Hier ist die Zentrale des Teufels...

...der Herr hat's mir bestätigt.

Die Worte waren laut und überdeutlich artikuliert. Dem Mann lag daran, gehört und verstanden zu werden. Ich saß in der Straßenbahn der Linie 12 mit dem Rücken zur Tür und fand den lauten Spinner des Umdrehens nicht wert. Ich hatte auf dem Nachhauseweg angefangen "Wenn man einen weißen Anzug anhat" von Max Goldt zu lesen und dachte mir jetzt, einen weißen 'Anzug' könnte dieser Freak auch gebrauchen.

Unterbrochen hat mich der Botschafter Gottes am Friedberger Platz. Noch bevor er eingetreten war, hörte man seine Klage:

Ihr Satansbrut. Ihr Satanskinder. Immer in der 12! Immer in der 12! Deswegen fahre ich nicht mehr mit der 12. Die 14 ist in Ordnung. Aber die fährt hier nicht.

Da war ich gerade beim Satz "Ich achte alle Menschen hoch, die sich in der Sterbehospiz-Bewegung um Schwerkranke bemühen, so auch Uschi Glas."

Ich fand, dass die Stimme des Freaks auch ganz gut zu Max Goldt passen würde. Dazu muss natürlich angemerkt werden, dass ich wirklich keine Ahnung habe, wie Goldt klingt, ich kenne ihn nur gelesen - und das auch noch nicht so lang. Das andere Buch, das ich von ihm gelesen habe, war mind-boggling. Jedenfalls wäre der denkbare Unterschied zwischen den beiden Stimmen, dass bei Goldt die Überartikulation zwecks Ironisierung erfolgte, während der Sonderling todernst gemeinten Schwachsinn im Feuer pfeifender Konsonanten schürte. 

Jetzt muss ich es aber wissen: Wie klingt Max Goldt wirklich?  Mal schauen, ob YouTube etwas für mich hat...

Ja, das wird er sein.



Aber zurück zum Thema. Der Sonderling musste, genauso wie ich, an der nächsten Haltestelle aussteigen. Und als ob es nicht schon reichte, dass er sonderbar war, nein, er musste auch noch unbescheiden sein:

Können Sie mir mal 20 (!!!) Euro LEIHEN? Mark is' ja nicht mehr...


Das brüllte er mir oder auch den anderen vor ihm Flüchtenden hinterher, während ich mich bei Rot über die Straße beeilte, darüber fluchend, dass ich ausgerechnet heute Schuhe mit hohen Absätzen anhatte.

Pjesme

(Some poems I've written in my mother tongue - almost 10 years ago...)

SUTRA

Blijedo je jutro
Ulica strma što naprijed vodi
I nije lako
Više me nije
O Bože, kako?

Ne plačem više, samo se mrštim
Samo me sumnja izjeda iznutra

Sva ova jutra
Puna nade
Sve ove večeri
Sto dočekah jadno
I ništa mi ne preostaje
No čekati sutra

Od bola satkana
Tiha je želja
Svjesna da nije
Ništa više od toga

Ponižen do srži
Ponos
Na samrti se koprca
Vjeran sebi
A dotučen i izdan

Jedan glas moli
Jedan glas drhti
A svaki dah odzvanja u tami

Šapuće pogrešne riječi
Jer danas prave ne postoje
Sitne su sitne večernje nade
Kad se i onog "sutra" boje


BEZIMENA

Ništa ne pitaj! Ti sve znaš!
Moju ćutnju, moj smijeh, moje suze ti poznaješ
Ono što bijah, što jesam i što ću biti -
Tebi nije tajna

Ovaj čudesni sjaj nada mnom što sada bdije
Iz tvojih ruku podaren mi je
Ti si tu i kad se sunce za oblak skrije
A ja sam ovdje
A ono me, ipak, grije


TAMO U BIJELOJ DOLINI 
(must have been high!)


