FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Culture

Sweden Is Upset About a Cartoon Erection Wearing a Hat and a Moustache

A sex-ed video released on Swedish children's TV show 'Bacillakuten' has activists complaining that it's promoting restrictive gender norms and transphobia.

This post originally appeared on VICE Sweden

Everyone's been talking about penises and vaginas in Sweden lately. The drama begun when children's TV showBacillakuten released a music video to accompany its hit sex-ed song 'Snoppen och Snippan' [Swedish for "the penis and the vagina"]. Since the show chose to illustrate the bouncy, infectious track with a pair of dancing genitals, the video made headlines in Sweden and around the world.

Annoncering

Bacillakuten – which airs onSweden's public service broadcaster SVT – deals with the human body and our most common physical conditions so singing about our reproductive organs isn't totally out of character for its creators. Still, once the video was posted to SVT's Facebook page last week, Sweden pretty much exploded with rage. As expected, some were concerned about the ways the exposure to a pair of cartoon genitals can degenerate the Swedish youth. Others, however, complained that the video promoted restrictive gender norms and transphobia.

The video is about a "fun gang", i.e. the penis and the vagina. The penis wears a hat, and the accompanying lyrics talk about how penises wear trousers. The vagina, on the other hand, wears make up and has long eyelashes. In Sweden, where gender issues are often controversial topics, it's not surprising when people feel upset about stereotypes.

The video — which YouTube briefly slapped with an "adult" label before SVT objected — has also received plenty of positive reviews for its attempt to strip away the drama and stigma carried by our vaginas and our penises. Still, Swedish activists were pissed off by cis-centric lyrics like, "Pee, pee with the penis / Or the vagina if you're a girl!" and imagery like this:

I can only imagine that "girls have vaginas, boys have penises" could be an upsetting thing to hear for a person who identifies as a boy but was born with a vagina or vice versa. In a country that launched "gender-neutral" preschools back in 2011, linking gender to genitals can come off as a fairly conservative message.

Annoncering

Following the online shit storm, Bacillakutenproject manager Kajsa Peters responded to the harshest criticism on SVT's website. Among many things, she said:

There might be a pedagogic point to inform children that this is how it generally looks like; if you have a vagina you're regarded as a girl by others when you're born. If you have a penis you're regarded as a boy. To be on the children's side can sometimes mean to meet them in the reality they are living in. We would never stand behind a song that says that girls with penises aren't real girls or that boys with vaginas aren't real boys.

I don't believe its makers intended for the 'Snoppen och Snippan' video to be transphobic or to hurt anyone. But if Sweden is progressive and mature enough to handle a cartoon dancing erection aimed at children – no matter how adorable it looks in a mustache and a hat – the country is also probably mature enough to do so without the aid of retro gender identity tropes.

As Swedish blogger Lady Dahmer wrote this week, "there's no reason to point out that 'girls have vaginas' because no child on earth has missed that." There's plenty of reason, however, to point out that vaginas are normal, even fun — and that both boys and girls can have a vagina or a penis.

Follow Caisa on Twitter.