Boys Aren´t Alright

"There´s too few roles available for boys. They are very early divided into winners and losers."

This assessment by a social worker specialised in marginalised boys made me think. Young men in this country are surely not doing too well. Even when there are more and more dads who play an equal role in bringing up the kids, too many boys still grow up in a climate where showing emotions is a sign of weakness and expressing violence strengthens your position in the group. Boys don´t cry. Be a man. It´s no wonder that according to research, well-being does not have a gender but ill-being does.

This became evident on a recent visit to an amazing NGO called Icehearts in Vantaa, Finland. Icehearts specialises in boys about to be taken into custody, having a difficult situation at home or not doing too well socially. They also include young people with an immigrant background. They often start with boys who have zero trust towards adults (for a reason) and are used to solving things through violence. By helping in school, teaching trust and group skills and playing sports, Icehearts mentors 6–18-year-old boys to get a grip on their lives, to plan their future and to continue their education. The men working at Icehearts show an incredible amount of dedication: they commit to working with a group of boys all the way from the age of six to maturity.

What they deal with is the same thing one can witness in the award-winning Finnish documentary Miesten vuoro by Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen. The documentary captures intimate discussions between Finnish men in the sauna. In the incredible scenes the men open up about their misfortunes, mistakes and let the tears run. Without victimising or ridiculing its subjects, Miesten vuoro shows that a large part of Finnish men have nonexistent tools and channels to deal with emotions. These tough guys demonstrate how the need to talk about feelings, love and family is there. The stuff has obviously been bottled up for years so when the floods break, there´s no stopping. No one makes it out from the cinema with dry eyes. At least every Finnish man recognises a father, husband, uncle or grandfather.

Without proper interventions we will keep on growing generations of men without any skills to deal with themselves. Exactly due to these nearly nonexistent emotional skills things are dealt through alcohol and violence.

Too often we use well-meaning tools for trying to change people into something else rather than coaching them to be better versions of themselves. Icehearts shows us one way. They clearly state that starting from skills and adapting the activities based on the group is the way forward. As one of the coaches put it: it´s not about ice hockey, it´s about the boys.

There is something to learn also from the small Finnish municipality called Kyyjärvi where they successfully formed a cooperative from people who had been unemployed for years. The key to success was that it started from interviews where the men and women were allowed to tell what they can do. Allowing people to keep their pride while going through difficult times helps you to win them on your side.

Progress and women´s magazines

I gave a talk today at the Diaconia University of Applied Sciences to an auditorium filled with media students. The subject of the entire day was the responsibility of lifestyle media for what they present.

My talk (unfortunately in Finnish) is below. I focused on how a progressive lifestyle journalist should position himself or herself. I claim, that it is very easy to get stuck to the old rant on how journalists should be independent and not promote any specific idea. I claimed that the justification for being progressive for instance on sustainability can be found from the Ethical Code of Conduct for Journalists where it states that journalists have a responsibility to tell people what is happening in the world. And as climate change is the big issue of our time, you do your job poorly if you don´t build ethical and environmental norms into your work. Already journalists have made a commitment for human rights, this is the other big ethical test.

In the presentation I suggested that when dealing with sustainability, lifestyle media should build on what they do best: enthusiasm and encouragement for action. They should promote excellent and ethical choices with the same enthusiasm they promote a new eyeliner. Making things appealing works far better than the message about giving something up.

The third main point I raised was on how change in lifestyles happens. This I would claim is the ultimate test for women´s magazines. Most lifestyle media still deals with change by showing one person one morning transforming their life completely. This is understandable cos it´s easy to build a story around it. But if you actually look into research on how change happens, people who do big transformations always relate to other people. By showing this link and giving the readers tips on how to win support and get people along, lifestyle media could be one of the most powerful instigators of action for the better.

Edistyksellisyys ja naistenlehdet

View more presentations from Demos Helsinki.

That´s Not Me

Le Chauvinist
Originally uploaded by John.P

"I am not on my way home to beat my wife but to take care of my children."

