For the 80th of the feminist pioneer: A for Alice

A for Alice, that’s A for rebellion, specifically rebellion against patriarchy. Alice Schwarzer stands for this like nobody else in Germany. She owes the second revolt after the revolt, that of the women. When young radicals took to the streets against hierarchies, oppression and exploitation in 1968, their theory of gender relations was a “side contradiction” of the system.

A for attack. Then Schwarzer pointed to the elephant in the room, or rather, to the female elephant, to the woman question. Yes, women were subject to hierarchies, oppressed and exploited. By men. When it came out in 1975, Schwarzer’s bestseller, translated into twelve languages, had the effect of a bang.

Minutes of conversations with housewives, students, secretaries report on housework, money worries, experiences of violence, abortion, sexual problems – a lot of everyday things for which there were hardly any words in everyday life. It was an attack on taboos just as the pill, porn and “sex wave” promised sexual liberation but increasingly objectified women.

A for pivot: Sexuality, wrote Schwarzer, is “the pivot” of the women’s question. “Here the dice fall. (…) Here is the foundation of male power and female powerlessness.” Many women no longer felt alone. “The book made me famous and notorious in one fell swoop,” Schwarzer later rejoiced. “For some I was the boowoman of the nation, for others a confidant.” Suddenly the elephant was no longer invisible in the room, but roamed through the china shops of the patriarchate.

A for autonomy. Self-determination over one’s own body, over intimate relationships, contraception, pregnancy, abortion, forms of life is elementary for feminism. That “the small difference” legitimized manifest inequalities should no longer be accepted as “natural”, but understood as cultural and changeable.

Sexuality – this is where the dice fall.”

Alice Schwarzer

A for enlightenment. Alice Schwarzer received groundbreaking impulses in France, where she first came as an au pair at the age of twenty. Born in Wuppertal on December 3, 1942 during the war, the only child of an unmarried mother grew up with grandparents. After business school and an apprenticeship, the young woman in Paris wanted to see more of the world. This was followed by a newspaper traineeship in Düsseldorf and a return to Paris as a correspondent and student of sociology. There she became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, from where she carried the French-influenced courage to enlightenment to Germany.

A for authority. In 1977, with the proceeds from the “Kleinen Difference” she founded a feminist archive and the magazine “EMMA” in Cologne, which is now published quarterly. On the side, Schwarzer writes books, discusses on talk shows, travels, talks, guesses on quiz shows and jokes there with a soccer player like Sepp Maier, no matter what her friends say about it. Incredible energy, tremendous presence, strong achievements, powerful authority – that has big consequences. This also brought jealousy and conflicts within the team. Schwarzer, the left, who had called for Angela Merkel to be elected chancellor, always remained amazingly sovereign.

A for arguments. Today, Schwarzer is active against Islamism, and for this she reaped outrage because of her alleged “white feminism”. Concerned about “saber-rattling” in German politics over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she signed an open letter in favor of peace negotiations, undeterred by accusations of naivety. She also takes on the woken ambience, and she, who describes herself as bisexual, is considered by some to be “transphobic”.

She is convinced that while biological sex provides the pretext for social gender roles, it is not a reason for “fundamental denial of biological sex”. Schwarzer recognizes “magical thinking” in this, and she fears that it is increasing. That is why the issue of Emma, ​​which will appear in mid-December, is dedicated to this topic.

A for love. “In 50 years of the women’s movement we will not overcome 5000 years of patriarchy,” says Alice Schwarzer. She also has a great gift for happiness. Six months after the introduction of “Marriage for All”, in June 2018, Alice Schwarzer married her longtime partner, the photographer Bettina Flitner.

How intensely both of them support each other becomes clear in the poignant and clever book that Flitner published in April about her own childhood. What does she want for her birthday? Alice Schwarzer is laconic: “For the world: peace. For women: Less male violence. For me: a little more leisure.”

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