Silver Tongue: August 2017

A heart and mind that's one of a kind

4:45 PM

May we be them

4:09 PM

Feminism

by: Daniella Braga

Feminism is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

Feminist activism is the struggle for that equality.

The women’s movement, homosexuals and people who do not wish to commit to a traditional gender order have often supported one another. In concrete politics, however, the alliance also raises problems. Historian Miriam Gebhardt’s assessment. A quick look at current political developments in Germany suffices to illustrate that feminism, on the one hand, and representatives of the rights of homo-, bi-, trans- and inter-sexuals (LGBT), on the other, have much in common. Above all, they have common opponents: the new political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose populism is increasingly successful, satisfies its clientele with repeated condemnations of feminism, gays, lesbians, transsexuals and the gender sciences. The “new right-wingers” may well live in the present, and its ranks may include high officials with homosexual leanings or alternative family concepts, but they nevertheless lump together everything that sounds like feminism, sexual deviation and a blurring of borders between feminine and masculine. This has to do not so much with bourgeois family values as with a battle cry that currently can be instrumentalized skilfully in German society and the media: “gender mania”.

The Feminist art movement emerged in the late 1960s amidst the fervor of anti-war demonstrations and civil and queer rights movements. Hearkening back to the utopian ideals of early twentieth-century modernist movements, Feminist artists sought to rewrite a falsely male-dominated art history as well as change the contemporary world around them through their art, focusing on intervening in the established art world and the art canon's legacy, as well as in everyday social interactions. As artist Suzanne Lacy declared, the goal of Feminist art was to "influence cultural attitudes and transform stereotypes." Feminist art created opportunities and spaces that previously did not exist for women and minority artists, as well as paved the path for the Identity art and Activist art of the 1980s.