Raoul Löbbert

He? She? More!
RAOUL LÖBBERT chooses CDU (me: the German conservative Christian Democratic Union party), reads "FAZ" (me: more conservative German daily printed newspaper) - and has a degree in Gender Studies. He says: Whoever stands up against unisex toilets has not understood anything.

»Gender studies are not a minority program. They are an exercise in compassion «

I have a secret. And as is the case with secrets, I reluctantly share it with strangers. Not that I'm embarrassed. What I did in my youth, I did out of conviction and inclination, not for money or career. I am just fed up with the justifications that I have been asked of to give, the dismissive looks of my mostly male colleagues, and the silence when these of my words slip out after the third after-work beer: "Yes, I am a man, and I have a degree in gender studies".

I can even understand the silence of my colleagues. What has not been written about gender? A madness it is, he last remaining ideology after fascism and communism. "Hokuspokus" at the expense of the state, says Alexander Kissler of the Cicero in toxic wording, an "air-booking" and a "pseudo-religion", which characterizes manhood as a "social construction." An "anti-science," writes ZEIT columnist Harald Martenstein, that "can not find anything, but wants to disprove something with all its might."

We gender apologists, so the repeated accusation, would refer solely to our existence, to persuade man that he was his own God and as such had to decide whether he wanted to be a man or a woman himself . The heterosexual normal condition, they assume, is a horror for us. That is why we wanted to destroy marriage and the family and make people happy, so that they are happy in polyamorous communities, according to our circumstances.

So I sit then after my confession in the pub, hold on to my beer and tell my colleagues, what gender really is. And as I am a happy (and with a woman) married man, who likes to go to football, chooses CDU and reads FAZ rather than taz, I explain how I have studied this alleged gender hulaballoo (me: fuss?). Having to do that after a long day is no fun - and a long story it is as well.

The short version is: I was asked. A lecturer with "pagenschnitt" (short cut male-like hair cut) and a handy-sized earring spoke to me when I was a sociology student and wanted to get a quick degree, apart from good grades. "Don't you want to go come to my seminar?" The lecturer asked. "We need men ... like you." It is true, I thought. The university is not a mere mass administration. There are academic protection zones where one sees in students more than the student ID numbers. I had to look at that.

When I entered the Gender Studies seminar a few days later, I wondered if the other men were smoking somewhere outside. I was alone and remained alone among the two dozen women. Why do I mention this? Because most of the texts that condemn the "gender ideology" were written by men, who have never seen a gender studies seminar from the inside. All the more they spread the word about how we are doing this. How we waste taxpayers money with our spinnery.

I learned to argue in that seminar. That was a new experience. In other fields of study there were no disputes (Me: this is at German universities). The professors were quoting and citing data they did not care about. Students painted silently in their ring binders, were numbed by boredom and futility, only to wake up after 15 to 20 semesters.

As an exotic bird in the Gender Studies seminar, between women who often quarreled about whether the homosexual marriage was bourgeois or overstretched, wether the Binnen-I (me: I can't translate this as I don't know what it means in German) is embarrassing, or the super-weapon in the fight against the patriarchal dictum. For the first time at the university this seemed to be the place where big questions are asked. In which world do we live? More important: in which do we want to live? And most importantly, what does gender have to do with it?

Fortunately, understanding the theory was easy for me. There is sex, I learned. With sex, social scientists mean the biological sex. And there is gender. With gender it means there are the expectations, conventions, and curative statements associated with the biological gender in a society. Sex is what comes to mind, but gender determines how we live. It explains why women in the euro zone earn an average of 16 per cent less hourly wages than men. Or why leadership in many companies is still the subject of gray-haired suitcases with sports cars. So, as a potential manager, as the manager of a pharmaceutical company once told me, she also drives sports cars and laugh at every dirty joke made by the boss.

In a subtle way, power is exercised on the (me: female) manager. The men who laugh with them, are also not so much better of. Perhaps they find the boss's joke also stupid. But they must not show that. By sacrificing the woman, they bend themselves to a certain idea of masculinity. So common is this compulsion that we usually regard it as natural.

Gender Studies take this power under the microscope. And under the magnifying glass that kind of "natural" power does not seem so unalterable. The chief (me: manager, CEO) is by no means inspired by his sexual organ to tear the dirty joke. He has a choice. Gender studies remind people of this freedom of choice. Gender studies appeal to the responsibility of the individual and urge him to be more conscious and less reckless in dealing with others. Gender Studies are an exercise in fellow humanity.

