Lesbian, gay. Everything normal?
The news spread like wildfire in the break, some pupils and students ran across the hall, others reacted stunned, many said that they had guessed anyway. "Yes, I live with a woman," teacher Karin Gabriel had answered as simply as directly to the question of a student. A courageous step, whether at this secondary school in Westphalia Bocholt or in the middle of Hamburg or Berlin. Even if she is the only one who has outed, today it is no longer an issue for students and colleagues. And when in fact the curse word "gay pig" falls on the schoolyard and Karin Gabriel is there, she can look at the young people, how embarrassing they are, "because they immediately realize what crap they are talking about".
Some things make her very controlled. For example in physical education. "For example, in a somersaults, you may accidentally touch the butt instead of the neck when the tempo is not right, so I always say very clearly what can happen, but many male colleagues are also doing it now To prevent misunderstandings. " There are days when she is very thin-skinned. And others she is angry about having to explain because of her sexual orientation. "To endure such an outing process is not easy," says the 47-year-old. But it's worth it. For the students who are homosexual, but do not know it well or keep it to themselves, for everyone else - and for themselves. She remembers well that she thought as a student, she was the only person on the whole world that feels that way. To date, no student, no student has turned to her. "But the fact that I am standing in front of them is good, and they see that it leads a normal life and is not broken."
But the daily tightrope walk is troublesome for many. And so unlike the dazzling image that advertising and media now draw from homosexuals. Above all, gay culture is in demand: fashion designers such as Wolfgang Joop and Karl Lagerfeld, choreographer John Neumeier, comedy stars Hape Kerkeling and Hella von Sinnen have shaped the media climate of tolerance for years. Not to mention Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's governing mayor. The sense of understanding culminated a few months ago in the headline of a tabloid: "Will Wowi the first gay chancellor?" In a photo, the mayor posed closely entwined with his partner Jörn Kubicki.
In fact, a lot has changed for the estimated five percent of lesbians and gays in Germany in recent years. For five and a half years they are allowed to enter a "registered civil partnership", so marry. And more and more often they live together with children - mostly from previous relationships - in a "rainbow family". For Constanze Körner, project manager at the Lesbian and Gay Association of Germany (LSVD), the trend is unmistakable: "The gay scene is becoming bourgeois." Adapted, less exotic than it was ten or twenty years ago, that may seem right at first glance to the lifestyle of most homosexuals. If you take a closer look, you will see the cracks in the ultramodern façade of our society. Pharmacist Sabine Scholer *, 48, does not really want to call herself a lesbian. She does not like the word. All those who look at you would get a tunnel look and think about sex. She says, "I fall in love with women and live with a woman." Nevertheless, she has worn the lesbian women's sign very discreetly on a thin necklace for many years. In the pharmacy, it has already happened to her that a respectable customer has slipped her a note under the recipe, which read: "Where is there a scene here?" She could not help her. The only lesbian cafe in the small town that opened in the women-moving 80s has closed down. Sabine and her partner Martina Witter * do not care about that. They say they do not need this shelter. Nevertheless, they do not want to give their names. The reason: their fear of outing at work.
Martina works as an occupational therapist in a Protestant nursing home. The home director is very conservative, he would not accept that, believes the 44-year-old. Every now and then he and his colleagues make gay jokes, reports Martina: "It always upsets me, but then I say nothing again." More than half of homosexual women and men in Germany have not raided their workplace, according to a survey by the lesbian magazine L-Mag; to a similar result comes a still unpublished study of the University of Cologne. They constantly live with the fear of being recognized - and at the same time they often long for it.
Like Martina, who drives by motorcycle on Christopher Street Day in front of the nursing home because she secretly hopes that a colleague will address her the next day. And that could then be the impetus to come out. Because secrecy has something shameful. Silence costs strength. Holiday pictures, for example, have to be sorted out before the colleagues are allowed to see them. Claudia Wohlers *, head of department in a large IT company in Munich, reports: "I only show landscape pictures." And when she talks about the weekend on Mondays in the office, she describes her experiences in detail, but always speaks of herself and her wife as "we".
