September 30

Bisexuality and Pansexuality – Why is there a war?

If you are part of the community or just very informed(good for you^^) you have heard of the two words “Bisexual” and “Pansexual” and you might also have heard about the “war” that’s going on between them. If you have no idea what I am talking about, or you know the topic, but don’t understand it fully, this post might be for you. I am trying to describe the problems that the community is facing from the perspective of a bisexual woman. I by no means want to say I know everything and what I say is law, it’s just how I understand the situation and my opinion on the subject.

Let’s start by talking about why labels are so important for so many people, using the Acronym for the community as a whole. Most commonly knows as LGBTQ (I don’t think I need to explain the first few letters and what they stand for) the Q can stands for either queer as a general term or questioning, as in you know you are not straight but you have not found the right term for yourself yet. But there is also the acronym LGBTQ+, LGBTQQAI, and even longer versions. Basically, it’s just letters that represent certain sexualities, relationship forms, or identities and it’s getting longer and longer every year because new terms are coming up. I have decided to use the term LGBTQ+ because it includes the founding members of the communities rights movement, queer to incorporate whoever does not want to pick a certain label, and the “+” for acknowledging that there are many more terms that belong to the community, but I don’t want to write out 20 letters or more every time I talk about the it. So for me, it’s a good way to represent everyone, but for someone who let’s say is asexual, it might not be, since their letters are not part of it, visibility. So they might use LGBTQA+ or something entirely different. It’s hard to say what’s right because that can differ from person to person and the same goes for the terms bi- and pansexuality, or does it not?

I will start to talk about the history of the word bisexual very briefly, not only because I identify as such, but also because it just exists longer. And when I say that, I mean that the word was mentioned first in the year 1892, where keep in mind we did not have many of the other words we use today, like transsexual or non-binary for example. But as far as I know it was not used to say you are interested in “both” genders. Yes at that time they might have talked about only two since most people were only aware of two, but “two” was never in the definition, to begin with. It was just a term used to say you were neither only interested in your own gender nor other ones, but both at the same time. And most bisexual people I know, still use this definition today, including myself.

Pansexual seems to have come up as a term with the rise of the internet, but it was also used way back in the past. It was first mentioned in the early 20st century but in a completely different way of how we use it today. I think as a term it really came together with the emerge of the pansexual pride flag in 2010. The colors pink, yellow, and blue are supposed to stand for the different gender Identities we had labels for at that time and being attracted to all of them. So the way I understand it, as trying to be different from the already existing word bisexual, they wanted to get away from the “binary thinking” and acknowledged that there are other identities too. The problem with that is, that the term bisexual already did that too.

The way I see the bisexual pride flag and many other bisexual people do too is that the blue stands for male read people(trans or cisgender), the pink stands for female read people(again, trans or cisgender), and the purple in the middle is a mixture between that, so for me, that also includes everything in-between and also people who don’t want to identify with those genders at all. Some people also say that the blue stands for the attraction to your own gender, where as the pink stands for the attraction to other genders and the purple means that it’s not always 50/50 but still is a mixture between those two attractions. For me both of these interpretations lead to the same conclusion: You see, even if the word bisexual might have had any binary meaning in the past, like many other words in our language it has evolved beyond that.

Let’s take a little digression and talk about the womxn/womyn debate. I try to keep it short. There was a feminist group that did not like that there was the word “men” in the word “women” so they decided they need to change it somehow. So they thought of replacing the “e” with an “x”, still the same pronunciation, but no “men” included anymore, literally. Because those feminists were very radical and they said only “real” women (meaning cisgender women) should be allowed to use the term.
This of course was very exclusive and offense, so another less radical feminist group came up with the idea of replacing the letter yet again, creating the word “womyn”, still the same pronunciation, but this time they allowed ALL women to use it, transgender and cisgender alike. I do get why that needed to be done, because the first word was obviously made with not-so-good intentions, so they had to replace it to make it inclusive again.
Now I feel that is very reminiscent of how the debate between pansexual and bisexual people goes along. It really feels sometimes as if they think we are like the “womxn” people and they needed to come in and be the “womyn” people, but that’s just not the case.