A comment thrown into the air by philosopher Jukka Relander tonight made me think. I was attending a Green Party meeting as part of a journalistic assignment and managed to catch part of the debate led by Relander who chairs the Green Men. With the comment above Relander was referring to the problem-oriented discourse on men and on something very wise said by Amu Urhonen - one of the candidates to chair the Council of the Green Party for the next two years.

Urhonen assessed that many men do not recognise themselves in the descriptions of men in political debate. Some of the roles thrown easily around are the sleazy middle-aged man and the underprivileged, alcoholic construction worker beating his wife. If a man resembles one of the groups only in terms of looks, political language forces them into a claustrophobic corner where they end up having to defend themselves against perceptions of a chauvinist and sexist cave man without any evidence that they personally would be guilty of such disapprovable action. It´s like the old tricky question:"When did you stop beating your wife?"

Most of these categorisations are done unintentionally and thrown around without really careful thinking. Urhonen reminded the Green politicians of their responsibility in choosing their words and stereotypes carefully. She managed to formulate in 60 seconds one of the core problems of the equality debate - both for women and men. I mean how many women have been pushed to choose between Virgin Mary and Maria Magdalena.

Random Quote of the Day

Vesi Mies! / Water Man!
Originally uploaded by hugovk

Theatre Director Leea Klemola is currently directing a version of Alban Berg´s opera Lulu for Kokkola Opera. In Klemola´s version Lulu is not a sexy, vulnerable woman manipulated by men but a hairy woman from the circus who loves to get laid. In the interview Klemola talks about her perception of men:

"Nothing beats Finnish men! I can say that we were just ice fishing yesterday that I love Finnish men who are too noble to beat you, when I should probably be hit, when foam comes from the corners of my mouth and I say that once again me alone here all blah-blah! I would hit someone like that! The women that Finnish men tolerate, would never be tolerated in France! I would never marry a Frenchman, I would rather shoot a bullet into my head. Or maybe I would marry but at least would not do any art there."
- Vesa Sirén, Helsingin Sanomat.

How is that for a statement?

I Talk With You

DSC06570
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

Having spent three days in the sunny Pyrenees talking about the importance of intercultural dialogue, I felt like my political scientist identity was raising its (ugly) head. I felt like we should more often go back to the basics of politics when talking about intercultural dialogue. With this I mean things like:

1. POWER: Who needs intercultural dialogue? Is it the immigrant, the scared native, both or is it a smokescreen for the bigger streams in contemporary politics?
We should remember that all relationships in the society are loaded with power and influence. For instance we can look at the phrase mentioned often around intercultural dialogue: tolerance. Even if people using the phrase often mean well, we should keep in mind that tolerance is a power structure where one party decides to tolerate the other and can on any given moment opt out of it.

2. MONEY: Who benefits financially from intercultural dialogue? What is the economic justification for it? Is intercultural dialogue about using all the talent in the labour market or about harvesting the savings of immigrants into local banks?

3. GENDER: Very often it seems like the only position left for immigrant women in intercultural dialogue is the one of a helpless victim waiting for the white (male) saviour.

4. POLITICS: A truly political intercultural dialogue requires a problem to be solved, different view points and a decision-making process. In order for people to join and get excited, they need to be able to link it to their daily realities. Too often intercultural dialogue is presented as a non-frictious process, which turns it easily into a non-term and it ends up being castrated from all of its political sides. No sane person would be against intercultural dialogue as a notion. If politics is seen as turning people’s individual concerns to the agenda of our society, intercultural dialogue by definition should be political and frictious.

5. COMMUNITY: Community is one of the buzz words of today’s politics. One often hears terms such as Muslim community, Turkish community, gay community or the black community without proper critique whether these groups see themselves as communities, whether they have legitimately elected representatives and whether politics or dialogue can be based on these groups in a world of fluid, plural identity. This leads me well to my favourite notion.