Dok zamišljam bijele doline

U bijelo mi se srce topi
Uživa u bekrajnoj Ljepoti
Zamišljam nezamišljivu ljubav,
Svjetlo iznad svih svjetala
Dijelove njegove u svima nama
I volim vas
Volim vas sve
I sretna sam što ste tu
A ja sa vama
Što vas vidim i čujem
Svi ste tako dragi
Svatko jedno malo čudo
Besprijekorni usred mana
Poznajem vas
Ne znam otkud
Bit će da smo se nekad davno sreli
Od tada, nešto je prekrilo trag
Kakvi li su vaši putevi sad
I hoću li ja kročiti njima

Učimo jedni druge
Što sami naučiti ne mogosmo
Spašavamo jedni druge
Tu ste zbog mene, a ja zbog vas

Napredujemo sa istim ciljem
Vratit cemo se odakle smo stigli
Očekujte me, jer očekujem vas
Tamo u bijeloj dolini

Gucci vs. Versace

ich bin die Kämpferin des Ich-Weiß-Nicht-Was
der willenlose Körper einer vulgär schweigenden Macht
der Schatten einer blendenden Güte
ein Hauch von Gott, geatmet aus einer Laune heraus
zu sein ohne Spur und ohne Richtung
eine schwebende Molekülansammlung
ewig tanzend am Rande der eigenen Vernichtung

meine Welt umgibt ein rosa Nebel,
der die Trümmer der Gleichgültigkeit verbirgt
ich würde ihr gern die Luft zum Atmen nehmen,
mich in ihr ausbreiten bis sie platzt,
eine schwarze Gucci aufsetzen bis Versace verblasst

ich bin die Trägerin des Gens der blauen Augen
auch wenn alle Spiegel sich zu Braun verschworen haben

meine Erde ist weder Scheibe noch Kugel -
sie ist ein fliegender Teppich,
für den mir noch der Führerschein fehlt
mein Kopf ist eine weich gefüllte Wüste,
in der aus jeder Richtung ein schwüler Gedanke weht

ich bin die Trägerin des Gens des Lachens,
doch verstehe ich den Clown nicht, der es aktiviert

Ironie ist der letzte Halm,
der nicht hält, sondern erhält
für die Rettung des Ich-Weiß-Nicht-Was
ordne ich mich ein in die Reihe,
die gegen Windmühlen kämpft

Bitter-Sweet Madness

The day before the wedding mother sat me down and said…

“I know you’re planning to do something tomorrow. But don’t! You had time enough to prevent this from happening. I tell you, tomorrow is not the time!”

“Mum…”, I tried to interrupt her.

“Don’t ‘mum’ me! You would just make a fool of yourself! He’s not the kind of man to change his mind shortly before the wedding. He’s not the kind of man to leave his bride in front of the altar. He has a heart. That’s why you still love him.”

She paused. I felt some kind of anger growing inside me, but I was not able to speak, not able to shout it out. Wasn’t she right?

“You have to let him go.”, she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t even go to the wedding. If it’s your destiny, you’ll be together again, one day. One day, but not tomorrow!”

When I came back home, I laid myself down. I felt tired. Through the window I saw the night coming closer. Inevitably. The green leaves, trembling softly in the wind, were loosing their colour. Yes, I was planning something. My heart was planning something unknown to my mind. That heart knew something my mind couldn’t grasp, or didn’t want to. As long as it didn’t, there would be no responsibility to be taken. I was listening to two voices inside me, none sounded like my own.

“You should use me.”, said the brain.

“You should do what you feel”, said the heart.

“What is that she feels?”, asked the brain.

“Without him, it’s emptiness.”, answered the heart.

“That’s a really dissatisfactory answer.”, said the brain.

That’s a really dissatisfactory answer, I repeated. With or without him, there was always emptiness. Two weeks ago. Only two weeks ago, he was lying here in my bed, watching me, asking, what did go wrong. Everything and nothing, I had repeated, you’re here.

“She’s easier to handle, isn’t she?, I had asked then and given him a scornful look.

“One can’t handle you at all.”, he had answered. “You can’t yourself.”

That’s when I had jumped out of the bed.

“Get out! Immediately! Get out of my bed, and my life! You are the reason, Tom! You are the reason for what you just said. Why did you come here at all?”

“Why are you angry?”, he had asked, approaching slowly. “The reason is very simple. Because I missed you and wanted to see you.”

I was crying.

“Clara, I had asked you first. Long ago. Be fair, it was your choice not to forgive me.”

