From Sweden to Russia: victims of sexual politics

 I month ago I visited Louisians exhibtion on pussy riot. For me, pussy riot stands for bravery and speaking truth to power, so to the least I thought it was a brilliant exhibtion. The fate of pussy riot have been in the western countries been linked to the pursuit of not only political emancipation but also a question of sexuality: Pussy riot fights for the rights of LBTQ+ communities and the most basic human right of all: to manage our own reproduction. 

Pussy riot - picture from Wikipedia


Since I've for the past year have been intrested in sexual politics, the parallel to my own country of Sweden is not that for away. Some months ago I read Gunnela Björcks "I lust och nöd" (a wordplay which can be translated into "in lust or poverty" which is a paraphrase of the english wedding vowel for richer or poor"). What stands out in this story about a young couple who in early 20th century started the sales of contraceptives is the huge amount of political and police repression, where the wife Karin Adamsson, actually ended up in prison for their commitment to contraceptives. 

The swedish legal history of sexuality in the late 19th and early 20th century is one of paradoxes. Often the start of agitation of contraceptives is conceived as national economist Knut Wicksell, who in 1880 proposed that contraceptives should made avaible to the working class to reduce their poverties. This lecture caused a public uproar and harsh repression from Wicksell's university of Uppsala. Or so it might seem, but according to historian Hjördis Lewin this is an over-simplification. According to Lewin, the Wicksell-lecture were not the start of a debate around vice, since this had ongoing for a couple of years. Nor did Wicksell actually get reprecusations from the university due to speaking out about sex. Rather it was the fact that he spoke about a subject which had no clear experience of that upsetted the university. Furthermore Lewin argues that the university could choose to expel Wicksell but instead gave him a warning, a less harsh punishment. 

Still the debate after Wicksells lecture set things in motion. For the coming 30 years the idea of proponing contraceptives in the public was seen as a scandal which hurt the morale of the society. This idea led to that when Swedish agitator Hinke Bergegren in 1910 held his lecture "Better love without children, than children without love" on contraceptives there was a nation wide ban on public agitation for contraceptives. There was people however willing to oppose this notion, such as Karin and Nils Adamsson and Hinke Bergegren himself. Karin Adamsson and Hinke Bergegren also spent time in prison as a result of their defiance towards the legislation. Socialist doctor Anton Nyström also became aquainted with the harsh laws, since he after a public lecture were subject to a large fine. 

In interesting aspect is however why the state choose to purge this forms of ideas. Especially since this was a time of widespread sexually transmitted diseases. The common folk wisedom, were history is often seen as non-enlighted period shaped by religious doctrines, often proposes that this was the result of the church being to involved in the nation politics. This is still an aspect that I would argue without knowing the full extent. However, what research have showned is that it was religion that was a driving force in the ban of contraceptive argumentation in public speech. Instead it was a notion of morale, where the idea of contraceptives were seen as threating towards the very foundations of society. Drawing inspiration from what was conceived - wrongly - as a pagan Rome filled with sex, the vice-policy and burecrauts claimed that a too lose sexualmorale would make the swedish collapse into chaos. 

What then does all of this have to do with contemporary Russia? In my view there is a great lesson to be learned here: namely that Putins Russia does not build on a notion of religion, even though the orthodox church is strong. Instead Putin seem to be inspirered by a form of conservativism and appealing to men who fell that their own values are threatned with rise of the modern society. Thereby there are strong parallels to made between a Sweden that was not that long ago, and contemporary Russia. And perhaps the strongest warning does not in the number of sexual political prisoners it produced, but rather the consequences of  being deprived the right to manage one owns reproduction. The social suffering behind people Bergegren and Adamsson can not be fully comprehended nor can it be denied. By these harsh laws, the body were put into a victimhood were women either had to marry involuntarily or seek dangerous illegal abortions. In history, we often tell the stories of certain political actors. But often we leave the great masses that invoked their actions behind. And perhaps it is time to move to studying the consequences of these harsh sexual politics, rather than the heroes themselves. 

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