Last year, as FB's "On this Day" feature has so helpfully reminded me, I was hit bit a tidal wave of homesickness. I wanted to be with my big extended family at their bbq's, eating vegetarian travesties/"hot dogs" and watching fireworks. I'd still, of course, love to be with my big extended family eating science projects and watching explosions, but... this year the overwhelming feeling isn't homesickness, so much as ambivalence.
Immigration to a place always implies emigration from another, and I am an im/emigrant. Not an expat. Expats are corporate types, or diplomats, sent by their employers for a set amount of time to work "abroad". Cushy! Or they are trust fund kids living the same padded life in Berlin that they would be in NYC, or SF, or London, throwing parties that double as performance art with a bit of tantric shenanigans in the corner (yes, really). No, I am not an expat. I am an immigrant. An emigrant.
Sure, I'll always have my family and friends in the US, will be there very often, will always be bound by growing up there and, inevitably, thinking in ways that are often tied up with that. But the more my accent warps into something amusing/grotesque, the more I switch back and forth between meaning Germans and Americans when pronouncing generalising "we" statements, the more I get to know Germany and, from an outsider's perspective, the USA, the more ambivalent I become.
The USA has lots of great things going for it. My family, to start. It's got loads of people who are forward thinking, accepting massive cultural shifts in understanding of things like gender and sexuality, for example, incorporating new vocabularies and ways of being without much fuss. Lots who do this even consider themselves conservative, and see not much contradiction there. It's got an easy-going, "but of course" approach to its diversity which, while challenged by competing narratives and violent hate crimes, I can still envy when comparing it to the conversation over here. The American approach to freedom of speech, even when it is difficult and makes us angry, is another pillar of American values that I can't help but admire, even if I wish we could smooth down its rough edges.
But it's also got a system that is so, so broken, and has been for a very long time. Trump may have awakened a new awareness of this among many of the formerly less-aware, but the repeated calls for a return to unity, our shared values, and a rejection of partisanism seem to miss the mark for me entirely. Compared with the way democracy works in Germany, with the German constitution - written, by the way, with active involvement of Americans during the occupation - America has a long way to go. Money, its role in public life, and it's place at the top of the hierarchy of American values, makes the promise of popular democracy illusory. Racism, and the legacy of the enslavement and genocide of Africans and Native Americans, are issues that, compared to German commemoration of the Shoah and other crimes of the Nazi period, remain barely addressed, even if many white people have the feeling that all we talk about in America are race and racism. The worship of money, and white supremacy: our twin historical and present-day evils that we just can't seem to deal with to create a society that keeps its promises to all its members. Soaring rhetoric and horrifying everyday realities.
Whenever the time comes for me to be sworn in as a German citizen (to "receive a German passport", as the Germans so detachedly and, rejectingly, phrase it), I'll surely embarrassedly mumble along with the German anthem, as the situation demands, and a bit more joyously sing along with the European one, but I have a feeling I'm stuck with this ambivalence. Maybe that's for the best. Just as I'd never give up my US citizenship, this ambivalence is part of me, pushes me to think. So, this Fourth of July, I will sit over here in Berlin, sipping a Brooklyn Lager and eating burgers and fries prepared by young American hipsters, and feel all torn up inside about the country I've left, but can't really leave behind.
The 5th of September marks 3 years, to the day, since arriving with a planeload of huddled masses young Germans returning from their New York City vacations at Berlin's golden doors Tegel Airport. So I thought this seemed as good an occasion as any to ease myself back into writing after a summer that saw me accomplish very little, thanks to a sneakily depressive inability to focus on much of anything for longer than 10 minutes. Alas. We can call this piece a review, an integration-check, or, perhaps more to the point, a "please, sweet Jesus, don't let me sound like that douchey American dude I overheard at a bar the other night whose accent was all fucked up from spending too much time abroad! Or wait, maybe he was just Canadian.." Yeah, let's go with that. It also serves as a bit of a debriefing after the reverse culture clash of spending six weeks back in the US this spring. Enjoy.