6. INDIVIDUAL: The phrase itself – intercultural dialogue – is paradoxical as cultures cannot talk to each other. Dialogue is a process between people. Intercultural dialogue should start more often from an individual and the individual’s self-definition, not from static notions such as a community or culture. I cannot know how someone’s identity is structured but most of us are able to explain our own position.

No Jar-Jar Phenomenon

Indiana Jones
Originally uploaded by Poofy

There are a few ways of revisiting an old hit. The first I would call the Jar-Jar approach referring to the three Star Wars films released during the last ten years. I don't think I am the only one who cringed from humiliation watching Jar-Jar Binks making his jokes as the "funny" Star Wars sidekick. After seeing the first new Star Wars film, I really did not feel like spending money on the other two films. It just did not feel the same. Same goes for the latest Superman production which was like warming Christopher Reeve's acting in a microwave and selling it as the original.

And then there is the Bond/Batman/Indiana Jones approach where the characters and the story have been modernised but still keeping the core charm of the series. Daniel Craig's Bond had already some features of metrosexuality and moved away from the alfamale strategy of Pierce Brosnan. The women were even allowed to think. The new Batman films have gone back to the darkness of the comics and moved clearly away from Tim Burton's annoying pop culture Batmans. And then there is the new Indiana Jones.

Before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull premiered, I think broadcasters in most countries showed the old three films. Also I watched them only to find myself experiencing slightly the Benny Hill/Moonlighting feeling where an old classic actually feels ûberchauvinistic and not that funny. Therefore I admit having some hesitations before seeing the new Jones yesterday.

But Spielberg and Lucas are not in it just to rip us off. The new Indiana Jones is innovative, funny and so over the top that at some point you tell yourself that this is not supposed to resemble truth and you just let yourself enjoy the action. Simultaneously as the female characters are given more personality (not merely hysterical and screaming), the new Indy plays exactly on the same kind of innocent action than the good old ones. Visually Indiana Jones still looks amazing. Also, like it is supposed to be in fairytales, the goods and good and the bads are bad. The film lacks all complexity and relativism of today, which I feel is one of the core reasons why it works. It has the same old flaws of Lucas-Spielberg productions - the acting is secondary to the action and the visuals - but hey, you don't go and see Indiana Jones for the compelling dialogue.

This is what they call entertainment.

I Know Me

Plastic 52 15/52 - American Idol
Originally uploaded by Angelina :)

In the course of the last two years I have attended I think five British Council networking events on topics ranging from corporate social responsibility to social cohesion. And what do you get every time you put a group of young European professionals in a room: a discussion on immigration. And sadly, the discussion is always rather dominated by the Western Europeans extremely concerned for the reason of their existence.

Today’s most stimulating speech was Swedish Actor/Director America Vera-Zavala who showed a clip from her play Etnoporn. The monologue takes the position of a young woman with an immigrant background who wants to win the Swedish Idol competition and simultaneously start a political and sexual revolution. The highly acclaimed and popular play attacks the way Sweden deals with immigrants, immigrant women and tolerance. In her clip the main character is seen shouting:

“We are normal! We don’t want to be multicultural! We are Swedish!”
“We’re tired of multiculturalism. I am tired of project managers!”

Vera-Zavala herself has Latin American parents, was born in Romania and moved to Sweden in the age of three. She accused the European culture for being fundamentally racist and criticized heavily the way the Swedish establishment has for instance embraced the Gringo phenomenon where a group of immigrants started claiming back the notion of an immigrant through a magazine and other forms of media. She stated that she feels that things are not improving when the establishment is introducing notions like second-generation or third-generation immigrant and branding a range of social problems as ethnic problems. According to Vera-Zavala the focus has only shifted from 1970s’ “violent and abusive Latin American men” to today’s “problem with the Muslims”. As she said:“I don’t want another generation of girls needing to feel like they have to defend their fathers against stereotypes on violent immigrant men.”

She said it is absurd when a teenager with an immigrant background is all through childhood told that she is Swedish but at the age of 13 she seems to always turn into an immigrant or when a woman beaten by her husband is forced to a discussion over “your culture” with the police.

