Kajsa Ekis Ekman

Kajsa Ekis Ekman (born in 1980) is a Swedish author, journalist, and debater. Her works have sparked debate in subjects regarding prostitution, surrogacy, transgender issues, and capitalism. She identifies as a feminist and has written a book and several articles from a gender-critical perspective,. She participated in the Swedish launch of Women's Declaration International. Until 2022 she wrote for Dagens ETC [sv], departing amid controversy in 2022. Later in 2022 she was hired as editor of Arbetaren, but let go shortly afterwards, which generated extensive debate. Currently, she is the editor-in-chief of Parabol Press and contributes to a number of other Swedish publications. The awards she received include the Robespierre Prize in 2010 and Lenin Award in 2020.

Biography

Ekman grew up in Stockholm and became involved with the punk movement in her early teens. That led her to engage in political activism for animal rights and anti-fascism.

She participated in the protests at the European Council meetings in Gothenburg 2001, coined the Gothenburg Riots, and has mentioned experiencing a decline in activist movements as an aftermath. During an open house at the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, she criticised the paper's lack of appeal to young people. Journalist Viggo Cavling, editor of the newspaper's supplement DN på stan, encouraged her to write and submit something herself. This led to a collaboration that sparked her interest in writing.

She has studied literature at university level, among other subjects.

Ekman has founded several networks and organizations, including the climate action group Klimax, the anti-surrogacy network Feministiskt Nej till Surrogatmödraskap and Greece support network Nätverket för Grekland. In 2010, she was a spokesperson for the group Shut It Down aimed at the fossil fueled powerplant Värtaverket using acts of civil disobedience.

Ekman serves as editor-in-chief of Parabol Press. She contributes to the cultural section of Dagens Nyheter, she has written op-eds about foreign issues for the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen, she is a literary critic at the Swedish daily Aftonbladet's cultural section, and she contributes to Dala-Demokraten. She has also contributed to Le Monde diplomatique and Truthdig.

She has previously worked as an editorial writer for left wing paper Dagens ETC and was a member of the editorial board for the magazine Brand. Ekman lectures internationally on prostitution, surrogacy, and crisis theory.

In 2020, Ekman was awarded the Swedish Lenin Award given that she is an "independent socialist and feminist with the whole world as her field of work." She has referred to herself as "generally left-wing."

Books

Ekman made her debut as an author in 2010 with the book Being and Being Bought, subtitled "Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self". It received mixed reviews, and her stance against surrogacy sparked debate. Maria Sveland described it as "one of the year's most important books" in Dagens Nyheter, and it has been translated into English, German, Spanish, French and Italian. The ensuing debate led the Left Party and Feminist Initiative to take stances against surrogacy in Sweden.

Ekman's book Skulden: Eurokrisen sedd från Aten (approximately "The Debt: Eurocrisis perceived from Athens"), from 2014, explores the economic crisis in Europe and Greek government-debt crisis from a Greek perspective. The book was published in Greek under the title κλεμμένη άνοιξη (approximately "The Stolen Spring"). It challenges the myth of the lazy Greek often cited in Sweden and the rest of EU. For the book and her engagement in Greece, she received the "Swedish-Greek of the Year" award in 2015.

Ekman's book On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman, which addresses what she refers to as the new understanding of gender, was published in April 2021. It spurred major controversy and Ekman was dubbed a "TERF", trans-exclusionary radical feminist, by parts of the feminist and LBGT-movement.

Views

Ekman has written several articles and a book promoting gender-critical ideas.

In 2020 Ekman participated in the Swedish launch of anti-trans group Women's Declaration International (WDI; formerly named Women's Human Rights Campaign or WHRC). She has also participated in other WDI events, such as WDI's "Feminist Question Time." In 2022 she appeared alongside prominent anti-trans activists Posie Parker and WDI founder Heather Brunskell-Evans, in an event focused on surrogacy.

Ekman argues that the perception of gender has shifted from being biological to being experiential, and that this risks undermining the issue of women's rights. Transgender individuals are mentioned in her book Being and Being Bought (2010), but it was first in the latter part of the 2010s that Ekman picked up the conflicts she believes exist between women's rights issues and later transgender rights demands. In an article from 2018, Ekman writes that gender has been redefined from being a reproductive function to constituting an identity. In addition to addressing ethical questions related to medical treatment of minors, the article discusses existing and potential negative effects of the new definition of gender. She expressed a surprise that the shift of paradigm she saw had not been discussed.