Despite Berlin's hype as some cosmopolitan super hipster Williamsburg-an-der-Spree, in the end, Berlin is in Germany and the culture, attitudes, expectations, institutions, popular knowledge, etc. that make up and shape everyday life are different from those I grew up with. Not like, Kabul or Pyongyang different, mind you, but still. Living in that for three years has to have had some appreciable affect on how I speak (even in English), how I interact with other people, my expectations, my points of reference, and the way I think. As I realized while having a long talk with a friend last week: I actually have no American friends, or even middlingly familiar American acquaintances, here, at all. Vielleicht soll ich doch mit dem ganzen Ami-scheiß aufhören und mich ab jetzt Flori-fabi-christi-an nennen!? Nee, lieber nicht. It's not like I've made a conscious effort to avoid Americans. Not at all, honestly! I'm over the pretentious Andy-circa-2007 "I did study abroad and most of my new friends weren't other Americans doing study abroad, so look at me amn't I great" stage. That's stupid, because, you know, there are some pretty OK Amis. But perhaps this is a topic better explored in depth in another post. Bottom line: immersed in a new culture, one changes. I've changed, too.
So here are a couple random thoughts, compiled into listicles, sans GIFs, to explore.
Nowadays, I:
- Can't start a beer without cheers'ing - it feels wrong. Though that 7 years bad sex thing is bullshit.
- Can recognize a good proportion of the German men's national soccer team on sight. Oh, Per, why'd you have to go?
- Can go days at a time without encountering a German word or expression I'm unfamiliar with. (!!!)
- Think Obama sucks, but not for the reasons most Americans who thinks he sucks do so.
- Think Germany is shitty, but then secretly think Germany is actually pretty good in a lot of ways. Which seems to me to be a really common German trait. Taken to its extreme, however, this Heimatszwiespältigkeitsgruppenonanie (I coin this word!) results in proclamations of Deutschland being so Kacke and how you just think of yourself as European, really... and then later you join in smug comment rounds on articles from the US about kids shooting their machine gun instructors in the head by accident and isn't that just typical stupid Amis and that would never happen here, we're just so enlightened, smug smug smug wank wank wank. Bastards.
- Notice how loud groups of Americans sound in public places.
- Don't find, for example, frank discussions of society's treatment of pedophiles at a dinner with people I've just met to be at all a surprising topic of conversation. Ditto for other topics like politics, religion, social issues etc. that are deemed "not polite conversation" by a lot of people back "home". Ok, so the Germans don't smile and act like it's amazing to meet you right away, but they don't hold back on the sharing once you get them going.
- Have a far greater attention span in conversations, and give others a lot more time to make complicated points. The 6 weeks in the US this spring drove home to me how much of conversation there consists of people shooting off 20-second soundbites and then cutting you off if you go "over time"...
- Both talk and think far, far less about carbs and calories because they're simply not things people talk about here. They talk about how best to "nourish oneself"/ "sich ernähren" instead. You Americans can continue keeping those calorie demons in the hole, though. As you wish.
- Do not support blanket bans on smoking in public places/all bars. Get a grip, people. And bring on marijuana legalization, Dland! And public drinking everywhere, America!
- Unintentionally (as in, not for humorous purposes) come out with bizarre constructions like "I already three years ago.." in English. Slap me when I do this, please.
- Am blunt and slightly sharp right back to people when they're that way with me. Here, bizarrely, it results in the interaction becoming friendlier, rather than escalating it into greater tension. Berlin, wa?
Yet, I still:
- Can't bring myself to wish people "Guten Appetit" before they start eating. It's just silly. Dig the fuck in, I'm sure your appetite doesn't need my verbal encouragement.
- Insist on speaking English most of the time when I'm one-on-one with my closest friends because I'm wittier in English. Sorry. It's objectively just a funnier language. (I'm also lazy.)
