Queer feminism, the
Queer feminism refers to a multifaceted movement of feminism, both activist and academic, that has gained increasing prominence in Germany since the 1990s.
Queer feminism assumes that gender is not biologically or psychologically predetermined, but that both, sex and gender as well as the roles tied to them are socially assigned. Gender, body and sexuality thus have mutable meanings that have evolved historically and culturally. The supposedly natural gender binary and heterosexuality (i.e., the organization of society on the basis of two genders, man, and woman, who are exclusively supposed to desire each other) are criticized as social norms. Queer feminism instead embraces a differentiated range of genders, sexualities, and forms of desire.
Queer feminism does not recognize womanhood as a universal perspective, as people who are ascribed female do not have a universal set of experiences. Heterosexual, white, lesbian, Black, transgender, poor women - they are all discriminated against in some ways similarly, in some ways differently. Different modes of discrimination therefore play an important role in queer feminism and are understood as a challenge to act in solidarity and to think through differences. The diverse composition of a queer feminist movement is thus influential for its visions and political demands.
Sources (in German)
- Braidotti, R. Patterns of dissonance. A study of women in contemporary philosophy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, p. 142.
- Haraway, D. (ed.). "A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century". In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991, p. 161.
- Klingner, C. "Dualism formation: pre-findable to thought, inescapable and false". In B. Kortendiek, B. Riegraf & K. Sabisch (Eds.), Handbook of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (pp. 165-175). Springer VS, 2019.
- Lichtenstein S., Rolling Eyes Collective (Eds.). Rolling Eyes Glossary: A project of the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences 2019, Department of Social and Cultural Sciences. Düsseldorf, 2019. last accessed 26.03.2020.
- Rohde-Dachser, C. Expedition into the dark continent - femininity in the discourse of psychoanalysis. Springer, 1991, p. 61.
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