That is an automatism, to which one gets used, says Barbara Sander *, 50, who works for a major insurance company in Stuttgart and founded the "Wirtschaftsweiber" seven years ago, a network of lesbian specialists and executives. A petite blond woman in business clothes and with pearl necklace. At the beginning of her career, she kept secret that she lives with a woman: "I wanted to be sure that any initial mistakes would not be pushed to my lesbian." The biggest hurdle was the leap to department head. Hiding her private life, she believes, could have been judged from this position as a lack of confidence in her superiors. When she got the job, she consecrated her boss. That's a good thing, he said, but she better not talk so openly about it, not all in the company could handle it. Even today, she varies, whether she should take her wife to a business lunch or not. On the other hand, Sander also sees advantages for lesbians in the professional life - they could make their career better, because most do not want to take a baby break, she says.
A European market research study from 2004 confirms this. According to the estimated 1.6 million homosexual women in Germany have an above-average income - but they still earn less than homosexual men. Such figures should not obscure the fact that in many business circles "ice coldness continues to prevail over homosexuals," says Christoph Wolf, former federal chairman of the gay network "Völklinger Kreis". In business, it is still not natural for him to speak of "my husband" in many situations.
This is what Bert Kruger *, 53, thought. For eight years he worked for an international company in Dusseldorf, most recently as marketing and sales manager. Then came the day when he was outed by an anonymous letter to his boss. Bert Kruger's voice trembles as he reads from the letter. There are lines of malice and false accusations, such as the statement that he has AIDS. "That's the only thing I could refute, with a medical certificate," he says bitterly. His trust in his colleagues was destroyed from then on. He suspected almost everyone had written the letter: "Suddenly the company was no longer home, but a crime scene." He became more insecure at work, withdrew internally. His boss was now often irritated. At some point Krüger was no longer invited to the important meetings. And finally he got a notice. Allegedly for operational reasons. Bert Krüger was no longer employed and has since worked as a self-employed person.
"Homosexuality is still associated with the same amount of negative feelings as 30 years ago", it says in an investigation of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Social Affairs. However, the focus is not on the hell of an office, but "the school as a homophobic place". According to a survey conducted by the opinion research institute Iconkids & Youth, the rejection of homosexuals among young people has increased dramatically: from 34 percent in 1998 to 61 percent in 2002. One possible reason: the fear of the future of many young people. Those who fear being pushed to the margins of society often attack those who stand there from their point of view: homosexuals and migrants. This trend can also be seen among adults: in a representative study conducted by the University of Bielefeld, 22 percent of respondents said last year that "homosexuality is immoral." In 2005, just under 17 percent had answered yes to the same question.
Stefan stands out. The 19-year-old likes to wear fancy clothes and gesticulates heavily with his hands. "Sometimes I'm a bit diva-like and eccentric," he says. Gays like Stefan have a hard time at school. After his outing in the eleventh grade of a high school in Hamburg he was for many only "Stefanie" and "fagot". In physical education, he was always chosen as the last in the team. In the locker room, the classmates moved over him, only the girls stopped by him. The teachers pretended not to notice. Stefan's school performance deteriorated rapidly. "I knew that the Oberstufenkoordinator is gay," says Stefan. "But I hesitated a long time to go to him.I wanted to be no sneaks and no sacrifice. "The step proved to be just right: After a crisis talk with Stefan's teachers and a student who had pestered Stefan particularly bad, stopped the hostility.
Especially heterosexual boys react in puberty aggressively towards peers who deviate from their masculinity. Her behavior is to a certain extent necessary to feel male, says diploma educator Steve Behrmann. He looks after "Soorum", a sexual education program for young people in Hamburg. He experiences again and again that boys and girls differ in this process. "Soft boys do not fit the male ideal and are therefore more likely to stand out than peanuts." The result: Young gays are often attacked verbally or physically, seeking help from teachers. Lesbian girls, on the other hand, can hide more easily, at least as long as they have not outed. For them, this raises another problem: nobody perceives them. And that means nobody takes them seriously, not even themselves. "Many more women than men profess their homosexuality at the age of 30, before that they often marry and have children," says Steve Behrmann. In their biographies, a part of lesbian history is repeated - they remain invisible. "Hiding, pretending another reality, yes, defining yourself not once as a minority has become second nature to lesbians," says Maren Kroymann. The cabaret artist is one of the few prominent women who professes her lesbian identity. There are quite a few homosexual politicians, television women and actresses, but hardly anyone who says so out loud.