- Immediately pretend I can't understand German when encountering crazy people/ticket checkers/the police/anyone where feigning ignorance might help me get out of the situation on a slightly better footing than otherwise would be the case.
- Can't understand why they can't figure out a fairer way to spread out the cost of the public broadcasters. - Ditto on the weird health care setup. The NHS makes more sense.
- Prefer cake that is mostly cake, and not a half inch of cake topped by fruit suspended in weird gelatinous sugar, topped by pudding, topped by whipped cream. That's like, a trifle or some shit.
- Probably still talk as loudly as those groups of Americans in public.
- Always forget that using the words Jew/Jews/Jewish makes everyone really uncomfortable. Not because they're anti-semitic, but because they're really scared of sounding anti-semitic. Chill kids, it's not your fault your grandparents/great grandparents became banally murderous psychos for 13 years.
- Have no patience for this natural/homeopathic/herbal stuff. Load me up on ibuprofen and give me those drugs that may or may not be shown to cause birth defects a few years from now. At least they work. Organic food, on the other hand, I can deal with.
- Refuse to drink a G&T with lemon. Give me limes, or give me death! (Or a different drink.)
In a week's time, I will be setting off for America for a whole six weeks packed with wedding festivities, family time, visits with friends, and sight-seeing with one German lesbian. It will be the longest single stretch of time I will have spent in the homeland since wandering out to Germany in September, 2011. This seemed as good an occasion as any to reflect, not too seriously, on what's grown on me about Germany, and what I still can't quit missing about America. So, two lists, each with the aspects of life I miss about one country when in the other. Family and friends go without saying.
What I miss about America when I'm in Germany
A broad scattering of things I'll lump together under "the taken-for-granted trappings of everyday multiculturalism"
Being able to go to the supermarket and getting ingredients for a wide range of "international" foods, without paying through the nose. Ricotta cheese should not be cheaper in America (far from Italy) than it is in Germany (just a skip north over Switzerland!). The things that German grocers seem to deem "exotic" can sometimes be baffling.
Ditto for non-German beers. Belgian beer is cheaper in America (not in the EU), than in Germany (neighbors!). Por que?
People not having some weird prejudice against garlic. Garlic ≠ spicy.
People generally having internalized what is politically correct, and what not, to say. Even when you mean something nice by it, calling little black children you see on the street "chocolate sprinkles" is not really ok. (Here's looking at you, Gudi.)
General acceptance of the name Kevin as being totally OK.
Jews. Love you, guys!
The ability to watch TV series as soon as they air, on TV, legally, instead of illegally streaming them the next day on one's computer.
Cursing. For having such a.. history.., Germans just can't curse. Drop the f-bomb more often, Germans, you'd loosen up a lot!
There only being one word for "you". Ditto with everyone just being on a first-name basis.
Being able to cross the street on a "don't walk" sign without an old lady yelling at you about setting a bad example.
Smalltalk and, relatedly, people generally being more willing to strike up conversation with people they don't know in public/social settings. There are more topics than work/insurance and regional stereotypes! (Poor people from Ost-Friesland, Sachsen, Westfalen, etc. You all get such a bad rap! The Sachsonian accent is totally easier to understand than the southern ones.)
Warm breakfast.
Things I miss/would miss about Germany when I'm in America
A healthy belief in the democratic state, as the highest form of democratic social organization, to address the needs of society. Not leaving it up to charities to maybe eventually help poor people. Etc. I mean, people really expect this shit to just work!
Relatedly: a general sense of entitlement to things like a decent place to live, time and money for long vacations (twice a year), high quality education, health care, etc.
A healthy wariness of the security and surveillance state. Asylum for Snowden now!
