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Today, we see many different forms of separatists and what may be a safe place for some may be provocative for others. In this article, we focus on separatist spaces, by analysing complaints submitted to the Equality Ombudsman, a governmental agency that supervises compliance with the Discrimination Act in Sweden. Through these complaints, we explore expressions of resistance to separatist spaces and how exclusion from such spaces is understood and made sense of. Hence, the aim is to, through analysis of complaints about perceived discrimination, explore which spaces and contexts are perceived as discriminatory and who is argued to be discriminated against. This analysis shows a clear pattern in how the complaints are filed against three different categories of places and contexts for women (gyms/swimming baths, The Statement Festival and contexts/networks for women). It is noteworthy that only one complaint is directed against a men-only space. The discussion focuses on how the definition of what constitutes discrimination spans between spatial exclusion to missed opportunities, how the complaints differ in terms of being expressions of personal experiences or a matter of principle, and finally, how the complainants argue that separatist spaces are constructing gender in specific ways. In conclusion, the complaints frame the gender separatist strategy as inherently exclusionary to men, threatening to their masculinity, unjustly portraying them as dangerous, and with complainants often casting boys and men as victims. Some of these complaints align with anti-feminist agendas, and some intersect with racist discourses about which groups of men that are to be perceived as dangerous.

The music festival Statement was initiated as a response to sexual violence towards women at other festivals, and during the work of creating a safe festival, separatism became a central strategy. In this paper we analyse media reporting from Statement, with a focus on the desire for safety. Using psychoanalytical discourse theory, we analyse different media materials, focusing on emotive language and fantasmatic narratives. We argue that in the media representations, a desire for safety is linked to enjoyment, opportunities to be oneself, predictability and lack of conflict. Safety is also strongly represented as linked to a focus on security and the absent man is continuously present in the media articulations. While the media representations tend to reconstruct a heterosexual Woman with a universal experience, the focus on the patriarchy, a common 'we' and the emotive language might nevertheless spur political mobilisation.