Vera-Zavala’s take was personal but according to some of the Swedes she was inaccurate and incorrect and thing were improving. As a British theatre director Karina Johnson rightly stated, we have a major problem where one’s personal experience of discrimination or racism is not valued but brushed off as a coincidence or as an exception to the rule.

The situation reminds me of an experience of my dear friend who was interrupted in an important seminar by a Finnish middle-aged multicultural expert when my friend stated in her talk that she as an immigrant feels more comfortable in Amsterdam than in Helsinki. The Finnish “expert” felt that she had the right to publicly invalidate someone’s personal experience of discrimination. The level of arrogance shown in this is just criminal.

Vera-Zavala’s presentation made me wonder what is the Finnish future in this respect. Just a few month’s back the lifestyle magazine Image praised in their editorial and in a big feature the Gringo phenomenon saying that we would need something similar in Finland. I am wondering whether these kinds of phenomena help the native establishment to “talk with and about immigrants” but whether they actually lead to equality of opportunities. Because let´s face it: this kind of critical self-distancing ironic reflection is the way we are used to talking about identities.

Don't Give Me That Shit

FUIST
Originally uploaded by Brian Elstak

One of the best parts of my work is meeting dedicated and inspiring people and organisations. This weekend I went to see a performance of our potential partner for StrangerFestival, the theatre company Made in da Shade. Ooh Shit is a play/performance by four girls focused on something highly important for them - friendship. The name Ooh Shit refers to the dramatic turn in the group of rowdy girls when one of them finds herself pregnant, not fully sure who is the father.

Made in da Shade's take on theatre is highly physical. The two productions I have seen now both mix dance, music and theatre. Yesterday's performance was due to its subject aggressive and loud down to the last movement. These were the girls I saw in real life in Nirit Peled's hip hop girl documentary Say My Name. These girls gained so much strength from their friendship that they felt no need to apologise for anything or to anyone.

The audience was very mixed both in terms of ethnicity and age. It was fantastic seeing how different people laughed at different things during the performance. Without falling too far into kitchen psychology, one saw parents of teenagers laughing uncomfortably and teenager girls identifying with the empowered and aggressive nature of the expressions on stage.

In projects that bring amateurs into the field of culture, one always has the balancing act between product and process. This time the girls really did a superb job in making the performance their own. But I must say still that my heart warmed up the most when I looked at their faces when the performance ended, the lights went on and the audience was clapping wildly. The joy on their faces is something you very seldom see on professionals' faces.

No More Monkey Business

Alexander Stubb, MP
Originally uploaded by Dansk Industri

Just before heading to our summer house for Easter, I sat in a cafe in Helsinki with two of my politically active friends. As usually, they were my deepthroats to current political thinking. One of them mentioned regarding Foreign Minister Kanerva's text messaging and the sexual harrasment cases in the Parliament:"Well, one could see something good in this entire fuss. It shows that these old guys just cannot keep going as they wish."

Right on the mark, my friend. Kanerva obviously thought that he can just shrug this off and trust on his buddies. And for a long time it seemed so. You had (male) politicians saying that who cares about his texting as long as the man does his work well. But when it came out that Kanerva had twisted the truth on his messaging a number of times, it became unbearable for him to continue. I guess that his party leader Jyrki Katainen realised that losing Kanerva is safer than gambling on the nurses and teachers that vote his party. Those people in Turku will keep on voting the "martyr" Kanerva but the female voters are easily in the hands of the Social Democrats and the Greens.

Even against the mainstream of my (mostly leftish) friends, I am extremely happy with the person replacing Kanerva, MEP Alexander Stubb (see pic). He is smart, liberal (also socially), internationally experienced and younger. Stubb has been brilliant in the European Parliament in raising issues concerning sexual minorities and transparency. One can see his background as a civil servant and a political scientist here: this is not about waving the rainbow flag, but about civil rights and good governance at the centre of the European project.