My choice, I thought, still lying in my bed and watching the leaves turning black. The clock said 9:58. Still more than twelve hours left. There was too much time not to make a plan. A real plan. The heart suggested it, the mind would have to follow even though all I could think of were dissatisfactory answers. But I was sure, that those dissatisfactory answers could produce a satisfactory plan. Like people did in the movies, I would enter the church when the priest says:

“Speak now, or forever hold your peace" and shout: “I want to speak!” Everybody would turn around to see who the intruder was. Only Tom would already know. And I would say:

“The groom was unfaithful!”

No, rather:

“The groom is unfaithful!”

No, no, no. That was bad. Rather:

“The groom is the only man I have ever really loved.”

Too risky. So what?, they would say.

“The groom doesn’t love the bride. He loves me.”

Awful.

“Really? Why then, is Melissa the one wearing the wedding dress today?”, they would ask.

Right, the wedding dress, maybe I should arrive there in a wedding dress. I laughed. I watched too many movies, really. As far as I knew, “Speak now, or forever hold your peace" was irrelevant in modern wedding ceremonies. But I could make it relevant.

I was definitely going crazy.

I stood up and got me a bottle of wine from the kitchen.

Red wine on the wedding dress.

I could ask to see Melissa before the wedding and then ask her to drink to her and Tom. I would ‘accidentally’ spill the red wine on her dress, and say: “Oops, I am so sorry, Melissa.”

With every gulp my imagination produced fancier fantasies. I could kidnap the priest, lock him in in his room or somehow block the door while he’s in the toilet. That would be funny. But sooner or later they would find him, sooner or later Melissa would get a new dress, so all of these plans were not effective. All of these plans were only an ironic way of fighting the reckless beast of pain raging inside me.

“This was our last night, Clara.”, he had said when he was leaving the morning two weeks ago.

“Are you sure, Tom?”, I had asked, “You’ve never been good at monogamy.”

He had just turned around and walked away.

The silence around me was now as frightening as it had been that morning. This is what you’re going to hear for the rest of your life, I thought and drank the last drops of wine. This pain would abate, but my pride, my silly pride would always revive the pain. Would I ever be able to forgive Tom? He said, he had been drunk and it had been ‘only’ a one-night-stand. It was now more then two years ago. Shouldn’t I gradually calm down? Yes, it was my choice not to forgive him, but it was his choice not to wait for me to forgive him. He’s not that kind of man, to make the same mistake twice, my mother said, not knowing that we were still sleeping together every now and then. He’s not that kind of man, you can ever forget, or even hate, I thought. Wasn’t that worse than anything else?

That night I was running towards the altar with a bottle in my hand, screaming “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” and my mother was running after me shouting the same. The corridor seemed endless. The distance between myself and the altar increased, although I was sure that I was moving forward. When the priest suddenly said: “Excuse me, I have to go to the toilet.”, I opened my eyes realizing that it was just a dream.

This time the clock said 10:40.

But it’s not dark anymore, I mumbled. It was day. It was 10:40 a.m.

“Oh my God, the wedding! The wedding, I’ve missed the ceremony!”, I screamed and jumped up from the floor, where I had slept.

I rushed to the cupboard, tore it open, and randomly grabbed a piece of cloth. I still had my yesterday’s clothes on, so I started dressing and undressing at the same time. This wasn’t easy to manage, and unfortunately, or fortunately, I stumbled and fell down.

Slowly I sat up and then started to laugh.

“What were you trying to do?”, I asked myself. “It is too late to implement any of your ingenious plans.”

This plan had been made without me. Somebody must have realised, that waiting for my plan would have been like waiting for Godot.

When my cell phone rang twenty minutes later, I knew it was my mother.

“How was it?”, she asked.

“I haven’t been there”, I said.

“Oh, thanks God! That was a good decision, honey.”

“Decision!? I didn't decide anything. It was the wine that decided..”, I wanted to exclaim first. But then I thought that maybe that was destiny, too. So I said:

“Yes. It was a good decision.”

Not really mine by chance.

When the beast of pride, now still hungry for revenge, falls asleep one day, I will reach a state of mind that will give me back my peace.

That's the theory.

Theory is a simple thing.

I can clearly imagine the day it will happen.

I am being a little bit ironic.

