Category Archives: workshops 2018

Die Spezifizität von Sexarbeit und Sexarbeiter*innen

Unser Workshop möchte einerseits einen Raum öffnen für Erzählungen und direkte Zeugnisse von Sexarbeit und andererseits für Betrachtungen und Reflektionen des Rechtssystems und damit die Analysen und Verlangen von Sexarbeiter*innen einzubringen, die überall auf der Welt Wege für Kämpfe aufmachen.
Basierend auf uns und unseren Geschichten möchten wir über Sexarbeit reden, weil wir denken dass so ein komplexes und vielschichtiges Thema angegangen werden sollet indem realen Erfahrungen Raum gegeben wird, nicht von der Realität losgelösten Ideologien.
Wir sind von dieser politischen Praxis überzeugt genau weil wir als Feminist*innen nicht für andere reden und entscheiden möchten und weil wir denken, dass Unsichtbarkeit lediglich Isolation, Diskriminierung und Vorurteile hervorbringt.
Wir wissen, wie unterschiedlich Geschichten und Erfahrungen sein können, deshalb benutzen wir keine Sprache mit Absolutheitsanspruch.
Uns ist daran gelegen Fragen aufzuwerfen, Debatten und Reflektionen über diese Realität anzustoßen, so offen und dialogisch wie möglich. Wir wissen wie schwer es ist uns selbst zu öffnen und darüber zu reden, denn wir wissen wie schwer Stigma und die möglichen Auswirkungen auf uns lasten, von derjede Person die eine sexuelle Arbeit offenlegt betroffen sein kann.
 
Deshalb nutzen wir fiktive Namen.
MAREA wird von seiner Erfahrung als Sexarbeiter* und Feminist*in sprechen und dabei die persönliche Geschichte mit theoretischen Überlegungen ganz konkret zu Selbst-Bestimmung und Stigma verbinden. In ihrem Beitrag geht es um die Verbindung zwischen Feminismus, Sexualität und Stigma, aber auch um Patriarchat, Sexarbeit und Selbstbestimmung.
 
TIZ wird eine kollektivere Perspektive auf die Welt der Sexarbeit einnehmen und über die vielen verscchiedenen Organisationen von Sexarbeiter*innen sprechen, darüber, was sie nicht nur an geteilten Negativaspekten zusammenbringt, sondern vor allem auch über die Forderungen, dass mehr und mehr zu einem Netzwerk werden.
 
Der Grundgedanke dieses Netzwerks ist die Forderung nach der Entkriminalisierung von Sexarbeit. Auf den spezifischen Fall Italien wird IVONNE tiefer eingehen, in einem dritten und letzten Beitrag aus einer rein juristischen Perspektive. Ivonne wird den Punkt herausarbeiten, dass ein legales System scheinbar mehr “garantiert” aber dennoch ein Unterdrückungssystem von Sexarbeiter*innen fortschreiben, durch Stigma und die Kriminalisierung von Solidarität und Unterstützung.
 

The uses of anger

and the reluctance to name racist privileges
 
Together, we will read some excerpts from audre lorde’s short spech that she gave in 1981 in front of an audience of white feminists. Based on her examination of exclusions, anger and solidarity, we will question our own positions in society and what we take for granted.
If anybody has the time to read the whole speech in advance, you can find it here.
 

Screaming

Since 2002, I have been doing screaming actions without words in public and I give courses on screaming, for all has been said but not been listened to. “Unhampered by propriety, niceness, discretion, public opinion, ‘morals’, the respect of assholes” as Valerie Solana put it succinctly in her “Manifesto of society for the elimination of men”.
My myself I am against the elimination of “men” because I oppose the category of man/woman. However, I also fight against the fact that a considerable and remarkable part of the population (which I am also part of as a feminist artist) is conditioned and prevented from being loud and present in public.
I give courses in scraming in ordert to communicate with others
loudly and clearly
as long as the distances are so big
as long as so many jamming transmitter inhibit communication
from mountain peak to mountain peak
from tower to tower
from barrier to barrier
from glass ceiling to glass ceiling
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

It was different back then – but what was it like?

 
Verena Siegrist can look back at an eventful life. She was a close friend of Amalie and Theo Pinkus and has been a frequent visitor in Salecine from the beginning. She is an integral part of the political and women’s movement history of the city of Zurich. Even for the Swiss secret service she was that interesting that they observed her for 40 years (1949 – 1989). Last year at the feminist seminar, she presented her book: “Eventful times, eventful life”. This year, we want to have a closer look at how she lived those eventful times and want to have an exchange what the political and private lifes of young women look like today. Along the topics of “contraception, gender roles and family and reproductive medicine” we are going to time travel from the 1950s until today.

