A Lesbian Controversy in Germany
Mar. 29th, 2010 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaI come from a family of history nuts.
We all adore history, we have different ideas of what history means, but we all love it, learn it and think memory is one of the more important things in life.
I recall the one time I looked my history in the face, when I was 17 and went on the class trip to Poland. I don't think I would have gone without my mother, who insisted, because I seriously hated my peers.
It was an odd time, of false camaraderie and a whole lot of national zeal. I still feel weird thinking about those ten days in Poland, in which the only time we saw something "fun" was in Krakow - where we went shopping in the square and travelled down the salt mines (which is used as a wedding hall, these days... or at least back in 2002).
In Majdanek, which is the concentration-death camp next to Lublin and has a fucking huge ash mound - yeah, seriously, there are reconstructions of the housing blocks, which have been converted into museums. There is a block that has nothing but shoes in it, there's a red high heeled shoe there that I'll never forget.
One of the blocks is an information archive, it has documents, SS uniforms, prisoner uniforms (those stripy "pyjama" things), ID cards for the well known Nazi commanders who did their duty there and a wall with badges.
Badges explaining what each one meant and who wore them.
I had only ever heard of the yellow star of David. When I saw the pink triangle I was shocked. What was a symbol I associated with Gay Pride doing here!?
I read the info and discovered what it meant and why it was reclaimed by gay people.
(I was 17, in a relationship with a boy and was only beginning to understand my own queerness).
I saw the black triangle and saw that it was given to Anti-Socials - which included gypsies, anarchists, the mentally ill and Lesbians.
This confused me.
Surely the Lesbians should be with the pink triangle.
Lesbian women were "Anti-Social", not because they had sex with women, but because they refused to marry and "breed" for the Reich. This I discovered not long afterwards when I realised that my country only counts the 6 million as victims and the rest as incidental - never mind that there are, you know, Jewish queers. So I read up on the other victims of the Holocaust.
Why am I writing this?
Because history continued to rely on the fact that men are more important than women.
As many of you know, Berlin has Holocaust Memorial instillations. A huge Jewish one and across the road from it, a Gay one. It was installed in 2008 to commemorate the gay victims of the Nazi regime. It includes a continued video of two men embracing and kissing. Very sweet.
I remember back when it was installed how happy I was that this piece of history, general and gay, was being recognised and promised myself that when I was in Berlin I'd go (as though I wouldn't any way). It was also stated that every two years the image would be replaced and this year it would be two women embracing and kissing.
Woe.
This, some say, is not historically accurate:
Yeah, gay women didn't suffer enough under the Reich.
That's basically what's being said.
I'm not saying that Lesbian women were persecuted in the same way. Obviously, they were not. Mainly because, women's sexuality doesn't exist without the presence of a penis. That's the crux, these "anti-social" women refused to marry, continued to wreak havoc on the ultra-masculine, misogynistic and fetishistic society that had managed to infect Germany during Weimar.
Regardless, Lesbian women were persecuted for being gay, just, as mentioned, not in the same way. To deny this, is to erase an important part of War World 2 history, the history of the Holocaust and the history of queer women, who are erased from history with fervour any way!
Lesbians Locking Lips on the memorial for the persecution of gay people during the Nazi Regime is just as important as gay men doing so. It is different. The outcome may have also been different, but the motivation was not.
How could it be historically inaccurate?
This is what happens when I read the news on Peach eve.
We all adore history, we have different ideas of what history means, but we all love it, learn it and think memory is one of the more important things in life.
I recall the one time I looked my history in the face, when I was 17 and went on the class trip to Poland. I don't think I would have gone without my mother, who insisted, because I seriously hated my peers.
It was an odd time, of false camaraderie and a whole lot of national zeal. I still feel weird thinking about those ten days in Poland, in which the only time we saw something "fun" was in Krakow - where we went shopping in the square and travelled down the salt mines (which is used as a wedding hall, these days... or at least back in 2002).
In Majdanek, which is the concentration-death camp next to Lublin and has a fucking huge ash mound - yeah, seriously, there are reconstructions of the housing blocks, which have been converted into museums. There is a block that has nothing but shoes in it, there's a red high heeled shoe there that I'll never forget.
One of the blocks is an information archive, it has documents, SS uniforms, prisoner uniforms (those stripy "pyjama" things), ID cards for the well known Nazi commanders who did their duty there and a wall with badges.
Badges explaining what each one meant and who wore them.