I like having a Minister who is opinionated, experienced, skilled and not building on an Old Boys' Network. I don't mind if he supports NATO: that is an issue decided by the the political coalition and finally by the Parliament, not by the Foreign Minister. If this is the generational change in Finnish politics, I kind of like the taste of it. As President Halonen put it so well: it is positive that decency and gender equality are starting to play a bigger role in Finnish politics.

Say My Name

IMG_2135 - Version 2_marked.jpg
Originally uploaded by mamamess

Sometimes a meeting can really make your day. In the middle of Excel sheets and overwhelming emailing, it is so empowering to meet people who really make change happen. My meeting today with Nirit Peled boosted the rest of the day.

Peled is an Israeli-born documentary maker who has for the last years focused on women in hip hop. She is currently working on Say My Name, a full-length documentary on female MCs and the women they inspire. She showed me the trailer and I found myself warming up from the inside. The strength of these women who are in the public eye characterised as rowdy and loud, was unbelievable. And the most amazing fact was that stars like Erykah Badu were completely shadowed by the normal women from the streets of Atlanta, New York and London. These girls kick ass.

I loved it, loved it, loved it. The trailer led us into a lengthy discussion on why these girls are so seldom heard and so often talked about. Through the interview we saw not rowdy but smart and frank women comfortable with their sexuality and opinions.

Nirit Peled works also with companies like Nike and MTV. It was brilliant to hear her insight on how these partnerships work. I am getting more and more convinced that often we in the non-profit sector could learn from commercial actors who seem to know how to tap into people's aspirations, how to talk to people directly and how to get them make and give their best. For instance a lot of these women take a lot of distance to classic feminism whereas a lot of women's organisations would see many of these openly sexual girls as victims of a chauvinist culture. Without dissing the protection agenda of the feminist movement, I would still claim that we should be using the modern means we have to make sure that as many of us as possible have the chance for a voice.

I really don't have problems with Nike, MTV and Dove making money by empowering women, I really don't. It is not like public funders would not have an agenda - sometimes it feels like the commercial funders are just much more honest with theirs.

Boys Will Be Boys

Tarja Halonen
Originally uploaded by Explo

Yesterday I stumbled into the YouTube channel of the European Union where one of the latest entries was a video from an EU-hosted conference for leading women. Next to Condoleezza Rice and Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner stood the Finnish President Tarja Halonen.

Halonen's election has had a positive impact on women in leading position in Finnish politics. I would claim to see a link between having a woman as a president since 2000 and finally in 2007 having a Cabinet where the majority of members are women. This makes me proud.

However, it would be still premature to claim that Finland has reached equality. We still need a lot of work when it comes to attitudes. I remember from my student politician years a number of situations where I felt that I got special attention and was taken more seriously because I was a man. I remember a stakeholder meeting/dinner which included sauna. As all the decisionmakers from the stakeholder were middle-aged men, all the women in our Board and Secretariat were instantly excluded from the intimate in-depth discussions which continued in the warmth of the sauna. That experience made me turn against mixing work and sauna (equals breaking a tradition in Finland). Real boys don't need old boys' clubs.

Recently an employee survey in the Finnish Parliament showed widespread sexual harrassment and dirty talk by the older male MPs towards the young female staff. This week's big scandal in Finland has been Minister for Foreing Affairs Kanerva's SMS escapade with an erotic dancer half his age. Finally yesterday Kanerva apologised publically and said that he showed lack of judgement.

I was highly pleased - and must confess, surprised - to hear that the youngish leader of Kanerva's party Kokoomus (National Coalition) condemned Kanerva's "sense of humour" so strongly. Minister of Finance Jyrki Katainen belongs to the generation that understands the harm of this kind of actions to his party's image. The last year's have made Kokoomus the party of educated nurses, teachers and young liberals and this kind of action by Kanerva drives easily a lot of these people to the Greens.

Polished Like Gold

Call me a sentimental fool but this clip makes me smile and warms me up from the inside.

