"We feminists set out for liberation from gender dictates - and now this"
De Lapuente: Dear Ms. Schwarzer, you are one of the few voices criticizing the Equality Act. In the media business, one perceives a strongly tendentious attitude in favor of the Equality Act - EMMA is an exception here. Why is it that such a drastic law hardly receives any media criticism?
Schwarzer I'm afraid that most of the advocates and proponents even mean well. They are simply not aware of the dimension and consequences of this so-called "self-identification-law". The very term. Which advertising agencies actually think up such smoke screens? Allegedly it is only about legal assistance for the in fact until recently extreme minority of genuine transsexuals. That is, people who have such a disturbed relationship with their bodies that they even accept the dramatic health consequences of hormone doses and "gender-approximating" operations in order to change sex. The tragedy is: both are just masquerades. People cannot change their biological sex, only their cultural gender role and their marital status. But I have the increasingly strong impression that even the Minister for Women's Affairs and the Minister of Justice do not know the difference between sex and gender, between biological sex and cultural gender role.
As I said, you are one of those who have strong reservations about the general mood of optimism. Quite a few - I'm thinking of that gentleman from ZDF who plays journalist on his show but is an activist - now believe that Alice Schwarzer and the feminism she stands for are long outdated. Do "women's issues" now merge into trans debates? And so can feminism now go away? By the way, our author Kai Preuß wrote yesterday that the rainbow flag - which he uses conceptually as a symbol of the trans movement - is "above all not dangerous to the state." That, he said, is one of the reasons why it is being instrumentalized politically. Is there something to that?
I'm afraid that most of the advocates and supporters even mean well. They are simply not aware of the dimension and consequences of this so-called "self-identification-law." The very term. Which advertising agencies actually think up such smoke screens? Allegedly it is only about legal assistance for the in fact until recently extreme minority of genuine transsexuals. That is, people who have such a disturbed relationship with their bodies that they even accept the dramatic health consequences of hormone doses and "gender-approximating" operations in order to change sex. The tragedy is: both are just masquerades. People cannot change their biological sex, only their cultural gender role and their marital status. But I have the impression that even the Minister of Women's Affairs and the Minister of Justice do not know the difference between sex and gender, between biological sex and cultural gender role.
You told Der Spiegel in a recent interview that it is "fashionable to be trans," precisely because it is a provocation. Is the non-binary perhaps comparable to the "No Future" of the punks or the long hair of the young men who were contemptuously called bums?
Yes, that's how it is. It has become a provocation of youth. But trans ideology turns the feminist premise of deconstructing gender roles - which is not identical to denying biological sex! - on its head. Instead of striving for liberation from pigeonholes, increasingly rigid gender roles are now propagated. A girl who likes to play soccer or even kiss her best friend? She can only be a boy. How absurd! We feminists started out for liberation from gender dictates and for free sexuality - and now this. The blatant opposite. Man or woman! And everything always nicely labeled. And nothing in between. It couldn't be more binary. But unfortunately, it's the rebellious girls who don't want to bow to the pink terror who are now falling for it, the so-called tomboys. But instead of advising them to become a "man" in terms of personal status, they should be told: You are free! Even as a biological female, you can take all the freedoms that were previously only granted to men - and vice versa.
You also told Der Spiegel that more girls wanted to change gender than boys.Is the phenomenon of girls in particular changing their gender "like a flight of fancy" an expression of the renewed stereotyping of gender roles in Germany?In other words, is it particularly unattractive to grow up as a girl and be a woman in Germany?
That's exactly how it is. Firstly, Germany has always been at the bottom of the league in the West when it comes to women's emancipation. Secondly, we are living in times of upheaval, of intensified contradictions. On the one hand, women can become chancellors or fly to the moon; on the other hand, young women are being told more than ever that the most important thing is to be desirable to men. And slim. And beautiful. And eternally young. Behold fashion and female influencers promising happiness for consumption. This, of course, is wrenching. It's a dead end from which a person shaped in this way can hardly get out again.
Born men who became women, according to the Self-ID Act, must nevertheless go to war if it should come to that. Shelters for women are to remain closed to born but then transformed men:Can it be that the self-determination law does not change so much in the end?
The self-identification-law in its form would make the concept of woman legally relative, i.e. obsolete. No more statistics by gender, no more gender medicine, for example. But it would increasingly expose young girls in particular to the dangerous fallacy that the solution in patriarchy is to become a "man" instead of a free woman.
Ms. Schwarzer, the proponents of the law are doing it on a very large scale: They call the law a historical throw - the last historical law of the SPD and the Greens was the modification of the SGB II, popularly known as Hartz IV. We now know what became of that. Do you see the same thing happening with the Self-Identification Act?
I would rather draw a comparison with the pedophilia paragraph and the prostitution law. In 1980, the SPD and FDP actually wanted to delete the paragraph that makes child abuse a punishable offense. In fact, only EMMA's commitment at the time prevented this from happening. We explained what the consequences would be and alerted society. This was followed in the 80s and 90s by the green and media campaign of "abuse of abuse". That's when they tried to intimidate and silence concerned social workers and mothers of victims by claiming that the stories of child abuse were mostly fabricated. We now know better. In 2002, the Red-Green Party passed the fatal Prostitution Act. Even then, EMMA warned before it was passed and has since provided comprehensive clarification. The law then turned Germany into the "hub of trafficking in women in Europe," opened the door to pimps and traffickers, and left the women in prostitution even more at the mercy of the authorities. Ninety-five percent come from abroad and are poverty prostitutes. By now, even former advocates and supporters have had to admit that. But for more than 20 years, the media in particular spread the legend of the "voluntariness" of prostitution. A social problem was individualized. Much like transsexuality. The only right step now would be to help prostitutes to get out and to punish the buying of women. This is what countries like Sweden, France or Israel have done for a long time, This would not only stop the demand, but also protect the human dignity of the sexes. So we're talking here about sexual politics - from abortion to prostitution to rape - the dark core of the gender power relationship. And there, our fiercest opponents have indeed always been these pseudo-progressives.
Do these pseudo-progressives have the sovereignty of interpretation? If you know the people in the country up close, you get the impression that they are living in a bubble.
True, it is a bubble. But this bubble is no longer confined to alternative shared flatshares; it's now also in key positions in the media and in politics, right up to the top of the government.
The interview was first published in Overton. - Translation via DeepL.
