“These girls just use me,” said my new friend of 42 seconds. “They treat me like a piece of meat.”

So spoke the latest victim of the great Danish female sex drive, a feeling-sorry-for-himself, English 25-year-old bent over a Jack Daniels shot glass in a bar in Nørrebro. After three months of life and sex in Copenhagen, he told me, he was tired. “Why don’t they just want to cuddle?”

I laughed. I recalled my own youth. And I remembered I liked the situation very much for three distinct reasons: I have heard this exact same pity-filled complaint on five occasions in as many years; I find it very amusing to hear a man complain about the same treatment women regularly endure and have endured since time immemorial; and that the liquor of choice for the depressed and existentially challenged is, was and always will be Jack Daniels.

I started to console him, but the conversation did not last. A particularly ferocious but friendly and smiling 20-something was moving in for the kill. She asked him if he had seen the new film ‘Shame’. He said no. She smiled, took and finished the Jack from his trembling fingers, and they left the bar.

I thoroughly enjoy Danish sex. I enjoy its freedom and the equality I experience that it yields. I further enjoy the freedom of Danish women to engage in strong, healthy and proactive sexual relations without fear of moralisation and patriarchal censor. I am married and no longer engage in the full-frontal hedonism of Danish city sex, but I very much appreciate living in a country where it occurs. I like it that in Denmark a woman’s choice about her own body and sexual habits are her choice and her choice alone.

Danish sex is a yah boo sucks in the face of the Sodom and Gomorrah pushers who would have one believe that a strong female sexual appetite will leave a society bereft, empty and dramatically falling into the fiery pits. Look around. It does not. In fact it is quite the opposite. Look at the countries currently permitting extremist views on sexual censorship, sexism and the rights of homosexuals. Almost without exception you will find that these countries are also ones of discord and disharmony. I propose that a sexually satisfied and sexually complete woman – and by extension, satisfied man – creates a complete and satisfied country.

However, before the back slapping begins, I should point out that even Denmark is no feminist Shangri La. Whilst the rule of law and social structure constitutionally supports the equality of women, one need only read some of the questions the media have asked Denmark´s first female prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt: “How do you balance family life with work?”, “What is your favorite perfume?” and “Is the stress getting to you?” Were any of the previous male PMs ever asked such questions? The answer is no, or at least rarely. The questioning of and posturing towards Thorning-Schmidt is an ongoing interrogation of her ability to lead, and therefore a woman’s ability to lead.

My previous article was about Anders Brievik and how artists deserve the same right to comment on the issues of the day as politicians and the media. The article was short and I could not include an important point: that a major part of Brievik’s sick manifesto was that it was deeply anti-female. It is interesting to observe that the media for the best part chose to ignore this, and along with the politicians mostly reported on Brievik’s views on the division between Muslims and Christians – the manifesto’s ‘enemy at the gates’ propaganda. Fear sells papers and gets votes. Women’s rights and female empowerment does not, even in Scandinavia. My fervent wish and hope is that this changes and that Danish sexual freedom and mores become stronger.

Back at the bar, I can report I met that same man there exactly one week later. He is now very happy. It turns out that the ferocious ‘she’ was in fact a ‘he’ and my new friend of one week had had a happy realisation about his own closet.

Illustration: Cæcilie Parfelt Vengberg / www.vindfang.blogspot.com