In 2020 Ekman published the book On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman. She argues that one kind of gender roles has been replaced by another. Where one was previously expected to dress in a certain way, have certain interests, and exhibit certain personality traits based on one's physical sex, now the physical sex is supposed to be determined by how one dresses, what interests one has, and what personality traits one exhibits.

Ekman's gender-critical writings have resulted in criticism for her views on transgender people. Maria Ramnehill argued in 2018 that Ekman spreads scaremongering propaganda about trans women.

Ekman's 2018 article about the transition of gender from a reproductive function to an identity sparked a heated debate in the Swedish media. Several transgender women criticized her sharply, and Ekman was described as "provocatively unsupportive". Ekman responded to the criticism and called for answers to her questions, and some expressed that the questions were important and should be discussed.

In 2022 Ekman complained over an article in Dagens Nyheter where she had been described as a "leading figure in the new transphobic movement" resulting in criticism from an ethics body over the fact that she was not offered the opportunity to comment on the criticism of her.

Her 2020 book On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman evoked many reactions and divided opinions. Swedish feminists such as Nina Björk and Yvonne Hirdman gave the book positive reviews. Among those who distance themselves from Ekman's stance is RFSL, a Swedish national organisation working for LBGT-rights, which responded to Ekman's book by publishing a list of a hundred things they believed were wrong in Ekman's book. The book also faced sharp criticism in daily and evening press for some of its conclusions and use of sources. The book was criticized for relying on far-right "fake news sources" and depicting trans women as a threat. Morgenbladet described the book's rhetoric as "abhorrent" and said that "it is debatable whether this book deserves any discussion at all." Maria Horvei wrote that Ekman's "onesided" book argues against strawmen.

On a few occasions, Ekman has been canceled from speaking engagements after her criticism of the new perception of gender received attention. For example, she was canceled by national women's shelter organisation ROKS in 2018 with the reasoning that her statements about gender are "incompatible with Roks' ideology". Mittuniversitetet's Forum for Gender Studies canceled a breakfast seminar at short notice that was partially based on Ekman's book, citing that a breakfast seminar was not the appropriate format for the topic. In a communication, the Forum for Gender Studies stated that they "[b]ased on questions and comments received in connection with the seminar, would like to emphasize that the Forum for Gender Studies is not a place for transphobia and trans-hate." Ekman responded to the communication on Instagram with the question, "So, at first, you were planning to have a place for 'transphobia and trans-hate,' but then changed your mind?"

In 2010, Ekman put up the bathtub of the Municipal commissioner for Sports, Regina Kevius, for sale on the online marketplace Blocket in protest against the commissioner's privatization of the public swimming pool in Högdalen, Stockholm. The ad was removed by Blocket because the bathtub did not belong to the advertiser. Ekman argued that by the same logic, Kevius also had no right to sell the swimming pool, as it belonged to the people. The inspiration came from activists in Gothenburg who put up local politicians' homes for sale on online realtor site Hemnet after the city started selling properties from the public housing stock. Ekman followed up by posting books that she guessed the chairman of the municipal board in Nacka was reading since he put the operation of libraries out for tender.

In 2018, Ekman revealed in an article in Aftonbladet that children had been stolen from China for adoption when politician Ulf Kristersson had a tenure as chairman of the Swedish Adoption Center. He has since become the leader of the Moderate Party and further on Prime Minister of Sweden. Over thirty children were placed from orphanages involved in human trafficking. The article was followed up by a report in Dagens Nyheter in 2022, which showed that Kristersson was aware of the suspicions. Ekman expressed surprise that no investigating journalists had picked up the story.

Ekman argues that Israel as a state is "built on occupation, the displacement of people, and apartheid" and that this should be criticized.In the summer of 2015, she participated as an activist aboard one of the ships in the Ship to Gaza campaign to protest against Israel's blockade of Gaza. The ship was overtaken by the Israeli military, and she was subsequently detained for a week in Giv'on Prison in Ramla.

Ekman has given a TEDx talk on capitalism. In her speech, she explains that she sees the past thirty years as a right-wing offensive, where capitalists have sought to recover the lost profits of the oil crisis through three strategies. First, by privatizing and infiltrating the welfare sector, second, by engaging in banking and speculative activities to a greater extent, and third, by lowering wages and/or relocating to low-wage countries. In the Swedish Television program Idévärlden in 2017, she states that capitalism is anarchistic by nature.