Not debating scientific findings as if they are matters of political opinion. Understanding the scientific consensus on global warming, evolution, etc., are not left-wing positions, nor are they matters of opinion. They are observations about the physical world, supported by data! Rebutting them requires more than saying, "well, that's your opinion. I'm entitled to my own." No, you're not.
Consistency. Germans will tut at you if you use paper plates at a party but still want to call yourself environmentally conscious.
Public drinking.
Relatedly, a general lack of moralizing about alcohol, smoking, sex, and other things that people really enjoy. So have a schnapps, light up a cigarette, and get ready for your next fetish related event. Schlager Nacktparty, anyone?
Relatedly, a half liter of beer, in a bar, for less than what you'd pay for a tiny American bottle of beer. Drinkable wines for 2-3 Euro a bottle from the supermarket.
People recognizing that work is a part of one's life, but not the purpose of one's life.
Pflaumenmus.
The word "doch". Best. Word. Ever.
The division of the year into Zeiten devoted to the eating of a specific, seasonal foodstuff. Spargelzeit, Erdbeerzeit, Grünkohlzeit, etc. Relatedly, Adventzeit (aka Glühwein-Marzipan-und-Lebkuchen-Zeit).
The capacity to both be corny, and to tolerate an astonishing level of corniness in others. Because, if everyone's that corny, then it's ok. Everyone in the club dancing like a bunch of old white people at a christening party? I'm down with that.
Not having to massively tip everyone for everything just because they are so shittily paid otherwise.
Things I miss about the UK when I'm in both countries
Everyone being so goddamn witty all the fucking time. The average British nine-year-old has mastered a fluency in irony and wit even the most adept German or American adult could not even dream of achieving.
False self-deprecation. Like when I was at an academic event in Berlin last year, and a young British academic introduced her work, peppering her presentation with phrases like "Oh, my whole theoretical grounding is probably complete rubbish" and "Oh, my findings are probably completely meaningless, just really, bollocks really, I should have spent another year in the field.." etc. The Germans' facial expressions were just priceless.
Ale. (Though America is better on the "beers that taste like something" front than Germany. Ironically.)
Well, no, but, here's the thing... Jump to the end for the disclaimers, and just stick with me.
Race and racism or, more specifically, how different societies deal with the fact of cultural diversity and migration, have been topics I've been wrestling with a lot in my own PhD research, as well as personally as an American and a migrant myself. As I've come to better understand how German society talks about and politically deals with diversity, the more and more startlingly foreign it has begun to seem. My native society admittedly has a huge number of lingering racial issues, but the discourse (excuse the academic language) here in Deutschland is at times striking for how.. and this isn't a word I use lightly.. backwards it can seem to someone from the outside.
I finally decided to write something about this partially in response to a piece in a magazine for expats, written by Jacinta Nandi, a British woman with a South Asian heritage who has been living and raising a child in Berlin for quite a few years. Click here to read it, then come back to me. It is obvious that she was in a state of anger while writing (and for good reason) - it's a feeling that has bubbled up inside me from time to time when hearing the things people can say, or learning of policies I find racist and offensive. I'm a cis-gendered, white, American male - if this shit pisses me off, I can't imagine what it would be like to be personally targeted by the people around me based on how I look. The worst I get is, "O, yeah, I could tell you were US-American from your dialect." (you mean accent, jackass) I can't imagine how I'd feel if I were a black person and someone referred to my baby as a 'chocolate sprinkle' or if I were of Asian heritage, and suddenly people on the subway starting pulling their eyes into slits and saying konichiwa. (Check the comments section on the original article.)
Anyway, her piece brought up a bunch of really interesting insights into the 'topography of the discourse' on racism in Germany that I've been exploring academically, and want to just delve into them here. By 'topography of the discourse' I mean the way people from all 'sides' of the debate talk about the issues, rather than just the positions they take. This is, in any case, as much an exercise in working out my own thoughts as it is (hopefully) a contribution to a debate that is desperately needed.