Right now my live is completely beyond theory. It's because Tom used to take me far far away from it, and I'll have to walk a long way back. I know, I will miss the cosy little place of madness he showed me. I still don't want to feel the day I will not care about him, or not care about the things he did to me. All in the name of the precious theory: “He is bad, catapult him out of your mind.”

At the moment it feels like calling for help and getting the answer: “The state of mind you're calling is temporarily not available.” I guess I am dialling the wrong number, but it doesn't matter much. I generally got too used to bitter-sweet suffering – since I have met Tom, I forgot how to live without. By now, I am perfectly aware of only one thing: Until some good sounding theory becomes feeling, I will have to put up with the virus I caught when reason couldn't reach me because Tom enclosed me like a human shield. We've both been playing with that virus, but if we really quit, if it really ends here, we'll have to give up our sweet practical madness for some theoretical reason. But – maybe one could already notice – I have developed some sympathy for the virus...

Das Licht (2006)

Werden wir uns einmal alles gesagt haben?
Uns genug gefragt haben?
Werden wir vielleicht zu früh aufgeben?
Uns zu schnell auf das Aus einlassen?

Mach das Licht an.

Ich will dein Gesicht sehen.
Ich will kein Grübchen vergessen,
Keine Falte und kein graues Haar verpassen.
Ich will dir die Tränen wegküssen,
Wenn dich Traurigkeit plagt.
Ich möchte dir die Erleichterung des Gesprächs schenken,
Nicht den falschen Schutz der Schweigsamkeit.

Mach das Licht aus.

Schaffst du es, uns getrennt zu denken?
Es ist vergebens, auf Unsichtbarkeit zu bestehen.
Auch wenn alles Andere in Dunkelheit versinkt,
den Glanz deiner Augen kann ich immer sehen.
Wie du fühlst und was du denkst,
möchte ich selbst dann nicht überhören,
Wenn es verletzt.

Women in the 19th Century: Separate but Equal?

Cartoon from The Vote, a newspaper published by the Women's Freedom League (February, 1911)

This short summary of the texts I've read while preparing for my final exam in American Studies shows the history of masculine and feminine role models constructed almost two centuries ago. Unfortunately, they are not completely deconstructed yet.


While the 18th century America was dominated by the theological discourse, in the 19th century religion gradually lost its status as the central cultural defining power. In the theological discourse the subordination of women was viewed as ‘God-given destiny’. With the scientific progress in the 19th century this order started to lose its footing. A new - now more acceptable - reason for keeping the established gender hierarchy was found: NATURE.

The physical - biological - difference between men and women was extended by constructing men and women not only as totally different but also as binary oppositions: The male dominance was secured by codifying men and masculinity as the norm. The qualities assigned to men were connoted with strength and defined by reference to their opposite: the woman. Masculinity came to stand for humanity; the woman became “the other” - the deviation from the norm.
Not only men but also women came to understand the female sex as the passive, emotional, practical, patient, “silent and unseen” being who prefers and needs the shelter of home and the protection of a man because of her ‘natural’ weakness. For both men and women the differences between them seemed indisputable because they were justified by nature - and no one can fight nature. As a consequence of their respective attributes the physical difference between the sexes was extended to “naturally” determine their social roles.

Thus the world as a social construction was divided into two separate spheres. The masculine sphere was the public sphere, its according concept was power; the proper feminine sphere was the domestic sphere and here the according concept was moral influence. Because the separate spheres were established as “natural” and because they were accepted by both women and men, they could be claimed to be of equal value. Thus, on the surface, the subordination of women could be negated although on the economic, social and legal level women got the short end of the stick.


Ideology of Spheres

Home was regarded as the woman’s proper sphere. It provided shelter from the dangerous outside world. Outside the home, men engaged in hard work and competition.
In the 1960s Barbara Welter used the phrase “The Cult of True Womanhood”, meaning the cultivation of women’s virtues of domesticity, piety, purity and submissiveness in the 19th century. These virtues were of course working in favour of strengthening the difference between male ‘power’ and female moral ‘influence’.
A very interesting point is that the housework was never officially referred to as work. Cooking, baking, washing etc. were occupations, offices, even (the very romantic sounding) “mysteries”; they were considered pleasant duties - pleasant because in doing them, the woman could fully dedicate herself to her ‘natural’ role and function as the self-sacrificing, caring mother and wife. Her pleasant duties could not be compared to the ‘work’ or 'labour’ of men - maybe, because these were paid for. The woman presides over the sanctities of domestic life and the man is the ‘breadwinner’. Wage-earning was associated with manhood.


