On Saturday, Sweden’s biggest music festival, the Bravalla Festival, announced that the event would be canceled next year following reports of four rapes and 23 sexual assaults over the course of the four-day festival. After it concluded on July 1, organizers said, “Certain men … apparently cannot behave. It’s a shame.”
In response to the outcry over the numerous assaults, which plagued the festival last year as well, Swedish radio personality Emma Knyckare tweeted that she thought it was high time for an event where women would be safe from men’s “bad behavior.” She wrote, “What do you think about putting together a really cool festival where only non-men are welcome, that we’ll run until ALL men have learned how to behave themselves?”
Apparently, her idea picked up enough traction that Sweden’s first-ever man-free festival will happen next summer, in place of the larger festival. “Sweden’s first man-free rock festival will see the light next summer,” she wrote on Instagram. Knyckare said that she’d bring together organizers and leaders to determine what a festival without men would look like, though it’s probably a good idea for them to watch the Idyllwild episode of Transparent first.