 2015). I agree with both camps and see the potential flaw in my mind/body argument when it comes to sexual offenders’ reintegration into society after having served a sentence. However, when it comes to powerful men, the likelihood of serving time is rather minimal, and as my analysis indicates, there is a greater likelihood of the circling of wagons by influencers. Therefore, for the moment, and as I stood there staring the creeper in the face while every nerve in every part of my being screamed ‘NO’, I knew I could not share the same space. It thus became this simple question of him or me, and I chose me, thereby lending weight to both our lived experiences (I the victim/survivor; he the alleged perpetrator) as a criterion of meaning in academia.
Concluding remarks
We live in a homosocial patriarchy guarded by influencers in flex-nets of different political affiliations and spheres. It is, therefore, difficult for us, as a society, to confront and uproot sexual violence, which is one of the many harms produced by patriarchy. That being said, I want to stress that this has been for me a feminist occasion to rise – practising theory, defending and justifying defamation – and a therapeutic opportunity on the way to self-actualization, coming out as a victor (victim/survivor) in the process of writing this article.
In her recently published book, Miriam E David (2014: 3) asks: ‘Can education be used to try to transform wider social and sexual relations and reduce, if not eliminate, male violence against women?’ Her conclusion points to the importance of combining feminist theorizing, as taught in universities, with activism outside of academia. This case is a prime example of just that, but I want to add that activism within the university by academics is just as important: ‘Those of us who have privilege of gaining entrée into academia have a responsibility to “make trouble”, to agitate for change both within and outside the ivory tower’ (Stockdill, 2012: 148). But making trouble in the ivory tower does not make for an easy transgression, and this feminist occasion has been a steep learning curve for me, my faculty and the university.
It remains to be seen what lessons this case has brought and whether these will have a lasting effect. How will society react when the next powerful man is accused of sexual violence and the influencers, with the help of less powerful men and women, come to his rescue, thus preserving the status quo and business as usual? The question for the rest of us then becomes one about seizing the moment of affect, rising to the occasion and raising a feminist fire.
Acknowledgements
Declaration
of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts
of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. In Iceland, it is common practice to refer to people by their first names.2.
This kind of media access is, to my knowledge, unprecedented. The
opinion pieces were on average 6202 characters with spaces (cws), the
longest being 7999 cws. During that same period, Fréttablaðið
published an opinion piece that I wrote, in which I explained the
position of the gender studies personnel (quoted in the introduction).
In my correspondence with the editor, he told me that their ‘norm’ was
5000 cws, so I had to shorten my 6500 cws opinion piece to get it
published.3.
Ögmundur is quoting a letter he says he received from concerned parents
who lost their daughter to drugs. He makes their words his own in the
sermon.4. It is estimated that Jón would have received ISK 138,887 for his teaching (Fréttablaðið, 2013b); the difference between the settlement and his estimated wages is ISK 361,113.
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