Our Shared Value

Where The Streets Are Paved With Gold
Originally uploaded by Darren Purcell

I realised again in the end of last week how much fun it is to spend 3 days with people who are passionate about what they do and what they believe in. Official sessions and plenaries in conferences like Network Effect are all nice but the most invigorating moments happen over lunch, dinner or in the bar table.

The Network Effect in Budapest gathered some 60 opinion makers from all across Europe with a strong Eastern European presence. It seemed to come as a surprise for some of the Western European participants that the East-West division was so present. This was most obvious in the discussion on the role of the nation and on ethnic diversity. This experience made me again wonder whose Europe are we talking about when we talk about common history and shared values.

When Western Europeans (myself included) were questioning the nation state, the Kosovar representatives were presenting their pictures from the independence celebrations some weeks back. When we (Brits, French, Dutch and some Nordics) got tangled into the Islam discussion, many of the participants could not really link it to their realities. And as we complained about the lack of energy in NGOs, the Russian and Ukrainian colleagues shared stories of personal excitement, engagement and risk-taking for things you believe in. It also felt that many people from the great old European powers tend to forget that for some of us independence is
1. rather recent
2. been contested rather recently

I sometimes wonder whether we could get further by recognising the differences out in the open rather than by pretending that we are all the same. I don't mean united in diversity, I mean saying things how they are, attempting to be precise and allowing confrontation. And above it all, asking questions rather than assuming. I caught myself assuming that a lot of people shared my Nordic ideals of parenthood only, to my surprise, finding myself defending equal parenthood alone in a group of five. And in the same way many people made great generalisations on the Nordic countries without recognising for instance the violent history of Finland.

I become more and more confident after experiences like this that the most powerful way to peace on the European level is to keep identity on hold and focus on areas such as common market, consumer protection, freedom of movement and environmental policy. Europe has to make sense, there are quite a few things already making us passionately believing in us and them.

p.s. Talking about image and reality: Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs Ilkka Kanerva admitted today that he has sent over 200 flirtatious text messages to a woman half his age described in the Finnish media as an erotic dancer. It is not the first time he has been caught from this sort of behaviour. Before he was appointed as minister, he was caught promising position to young women in the Sports Word Championships. Then he promised to his parliamentary group to stop this sort of behaviour. This in the country which takes so much pride as a beacon of gender equality.

On Idols

Yesterday evening in the dinner table we had a discussion on politics and I asked me friend and colleague who she would say is her political idol. She could not come up with one but promised to come back to me on the issue. I mentioned Madeleine Albright in that interview as a determined woman playing the game with equal rules and not afraid to show strength. This interview shows why I like her so much.

Can't touch this

Ass grab
Originally uploaded by le Andreas

The news of the day in Finland are quite depressing: in the Parliament of the country that promotes itself as a paradise of equality, a survey amongst the employees showed that sexual harrassment is extremely widespread within the premises of the Parliament. And the worst thing being: the people charged are by default Members of the Parliament.

The situation is a sad picture: middle-aged men selected to the Parliament feel like they are on top of the world and they exercise their powers towards the assistants and office staff - mostly younger women. The men are more or less untouchable, the women are on temporary contracts, often in their first real job. The unfortunate side of things is that MPs cannot be charged for sexual harrassment as they do not have employers and the legislation on the matter falls under labour law.

How the Parliament and more importantly the political parties react to this issue is a good test for Finland: do we take sexual harrassment seriously or do we laugh it away? Unfortunately still way too often the women are characterised as uptight, too serious and with no sense of humour. Just a simple test on Flickr shows how sexual harrassment is too often addressed: search with the words "sexual harrassment" results to numerous pages of "funny" grabbing of friends, both parties laughing.

Sexual harrassment is not fun, not playing. Sexual harrassment means exercising power over another person. In this case the Parliament is unfortunately a representative picture of reality: a man in a higher position intruding the private sphere of a woman in a lower position in the organisation.

Time for a woman

As proven by this clip.