Jacinta Nandi: "Sometimes I don't think Germans find anything racist except for Nazi demos in Hellersdorf, the actual Holocaust and Rosa Parks not being allowed to sit down on the bus."
I've had a version of this thought many times. It has seemed to me, again and again, that Germans, especially liberal/lefty types, spend lots of energy obsessing over the fringe neo-Nazi element in society, while ignoring the fact that, HELLO, everyday racism can be found right across the broad spectrum of the population. Sure, violent Nazi attacks are bad, but the way of thinking that makes them possible are not exclusive to the fringes of society. There are, as I see it, some historical and psychological reasons for this focus.
So, there was the Nazi era. That is the last time anyone speaking German talked about "races" as if they were real, actually existing things. Of course, scientifically, they're not - the human population is biologically and genetically very uniform in comparison to, for example, some other primate species. Due to history, however, 'race' as such is a very real social fact in places like the United States and denying that it plays a role in social life is delusional. Use of the word race in German, on the other hand, automatically makes you sound like you're participating in a Nazi era discourse (sort of like using the word Negroid would make you sound crazy and old-timey in America) - you can't. As a result, the only people who can be racist, in this logic, are people who actually are Nazis. In the German discourse, then, stopping racism means the same thing as stopping Nazis. It rarely means checking your privilege, or reflecting on the way using certain words might make minorities feel, or whatever. Of course, it is also understood that racism exists where there are no Nazis, but this usually means America or other foreign countries. I also think it's a lot easier to just focus on hating Nazis than it is to look at oneself and one's own friends and families for the fucked up ways of thinking that are inevitably lurking in the background.
Obviously there are not only the fringe Nazis and then everyone else in Germany, free of any racist/xenophobic thoughts. Racism, or ethnicism, or whatever you want to call it, is pervasive in society. Sure, you can't say 'the Jews' without someone spitting out their drink, but call a black kid a chocolate sprinkle or call mallowmars Nigger-kisses, and that's just fine, because you don't mean them in a negative way. Consider this recent (sadly, real) conversation I had with a new acquaintance (a young, hipstery type, not a grandpa from Brandenburg):
Dude: Oh, wow, you haven't been here that long but your German is really good. (disbelief! cuz, German must be the hardest language, like, ever!) Me: Oh, well, you know, I had three years of it at university in the US first. Plus, its not like.. Chinese, it's not the hardest language for a native English speaker to learn. Dude: Tell that to the Turk* (dem Türken) who was born here and has lived here for twenty years and still can't speak German properly. Me: OMG THAT'S SO RACIST. Dude: It's not racist if it's true. (!!!!!!) You can hear them on the U-bahn and at work, it's ridiculous. Me: ::Vomits on his shoe:: *emphasis added
See what he did there? The "Turk" was born here and has lived here his whole life.. but, he's somehow still not German. Of course, many people don't see it that way, but this way of thinking has roots in the ethnic notion of citizenship that was law in Germany right up until just about 10 years ago. Also, no one has lived here for their whole lives without being able to speak German. I just don't believe that. He may have a different accent and use some different slang because of the community he's from, but so do lots of white kids from those areas nowadays. And that's not a failure, or a degradation of society. That's called diversity!
Accents shift, new immigrant groups change the societies they come into (why do you think Boston and NYC have different accents? Different mixes of immigrant groups historically and today!). This, however, is unacceptable to lots of people. If it is not viewed as a failing of the minorities, then (and this is often the lefty view) it is a failing of the state to integrate them properly. The "foreigners", in this view, need to be helped to be more like the majority, and that's somehow not a racist way of approaching the issue, because helping them is a positive thing. It can be, only, it's not, not when you approach it that way. Banning kids in kindergartens and primary schools from speaking Turkish to each other is NOT OK even if you're just trying to help them learn German. If schools are majority 'migration background', then bring in white kids from other parts of the city, don't ban the 'brown ones' from speaking their second native language to each other on the playground. If kids in majority-minority schools bully the few white kids, that isn't equivalent to the structural and individual racism people with Turkish backgrounds face throughout their lives. I'm sorry, it's just not. That's bullying, not racism. That the term Deutschfeindlichkeit (hostility to Germans) exists, as if it were some equivalent to Ausländerfeindlichkeit (hostility to foreigners), boggles my fucking mind.