And that actually leads to the biggest problem I have with part of the pansexual community, which is that they are trying to replace the term bisexuality with the term pansexuality completly, to be “more modern”. And that feels wrong to me on so many levels. It feels like they are trying to explain our sexuality to us, make it look bad and then try to make us use the term they use, even though it might not feel right for many people. They are also trying to erase the history and activisms work, maybe not on purpose, but that’s what would come out of replacing the word too. Of course not all pansexuals do that! And I guess, I get it, to some extent. Because if we look at it the way I explained it, those are two words for the same thing and I guess that’s where this thought of “war” is coming from: The two terms and maybe even the two communities fight for their existence.

Sadly I can’t provide a solution to this problem, other than trying to ignore the fact that both terms are basically discribing the same thing and tring to kinda not talk about it? But I don’t think that would be something we could hold up for long. I don’t want to say one term is better than the other and I totally get wanting to be inclusive, that’s always a great thing. I just don’t think coming up with a new word would have been nessesary in the first place.
I always like to think, that someone just interpreted the term “bisexuality” wrong and than went out and told his friends about it, being angered by how excluvie it sounded and coming up with their own “better” term. So I thought if we can provide the right explanation, the need for other word would just vanish. But I think at this point it has gone beyong this possible missunderstanding, which lead us to this “war” inside of the community.
I hope one day we can come to some kind of understanding, however that might look like then. Because as a community we should not only fight together, rather than fighting each other, but we also have problems in society still to face. And I think we should not get distracted from that, by analysing what seems to be “problematic” about each other and the concepts about our identies.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: LGBTQ+, Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 23

I Am Bisexual – My Coming-Out Story

I am thinking about writing some more personal posts recently since I feel like in the last months you got to see reviews mostly 😛 So talking about tattoos was a good start since it’s a topic I am very passionate about, but now I want to get a bit more personal with talking about my sexuality. It’s something I have been very open about since realizing I am in fact bisexual, but I feel like now more than ever it’s important to actually speak about it. That’s mostly because I got into activism a little bit over the course of the last year and I came across the question of “is a coming-out really still necessary?” and “Do we need bisexuality as a term?” way too often. So I’d like to give my opinion on the subject at hand, but keep in mind that it is only that my opinion 😉

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I actually came out as bisexual after my first relationship. Before that I’d say I had other things to worry about and with the constant bullying at school, I just did not think about love or sex that much, since I did not think I would get a partner soon. But after I did get one, some wheels began to turn, especially after the break-up. Since romantic relationships were a topic on my mind now and my last partner happened to be pansexual, I thought about what love and sex meant to me and whom I would like to share them with in the future. And I came to the realization very quickly that I did not really distinguish between men and women(non-binary and trans people came later since that was the start of my LGBTQ+ journey and I did not even really know what these terms meant back then).

I did really come out right after I had this thought in my head since I wanted to talk about the possibility of what that means and if that’s really how I feel or if I was just confused(spoiler warning: I was not xD). So I talked with my mother, who is not really educated on the whole LGBTQ+ topic, but she still tried to understand what I was telling her, and even though she could not really wrap her head around it, she was supportive from the start. I know that I was very lucky with that since I did not really have to be in the closet hiding for any time really. My father does not know about my sexuality to this day, but that’s a whole other story and I actually have no idea what his reaction would be, genuinely don’t know if he would be mad, supportive, or not care about it at all xD So that’s where my story might differ from all of the queer people whose parents were too homophobic to create an environment where they would have felt safe to come out.

I am aware of my privileges being a white girl raised by an open-minded mother, but I really don’t like this idea of the LGBTQ+ community being build on the foundation of pain. I actually had a talk with a gay guy I knew at school, who was closeted for a long time because of his homophobic father. He told me that I would never know what it was like to wake up knowing that you are a disgrace to your family and that I could just live a happy life passing a straight if I wanted to. But what he did not realize back then was that I could not just ignore my queerness and pretend to be straight and also if passing as straight would come as an advantage, they would be passing as gay in a straight community too? It was not, actually, I always felt like I belonged to neither of them and that was a feeling he might never understand. But that’s okay, because it’s about the pain we share or not share, it’s about being different and embracing it.