Better and more equal dreams

Workplaces: Gender on the Road
Originally uploaded by huibriethof

The wonderful thing in Christmas is that is really gives you time to watch, read and talk. And eat, I don’t need to go into that one. I wanted to share a few things:
1. Leea Klemola: Klemola is a Finnish actor and theatre director who has a reputation of a radical and angry young woman. She gave fantastic interview to IMAGE on theatre. She said that you can become a scary woman by only showing violence. ”It originates from the thinking that male creators make observations but things just blurt out from women. (...) I can’t stand educational theatre. In (Reko) Lundán’s plays I was irritated by the way he showed those small people, or politicians who grab those others. Not themselves. (...) Theatre is a place beyond morale and politics. The worst example of how theatre can be politically correct is the Enraged Roses Group. That thinking that when they are all women, it would turn everything they do into meaningful.”

2. Top Chef Final: In the American chef competition a woman called Tiffani lost to a guy mostly because she was perceived to be a difficult person although everyone found her menu more courageous. The winner cooked safe dishes and was a good lad. At the same time Gordon Ramsay makes millions by swearing when doing brilliant food. Women cannot win, can they?

3. Miehen työ: There is Finnish film beyond Kaurismäki. Aleksi Salmenperä’s Man’s Job is one of the best films I have seen showing how a man of the North deals with pride, loss and emotions. In the film a father gets fired from his job and when trying to cover the issue from his family but still provide the income, he ends up working as a male prostitute. Phenomenal acting and subtle humour. Highly recommended.

4. Anu Kantola: Kantola is a researcher in Media Studies and a columnist for the biggest Finnish political weekly Suomen Kuvalehti. She writes in issue 50/2007 about her observations on Finland seen from the inside and outside after reading all 1 600 stories on Finland from Financial Times. According the FT, Finland is doing superbly in education, national debt, innovations, music, cuisine, public expenditure etc. At the same time from the inside it seems that the country has a crisis in parenthood (Jokela shootings) as well as in health care (mass resignation of nurses) and people are leaving working life due to depression. ”Someone said that depression is a result of a situation where one’s external and internal realities don’t meet.(...) Even if I usually don’t like psychologisation, I started wondering whether this would work in the case of Finland. As if we had created a monster that acts out in an exemplary manner but which no one recognises as his or her own and whose ride no one likes. Changing realities could be started for instance from politics. Would it be in any way possible that sometimes in Finnish politics we could afford something? That instead of scaremongering we would create systems on the terms of people and not discipline and control? That instead of despair we would be bold and trusting?

As a result of Expedition Christmas, we could only say the following:
1. We need better and more inclusive dreams.
2. We still have issues regarding gender.
3. Finnish political and cultural discussion needs more contaminations from the outside.

Business first

deborahmeaden
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

It’s around eight on Friday evening. I can feel the sun of Lisbon on my face. I feel a bit like a Finnish friend of mine once described Finns travelling South: due to the lack of light we spend the first day lurking and squinting like prairie dogs.

Lisbon is amazing. We spent five hours walking up and down the hills, photographing the bright houses and the street art and stopping for an espresso (0,60 euros) and cake (0,80 euros) in small cafes. Now it is time for some rest before heading out for dinner.

For yesterday’s flight I bought the Guardian which is always a highly pleasurable experience. One thing that I truly miss in the Netherlands is the routine of reading daily the paper. The best quote in yesterday’s edition was in an interview with Deborah Meaden, an investor taking part in BBC’s entrepeneurship programme Dragon’s Den. The idea of the programme is a simple one: 5 investors listen to pitches of starting entrepeneurs and then decide whether they will invest their own time and money into the proposal. The dragons (the investors) are harsh, smart to a scary extent and extremely success-driven multimillionaires. Meaden is the only woman amongst them. Meaden rocks:

Hannah Pool: Are you as mean in real life as you are on Dragon’s Den?

Deborah Meaden: Stand in front of me and ask me for a quarter of a million pounds when you can’t be bothered to tell me what your turnover numbers are and I am that person. People try to let me off the hook and say I’m much nicer in real life – but if somebody is asking me for my money, my job at that moment is to establish whether or not this is a good investment, not to win friends and influence people.