Working Women

But working women (such as the Lowell Mill Girls) did exist. For the white middle class women stressing the shelter of home could have been one way of distinguishing themselves from the working-class women and thus a means of maintaining class boundaries.
Jobs like those of the mill girls did not directly challenge men’s jobs because the women’s work there consisted of weaving, fulling, spinning which were famous for being pleasant ('naturally' feminine) duties. These worker's overseers were male (like it 'naturally' should be).
The problem was that this was new, paid labour. Another problem was the presence of those women in the public sphere, which was, analogous to the dominant discourse, regarded as rather ‘unnatural’. Wage earning women became symbols of the threats posed to the concept of manhood. Men’s anxieties were expressed by their complaints that women were taking jobs away from them (and thus the proper masculine role), and also through the working men’s call for ‘family wages’ – wage packets high enough to permit their wives and children to withdraw from paid work – thus identifying the husband as the proper and natural wage-earner.
Once again women’s unfitness for paid work was emphasised by calling attention to their ‘physical organization’, their ‘moral sensibilities’, ‘fragile constitution’ etc. Presumably, only man had the constitution for paid labour. To declare women unfit for work helped to justify underpaying them when they had to work.


Celebration of Motherhood

Another explanation of the discomfort with working women is the great importance tagged on women's social identity as mothers. The celebration of middle-class Motherhood was one of the main reasons of the marginalization of housewives as workers. The role of the mother was considered to be what God had in view when creating the woman.
In the working-class those women who could not or did not wish to remain in their homes and get absorbed in the maternal role, provided the excuse for a growing middle-class intrusion into the working-class households, as middle-class reformers claimed that women who could not or did not aspire to middle-class standards of domesticity, were poor mothers.


Middle-Class Reformers

Generally middle-class reformers were trying to help the urban poor, providing them with food, clothing and religious consolation. But very often their intervention was based on harsh and unsupported judgements. Facing the great crisis of poverty in the New York streets the reformers took the symptoms for causes and focused on transforming two elements of the working-class family life: the place of children and the role of women. The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) was founded. One of its programs was the so-called “placing-out” system. It sent poor children to foster homes in rural areas (where labour was scarce) – sometimes even without informing their parents. The goal was double fold: to disperse the surplus of labour but also to separate the innocent children from the tyranny of their unprotected mothers. Unprotected because many of those mothers were widows, and thus without a male protector. Unlike their middle-class contemporaries these women did not consider mothering a full time task of supervision. They expected their children to start working from an early age. By the 1850s, huckstering, scavenging and crossing-sweeping were the main means by which children could earn their keep.


Prostitution

Young girls also found another way of getting a living: prostitution. These were not professional child prostitutes; rather they turned to occasional prostitution to supplement other earnings. Prostitution was quite public in the antebellum New York. It was not yet a statutory offence, and although the police harassed streetwalkers and arrested them for vagrancy, they had little effect on the trade. The CAS members were worried about the modesty of the females of thirteen and fourteen walking the streets without a protector. During the century the attitudes surrounding prostitution changed from empathy for the prostitutes to utter rejection. Generally, today the majority of people have kept the latter Victorians’ attitudes towards prostitution.


Female Friendships & Networks

One more aspect of the female experience in the 19th century is the female friendship and women’s networks. The relationships ranged from the supportive love of sisters, through the enthusiasms of adolescent girls, to sensual avowals of love by mature women. Such intimate friendships were considered socially acceptable and fully compatible with heterosexual marriage. Many womanly bonds continued across a lifetime. Theirs was an emotional world to which men had little access. This was, as well, a female world in which hostility and criticism of other women were discouraged, and thus a milieu in which women could develop a sense of inner security. In this way women who had little status and power in the large world of male concerns, possessed status and power in the lives and worlds of other women.
One very intimate occasion that created very powerful bonds among women was childbirth. Pregnancy and childbirth carried with them the ever-present possibility of death or the prospect of permanent physical limitations. Women were looking forward for the childbirth with legitimate fear. The support of female friends, neighbours and family members helped them to manage the time of crisis.
Another aspect of fear from labour and delivery was that many women did not let it come that far. Abortion was not prohibited until ‘quickening’ (the moment when a woman for the first time felt the baby’s movements). No reliable tests for pregnancy existed, and even quickening could not confirm with absolute certainty that a woman was really pregnant. Hence, either a woman herself or a doctor could take actions designed to restore the menstrual flow after one or more missed menstrual periods on the assumption that something might be unnaturally “blocking” or “obstructing” her normal cycles. Abortion entered the mainstream of American life during the middle decades of the 19th century. It became highly visible and quite common as a means of family limitation among white middle-class women: At the turn of the 19th century American women bore an average of 7 children before their fertile years ended; at the turn of the 20th century it was 3 to 4 children.


