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Traditional distribution of roles between women and men: You could wish it differently
Photo: sturti / E + / Getty Images
Easter may be long gone, Pentecost may be looming: At home there is still a pair of rabbits on the table.
I am making up for a twenty year old contempt.
It was then that we came across these two small painted clay figures, which I dismissed as kitsch and banished to a tall cupboard.
For these Easter days - many people, not least CSU politicians, become more tolerant in old age - I set up the couple.
Franziska Augstein
Photo:
Michael Gottschalk / imago images / photothek
Studied history, philosophy and political science in Berlin, Bielefeld and Sussex and received her doctorate from University College London with a thesis on early race theories. She worked as a journalist for the "Zeit" magazine, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" and the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". In 2000 she was awarded the Theodor Wolff Prize for an essay on Martin Walser. You can find selected articles and speeches since 1999 to date on their website www.augstein.org.
It is worth taking a closer look: Ms. Häsin proudly holds up her mustache.
She has her paws crossed over her chest in an authoritarian manner.
A purse dangles from her apron, which shows where Mr. Hase gets the cider, or more precisely: the Penunse.
For his part, Mr. Rabbit looks conscientiously and confidently into the distance, the pipe in one paw, the shovel in the other: There's a lot to do, let's get started.
Ms. Häsin and Mr. Hase are completely gender stereotyped.
In small French shops it is common for “la patronne” to sit at the cash register and for “le patron” to do the rough work: for example, chop chops to the centimeter with the meat cleaver.
In many German craft businesses, the woman is responsible for the accounting, while the man moves out to lend a hand.
Such is the reality.
Women in all professions earn less than men on average.
The mandatory asterisk notation required by well-meaning people will not help.
You can wish it all differently.
Hollywood shows us how it is: women in action films - clad skin-tight - are just as strong as men, strong in any case in Asian martial arts.
The actress Robin Wright received less pay than her film husband Kevin Spacey for her role as the nefarious wife of Frank Underwood in the US series "House of Cards".
Women in all professions earn less than men on average.
The mandatory asterisk notation required by well-meaning people (there are also other suggestions) will not help. Social changes do not happen because interest groups want them, and they certainly do not happen by means of linguistic regulations. Rather the opposite is the case. Not all citizens would be happy to be instructed by politicians or administrative officials on how to write to their employers and other addressees in the future. The asterisk does not rise, it is a firecracker that just scares away many.
Trying to enforce equality through the language police is a bad idea. Today "policewomen" and "judges" seem as normal words to us as the fact that women finally do these jobs. In the 1950s, law student and later Hamburg Justice Senator Lora Maria Peschel-Gutzeit was addressed by the professor in a lecture: "Girls, go home and peel potatoes." The German language is more conciliatory than this professor. She is flexible, docile, she behaves as it were like the world of men used to expect women to do. But the language does not go along with everything straight away: "Sergeant" sounds (currently still) more like a mockery than a rank. And when it is said that Marie Müller is the first researcherwho dealt with question X, then this implies: Before Marie, men would have already dealt with this question.
Many women consider it unreasonable to be defined primarily by their gender.
Incidentally, many women consider it unreasonable to be defined primarily by their gender.
The 32-year-old writer Nele Pollatschek recently put this in a nutshell in the »Tagesspiegel«: »I don't gender, I don't want to be gendered." She is not just a woman, she is a Jew in Germany, she is an individual, which has its peculiarities beyond their gender and their Judaism.
In principle, and first and foremost, Nele Pollatschek would like to be considered a human being.
Incidentally, this is also one of the occasions when language becomes beastly: "human" and "human" do not like it.
The gender discussion: It is a broad field. How lesbians, gays, transgender people, asexuals, who define themselves as “diverse”, can express their self-image linguistically; How their gender needs should or can be met in practice, for example with regard to the necessary variety of toilets in public spaces: That will result in a lot of debates. Debates that should better be devoted to more important questions: the prevailing inequality in the world and in Germany, climate change and its effects, in a word: the future and the survival of mankind.
Pentecost is just around the corner. Then, so the scriptures say, the Holy Spirit comes over men. Unlike Mr. Easter Bunny, the Holy Spirit is single. He comes as the spirit - without a spirit. Nevertheless, religion teaches us that he tears the believers out of the context in which they have previously thought and lived. Society needs such a spirit of equality, not an equality language.