One Tuesday afternoon in Hamburg. Weekly meeting of the young lesbians in the basement rooms of the association "Intervention". Girls who come here do not want to hide. A man is standing in the street staring through the glass. He lurches his tongue and takes hold of his crotch. "This happens more often here," says Jana, 21. On her tight T-shirt is "Dykes in the city" - lesbians in the city. She has a pretty face and walks like a boy, legs apart, teetering and with her hands in her pockets. "Everyone always immediately sees me as a lesbian," she says, laughing. Unlike Lena with her long black hair and female figure. "Nobody believes me at first," says the high school student. Nadine, 20, keeps hearing: "You do not look lesbian at all." For lack of real heroines, Jana sought her in the fiction: "After my coming out, I have devoured lesbian films." They already exist in film and television, the new model lesbians - they have even moved into "Lindenstraße" and "Marienhof". But only with the US series "The L-Word", which ran on Pro7 last summer, a new era started. The series not only focused on lesbian life in all its everyday life for the first time. It also freed the lesbians from an image problem. For decades, they were considered fashion lovers, as anti-consumption and notorious fun-objectors, in contrast to the often style-conscious gays. In "The L-Word" the lesbians look great, dress feminine and earn a lot of money. How stubbornly the prejudice of the gray mouse still holds, experienced "L-Mag" editor-in-chief Manuela Kay again and again. The advertising business for her magazine is running badly: "There is no ad that specializes in lesbians."
In real life, Jana and her friends are more annoyed about the constant sexual harassment. It happens, says Nadine, that strange men came up to her and her friend and asked: "Do you want to join me, I can only watch." The worst thing for them, however, was that high school classmates pushing them down the escalator in the subway after their outing. And the suggestive remark of a schoolmate in front of the whole class: "Tell us how you do it!" Lena was not up to the pressure from the outside. "I was extremely opposed to being attracted to women," she says cautiously. Only after a change of school she could openly confess to it. She has not said anything to her mother until today. Like Nadine, she left home when she was 16 years old.
The loneliness in the years of the hunch, the self-denial and finally revelation is great for all young people. Many despair in this phase. Like the 17-year-old Michael, who took his own life at Starnberg last summer. He had fallen madly in love with a classmate who rejected him. The parents tried to strengthen Michael, but nothing helped. Michael threw himself in front of a commuter train, after a last, desperate call to his great love. Now a prize has been created by gay and lesbian youth groups that bears Michael's name and promotes tolerance.
Bitter necessary: According to a study by the Berlin Senate, 18 percent of homosexual youth have ever tried to kill themselves. Thus, the rate of suicide attempts in them is four times higher than in adolescents in total.Especially in rural areas, lesbian gay youth centers are lacking, where they can get therapeutic help and meet like-minded people. Although many chat about chats on the Internet. But in case of need, no virtual contacts help. This is greatest when those people who are closest to them turn away: "For most parents, their child's commitment to being gay is still a shock," says social worker Almut Dietrich. With fathers dominate the rejection, with the mothers the concern that one could not be so happy. There are also feelings of guilt: what did we do wrong? Ask the parents. Why am I just like that? Ask sons and daughters. Quite a few parents react with house arrest, controlling the mobile phone, bursting into the room, when there is a visit, to physical violence. Only in a few cities, for example in Berlin, there are housing groups for those who can no longer bear it at home. "But the yearning for reconciliation is great, everyone wants to return home by Christmas at the latest," says supervisor Andrea Lebek from the association "Gleich und Gleich".
When will her life be really normal? "When parents are as happy about their child's first love as they are about a heterosexual child," says Renate Rampf, spokeswoman for the Lesbian and Gay Association. Manuela Kay is more skeptical: "You have to fight for difference again every day." It also means to have normal worries like figure problems, financial problems, work stress. Maybe one can put it this way: Only when gays and lesbians have only these normal problems, they have really arrived in the middle of society.
Forum
What experiences have you had? How do you deal with discrimination? In the forum Love Under the Rainbow you can exchange ideas.
Book tips and Internet addresses
Meike Watzlawik, Friederike Wenner: "... and I thought you were pregnant, women tell their coming out" (17.50 Euro, Gatzanis Verlag)
Joachim Braun: "Gay and then? A coming-out guide" (14.90 euros, cross publisher)
Lesbian advice centers throughout Germany: www.libs.w4w.net Gay and lesbian youth groups nationwide, campaigns and events: www.lambda-online.de Forums, dates, tips, dating for lesbians: www.l-mag.de Tolerance price: www.schmidpeter-preis.de