Let’s jump some years into the future and look at where I am now. I am actually happily married to a man, which comes with new problems. The first question I was asked after being married was if I decided to be straight again now. No, I did not, I never decided to do anything, not even to be bisexual. Maybe I decided on the label but I am not actively deciding what people I feel attracted to. And these attractions did not stop just because I am married, which does not mean I want to have sex with everyone I meet, but I can still find women and non-binary people hot, despite being in a monogamous relationship with a cis-man. Fortunately, my husband does understand me better than most people and has zero problems with the whole concept of being married to a bisexual wife. We even like to joke about it sometimes or talk about women we both find attractive. But knowing that other people read me as being straight just because I am married to a man, always bothered me.

It might feel strange to people who never had to think about this, gay and straight people alike because either you are always assumpted to be straight from the get-go or you are at least perceived to be gay because of your same-sex partner. I always have to remind people about being bisexual still, but sometimes I don’t even get the chance to do that. Not everyone who sees me and my husband strolling around gets into a conversation with me and of course, me being bisexual is not the first thing that would come up anyway. And you might think: Why is that so important to you? My answer is because that’s part of who I am. When people see me and label me as straight, they take away a part of what makes me, me. I have thought about that A LOT lately and finally decided to get a tattoo, which will empower me to at least somewhat be able to show people, even those I might not talk to directly, that I am not part of the straight masses.

And I think that can be important not only to me but also to queer people in general. I don’t want to sound like getting a bi-themed tattoo will make me a great activist or something, but I do think that it will do its part because it makes other people aware. Aware of the fact that not everyone who looks straight, has to be straight. Or that there are more queer people than most straight people might believe. I want to get the tattoo for me in the first place, but I like the impact it can have on my surroundings in general. And who knows, maybe I might inspire some people or it can be a conversation starter 😉

So to answer one of the questions I asked in the beginning: Is coming out still necessary? For me, it is, because yes there has been a lot of good things happening to the community within the last decades, but there is still a long way to go when the goal is to be equal at some point, to be known, and to be seen. Of course, that’s only my opinion on the topic and I would never force anyone to come out or be as open about their sexuality, but for me, it’s empowering. As empowering as choosing bisexual as the word I want to label myself with, instead of pansexual for example. And I did think about including my reason why I did so in this post, but I think that might be a long enough conversation to have, to make its own post for. So keep looking for that one, if you are interested in it 😉

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

PS: I wrote this post in the beginning of august but then I thought: In one month is a special day, why not save it up till then? So I wish you all a happy Bisexuality Visibility Day!

Category: LGBTQ+, Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 15

Covid 19: Vaccination Diary

At this point, you might have already read my 3 part commentary about the situation in Germany with the pandamic still going on. In the last part, I have mentioned wanting to do this diary where I talk about my experience with the whole vaccination process, well here it is. I want to talk about how the vaccination, in general, is perceived in Germany, how and what kind of vaccine options you have, and what it was like for me personally to go through all of that.

The vaccine seems to be a double-edged sword, on the one hand, many people believe it’s the cure for everything and it will get us back to a pandamic free life, on the other hand, people are very confused about the different kinds that there are and who should get them, that they might not actually want to get them at all. I am kinda in-between, I have a problem with needles at the doctors’ office in general, so I have fought with myself for a long time about if I should get the vaccine or not. In the end, I have decided that I want to get it to be protected myself, but also help to prevent the virus from mutating and more variants to come up. But I do also get why some people might be scared.

The first vaccines we had in Germany were AstraZeneca from England and the Biontech/Phizer vaccine which was produced in a collaboration of a german and an american company. They are totally different kinds of vaccines, but most people don’t know how vaccines in general work, so that was confusing right off the bat. Kinda like with the articles which were spread on WhatsApp about who was responsible from the pandamic in the first place, which I had talked about in my commentary part two, misinformation was spread very quickly. Some of it intentionally or unintentionally was even reported about on the news, especially AstraZeneca was made to look bad. At the latest when the risk of getting thrombosis was tied to getting vaccinated with it, no one wanted to get it anymore, which lead to many doses just ending up unused and having to be thrown away.

Partially that was due to the priority system we had at first. Because we had so few doses of the vaccines, they were only giving it to the people who needed them the most, because they had the biggest risk of dying if infected with the virus. Starting with very old people, risk patients with pre-existing conditions, and staff in hospitals and retirement homes. Young people were just not allowed to go to their doctors and get the shots, because we did not have enough and the few doses we had were saved up. And the ones who went unsued oftentimes were not able to be reused again or could not be used on younger people because of dumb rules. The priority system was taken down when we got more doses and more different kinds of vaccines were approved by the EU. Right after that happened, my husband and I got our appointments.

