A Swedish music festival has banned men ‘until ALL men have learned to behave themselves’

I have a penis. 

This natural phenomenon is my contribution to an important statistic. Because I have a penis I am more likely to commit sexual assault. Statistics tell us that women are more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, and common sense tells us that sexual assault is bad for the victim. Therefore I am part of a group which is socially, morally, and ethically dangerous, and which makes the world an unpleasant place for women.

Bråvalla, Sweden’s largest music festival, was due to be cancelled next year after it emerged that twenty-seven people were sexually assaulted, with four of those reported as rape, at this year’s event. The festival experienced similar violations last year and so the decision was taken to end the whole show, because, as the organisers phrased it, ‘certain men apparently cannot behave’.

In response, alleged comedian and radio presenter Emma Kynckare sent out the following Tweet:

"What do you think about putting together a really cool festival where only non-men are welcome, that we'll run until ALL men have learned how to behave themselves?"

This idea proved popular and, soon afterwards, Ms Kynckare confirmed that "Sweden's first man-free rock festival will see the light next summer."

There we have it. Everyone’s happy.

Except that we’re not, actually. I don’t care for festivals but I do very much care about hypocrisy. The rape of reason is a crime of kind, too. 

Sweden has taken the cause of ‘anti-discrimination’ to absurd and damaging heights. It is no stranger sexual assaults at festivals, as well as other places of revelry. You might recall the organised mass-assault perpetrated against women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, and the revelation that the German authorities had deliberately underreported the number of these attacks and tried to withhold certain information about the alleged perpetrators. You might not remember that the same thing happened in Sweden.

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In 2014 and 2015, large groups of men, apparently in concert, assaulted and molested revellers at the We Are Stockholm festival. Yet again, the numbers were played down (if reported at all), and another bit of salient information was withheld from the press. That information pertained to the identity of the gang of criminals, described by an internal police memo as ‘so-called refugee youths, specifically from Afghanistan.’ The official police report made no mention of the assaults, nor the identity of the attackers. The same thing is alleged to have happened in Malmo on New Year’s Eve, and the same information withheld. The same thing happened in Cologne, and the same information was withheld until police eventually admitted that almost all of the suspects were ‘people with an immigrant background’.

I can hear the howls already. How dare I draw a link, or appear to draw one, between immigrants and sexual assault? That’s racist. It’s discriminatory.

Well, that’s half right. It is discriminatory to point out, as Ivar Arpi has in The Spectator, that the practice of organised molestation and assault by gangs of young men is so common in parts of the Arab world that it has a name – Taharrush gamea. 

And Roger Ticoalu, head of events at the Stockholm city administration, revealed that the Swedish authorities had been aware of the phenomena in 2014, telling The Guardian that "[it] was a modus operandi that we had never seen before: large groups of young men who surround girls and molest them… In the cases where we were able to apprehend suspects, they were with a foreign background, newly arrived refugees aged 17-20."

It is discriminatory to point this out because it discriminates between bystander and participant, and separates those who are liable to commit such crimes from those who are not (I will offer myself as someone unlikely to take part in Taharrush gamea, as I am a reasonably decent person. I’m also not straight, and think women are overrated. So it’s really not my thing).

It might be racist if I said that Taharrush gamea was something all immigrants, by virtue of being foreign, engaged in or support. I categorically do not say that, so spare me the usual tripe about the vast majority of immigrants respecting our laws and women. That is self-evidently true, and no sane person would deny it.

But it is discriminatory, and rightly so, to say that Taharrush gamea is a subcultural phenomenon, and that said phenomenon has most definitely been imported from a part of the world which does not afford women the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Swedes or Germans. It is discriminatory to point out that Swedish and German men have no equivalent of Taharrush gamea. Such discrimination is vital if we are to properly counter the crime. The line taken by Ms Kynckare is the intellectual equivalent of nuking Israel to take out Hamas.

This kind of thorough discrimination is invited by the statement, from the organisers of Bråvalla, that ‘certain men apparently cannot behave.’ A sensible person takes from that a mandate to identify which men, and why. A silly person, like Ms Kynckare, who really thinks that virtuous ‘anti-racism’ is more important than the safety of women and of society, will ban all men and make victims out of the blameless. They will discriminate badly but apparently, that’s alright.

(Not to worry though, chaps. The new festival is open to people who identify as non-male, which is very easy to do.)

In closing, I will amend and repeat my opening paragraph. If you disagree with it, then you disagree with Kynckare and her ‘non-discriminatory’ discrimination.

I am a Muslim immigrant. My citizenship status and my religious affiliation, I’m told, are my contribution to a very important statistic. Because I am a Muslim immigrant I am more likely to commit sex crimes, such as the gang-rape of women at music festivals. Therefore I, being a Muslim immigrant, am part of a group which is socially, morally, and ethically dangerous. Therefore I should be banned from all festivals and public celebrations.