Isam B said the other day that one of the most feminist things a woman can do is to put on a niqab. Then she becomes... ninja.
The men want to see her, but only she can see them, and they cannot see her.
You've probably read about it, just like all the rest of us.
After a successful launch of VEILNESS™, I've spent several evenings alone in the dark with precisely that sentence.
First to understand how it hangs together on the inside - and then to see if there was more to be gained from it.
Because there's something about it that doesn't behave like a stupid sentence. A stupid sentence falls apart when you poke at it. This one doesn't. It gets stronger.
So I took it apart.
There are three parts. First a word that has a history, which everyone thinks they know what means. Then comes what the word has always been against, put in the word's place. And finally a little turn that must be said with a calm, self-evidence and surplus that makes the two words' exchange look like an insight, because this reverses something you hadn't thought to reverse.
She can see them. They cannot see her. And suddenly it's the one protesting who sounds like someone who hasn't understood the point.
Pretty smart.
Because it's not an opinion. It's a machine. You put a word in one end, and out the other comes the opposite, without anyone being able to pinpoint exactly where it went wrong along the way in the sentence.
And a machine that works for one word works for them all...
That was where - right there - I stopped looking at the sentence and started looking at what else you could build with it. Because I knew that if I didn't move first, then Jesper Buch who lives just down the corner would have taken it into the Lion's Den before Friday.
And Denmark is ready, by the way. We've had a party for over a hundred years called Venstre (Left) that sits on the right, and no one has ever raised an eyebrow. We've just been missing someone to draw the consequence.
Therefore it is my pleasure today, together with the party's newly elected chairwoman, who is reading the party platform here for the first time, to present -
PERSPEKTIV - Denmark's first party for the modern woman, where every single principle is seen from the other side.
Directly from the freshly minted party platform -
- The most climate-friendly thing a woman can do is to fly to Bali, because only there can she see with her own eyes what we're about to lose. The one who stays home has only read about it.
- The most socialist thing a woman can do is to become a billionaire, because no one knows inequality better than the one standing at its top. You can't fight what you haven't owned yourself.
- The most liberal thing a woman can do is to let her husband decide, because the freedom to give up one's freedom is the greatest freedom of them all. Everything else is coercion, just with herself as the one coercing.
- The most democratic thing a woman can do is to stay home on election day, because then there's no one who can take her vote from her. It stays with her. Uncast. Unused. Hers.
- The most conservative thing a woman can do is to get divorced, because only that way does she keep marriage pure as an ideal, untouched by the reality that otherwise wears on it.
- The most equal thing a woman can do is to let the man walk in front, because only from behind can you see if he's walking straight.
- The most family-friendly thing a woman can do is not to have children, because the family that never came to be is the only one no one has ever failed.
- The most integrating thing a woman can do is to move, because the one who gives her place away can never afterwards be accused of keeping anyone out.
- The most industrious thing a woman can do is to go part-time, because no one contributes more to the labour supply than the one who frees up her place for another.
Since we are not yet ready for nomination, the project is driven solely by goodwill and financing through membership fees, which are not collected - because the most solidary thing you can do is to let the others pay. So enrolment happens by not doing anything.
And yes, even though the party is aimed at the modern woman who wants to see it all from the opposite side, the party is naturally open to men.
All the party's spokesmen are men. And should anyone think that a women's party led by men is a self-contradiction, we will remind them that men these days win women's swimming races, set women's records and receive women's prizes.
It has actually turned out that men are also better at being women. So we have as the first party merely drawn the political consequence. The reason for it all stands in the programme's last line, which is the only one we haven't written ourselves, because it had already been said -
The most feminist thing a man can do is to explain to women what feminism is.
And what do we expect to change in Denmark?
Nothing.
Denmark has already changed.
The language has been swapped around, the words mean the opposite, and the boundaries for what you can say have been moved, without anyone being able to remember having moved them. No one voted for it. No one was asked. No one noticed it before it had happened. We're just the first party that has had the courage to write it down as a programme.
The most democratic thing that has happened in Denmark in our lifetime is what no one voted for.
😉
Sorry again, Isam. But. You know....
Something about a football and a triangle and a pass. 😅🤷♂️
