A few weeks ago, I came across the transcript of a speech that was given by the mayor of one of Germany’s major cities (no, not one of the openly gay ones) at a convention organized by the German Savings Bank Association. He started his speech, in which he of course talked about the financial markets crisis, by telling a little story about a woman called Adele Spitzeder, who lived in Bavaria in the 19th century. Adele Spitzeder founded a bank based on a simple idea: She promised an interest rate of 10 % per month for every deposit and to make the first two interest payments immediately. Of course, she had no intentions to pay the deposits back, but people gave her their money anyway. One of the reasons they did it – besides the obvious, which was greed – was that a friend of Adele used to linger on the staircase where people waited for a meeting with the “banker”, telling them how gracious it would be of Adele if she met with them at all that day, because it was already late and she was tired and had actually decided to close the business for that day. So of course, the people begged the friend to put in a good word for them so they could make their deposit that day. Eventually, though, Adele the “banker” was convicted for fraud and ended up in jail. If she had done the same thing today, the mayor concluded in his speech, her system would have been called “financial innovation”, her friend would nowadays be called “ratings agency”, and she wouldn’t have been convicted for fraud but would have been granted a “financial parachute” by the state.

Adele Spitzeder

You might wonder about this long introduction and what this story has to do with eurOut or my column. The reason why I’m writing about this is because there was one phrase in the transcript that I stumbled upon immediately and that confuses me to this day: that the friend who helped Adele was “a lesbian friend”.

It confuses me because I have no idea what the sexual orientation of the friend has to do with the story, unless it was to imply that the two women were lovers and therefore people would believe the friend even more willingly, but then why not call her “lover” instead of “lesbian friend”?

And it confuses me because I’m uncertain of what to make of this example of “lesbian visibility” and how to respond to it. Should I cheer that the fact that the woman was a lesbian wasn’t concealed but mentioned in this public speech by a politician? Or should I write an angry letter because that lesbian is being portrayed as a criminal? Which of course she was, but which doesn’t have anything to do with her sexual orientation, does it?

I have been struggling with this for a while now, the uncertainness about how I’m supposed to respond to things like that as a lesbian. Is there something like “lesbian political correctness”? And if there is, who establishes the rules?

Ever since I started reading lesbian magazines and websites, I have noticed a tendency to condemn certain kinds of storylines, reports or articles in the media. We seem to be very critical, and not only with straight writers, producers, journalist etc., but also within our own community. We don’t want the same old clichés, like the one that says that in a lesbian couple, one has to be the “man” and one the woman, the one that all lesbians want to have children and of course the one that when things get rocky, we happily seek refuge in the arms of a man. We don’t want any negative portrayals of lesbians, and of course, we don’t want any of our favourite lesbian characters to die. If any of this happens, we’re very quick with screaming that those storylines and/or portrayals are either homophobic or misogynic or both, we write sarcastic articles or angry emails, and most of all, we want all lesbians to be as angry and annoyed about this as we are. Judging from that, I probably should have written that angry letter to the above mentioned mayor for invoking the picture of a “lesbian criminal” in his audience.

But while I agree that visibility doesn’t help us if it only confirms the same old clichés about lesbians, there are some things that I’d like to take into consideration. For example, how much of an improvement most lesbian storylines actually are. Less than 20 years ago, there was barely any lesbian visibility in the media, and there are still a lot of countries in the world, even in Europe, in which homosexual content is either not shown at all or hidden in the late night program. Today, we even have a show like “The L Word” that – thanks to the internet – can be seen all over the world, and even if we don’t like some of the decisions Ilene Chaiken has taken regarding the storylines, we should still give her kudos, because without her, we would still bemoan the lack of a “lesbian TV show”.

Also, not every negative portrayal or storyline that ends badly for a lesbian character is necessarily driven by homophobia or ignorance. As much as I hated Joss Whedon for killing Tara on “Buffy”, I knew he didn’t do it because he was homophobic, but he did it for the sake of the storyline. (I was kicked out of a Willow/Tara fan message board for saying that, but honestly, who didn’t like big bad, ass-kicking Willow in the last few episodes of season 6?) But most of the times, less gifted writers than Joss Whedon probably revert to the same old clichés for one reason only – a lack of imagination.

And last but not least, if we want a somewhat realistic portrayal of lesbian life in the media, we also have to accept that there are criminal lesbians and that bad things don’t always happen because of the sexual orientation. A few weeks ago, in an episode of German crime drama series “Tatort” a lesbian lawyer was murdered, but not because she was a lesbian, but because she knew something that could have get the killer – a young girl – into trouble with her very strict parents.

Of course, there are some things that are completely unacceptable even in my opinion. For example, if German TV channel RTL in fact changed a video interview with actress Ulrike Röseberg and her co-star Andre Dietz of the soap opera “Alles was zählt” to make it look like they were into each other when in fact, in the original version, actress Ulrike Röseberg made it clear that she is a lesbian, and this happened after the link to the interview was posted on various lesbian websites, among them eurOut. But there’s still a huge grey area of lesbian storylines that I don’t want to condemn so easily.

So, in conclusion, if there is something like “lesbian political correctness”, it looks like it’s hard to grab and that we should all come up with our own definition of it, based on our own values and beliefs. In the end, I guess we all want the same thing: to get rid of the old clichés by means of realistic portrayals in the media and – ultimately – finally be taken seriously as women and lesbians.

As for the mayor and his speech, I decided to let it go for a certain reason. By the end of his speech, he asked his mostly male audience to finally pay attention to the female majority of citizens and let them advance to the higher management ranks. As a woman who has worked with mostly male colleagues in a field in which only few women have made it to  top management levels, I couldn’t help but applaud this.

Pictures: graumarktinfo.de, AfterEllen, whedon.info

Posted on eurOut on March 1st, 2009

A few weeks ago, I came across the transcript of a speech that was given by the mayor of one of Germany’s major cities (no, not one of the openly gay ones) at a convention organized by the German Savings Bank Association. He started his speech, in which he of course talked about the ...