Women’s Legal Status

To come back to the gender difference: It not only determined the division of work and the everyday spheres, but also women’s legal status in general.
Property, for example, was a masculine concept. Accordingly, subordination and dependence were feminine concepts. A woman’s legal status was tied to her marital status; once married, a woman became the property of her husband, along with any estate or wages she brought to the union. She could not sue, execute a will, or vote. In addition, she had no legal rights to her children and was excluded from higher education. Single women over 18 and widows could own property but could not vote. A married woman was thus left economically dependent on her husband and she relied on his beneficence.
Before 1848 a few laws were passed in some states in the U.S. giving women some limited property rights, but the 1848 Married Women’s Property Act was more comprehensive than its forerunners. It was amended to include even more rights in 1860; later, married women's rights to control property were extended still more.


Black Women

In the 19th century black women were either brought to America as slaves or were born in America as slaves. Their situation was particularly complicated. On the slave ships, unlike black men, black women and girls were not shackled. One of the consequences was that they were more easily accessible to the criminal whims and sexual desires of seamen.
Once in America, on the one hand their slaveholders expected them to work as hard as any male slave, on the other hand they were expected to provide their slaveholders with replenishment of their labour force. That means they were not only bought to work but also to bear children. And if the latter didn't happen voluntarily, the women were threatened and put under pressure until they finally gave in and went to live with men the slaveholder had chosen for them. Running away from the estates was also rather difficult with children and few women decided to leave their children when an opportunity appeared.
Also, after the abolition of slavery in 1865 in America, black women did not have much choice when looking for work. Usually the only jobs they could hope to get were jobs in domestic service. So the improvement of the black women's conditions went even slower, because they were not only facing gender but also racial discrimination.


The Woman’s Movement

The woman's movement in the 19th century concentrated on three main issues:
1. Service and social action along with male middle-class reformers.
2. The campaign for women’s rights, initially in the form of temperance unions and abolition, and gradually calls for suffrage.
3. Emancipation from structures, conventions, and attitudes reinforced by law and custom.

The underlying theme of the woman movement was that women were human beings too and had similar intellectual and spiritual properties as men, and, therefore, they deserved equal rights and opportunities to develop their potential as human beings. By the time of Seneca Falls Convention, women were ready for change.
In the struggle for women’s rights Elisabeth Cady Stanton was one of the leading figures. Encouraged by the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act in 1848, together with a network of other women and men who held egalitarian views, she organized the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, where 100 people (68 women and 32 men) signed the so-called Declaration of Sentiments. The Declaration of Sentiments was rhetorically modelled upon the Declaration of Independence. The latter’s “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal” was re-modelled into “that all men and women are created equal”. The main concern was to point out the overall subordination of the woman in legislation.
After the Seneca Falls convention Stanton met Susan B. Anthony and from then on they remained in contact and used to collaborate. Anthony is famous for leading a woman’s protest at the 1876 Centennial, delivering a Declaration of Rights written by Stanton and Frances Dana Barker Gage. Thereby women were asking that justice, equality, and all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the US, be guaranteed to them and their daughters for ever.
Other important women reformers were those associated with the Hull House – a social settlement founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Women in the Hull House were coresidents and friends. They collaborated with many other female institutions and gained much social power . They were connected to other women's organizations and they also cooperated with male reformers. The Hull House women were highly educated. Their focus was on the enforcement of antisweatshop legislation and the regulation of working hours for women as well as prohibiting work for children under 14 and regulating the labour of children aged 14-16.