The way the discourse plays out here can sound really naive, and even offensive, to some people coming from the outside. Sometimes it feels like no one here has heard of structural racism, intersectionality, examining one's own privilege, etc. Even a lot of the people who mean well just seem hopeless sometimes, because they are sort of stuck, stuck in the discourse this society can offer. Like when the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin, instead of being like the Notting Hill Carnival in London, ends up feeling a lot like one of those human-zoo World's Fair exhibitions from the 1890s. Or the Marxist party campaign posters with little black kids in 'traditional garb' shaking maracas, with some bullshit slogan about solidarity underneath. All that gets really frustrating. So frustrating that at times you need to write a piece like this one, or the one Jacinta wrote, because you just can't even take one more minute of it. This isn't to say that the US or British ways of approaching these issues are 100% right, or that they're racism-free (ha!), but I do think they have more experience of confronting these issues than German society does. It's not only the minorities who need to adjust to be successful in Germany, it's Germany that needs to adjust to be successful as a modern, diverse society.
*I use 'the Germans' here broadly, knowing full well that it is really generalizing - but sometimes you need to generalize. German society DOES have a different discourse on race and minorities than the US, even if individuals within the society might not always fit into this generalization. But, societal and political discourses aren't individual so I don't care, in this instance, about speaking in broad terms. Sorry in advance if you feel offended by that - go and check your privilege.
Now if you made it this far and you're really pissed off at me, or racism, or whatever, watch the video.
With the German federal elections just around the corner, I thought it might be a good time to resurrect ye olde blogge! And what an inspiring election it is..! Oh, hm, well, no, actually not. In fact, commentators in the German media have begun calling it a Nichtwahlkampf, or non-election campaign. I like the ring of un-election better, though, as it syncs pretty well with the idea of an unbirthday from Alice in Wonderland (and gives me an excuse to include youtube link). Watch, enjoy, return to text.
You see, you have unbirthdays 364 days a year, and birthdays only once. Just as you don't get any older on your unbirthday (not officially, anyway) you also don't get anything new out of an un-election. Angela Merkel, she with the mouth drooping rhetorical finesse, seems pretty well destined to remain Chancellor even after all the votes have been counted and any necessary coalition building deals have been agreed. But why? From the outside, it might be hard to understand - people in the southern European countries like drawing unflattering historical comparisons, her austerity measures have driven nearly as hysterical photo editing reactions from even respected publications, and she leaves many Germans stupefied and asking "Why?" (among other questions related to braindeath..). But among a large share of the voters, she remains well-liked, well, because she's just so well-liked! Kidding aside, her personal approval ratings are high even though, when polled, voters strongly disapprove of many of her government's policies and handling of such issues as the NSA/domestic spying affair. Love the sinner, hate the sin, functioning well in German politics!
The other parties don't have a chance of getting a large enough share of the vote to lead a coalition, and with the SPD having already ruled out a coalition involving the far left Linkspartei, well.. Merkel it is! Because, for most Germans, times are pretty good. With many average voters still stuck with the mindset of the Euro crisis as the fault of "the lazy Spaniards/Greeks/Italians who are just ungrateful to the hardworking, generous Germans", that issue is a non-starter. Meanwhile, the SPD is rhetorically hamstrung by their own leadership, preventing them from speaking credibly at the federal level about the said development of the working poor, and the increasing costs of living even as wages remain stagnant. And why no one sees the same ingredients for a housing bubble developing here, the way they did in the US/UK in the 2000's, I just can't understand. It's a bit like watching history repeating. As it is, the biggest issues in this Nichtwahlkampf remain rather.. tame.. by American standards. Disagreements on how best to fund universal childcare provision, the rising cost of energy in the face of a remarkable transition towards renewable sources of power, train service disruptions in Mainz and too-expensive airports and railway projects in Berlin and Stuttgart - the Germans are complaining at a high level, while ignoring or downplaying bigger issues.