H.P.: It mush bother you when the reviewers describe you as charmless.

D.M.: (Laughs) Well, I hope I’m not. My friends don’t call me charmless, people who meet me don’t say I’m humourless. People can call me what they like – fat, ugly, sour – but tell me I’m not fair, tell me I’m not ethical, those are the things that bother me.

H.P.: You are much softer in real life.

D.M.: It’s a different environment. Nobody is like the person I am on TV, surely, only Cruella de Vil, or the wicked witch from Snow White. It’s me, but it’s me in that environment. I’ve got that job to do. It would be worse if I tried to be different, if I tried to be soft. I’m a business person first and I happen to be doing television.

I really admire her. This is true equality. Her attitude reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s comment after last week’s attacks towards her by all the other candidates. She said that people are not attacking her because she is a woman, they are attacking her because she is winning.

I am a man

My Scary Street
Originally uploaded by Dreams on 27

Yesterday at Prix Europa we saw a Greek documentary called Sugar Town about a small village where the Mayor decided to help the lonely men of his village by organising wife-fetching trips to Russia. The documentary showed sadly how many Western men still see especially Eastern European women as objects, something to sell and buy. The men took for granted that these educated women would be willing to move to Greece. You could sense what the men were thinking:"I mean what do they have there that would keep them there?"

I consider myself a feminist and years in student life made me quite alert and sensitive to chauvinism. I am also extremely easily irritated when people start the John Gray Mars-Venus bollocks about our fundamental differences. Very often I feel awkward when being narrowed into a man, a hunter.

Tonight I promised to meet some of the other participants for dinner and we agreed to meet first at the conference venue lobby. As I left my hotel, a young woman left at the same time. She was heading - like I was - through the rather dark shortcut to the lobby. I did not know her and she did not know me. There was no one else on the street and I could hear her steps speeding up. I was trying not to look suspicious by slowing down my pace but I think that only alerted her more. It was obvious that she was conscious that there was an unknown MAN behind her and there was no one else on the street.

I have been in this situation a few times when walking home from a bar or so. Her feeling is something men do not experience. The risk to men - risk of violence - is different as it has not sexual component in it. From the man's perspective, today's case is a helpless situation where you nearly feel like shouting "really, I am not a rapist". This is part of the gender-specific geography of fear.

Getting under her skin

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Originally uploaded by todork

Coming back from holiday, getting back to work - never an easy combination. Moving in 24 hours from a nice cafe in Montmartre in Paris to the exciting world of quarterly budget monitoring takes some time to get used to. Getting there now, after three days.

Good literature helped the blow though. Ian McEwan's latest, On Chesil Beach, was next on my list after Austen. Expectations were set high after Amsterdam and Saturday where he proves his amazing talent of getting under the skin of people in highly different fields of life than his own. Especially the way he captures the mindset of Saturday's main character, a talented surgeon and a family man, is just out of this world. I forced my parents to read the book as I was convinced that it would impress them. I still remember my father's and mother's reactions:"How can someone, in another country and in another language, describe so well my way of thinking and reacting to problems?"

Look at the picture - that is Ian McEwan. He is a balding, white, middle-aged English man. Somehow it is easier for me to understand how he can write from a point of view of a middle-aged newspaper editor (Amsterdam), a middle-aged composer (Amsterdam) or a middle-aged surgeon (Saturday). But in On Chesil Beach he moves far away from that. His main character is a daughter of a good Oxford family in her early 20s. On Chesil Beach tells a tragic story of the conditions people married each other in the early 1960s, before flower power and free sex. It depicts the fear of intimacy and the pressure of performing right which destroys all possibilities for true affection. It is a sad, sad book - crying guaranteed for everyone capable for compassion.

On Chesil Beach is guaranteed McEwan. It is heart-warming, heart-breaking and very detailed. McEwan's description of places, clothing and people's professions shows the level of background research without the feeling that he would be showing off. I highly recommend the novel - it is of utmost beauty.