When you wanted to get a shot you had different possibilities. You could either put your name on a list at your locals’ doctor’s office and get notified when they had enough vaccine to give it to you. You could also go into a so-called vaccination center which basically was a temporary build-up hospital for the sole purpose of vaccinating people. Or you could wait for one of the possibilities which were kinda Walk-In Events, where they tried to vaccinate as many people as possible on one day, using the empty stadium from football or other buildings that were just not being used because of the pandamic. My husband and I decided to make an appointment in a vaccination center, because it was the best option for me, as I don’t like to go to the doctors’ office and I had hoped the vaccination in a different environment would be easier for me. Our first appointment was at the beginning of July and the second one was at the end of august(because you had to have a certain amount of time in between).

We didn’t get to choose the company where we got the vaccines from, but we could decide on the kind of vaccine we were getting. We wanted to get one of the mRNA vaccines and then got randomly chosen which one we get by the vaccination center(I will abbreviate it with VC from now on). My husband got Moderna and I got the Biontech/Phizer one. When we got to the VC, it was guarded by security which looked kinda intimidating to me, but with a QR code we got in the mail when booking the appointment, it was fairly easy to get in. We were led by arrows on the ground and a tunnel-like structure with more safety inside guiding us to the booths where the doctors were. We were then briefed by a doctor about what kind of vaccine we were getting and what kind of side effect could arise and after we signed some papers, we were led through another tunnel to a small room.

My husband actually had to shove me in the right direction, because even though we were not at a doctor’s office, it still triggered me and I began crying as soon as I got into that room. But I was very lucky to have a doctor(or a nurse, I am not sure) who was very understanding and tried everything to comfort me. She was even tattooed, which was great because normally when I am in situations like that, people love to say “Oh you have tattoos, therefore you can’t be afraid of needles” even though these are two completely different things, mainly because tattoo needles are way smaller and go only about 3mm deep into your skin. Anyways, the doctor talked to me, tried to distract me, and made the whole process as comfortable for me as possible, which I am very grateful for. I even got candy, which might sound very childish, but was actually meant for my circulation not to collapse.

After the shot, we were led to another corridor where we had to sit for about 15min to see if any allergic reactions would occur, which could have been treated then right away by the medical staff. Gladly we did not experience something like that, drank our free water, tried to calm down, and then we got to leave. All in all, I had to say that it was more pleasant than I feared it to be and we got also pretty lucky, because aside from my husband’s left arm being sore right after, we also did not experience any side effects.

Our second appointment actually had to be rescheduled because of my husband’s work, which only means we got it about a week earlier. We also did not really have to make another appointment, because there seemed to be so few people coming in every day, that it would not have been necessary. So we could just show the paper from our last time getting the shot and were lead-in again. Again everything was the same as last time, we got briefed, signed some papers, and were led to the room. And yes, I cried again, but again everything worked out fine. I did not even experience any noteworthy side effects. My husband had some more pain in the right arm, days after the shot, but luckily also nothing worse.

So that was my experience and I am very happy for it to be done. I was very scared, mostly because of my own pre-existing conditions, but maybe also a little bit because of the very strange and confusing way the media talked about it. I can highly recommend you to go to your local’s doctors office(if you can) and have a talk about which vaccine would be the best for you and then maybe they can also help you find an appointment somewhere. Take someone with you when going there, it makes things easier.
And if you don’t want to get vaccinated for whatever reason, I am not here to tell you otherwise. There is a whole debate going on about an indirect vaccination duty, which I do not support. I think everyone should be able to decide for themselves what they want to do. Even though non-vaccinated people should also accept that they have to get tested to participate in certain events or maybe take an extra step to go somewhere in general. It should not be as big of a hurdle to push someone to get vaccinated, but it can’t be that they have the exact same right as vaccinated people, because that would just not make sense safety-wise, right?
So please keep that in mind, this post is not supposed to be an advertisement or something, I just wanted to tell you how it was for me and maybe answer some questions some of you might have. I hope you all stay safe and healthy.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 8

My first poetry with Rupi Kaur (Milk and Honey Review)

Cover of the book: black backround with white text saying "Milk and honey, rupi kaur" and two realistically drawn bees. Text on the end is orange and says: "#1 New York Times Besteller".