And perhaps this tameness is the hardest thing for me to understand. Having come of age as a lefty during the Bush II era, I'm very used to pretty much hating the political opposition, or at least being dumbfounded by the backwardness and often the mean-spiritedness of their views. German politics just doesn't have anything like the anti-government tea party to moan about! Merkel has moved her party so far to the center that she's not all that distinguishable from Steinbrück. Everyone agrees the state should do lots of things to help people live their lives more comfortably, most people don't see any reason for the German military getting involved in other peoples' affairs, most people want their privacy protected from snooping even at the cost of "extra security". Granted, the current government isn't my cup of tea..but still, I can't really hate Merkel, because I still think she is a thinking, reasonable person with basically alright intentions though slightly misguided views of modern society. The right wing of her party is less pleasant, but marginalized, and the election posters of the far-right parties are so silly that they could appear in the Onion. Combine this with a voting system that gives everyone two votes, one for a direct constituency candidate, and the other to be used freely to "top up" the proportionally distributed seats in Parliament with any party you like... and German democracy seems to be running enviously well from an American viewpoint.
And so we'll slog along, through the unelection, and on to the status quo that comes after. And I'll sit here, mildly bemused by it all, secretly hoping for a German Michelle Bachmann to come along and get me more fired up.
I feel compelled to resurrect this blog (after a lengthy respite) by the course of current events in both Germany and the USA. This week, as almost everyone by now knows, the US Supreme Court will be hearing arguments on two cases concerning marriage equality for same-sex couples. Depending on how the justices rule, this can result in anything from nothing, to the overturning of the anti-gay Prop 8 in California all the way to the full federal recognition of marriage equality and the simultaneous striking down of all state-level laws and constitutional provisions against it. Big time stuff. If the best-case-scenario indeed came to pass, the USA would have full marriage equality even before Germany.
Germany has something commonly referred to in the press and popular parlance as the "Homo-Ehe", or "Homo-Marriage" (they don't mince words, the Germans..!). Despite the misleading name, it is not actually marriage, but a form of civil union that includes nearly all the legal benefits of marriage except for a peculiar structure of income tax benefit and the right to jointly adopt children, as a couple, from the start of the adoption process. The German Constitutional Court has recently chipped away at rules against gay couple's adopting, such that they can now do so, but "through the back door" (ha ha) and only after one of the partners is already the legal parent of the child(ren).
Court cases aside, opinion polls in both countries, as well as ever stronger commitments from the left/liberal parties in both countries, seem to suggest that full marriage equality for same-sex couples is only a matter of time. My question, and concern, is thus: what happens after that battle is won?
Of course, marriage equality is not the be all and end all of the LGBT movement. Sure, for many bourgeois types who insist we are JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, that may be enough. But for those of us who see "just like everyone else" as merely code for "the current order of sex, gender, and familial norms and structures is just fine and dandy", this remains problematic. Even "everyone else" aren't actually like everyone else - straight, cis-gendered white men also suffer and need liberating from this system. And, even if they were, why would anyone want to fit into a system of power relations and cultural hegemony in which rape culture is justified and normalized, in which signs of gender non-conformity even in young children are all too often greeted with horror and disgust, in which our trans* brothers, sisters, and somewhere-in-betweeners continue to face discrimination and violence, and on and on and on?