Antisemitism: experiences, in_visibilities and possibilities for discussion in (queer)feminist contexts

In the 1980s and 90s, there were some attempts in the West German feminist scene to create alliances between Black, Jewish and of Color feminists in order to work in solidarity and collectively as people affected by racism and antisemitism – to us, it seems, these alliances have been lost.
Feminist Jews from the radical left and thus their experiences of antisemitism are hardly present in left queer-feminist debates – unless, they make antizionist utterances related to Israel. We offer the hypothesis that there has been a discursive Whitening of European Jews in the past 20 years so that they hardly appear as discriminated against in the debates on power relationships or that antisemitism is conceptualised as a part of racism and thus becomes invisible. In our perception, this invisibility of identities and experiences increasingly results in queer-feminist scenes being usually thought as non-Jewish and that experiences of antisemitism are being trivialised or questioned – if they are being formulated at all outside of safe private spaces; or if the language and words are at all available in order to identify and describe as antisemitism what has been experienced and felt.
In our workshop we would like to deal with the question what the alliances between Black, Jewish and of Color feminists looked like and when and why there were any ruptures. What experiences do Jewish people make in left queer-feminist scenes and how can experiences of antisemitism again be made more audible and thus perceivable?

Why did the tomatoes fly, where to and how far?

And are they still glittering nowadays?
 
We are Gisela (75) and Inga (34), feminists from different generations, who enjoy discussions and work together and learning from each other.
During our time in scientific research and as activist in (queer)_feminist movements we made different experiences with different feminisms. Together with the participants we want to engage in a conversation on these different but also overlapping perspectives. For this purpose, we want to reflect the history/histories of feminist movements in West Germany in dialogue and solidarity, but also critically.
The topic and point of departure for our collective reflections is our observation (influenced by our experiences) of the emergence of independent feminist movements in West Germany in 1968, their programmes, forms of organisation and their potency beyond the founding generation to toda’ys (queer)feminist movements. Our aim is an exchange on similarities and diferences mutual (mis)understanding and open questions, characterised by appreciation mutual interest but also critical reflection.
 
Gisela Notz, social scientist, historian and author AND
Inga Nüthen, political scientist and author are both activists and also like to work and discuss together from time to time.
 

Feminist burnout in fascist times?

Why mental health is a political topic and what patriarchy has got to do with it
 
Becoming depressed because of the political state of things, becoming sick because of racist structures, emancipatory activism resulting in burnout, a nihilist sense of powerlessness as a slowly encroaching state of normality. These are only some causal relationships of mental health in times of fascist crisis.
Topics revolving around “psychological problems” are strongly individualised in neo-liberal societies. Those with problems are individualisd and expected to find their own solutions, looking for a spot in therapy and becoming operational again as fast as possible in order to be usable for capitalist structures. It is seen as an individual sensitivity, decoupled from prevailing societal relations.
In the workshop, we want to put the topic of mental health into the existing political context from a emancipatory and intersectional feminist perspective and thus discuss possibilities of collective prevention, intervention, support and solidarity as a form of anticapitalist resistance.
We want to discuss examples from projects in which activism and mental health issues were contemplated together and put into a political context.
 

Bad wages for household?

Outsourcing housework – is this possible as a queerfeminist?
 
Continuation/repeat of the 2017 workshop “the cleaning lady principle”
 
It is often negotiated as a matter of morality whether we as feminists and/or lefties do the housework (cleaning, laundry, ironing or care) ourselves, in addition to waged labour, or whether we pay somebody or leave the work unpaid for somebody else to do.
In the workshop on “the cleaning lady principle”, we engaged with this topic last year and talked a lot about different needs concerning cleanliness in shared houses and partnerships. We also talked about the “bad conscience” when the work remains undone.
 
This year, I propose to continue and deepen the topic.
Apart from matters of justice that are perceived or can be discussed, the whole issue of housework also has a materialist foundation: what structures make it possible or necessary to delegate housework to others, paid or not? Or to take it on for others, in exchange for money or unpaid?
What were the actual demands of the feminist campaign “paid housework” in 1972 and why haven’t they been met in the new service relations? What could good conditions for housework look like?
The workshop is to be a mixture of giving an overview of the current situation of cleaning staff and domestic help (focusing on the new labour market in Germany), of looking back at the wages for household campaign and interrogating our queerfeminist selves on the issue of work load.