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Since end of August, Dutch student Noa Jansma has won dearcatcallers more than 345,000 Instagram-follower with her selfie project. The scene of her selfies is always street: in foreground one sees her serious, half-cut face, behind it a posing man or equal to a whole group of men. In captions you can read what se men of young woman have called after, in English is called catcalling: “I know what I would do with you”, “Baby”, “Sexy”, “hot girl”, and so on, whole litany of sexual harassment on street. In comments, Jansma gets a lot of approval for her project, but also for expected headwind: she is insulted as a feminist with fragile self-esteem, as a privileged woman with luxury problems, as a drama queen. The user freddiefred goes so far as to naturalize catcall: All men thought in sex, if y see beautiful women, it is only normal, if y would say so too. “You’ll understand when you’re older. In meantime, just keep girl and moaning about it. That’s what all young women do about that. It’s a life ritual. “
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“Moaning” – if you want to bring speech files freddiefred here as a “life ritual” of young women dismissing to a somewhat less derogatory term, you could speak of “complaints”. It is a form of speech that is particularly often assigned to young women when y protest publicly against discrimination. Last but not least, scandal about Harvey Weinstein has brought forth: an archive of complaints about sexual violence and sexism, which had to have been public for a long time, but were suppressed and concealed instead, although everyone who Had done of m knew.
In Germany, too, re have been many public complaints about sexism in recent months, albeit with much less attention: at end of August, Asta of Alice-Salomon-Hochschule in Berlin had protested against a poem by Eugen Gomringer on a wall, In opinion of students, structural violence against women was reflected, thus bringing discussion about destruction of works of art due to sexist or racist content to Germany. After a written Sexismusvorwurf to lecturers at Institute for Literary Writing and literary studies of University of Hildesheim, in support of complaining students, around 30 Experience reports on Everyday sexism in university and cultural business. Toger with Alina and editors of Mercury, I supervised and edited submissions.
About author
Lena Vöcklinghaus has been a PhD since 2016 in research college “writing scene Frankfurt” of Goe University in Frankfurt am Main. She was co-editor of literary magazine Bella Triste and has curated dossier sexism at universities in blog of journal Merkur.
The old rule: don’t complain!
The literary critic Mara Delius of world reacted at that time as one of first to our dossier. She gave us a piece of advice that had to be read in many comments in a modified form: “young authors” should not make mistake of tapping into “subjectivity and complaint trap”.
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The “complaint trap”, what a peculiar term. Apparently, somewhere on edge of career path of young women, re is a place of damnation that y can maneuver into when y complain too much and too carelessly. If a statement is categorized as a “complaint”, it always implies a rating: one could describe same sentences as a heldinnenhaftes “revolt” against ruling order, or simply as a pronouncement of truths that have been hushed for too long. “Complaint” does not sound so gloriously, it sounds more like passivity and powerlessness.
