While sex may feel like a sport sometimes, Sweden had to make it very clear that it will not be classing the activity as an official sport.
It comes after Dragan Bratic, who owns several strip clubs in the Swedish city of Jönköping, applied for his organisation – the Swedish Sex Federation – to be an associate member of the Swedish Sports Confederation earlier this year.
In case you’re wondering, the Swedish Sex Federation claims to be the first organisation in the world which sees sex as a sport.
And, according to its website, it “organises, trains, awards certificates and scholarships etc to active members who train and compete in sex”.
It alleges that this is all a way to boost gender equality, claiming: “Sex is one of the few sports or the only sport that women dominate on almost every level.
″It is a severe blow to men who have stigmatized women for thousands of years. Women are more superior in sex as a sport than any other sport.
“Women dominate and are better in almost all branches than men, which creates a strong resistance among a wide audience that still wants men’s dominance over women.
“Unfortunately, it happens in many countries that women are stigmatised and exploited.”
The federation claims that there is “no advantage to men” in sex, while lamenting that no country in the world uses tax money to educate populations in love and sex, the “most peaceful thing on earth”.
It also supposedly offers training courses (where people can actually keep their clothes on), and aims to change the view of sex. People are taught on anatomy before they are allowed to move onto the practical.
And while this whole thing may sound quite far-fetched, a national body did actually have to intervene earlier this year.
The Swedish Sports Confederation rejected Bratic’s bid back in April. Even then, several reports gathered together and fact-checked by Reuters news agency earlier this month, falsely suggested that it had been approved and that sex had become a sport in Sweden.
Some of those reports even incorrectly stated that Sweden was going to launch its “maiden sex tournament” on Thursday, June 8, and that there would be entries for endurance (where entries would be tested in “matches” lasting between 45 to 60 minutes and daily sessions stretching up to six hours), as well as oral sex, foreplay and body massages.
Competing nations would allegedly have 20, uh, athletes, judged by a panel of three on their chemistry, sexual knowledge, positions, creativity and artistic communication.
But, as a spokesperson for the organisation, Anna Setzman, firmly told Reuters:
“The Swedish Sports Confederation has drawn attention to the fact that in some parts of the international media news is currently being spread that a sex federation has become a member of The Swedish Sports Confederation. It is false information with the aim of smearing Swedish sports and Sweden.”
She emphasised: “There is no Sex Federation that is a member of the Swedish Sports Confederation.”
That’s that, then!