Gender, Power, and Sexuality: Crossroads in Sweden

Ever since the boldly functionalist Stockholm Exhibition in 1930, Sweden has taken pride in being modern. In interior decorating, in welfare, in women's or lesbian and gay rights, Sweden has always opted for the modern solution, and Swedes tend to regard their country as "modern," while they think of other countries as "backward." But what does this imagined modernity mean for issues of gender and sexuality? On the one hand, women are now represented in local and central government in unprecedented numbers. But on the other, there are hardly any women in executive positions in corporations, big or small, and when salaries go up, the gap between female and male wages increases. On the one hand, lesbians and gay men enjoy visibility, popularity, and legal protection. But on the other, gay sauna clubs are prohibited throughout the country, and the Contagious Disease Act allows for the forcible isolation of individuals who are HIV positive. On the one hand, sex education is compulsory in schools. But on the other, the display of pornography is regulated, and buying sexual services is a crime punishable by up to six months in prison.

Sexuality is firmly regulated by the Swedish state, and so is gender. Government agencies are legally bound to work for the equality of men and women, and to focus on gender issues in one's application is generally seen as facilitating access to government research funding. The Swedish Federation for Gay and Lesbian Rights (RFSL) is a partner in dialogue with the government and an important lobbying group.

Highest on the RFSL's agenda in recent decades has been the law on registered partnership, now a reality in Sweden as well as in the other Scandinavian countries and elsewhere.¹ This raises interesting questions: Are the partnership laws merely minor readjustments of the limits of acceptable sexual behavior, without consequences for the sexual order but possibly leading to increased marginalization for those outside the area of legitimacy? Or are they the most important redefinition of family and kinship since late antiquity? Will the inclusion of nonheterosexual couples in state-sanctioned matrimony affect the way we think about marriage, sexuality, child rearing, and households? To answer that, we might consider which alternatives have emerged.

When gay marriage was discussed in the Swedish parliament, the Christian Democratic Party, vehemently opposed to the idea, launched the concept of "household community" (hushållsgemenskap). A gay marriage law, they said, would privilege homosexual couples at the expense of other possible households, such as adult children living with their parents or siblings living together. In some ways the household community proposal was more radical than the form of gay partnership advocated by the lesbian and gay lobby, but it was set aside for being hopelessly homophobic (which was certainly its intention). The RFSL's arguments against this proposal highlight that what gays and lesbians—or at least their organizations—want is not to deconstruct marriage or to merge in an amorphous blend of relations but to achieve a respected, highly exclusive separate status. What they want is a marital status, the registered partnership, with the same rights as heterosexual matrimony, including the right to church weddings, joint custody of children, and adoption.

Partnership laws have moved the debate toward the family, and the gay and lesbian movement is now fighting in the same arena as the feminist movement. While the RFSL's chief goals in the past mainly concerned gay men, like the fight against antigay violence and AIDS, its focus is now on family issues, concerning both women and men. Since February 1, 2003, lesbian and gay couples have had the right to be considered as adoptive parents. Yet only heterosexual married women are eligible to receive reproductive assistance. It is hard to see this kind of discrimination as anything but a result of a male-dominated discourse. When men and women join forces, much...