I had only ever heard of the yellow star of David. When I saw the pink triangle I was shocked. What was a symbol I associated with Gay Pride doing here!?
I read the info and discovered what it meant and why it was reclaimed by gay people.
(I was 17, in a relationship with a boy and was only beginning to understand my own queerness).
I saw the black triangle and saw that it was given to Anti-Socials - which included gypsies, anarchists, the mentally ill and Lesbians.
This confused me.
Surely the Lesbians should be with the pink triangle.
Lesbian women were "Anti-Social", not because they had sex with women, but because they refused to marry and "breed" for the Reich. This I discovered not long afterwards when I realised that my country only counts the 6 million as victims and the rest as incidental - never mind that there are, you know, Jewish queers. So I read up on the other victims of the Holocaust.
Why am I writing this?
Because history continued to rely on the fact that men are more important than women.
As many of you know, Berlin has Holocaust Memorial instillations. A huge Jewish one and across the road from it, a Gay one. It was installed in 2008 to commemorate the gay victims of the Nazi regime. It includes a continued video of two men embracing and kissing. Very sweet.
I remember back when it was installed how happy I was that this piece of history, general and gay, was being recognised and promised myself that when I was in Berlin I'd go (as though I wouldn't any way). It was also stated that every two years the image would be replaced and this year it would be two women embracing and kissing.
Woe.
This, some say, is not historically accurate:
[..]Alexander Zinn, a board member of the foundation that maintains the former Nazi concentration camps near Berlin, said such a move would distort history as there were no known Holocaust victims targeted for being lesbian.
"Historical truth must remain the focus," Zinn told AFP.
He has banded together with other Holocaust experts and fired off a letter of protest to Culture Minister Michael Neumann and Berlin's openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit.
Neumann defended the plans as true to the original concept of the memorial in addressing present-day discrimination against lesbians and gays as well as the plight of homosexuals at the hands of the Nazis.
"The option of using a lesbian film motif in the memorial is in no way meant to put on the same level the persecution of homosexual men and women under the Nazi regime," he said in a statement.
Yeah, gay women didn't suffer enough under the Reich.
That's basically what's being said.
I'm not saying that Lesbian women were persecuted in the same way. Obviously, they were not. Mainly because, women's sexuality doesn't exist without the presence of a penis. That's the crux, these "anti-social" women refused to marry, continued to wreak havoc on the ultra-masculine, misogynistic and fetishistic society that had managed to infect Germany during Weimar.
Regardless, Lesbian women were persecuted for being gay, just, as mentioned, not in the same way. To deny this, is to erase an important part of War World 2 history, the history of the Holocaust and the history of queer women, who are erased from history with fervour any way!
Lesbians Locking Lips on the memorial for the persecution of gay people during the Nazi Regime is just as important as gay men doing so. It is different. The outcome may have also been different, but the motivation was not.
How could it be historically inaccurate?
This is what happens when I read the news on Peach eve.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 12:16 pm (UTC)I find it really disheartening to see this sort of thing. It shows that women really are considered second rate historically, that their suffering wasn't the same and thus not "enough".
It's plenty irritating!
Oh, and Icon Love! My Eddie Izzard icons are on my LJ!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 03:13 pm (UTC)For sure! I mean, I'm not surprised that L as well as G persons were treated as "unpersons" so to speak, but it's worth reminding people of the fact.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 09:04 am (UTC)...and what's worse is that our textbooks don't call this BS out, but instead happily feed it along. Because Texas doesn't want them to talk about those kinds of issues.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 09:32 am (UTC)The former half of the sentence doesn't actually superimpose the latter.
Jews were fetishised more than any other undesirable in Nazi Germany, but the suffering in the camps and the persecution just can't be quantified or qualified in that way.
*sigh*
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 07:37 am (UTC)The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used by the Nazis to identify male prisoners in concentration camps who were sent there because of their homosexuality...There hasn't been any evidence for the persecution of lesbians under the "black triangle".
I suggest you correct the article.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:26 am (UTC)Having this disinformation in Wikipedia is as bad, if not worse, than the example you gave.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:29 am (UTC)"I suggest you correct the article" - I thought you meant mine! you've referred to posts of mine as articles before.
I'm so sorry! And here I was all pissed at you :( *hugs*
I don't know how to edit Wiki. I tried, never figured out how...
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:31 am (UTC)Send me your corrections.
Don't forget a citation.
Looks like you need a man for this job ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 08:32 am (UTC)I'll email you in a bit.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-31 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-31 10:10 am (UTC)