White Men Can't Dance

Sanna Marin must be taking drugs if she is dancing at a party. WTAF?! A woman who is willing to defy Putin emasculates en masse, so let's punish her for being thirty-something.

When I think about the patriarchy, the image that my mind’s eye throws up is Winston Churchill’s parliament. A dusty tiered room full of white men who all have their 65th birthday within days of each other. The only variable is the degree to which their truncal obesity obscures the view of their genitals. How much whisky they drink doesn’t matter because they will never match their leader, which means the entire twenty-four-hour clock is fair game. Deals, secret handshakes, and sacrifices for the end-game were deemed appropriate for all of humanity by this homogenous bunch of humans. You can tell me how much worse my safe, white life would be if Winnie hadn’t made the decisions he did, but I could also say it might be better. I might not be stuck on this burning planet with psychos leading our demise if he had even one woman or one non-white person on his team—or any ‘other’ sort of person. I might not be stuck in a nightmare of ‘isms’ that stems from this patriarchy and its ancestors. It is a pointless argument because all of those white men are dead now, and we have a new guard in place. We honour them with statues and films while our disapproving gaze lands on a young female leader who has the audacity to dance.

Sanna Marin is EVERYTHING I want my daughters to believe is possible. She was thirty-four years old when she became the prime minister of Finland, the youngest PM in the history of the world. Daddy’s trust fund didn’t pay for her education; she paid for it by working shitty part-time jobs, supported by her two mums who told her she could be anything she wanted.

Finland joined NATO last month, and that decision is possibly the country’s “most important moment”, according to experts and the media. If you don’t know where Finland is positioned geographically to Russia, please look at a map now and pause to reflect on the bravery this decision took. Their border with Russia is similar in length to that of Ukraine. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance, and member states agree to defend each other against attacks by other countries. Finland joining NATO would have fucked Putin off, and everybody knows he kills people when he doesn’t like what they’re doing.

Last week Sanna Marin went to a party and danced. Somehow this has become a world headline, and the space it takes up allows bad shit to prevail in the shadows. Political opposition nullifies the very democracy it is meant to represent. The accusations, name-calling, and preoccupation with catching the current leaders out are adults near their worst. Sanna’s opposition wanted her to take a drug test because, apparently, dancing is synonymous with drug-taking. I think they should focus on the fact that their neighbour is killing their other neighbour. Thankfully Sanna got the brief about work-life balance. To maintain her health, well-being and resilience, which I certainly want in my country’s leader, she takes downtime. Her opponents don’t. They’re busy scrambling about for any evidence that Sanna’s fake friends might leak, increasing their chance of clawing their way into the top spot. The only thing Sanna did that she might change was trusting that everyone in the same room was a friend. Whoever filmed and leaked must contemplate the state of the human race they’re contributing to.

I learned something about myself in a Twitter exchange recently; I didn’t understand my own privilege. I took offence at a post about white people taking up all the oxygen in indigenous language classes. I tried to explain that I had purposefully pulled out of my third-year Māori language class because I was the least fluent and knew I was holding people back. Somebody in twitter-land diplomatically replied and told me the post wasn’t about me then. I continued to explain (yawn) and suggested they confront the oxygen-stealers mid-diatribe. Another person chimed in and said that this was a perfect example of my privilege; to think confrontation is an option for the oppressed - ouch. They were right. Long story short - if you’re a white man who can dance, don’t fucken tell me about it.

Despite having a fair argument for invasion of privacy, Sanna Marin is taking a drug test. Why? Because she is a reasonable human being who knows that it is the quickest way to silence her accusers on the matter. The longer we are distracted by the devil’s pawns, the more harm he can get away with and she wants to get on with the job of preventing that. Gender bias and ageism are in action here and we all know it. Some of the mob calling for the drug test are female and I’ve written about them before. They are consciously or unconsciously siding with bias and are letting the team down. If Sanna was a sixty-five-year-old male, would a drug test be demanded?

Boris Johnson danced at his own party during lock-down and broke his own laws in the process. Sanna Marin danced at a party. Sanna Marin is a young female world leader. Boris Johnson is a white man who can’t dance.