Every time a woman crossed the borders of what was discursively defined as ‘proper’ for her, every time a woman showed that ‘nature’ didn’t prevent her from doing something that was thought of as ‘naturally masculine’, the power relations were at least a little bit challenged.
But the 19th century discourse cemented women as "the (subordinate) other", the deviance from the norm so firmly (because 'naturally') that the 21st century women still have to fight for equal rights and equal treatment of men and women, and they still need a thick skin and perseverance in order to prove that the separate spheres were socially constructed and not biologically given.

Kleiner und Kleines gebären nach herbeigesehnter Apokalypse eine neue Meinung

Das wird jetzt gleich ein bisschen krass. Die zart Besaiteten oder sehr romantisch Veranlagten, sollten das hier lieber überspringen. Für die Neugierigen und Mutigen: Wenn ich krass anfange, dann habt ihr das Schlimmste gleich hinter euch und könnt euch damit trösten, dass es nur besser werden kann.
Das Folgende war damals (vor gut 7 Jahren) ein Protestschrei gegen die heuchlerische Praxis:



Sei nicht traurig, Kleines
Sagte er

Dann nenne mir einen Grund

So ist die Welt,
So ist die Zeit

Schalt sie aus
Für sie bin ich nicht bereit

Zu spät, Kleines
Was willst du tun?
Sie rufen schon den Moloch

Nichts kann er mir tun
Ich fürchte ihn nicht

Gib dich nicht auf
Und sie auch nicht

Sie spucken
Ich blute
Sie schenkten mir
Ich schenkte mich nicht
Zu viel, zu wenig
Wer kann’s schon sagen

Hör niemals
Niemals auf

Ich will alles
Sag jetzt nicht: Werd erwachsen!

Du musst
Sonst werden sie dich opfern

Was kann ich schon anrichten...

Auch Würmer werden zur Plage
Sie werden dir vorbeugen
Stell dich nicht dumm
Du selbst hast so gewählt
Du versinkst in der Gülle
Und schreist nach mehr
Du nimmst ein Bad im Erbrochenen
Nur damit sie zu erwidern anfangen

Hey Kleiner
Lass doch den Zug
Ohne uns weiterziehen
Hier ist 'ne solide Bahnhofstoilette
Mit allen Kulturen, die dazu gehören
Wollen wir nicht hier Liebe machen?
Wollen wir nicht hier den ersten Wein trinken?
Ich will dich hier,
Ich werde nichts bekämpfen

An diesem Abend
Auf der besagten Toilette
Als Kleines kam
Wuchs es aus ihr:

Ich glaube, ich muss mir mehr nehmen
Als dieses Stück Fleisch -
Etwas mehr Seele, etwas mehr Geist.

Da riss sie ihren Mund auf
Und ab war sein Kopf

Verzeih mir, Kleiner
Anders kann ich nicht.
Es besagt die Selektion:
Entweder ich dich
Oder du mich

So ist die Welt
Reich der ewigen Irrzüge
Seine voluminösen Gehirne
Seit Geburt entstellt

II

Bist du schon bereit?

Alles zu bekommen und
Alles zu verlieren
Für die Geburt
Für den Tod
Für den Fick deines Lebens
Für die Leere danach
Für die Blamage des Jahrhunderts
Den Ruhm danach
Für verblühte Lorbeeren

Dinge beim Namen zu nennen
Mich
Beim Namen zu nennen

Auf der Suche nach dem Sinn
in einer Ordnung im Namen der Zivilisation
Tagelang zu warten
Monate zu verschwenden
Jahre zu opfern

Dich vor Scham zu verstecken
Dich von dem Gewissen brechen zu lassen
Nur um entzweit wieder hochzukommen,
Mit der Erkenntnis:
Zu zweit schläft es sich viel besser

Bereit,
Zu leben mit der Gewissheit,
Dass alles ungewiss ist,
Dass du den Kopf eigentlich nicht gebraucht,
Dass er in mir besser aufgehoben

Zu schade, Kleiner,
Dass du jetzt für immer schweigst -
Andererseits...

Ich kotz dich einfach raus
Ich weiß, du stehst drauf

Daraufhin beginnt die Welt zu beben,
Abgründe tun sich auf,
Verschlucken
Himmelhoche Brocken verstaubter Eitelkeit
Und gebären

Eine neue Meinung.