The fact that you want to become a better person does not mean that you just believe that you are one. Gender Studies degrees do not lead to enlightenment. In my seminars I met wise and foolish, open-minded and bigoted. There were fellow students who did not want to talk to me because I was a man and never intended to change anything, and there were those who looked at me like an extraterrestrial and regularly asked, "What does our 'man' (husband?) say to that?"

I learned a lot about militancy there in the lecture hall. There are truth monopolies everywhere. They are all the same disgusting to me everywhere. For passion, however, I can inspire myself. Passion is needed to not take the world as it is. That is why I have a weakness for romantic ideas, high-flying plans and well-meaning idiocy. The idiocy usually takes care of itself after a while, if one argues long enough about it. I learned this from and among women. They made me more relaxed. And if once again someone asks that Germany needs a gender-balanced allocation of street names, I am rather amused today than that it makes me angry.

I also wished there would be more dis-passionateness towards the gender opponents. They like to overlook what they are talking about, and they fall back on details that seem particularly bizarre to them, like currently, the unisex toilets. As if they were so confusing to the Germans, that the German does not know what he is and wants to be when he is flushing the toilet. The unisex toilet as a battlefield for the fight to save the 'occident" is conceivably unsuitable. After all, with their (the gender opponents) help, the quiet place (me: the little outhouse with a heart so to speak) should become precisely the non-ideological zone, where everyone can ease (me: shit and pee), regardless of sex and gender.

Gender Studies are not a minority program. This can be seen quickly when one manages to get no more excited about it. For all of us sexual identity is an amalgam of a grain of biological truth and a lot of self-staging In the end a Sugar Daddy, who gets his butt (surgically) lifted, does not differ so much from the transgender woman, who wants to adapt her appearance to her image. Only that the self-optimization of the former falls under personal freedom, while in the latter it is regarded as abnormal, if not ill. Backward laws make life difficult for transsexuals. And they are not changed. Too much effort for the few transgender brothers and sisters.

And now I am really taking it personally. Not because I'm going to change my gender, but because I know it's easy to write about individual destiny and writing right over it, when you screw in at a point (I apologize to all Sugar-Daddy's: you live your dream!). And because I've learned that it takes courage to meet for a beer with individual fates.

Three years ago Michael, an ex-colleague, announced on Facebook that he had always felt like a woman. Now, in the middle of 50, he would live like that and be called Vivian. We agreed. I was curious. Transgender I knew until then only as a term from my seminar. We agreed to meet. I was curious. Transgender I knew until then only as a term from my seminar. This was the practice test.

I waited two minutes before the pub. I could feel panic in me, a diffuse, totally irrational fear. I'm still going. If I had not, I would not have known about Vivian today. I would not have known that she sometimes she was standing behind the front door of her home in one of the costumes she had hoarded, not daring to leave and to be scared, scared to be beaten and harassed verbally and mobbed. I would have just remembered Michael, a timid guy, who you had forgotten, as soon as he was out of the room. I'd never seen what was so long buried in this man without edges: a woman in a red skirt, who seemed to care about the looks of the end-of-party drinkers around us. She stood up when she saw me. She waved. She smiled as broadly as I had never seen Michael smiling in the past before.

Two long beers we talked about the gender fuss (hullabaloo, then to the real meaning of life: football. And while Vivian was thrilled for the 1. FC Cologne (for me a sporting orientation against nature), I realized: It is about him, my fellow neighbor and colleague, and his freedom to decide about his own life.

Those who are closest to them, like to forget gender opponents. His pursuit of happiness falls under the table, when they come with the 'great whole', with nature, reason, or God. And, of course, gender studies speak of the whole: equality, justice. Demanding it is a beginning. The hard part is to live it, to overcome again and again.

When one of my colleagues asks me, "Why Gender Studies?", I answer "Vivian". Because I, despite my degree in Gender Studies with top grades, only this evening, in this pub, really correctly understood.

I translated this article (all mistakes, possible misinterpretations are mine), because when I passed by a newspaper stand, the cartoon above on the front page of "Die Zeit", triggered me. I could not forget it, because the image made me think too long and too much. How I wished we wouldn't have "to look" into our pants and if we have to, I wished, we would get an answer we understand.

I also found myself admitting, that I had more compassion for emprisoned Bradley Manning than I have for pardoned and free Chelsea Manning and I felt ashamed to realize that, however weak that emotion popped up. So, I like this article. It says "Gender Studies are an exercise in fellow humanity." And I was reminded of the saying:
"Jeder soll nach seiner Façon selig werden". (Chacun a son plaisir)
And we should work to defend that right. Right?

And now I am nervous to have said something that might be not sensible enough. Sigh.
Hope you don't mind me translating an article in full, which I liked. If it's too much, let me know, I redact passages to stay within "the law".