In several articles, Ekman has written about the class society and the growing social disparities. She has criticized, among other things, why work-related accidents involving workers do not receive any attention in the media, as in this article from 2020: "There are no online threads where hobby detectives try to figure out what happened. It doesn't become a political issue where parties try to outdo each other in who does the most. And companies are almost never prosecuted for causing the deaths of workers. It's as if the whole of Sweden silently accepts that our country should be built at the expense of sacrificing workers, especially Eastern Europeans."

Editorial board at Dagens ETC

Swedish left-wing magazine and publisher ETC started a daily newspaper, Dagens ETC, in 2014. It was a print publication with a clear left-wing profile and Ekman was contracted as an freelance writer of the editorials. Her contract was terminated with immediate effect in April 2022 after she wrote an article about the Ukrainian newspaper The Kyiv Independent, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022. Ekman's article is an investigative report on the economic and political interests that influence the Ukrainian newspaper. The article focuses on the newspaper's financing, which Ekman argues comes from the European Endowment for Democracy and the Canadian government. The article also addresses the connections between the CEO and the defense reporter of the newspaper with the Ukrainian militia Azov Brigade, particularly highlighting their links to nazism, as well as the affiliations of many of the reporters with the U.S. Department of State and USAID.

The article was accused of reproducing Russian propaganda, casting suspicion on Ukraine, and praising Putin. Specific criticism was directed at Ekman for choosing this topic during an ongoing war. ETC decided to end its collaboration with Ekman, who was also accused of plagiarism since a similar article had been published before hers. However, Andreas Gustavsson, the editor-in-chief of ETC, had already reviewed Ekman's article prior to its publication and was able to refute the plagiarism allegations. He also clarified that the article was not the reason for ending the collaboration but rather Ekis' behavior on social media. On Instagram, Ekman had compared RT (TV channel) with Telesur, Al-Jazeera, and CNN. Gustavsson was accused of inability to recognize Russian propaganda, despite several articles with similar messages to Ekman's being published in close proximity to her article.

ETC's actions were questioned from various quarters, and a debate on freedom of speech and press freedom ensued. Several writers at ETC, including Nina Björk, Aleksa Lundberg, and Stefan Sundström, have expressed their support for Ekman's position as an opinion columnist, including through an open letter published in ETC and signed by twelve colleagues who write for ETC.

Executive editor at Arbetaren

After the summer of 2022, the chairman of the board of the syndicalist magazine Arbetaren, Thomas Karlsson, announced that he had appointed Ekman as the acting editor-in-chief for a year. This decision sparked protests when the editorial staff and the board learned about it. The protests resulted in several employees receiving warnings, the resignation of the board, and the temporary intervention of the central committee of the owner, the labor union SAC Syndikalisterna, taking over as a new board. The new board terminated the agreement with Ekman, which she refused to accept, citing Swedish Employment Protection Act (LAS) among other reasons. Consequently, Ekman was relieved of her duties and subsequently filed a lawsuit against the newspaper. She won the lawsuit, the court found the contract breach unlawful, and Arbetaren had to compensate for lost income for the full year and damage.

Arbetarbloggen

During her time at the newspaper Arbetaren (The Worker), she began setting up a blog called "arbetarbloggen" (i.e "the Workers' Blog"), where anyone should be able to blog about their everyday work place. The newspaper shared stairways with the syndicalist labor union SAC, and she was inspired by stories from their visitors. However, the newspaper did not follow through with the launch, and when she had to leave, she started arbetarbloggen.se, where workers can submit stories about their everyday work experiences. She is the editor-in-chief, and anyone can contribute to the blog with the option to remain anonymous. The blog is not intended to report on misconduct or serve as another platform for political debate. One of the points is that workers spend a significant part of their lives at work, but it is rarely mentioned on social media or other interaction creating a lack of knowledge about each other's everyday experiences.

Awards

• 2010 – Robespierre Prize
• 2015 – Swedish-Greek of the Year, appointed by "Nämnden för kulturellt samarbete mellan Sverige och Grekland", an Governmental board för cultural cooperation between Sweden and Greece.
• 2016 – Sara Lidman Award
• 2020 – Lenin Award

Books

• Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self (Varat och varan : prostitution, surrogatmödraskap och den delade människan. Stockholm: Leopard. 2010)
• Skulden : eurokrisen sedd från Aten. Stockholm: Leopard. 2013
• Texter 1998–2015. Perspektiv ; 1. Stockholm: ETC Förlag. 2015
• On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman (Om könets existens – tankar om den nya synen på kön. Stockholm: Polaris, 2021)