Kirsten Plötz
"Echte" Frauenleben?
"Lesbierinnen" im Spiegel öffentlicher Äußerungen in den Anfängen der Bundesrepublik
"Genuine" Womens‘ Lives?
"Lesbians" mirrored in public remarks in the beginnings of the Federal
Republic of Germany
English abstract
While the dominant image of femininity of the married mother was referred to broadly in politics, the media and other discourses of the young Federal Republic of Germany, lesbian love prevailingly faced ignorance. If it was made an issue at all, this happened mainly in a context of despise and pathology.
This was mainly done by male psychologists, sociologists and jurisprudents. With great self-evidence most of them equaled homosexuality with sexuality between men and hardly ever commented on lesbian desire. Same-sex desire among men counted broadly as societally more important, respectively more dangerous than same-sex desire between women. Even in accounts of lesbian sexuality, men were often assigned a central role; if not as "cause", than as "cure". These patterns of thought can also be traced in "Sex-educational literature", in jurisdiction and in the pornographic employment of "lesbian" sexuality.