I see, on the horizon, a rupture in "the movement" rearing its head. This rupture, between the "we are/want to be just like everyone else", and the more radical forces who seek to question and subvert the current order of sex and gender relations has, of course, always been there. The marriage equality issue has simply made it less apparent, as even those who find marriage to be an institution mired in a history of sexual domination based on the ownership of women by men agree that, in our day and age, it should be an equal opportunity "oppressor". Perhaps the movement as such will more obviously splinter, and probably have less money at its disposal from the bourgeois HRC-type conforming gays. Then again, a leaner, meaner, more culturally aggressive movement, unafraid to offend certain sensibilities, couldn't be all bad.
How my homeland and adopted country compare is, overall, a wash. In some ways, gender and sex relations in Germany are more progressive (from my point of view). Women hardly ever wear heels, childcare burdens seem more evenly shared, the law provides for paternity leave in addition to maternity leave (the US provides for neither..), and so on. More broadly, the general German willingness to engage with ideological commitments and personal convictions as matters of a shared social life, rather than as personal consumption-oriented lifestyle choices, seems to me to enable social transformation of gender and family life more in the long-run than it does in the US. On the other hand, radical voices are also present in great numbers in the US, and often institutionalized in settings like the university in a way they are not here in Germany. For example, Queer/Gender Studies is nearly non-represented in degree and course offerings in the German university landscape.
Of course, I can't cover the entire landscape of the German and American LGBT rights movements and the cultures of gender etc in each country in one blog post. I simply wanted to ask the question, what comes next for the movement after this battle is won? I'm not sure what it will look like, but I am sure that, 10 years post-marriage equality, it will be an entirely different beast.
Those industrious Germans! Deutschland! Shining example of the rewards of hard work and saving. Able to teach those lazy Greeks a thing or two about what it takes! Well, actually, no.
Despite everyone (except the Greeks) in Europe thinking the Germans are the hardest workers, the Greeks have it closer to the truth. Ok, so the Germans are more "productive" per hour worked than the Greeks are, though curiously less productive than the French and Belgians(!). Nevertheless, the myth of the incomparably hard-working German doesn't stand up to the test of reality. Germany's success owes to lots of complicated factors, but hard work alone cannot explain it.
After nearly a year in this country, I can tell you that the Germans shirk work with an efficiency unmatched in the homeland. Try to get something done at a bank on Fridays, you can almost forget about it. Need to file one of the 50 million forms essential for daily life? Most government offices are open about 3-4 hours a day, 3 days a week. Need to go shopping outside of your normal working hours? Sorry, shops close by 7 or 8pm, early on Saturday, and don't open at all on Sunday.
Besides working an average of only 35 hours a week, the German worker is guaranteed at least 28 paid vacation days per year (which they use unashamedly), plus public holidays, plus nearly unlimited sick time. If you're ill, you just need a note from your doctor, and your employer simply has to accept it.
And I don't just mean for the flu or consumption or whatever. No, no. In fact, Germans suffer a variety of maladies unknown in the New World. Most notable among them is the phenomenon of Kreislaufstörung - literally, problems with one's circulation. Now, in America, when you have problems with your circulatory system you usually end up in the hospital and under close observation of a cardiologist. Germans, on the other hand, see such problems as so normal as to be almost unworthy of note (except the doctor's note!). The exact cause is unknown. Some conjecture that it stems from the Germans' notoriously cold hearts, though that remains unproven. In any case, any time you feel a bit tired or unpleasant you just chalk it up to a circulation problem, run to the doctor, and get a nice little note for your employer and perhaps a prescription for herbal-magic-homeopathy rose hip water pills. Problem solved, blood flowing easily once more!
Then there is the problem of burnout. From working so hard, this is something the Germans struggle with endlessly. Of course, when an American feels burnt out, they simply try and get more sleep or take up meditation or an addiction to prescription medicine. For a German, on the other hand, burnout is simply another source of the cherished doctor's note. For particularly bad cases, your doctor can even write you a prescription for a few days trip to a spa resort. Paid for by insurance, not counted against vacation time. For Europe's hardest workers, only the best.
