Screw Your Gender Norms: Talking Politics With Könsförrädare

Photo by Anna Rönnqvist

Ok, so we don’t live in the ‘60s when making politicized and abrasive music was THE thing to be doing, but we do live in a particularly fucked up time. As in, we’d rather hide in a pile of shitty memes and depressing Tinder profiles than read consistently terrible news. As in, we’re now facing a lovely cocktail of climate change, refugee crises, growing income gaps, marginalization, genocide (we could go on and on) we’re probably too ill equipped or stupid to fix. So it’s pretty fair that young Swedish rockers Könsförrädare are pissed about it—so pissed, in fact, that their upcoming sophmore album, End of History, tackles this myriad of issues. Judging by their recent single “Blood Rush”, these guys have no qualms about being blatantly political and dissecting all the things that are wrong with Scandinavia. So, before the album drops on Friday, we thought we’d call up the band (Janinne Sandström Oja, Måns Lundstedt, Alina Björkén and Robin Bernhardsson) to find out what exactly they’re talking about.

NOISEY: Hi, guys. Your bio says that Könsförrädare ("gender betrayers”) refers to a Swedish feminist politician recently saying that women who sleep with men betray their gender. Why name yourselves after that?
Måns: We’ve been linked to that controversy, but we give the word a different meaning than it was portrayed in media. The controversy was probably the last time the word was relevant in Swedish media before we appeared. For us, the word is about being comfortable in one’s own gender identity. The way it was used in the conflict was derogatory and we never thought of our band name in that way.

Why is the idea of being comfortable in your own skin and gender important to you right now?
Robin: It’s like a cultural zeitgeist—it’s now way more common to talk about defining your own gender and gender issues than in the past. We’ve always been limited by the genders we were designated at birth. We don’t want to be linked to ideas of how we should be according to the main dialogue in society. We want to be as free as possible.

What does the dialogue around gender and gender norms look like in Sweden?
Robin: I would describe it as very progressive, or rather that a progressive stance on it has become very mainstream in the last few years. Feminist ideas pertaining to gender identities and sexualities have become mainstream.

Janinne: At the same time, conservatism is also very strong in Sweden. It’s two extremes, in a way. Everyone is very loud about their opinions, especially on social media. I think it’s both conservative and progressive.

Is your political commentary Scandinavia-specific or is it more general?
Alina: We mostly write our songs from our perspectives; we look at ourselves, the problems we see and write about them.

Robin: It was way more interesting writing this album because when we wrote our first one we were just out of high school and hadn’t really grown up. Now, we’ve been living on our own for quite some time and feeling the struggles of being independent. A lot of my thoughts have been about not having a secure place to live and feeling that the whole world or city is working against you, in a sense. Also, issues of unemployment and so on.

Alina: We used to live in Stockholm and it’s very extreme there. It’s a very expensive to find a place to live. Here in Malmö where we're based now it’s better, but things aren’t good either. In all of Sweden it’s really expensive to find a place to stay, even in our hometown.

Måns: There’s also the issue of reallocation of available living and public housing—it’s being sold out to capital interests as a way to create PR stunts, pretty much. People’s needs are being beat down by corporate interests and gentrification.

This dialogue about gentrification and corporate interests—do you feel like the music community you’re part of is tackling some of those issues too?
Robin: We may do that a bit more than our peers, but there’s been a resurgence of political music in the last couple years as well. It’s happened in connection to the rise of the feminist sentiments that I spoke about earlier. We definitely came into a wave of political music when we released our last album.

How do you feel about the political label you're being branded with, though?
Alina: I think it’s good. Many things in society are apolitical and you don’t get to speak about them, but we do. Everything is politics in some sense; we speak about things we find important, so that’s cool.

Photo by Erik Viklund

Since you're embracing being considered 'political', what's your goal for your listener?
Janinne: It would be cool if they were like ‘let’s start a revolution’, but that’s getting our hopes up.

Do you feel like we need a revolution right now?
Janinne: I think we should have a revolution and that most things in the world suck right now. It’s very hard to see a solution for the near future so a part of me is like, ‘Let’s just have a revolution’.

Robin: You could always start with tearing down the borders surrounding the European Union.

So do you see your music as more of an emotional outlet, or as your responsibility to bring attention to some of the issues you've mentioned?
Alina: It’s one of the few things that makes us feel good, so that’s the most important part.

Janinne: The music is an emotional outlet and the rest is our platform where we put out some of the ideas we support.

Robin: I don’t think we’re under the impression that one band is going to make a difference, though. It’s not our mission to change the world with our band.

Thanks, guys.