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Rising levels of hate forcing women out of Swedish public life, says equality agency
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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I wonder why women and LGBTQ+ people would be so uncomfortable in Sweden.
collapsed inline media
Out of curiosity, what does the diagram represent? I wonder what value has increased to about two thirds of 18% (and what is the 18%) between 1945 and 2015?
1945 - I can tell what happened over here on that year. Tens of thousands of Estonians took boats and sailed to Sweden, because they knew that Stalin's regime had extremely unpleasant surprises waiting for them. Without a clue about the context, I would guess that's the blue bar in 1945.
Also, I think your graph is missing the point. Lööf was sure as hell unsettled when psychiatrist Ing-Marie Wieselgren was killed at a political festival, by a guy who arguably intended to kill Lööf.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swedish-court-finds-man-guilty-murder-politics-festival-2022-12-06/
Wikipedia tells us a bit more:
So, apparently the motive was political, but I don't think you expected it was this one.
Polarization is really stupid, it makes people talk, campaign and vote about identity issues (parties start to have ultrafans who want to beat each other up), when their best interest would be served by discussing other topics. Fortunately the Swedish electoral system does not support unhinged levels of polarization.
The graph represents the proportion of Swedish population not of Swedish descent. As you allow people with such a different culture and outlook on women and LGBTQ+ peoples into the country, you begin to see the same patterns of violence and hate from their home countries.
I would put it differently.
The graph represents immigration. That is another topic, if you read the title carefully (see: "public life").
Recent / notable incidents of violence against women in politics, in Sweden, can be fairly blamed on far-right actors who are (perhaps by coincidence or perhaps not) also failing to discuss immigration normally, because discussing things rationally is not their slice of bread. Some parties' ultra-fans have a culture of threatening and intimidation.
I know it first hand without being in Sweden. Here in Estonia, we also have a party of that sort, with all the bells and whistles (anti-vaxx, pro-Kremlin, anti-immigration¹ and of course pro-authoritarianism). And their supporters can't argue with a person much more often than an ordinary party's supporters. I sincerely hope that party goes below the election threshold soon. They already split because of internal culture (failure to tolerate disagreements).
¹ anti accepting Ukrainian refugees, since there is nearly no other immigration coming here, unlike Sweden which has been considered an attractive destination
P.S. I should note that Sweden has its share of integration problems (which they try to solve, and will likely pull the brakes if they cannot), but as a result of immigration, Sweden experiences less of the demographic problems which press Eastern Europe (read: our population pyramids in Eastern Europe are top-heavy, predicting serious issues with financing of public services in future, their population pyramid in Sweden is relatively square).
this was always the argument in the US when taking with people regarding all the cool things Sweden instituted - "but they are culturally contiguous, and that's what makes it work."
..in a melting pot, you have to account for the existence of all these extreme viewpoints, and have some kind of response. Those things that aren't accounted for simply spill out into the populous, and become everyone's problem.
The Swedish system is unfortunately collapsing under it’s own weight partially due to immigrants taking more than they put in. The rapid influx of people has put a strain on all factors of public services from healthcare to school.
Yeah.. ..I really love some of the core Swedish ideals, and it's sad to see this happening. I really hope that Sweden is able to generate an effective response to the incoming ideologies without sacrificing their own ideals.
When people get too soft, times get hard (bullies win when people are too soft). A genuine balance needs to be struck, which requires a lot of personal processing by many people, as well as time for the resultant answers to spread through the culture. Sweden may need to limit immigration in the mean time to give time for that to occur.
Quit your bullshit. The person who murdered Ing-Marie Wieselgren (national coordinator for psychiatry) in front of Annie Lööf (leader of Centerpartiet) in 2022 was Theodor Engström. This article is news because Anna-Karin Hatt (leader of Centerpartiet) quit a couple of weeks back, in response to online threats.
If you look at the incidence of violence against women in Europe, there is no correlation with immigration. Sure, Sweden is ranked as number 2, which seems bad and you might infer that it has something to do with demographics. Just one problem - Finland is number 1, with 1/10th of Sweden's immigration. Denmark and Hungary are also really high up. You can try to draw your own conclusions but a clear correlation to immigration is a hard sell.
Nearly 63% of all rapists in Sweden are immigrants or children of immigrants. In Finland, Immigrants are three times more likely to rape a woman that Finnish people. In Finland, second generation migrants are labeled as Finnish, so I bet the statistic is even higher. These are also only rape statistics and not sexual harassment, which has much less data, but we can see would follow this trend.
Right. So you just outed your specialized interest in a fringe issue. The thread is about female politicians leaving the limelight, and you just had to force a connection to your pet theory of how the world works, didn't you.
Nevermind that the reason they leave is almost always threats from far-right nutjobs.
The strong correlation between an increase in non-western immigration, crime, and now prejudice against women, is strong. Your second paragraph was about violence against women, and does not have a breakdown by immigration status. Importing a culture with regressive views on women leads to this.
Immigration leads to far-right nutjobs threatening politicians so they leave their positions?
Could be bit of both. Sweden has always been more right wing than their Scandinavian brethren. Their far right was strong during World War 2, and they have a far right in a coalition government at the moment. But on the one hand, Sweden allowed too many immigrants who share the same attitude as their own far right.
Two things can both be true at the same time.