Femicides: Sexualized violence: Whether Lisa, Nadia, Rahel or Serina…

Harvey Weinstein, Dieter Wedel, Gérard Depardieu and others – it seems as if the film industry offers a particularly favorable breeding ground for sexual violence against women. A fallacy fueled by the omnipotence of headlines. Sexual or sexualized violence occurs in all areas of society and social classes, regardless of cultural or religious background. At work and at home, in public and non-public spaces. But it was the attacks and rapes by celebrities, which testify to unbearable contempt for women and aggressive machismo, that caused global outrage, brought a social grievance that had been hidden, silenced, repressed and denied for far too long into the public debate and gave birth to the #MeeToo movement called – which has now suffered a bitter setback with the scandalous overturning of a verdict against US film mogul Weinstein.

The lawyer Christina Clemm from Berlin-Kreuzberg has represented hundreds of victims of gender-based violence in her almost 30-year professional life. Your book »Inspection of files. Stories of Women and Violence” (2020), she followed up with a second one: “Against Misogyny.” She understands “women” not only in the two-gender sense, but, as she makes clear at the beginning, includes “all people who are read as female,” including trans women, people who see themselves as non-binary, and trans men who are also subject to patriarchal hatred Suffer. She offers harrowing examples from her activism and advocacy work. In order to maintain confidentiality and protect her clients, she changed names and locations, which does not diminish the terrible truth of the atrocities she denounced.

Christina Clemm, whose book was nominated for this year’s Leipzig Non-Fiction Prize, is not only about sexual violence, but also about sexualized violence, in which the focus is not on drive or satisfaction, but rather on “a particularly degrading form of exercise of power and discrimination.” the man. »Sexual violence does not begin with brutal rape. It starts with everyday verbal attacks. “It is carried out through looks, hand signals, sayings and often digitally,” the term “catcalling” includes sexually connoted behaviors and various types of sexual harassment even without physical contact, such as lewd comments or obscene shouts.

You can feel the author’s deepest disappointment and holy, righteous anger in every line, in every tragic story described here. The most dangerous place for a woman is still her own home, the most threatening person is often her own partner, the lawyer knows and talks about Lisa, a studied sociologist and philosopher, who was punched so violently in the stomach by her husband in a fit of rage while she was pregnant will mean she has to go to the emergency room.

After the birth of the child, which was soon followed by a second, things got worse and worse, even though Lisa bowed to her husband’s wishes and gave up her doctorate and professorship. She suspects that one day he will kill her. And finally dies from seven stab wounds in the back. Her murderer husband is given reduced criminal responsibility because of his drunken state, and on top of that he gets out of prison early because of “good behavior.” A particularly drastic example, but not an exception. It also shows that it is not uncommon for men who feel intellectually inferior to their wives to try to compensate for their self-esteem with violence.

Or Nadia, a political activist and feminist who runs her own small company and speaks five languages: Her partner can’t cope with the fact that she has “a mind of her own.” Nadia’s mother asks the police for help several times. “They listened to her and put the record of her complaint on the pile of the other unprocessed complaints.” Inaction or even unwillingness leads to Nadia ending up in an intensive care unit.

The failure of the executive branch when it comes to violence against women is outrageous. In the case of Rahel, who was beaten into a coma by her husband and suffered a fractured skull and an arm, the verdict states that the sentence should be reduced because the defendant loves his son very much and he cannot be expected to be separated for a long time. Serina, who has been exposed to verbal, physical and sexual violence since the beginning of her marriage, manages to escape to a women’s shelter with her two children and file a criminal complaint, but the youth welfare office is more likely to believe her husband, who portrays himself as a loving family man.

“I have heard many threadbare explanations from perpetrators and have paid too much attention to the explanations of their alleged desperation, their justifications, and their attempts to blame the women,” writes Christina Clemm. »What interests me is not why they do it, but rather why they don’t. And why they are not prevented from doing so.”

But she also asks: Do women not defend themselves enough? And why? Shame, disgust, pain, despair, uncertainty and confusion, fear and panic paralyze those affected. And the bitter experience that they are not taken seriously, their suffering is not acknowledged, and no one seriously protects them. Women have to justify themselves. Didn’t they actually encourage the violence inflicted on them, provoke it, whether through their appearance or by speaking back? Authorities often do not believe the victims or do not want to believe them. And that doesn’t just affect the lower authorities. The BKA and the Ministry of the Interior see graffiti as a criminal offense that – as in Berlin-Friedrichshain – states: “Feminism is for everyone” or: “Smash the patriarchy”.

“The resentment is systemic and systematic, the hatred is structural, targeted and not only inherent in the patriarchal system, but stabilizing it,” emphasizes Christina Clemm. One could also speak of patriarchal hatred. “It doesn’t come out of nowhere: contempt for women is instilled and tested early on.”

Misogyny is also omnipresent and widespread in Germany. “Germany is lagging behind in the fight against gender-based violence,” complains Christina Clemm. According to studies by the European Institute for Equality, the Federal Republic ranks eighth in Europe for femicides. These are not just so-called honor killings of Islamist madness – the perpetrators often include right-wing extremists: “The hatred of women and everyone who dares to cross the binary gender order is, along with racism and anti-Semitism, a mainstay of right-wing extremist ideologies.” The The author shows that the attackers in Oslo (2011), Halle (2019), Hanau (2020), Christchurch (2020), Colorado Springs (2022) all adhered to anti-feminist ideologies.

The Ciudad Juárez femicides in Mexico in the 1990s led to a clear definition of the most extreme form of gender-based violence: the killing of women and girls simply because they are women and girls. German criminal law does not recognize femicide as a separate criminal offense. And fatal violence against women is seen as accidental rather than intentional. Hanebüchen! The lawyer Christina Clemm is understandably cautious about the demand for a new, special murder paragraph, but vehemently advocates a fundamental reform of homicide crimes. Those based on misogyny or contempt for women should be viewed as particularly reprehensible and punished accordingly, as should those based on racist, anti-Semitic or anti-queer motives.

In El Salvador there has been a “special law for a non-violent life for women” since 2010. Why not in Germany? In 2018, the Convention “on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence”, the so-called Istanbul Convention, was adopted, which was ratified by 54 states, including Turkey, which, however, withdrew three years later at the behest of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan . The author complains that the signatory state Germany is one of the “slow to implement states”. For a long time, German jurisprudence simply ignored the Istanbul Convention. What cynicism: When it comes to the deportation of migrants, the authorities in this country refer to this. Countries that are among the signatories are considered safe, regardless of the real social, misogynistic situation on site.

What should I do? »Sexism and misogyny must be fought against at all levels, as early as possible and with lots of resources, imagination and courage. It is not enough to oppose the mechanisms of oppression; people must be empowered to understand gender equality and stand up for it. This starts with upbringing and education.« Christina Clemm is not content with describing the situation and analyzing it; she also offers concrete suggestions for the protection of women and non-binary people, including obvious and easy-to-implement ones such as the recognition of suffering and pain Respect for the victims, sufficient counseling centers, women’s shelters and shelters as well as trauma-sensitized medical care, free access to legal advice and legal representation, rapid and non-discriminatory investigation and criminal proceedings including mandatory training for judges, investigating officers and prosecutors on the subject of gender-based violence and racism .

It may sound a bit pathetic to some people when Christiane Clemm calls on her readers: “Smash the patriarchy – solidarity is our weapon!” She is right.

Christina Clemm: Against misogyny. Hanser, 256 p., hardcover, €22.