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Election poster of the CDU
Photo: STEFAN ZEITZ / imago images / Stefan Zeitz
A few years ago there was a little trend, that was T-shirts that said “This is what a feminist looks like”. Mostly worn by women, sometimes by men, at least by people who wanted to show that feminists can also look cool and sexy. I never really liked these t-shirts, I found them a weird mix of vanity and despair, but lately I've been thinking about them sometimes. When I saw photos or videos of Armin Laschet. Or from Olaf Scholz. Or Friedrich Merz.
We are slowly beginning to know what feminists can look like, but do we also know what patriarchy looks like? Laschet, Scholz and Merz may be different types and so on, but before my inner eye they sometimes blur into a single figure, an eternally smiling candidate with the subtitle: "This is what a patriarch looks like".
It is of course always difficult when you say "patriarchy" because people have different ideas about it: what it is and where it is.
Some think of something from the ancient world, some only of Muslim countries, some maybe think of guys like Trump or Putin.
To powerful men who let themselves be photographed with gold or weapons or large animals, to displayed potency, toughness, strength.
And we don't have anything like that here.
After all, we still have Merkel as Chancellor.
By and large, you can be about 95 percent certain that whenever you publicly use the term "patriarchy" as a feminist, someone will respond with a sentence that includes the word "Chancellor".
What women are still doing wrong
You could then talk about how much Merkel has brought "women" after hearing over and over again for 16 years that women can now become anything because: Merkel.
But others talk about it enough.
Almost too much if you ask me.
16 years Merkel, 16 years hearing that it no longer makes a difference whether you are a woman or a man, at the end then the “Zeit” cover picture with Merkel in a beach chair and next to it the words: “A woman stops.” One Woman.
I say how it is, it got me down.
In any case - the following observation: Whenever one speaks of patriarchy, the conversation quickly comes to the question of what women are still doing wrong and why they have too little power because of it.
It makes sense because many are used to thinking that way.
But it's a shame too, because there is so much to say about men.
Because while many people have a clichéd image of patriarchy in their heads and are of the opinion that something like this no longer exists here, they overlook the fact that a variant of patriarchy has long since spread in Germany that is far removed from the cliché and yet all the more dominant and is more persistent.
The dominant type with us is: the emphatically uncharismatic, incorporeal, smirking, flirtatious with his yesteryear, who in principle has not apologized and has trained for decades to see questions only as suggestions, to say the same thing again, what he always says, because obviously have still not all understood, but he is patient.
Women yes, gender no
He has an easy relationship with facts and science, and an intimate one with money. Still, he would never deliberately identify himself as part of the upper class. It is clear that he studied law. He manages to look haughty and somehow dented at the same time. His glamor is that of a savings bank employee with chronic gastric mucosal inflammation, but that's exactly how it should be. It is absolutely unthinkable that there could be a public debate about his hairstyle because he doesn't have one. He doesn't need any.
If you ask him about feminism, he will smile knowingly and either tell about the past or mention his wife or daughter. He won't put women in their place, at least not directly. His position is: women yes, gender no. In principle, women are not a problem for him at first, as I said, he has one himself. Friedrich Merz cannot have a problem with women because his daughters are still talking to him and his wife has not yet been divorced. Funnily enough, Scholz and Laschet even literally agree with each other when they say, "Women owns half of power" (occasion: Women's Day or the invitation to say "something feminist" in the interview), so half, yes ... - as long as they are set themselves. Laschet even thinkshe could "perhaps even more as a man" than a woman ensure equality, for whatever reason. Maybe, sure. Maybe not. May his golden figure of Charlemagne show him the way.
In the face of a burning, flooded, exploited earth, in the face of poverty, violence and oppression, to smile through the face and, by and large, to carry on as before - that is the patriarchy today, in Germany. If someone has died as a result of your previous policy (keyword emetics) or if people are churning out your lies or incompetence (keyword corona and civil protection), then that may cause trouble on Twitter or Instagram, but it won't cost you votes.
With your hands in your coat pockets in front of the mountains of rubble in the flood plain - why perform when you can just be yourself?
It was always enough.
Why shouldn't that be enough this time?
That is the ideal type, of course deviations and alternative designs are possible, but the direction is clear: the unagitated administrator.
But "calm" in the negative sense and "manager" too.
Nothing about it is accidental.
The limits are: not too aggressive, not too intellectual, not too elitist, not too minority-friendly, then it will be fine.
Patriarchy can do that too
Armin Laschet has almost perfected this role, but so has Olaf Scholz. So far it has not hurt Laschet that he has no plan against social injustice, climate change, the pandemic - privately, I would say that he does not care if we all die - no, it has harmed him: the weather. The weather wasn't planned. Scholz would currently be the more popular Chancellor, but of course he is especially lucky that nothing has been flooded with him and the Wirecard thing will be too complicated for the people forever.
A characteristic of capitalism that is often described is to incorporate and weaken opposing forces and thereby become even more stable. So, for example: Feminists criticize the oppression of women, which - among other things in the form of too low wages or completely unpaid work, but also in the form of gender-specific consumption incentives - is part of capitalism. So capitalism realizes that feminism is a thing now and prints feminism shirts, see above.
But: the patriarchy can do that too. Unfortunately, it is absolutely no problem for the patriarchy to add to the clichéd role of the unquestionable leader the role of the candidate hardened by shitstorms, perhaps a bit politically retarded, but somehow sufficiently competent. That is the stable smile. Diversity! The "pater" in "patriarchy" may originally be called "father", but so does the uncle. The guy who has already noticed that there is feminism now, and who may even call himself a feminist (Scholz), because: No food. He knows that the truant climate teens and new feminists think he's stupid, but what do you want to do, that's priced in with him. That was never his aim to make everyone happy, you don't expect that from men.
In the spring, Armin Laschet was asked by “Zeit Magazin” whether he was embarrassed “that not even the woke activists and hipster feminists around Margarete Stokowski see you as a true enemy?” He didn't answer anything interesting, but that Thing is: the question was wrong. I rarely talk about political "enemies", but for people like me the main problem is patriarchy in its current capitalist, racist variant - and Armin Laschet is the one hundred percent embodiment of this system. Armin Laschet IS the smiling patriarchy. Whether he will be chancellor or not. Scholz ditto. Merz and Söder each with some cutbacks too, they are only too loud at the moment because they are offended. Neither of them would explicitly send women back to the stove. But none of them ever did anything for us.