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 4th of November 2014
Length: 208 Pages
Genre: Collection of Poetry and Prose
Price: 11,49€ on Amazon

Review
Let me tell you the story of how I got to know the work of Rupi Kaur. I am actually not a big fan of poetry, at least not of the stuff we had to read and analyze at school. I guess not everyone liked to unpack a Sonett and its multiple layers of meaning, especially when it’s about something you are not interested in at all. So when a pen pal of mine, actually recommend Kaur’s work to me, in a totally different context and I got to read some of her poems, I was quite surprised that I was enjoying it. The friend suggested using her poems and illustration to get inspired for my own works of art, mostly illustrations too. So the intention was not even to get me into poetry, but maybe it kinda did?

But then, in an effort to find out more about this artist who got me interested in reading poems, I found out that not everyone was enjoying what she wrote, quite the contrary. Many people called her a wanna be-, Instagram- or tumblr poet, they were saying that her work seemed lazy and not quite thoughtful. People were pointing out that some of her work would be considered statements, might have even been Twitter posts, but not art. Which really got me thinking: what is art and who can decide on the definition? (There are famous people in Germany I know of whose whole art persona is based on sharing their own tweets on different platforms, it might not be poetry, so maybe to be the best example, but I would say it could be art, modern art so to speak.) That’s why I really wanted to write this review because I guess if I would not have been reading some of her poems before, hearing and reading all these negative things about Kaur’s might have been the point where I would have stopped researching. I might not even have bought the books I already put in my online shopping card. But glad I didn’t, I gave this artist a chance and I can’t say that I am regretting it.

I am not an expert on this field obviously and I don’t try to discredit the people who gave their very negative opinions on Kaur’s work, but I want to try and give another perspective on the topic. Because I think, what some people might actively or subconsciously have done was gatekeeping and I think in its essence, that was wrong. Comparing Kaur’s work with what I knew from schools, definitely showed some differences. Most of her poems are quite short and as I said, their meaning can be understood easily. The themes of her poetry surround around womanhood, abuse, family and relationships and you can say they feel like very meaningful quotes. The most popular one, which her first book is named after is “Milk and Honey”:

Image shows on of the poems from the book, black text on a white backround: "how is it so easy for you to be kind to people he asked Milk and honey dripped from my lips as i answered Cause people have not been kind to me - rupi kaur". On the right side of the page there is a illustrauion of a glas with a honey stick ontop and bees fling around it.

The messages of this poem seems to be: people who have been hurt, try not to hurt others because they don’t want anyone else to feel the pain, they felt. It’s said with a more visual language and emphasizes with a not quite fitting illustration, to which we get in a moment, but you get a general idea. There is no second or third layer behind it, which some people might consider lazy or consciously vague so that more people can relate to it. But what exactly would be the problem with that?
Kaurs work in her first book feels very much like a sort of theraphy session for herself and the reader, where you get lead through diffrent stages from “the hurting”, over “the loving”, to “the breaking” and in the end “the healing”. Writing down those maningful quote-like and longer poems, seemed to have helped her deal with certain things that might have happend to her. And it did help me feel understood somewhat too. Since I can’t believe Kaur only did that to become famous, I want to ask again: what exactly would be the problem with that? If she was helping herself and others with her words, is that not the purest form of art?

I said the illustration was not quite fitting, not because I wanted to critique her art style, but because I think a different imagine might have emphasized the message a little bit more. Her Illustration is general, seem to be what people like to complain about the second most though, also calling it lazy. I feel like that’s very subjective like the whole thing might be because I actually really like the art style Kaur used. Just because it’s not shaded or colored, because the ends of the lines don’t connect to each other all the time, it still has something very interesting to it, that I really enjoy. I actually even tried to recreate that, which is not as easy as it might seem. People also like to point out that it feels like the illustrations are only there to fill the pages, make the book seem fuller, they don’t really see it as part of the poem, which I find strange. I see them, the illustrations and the poems, as a connected piece of art. Like in this example:

Another Poem from the book, black text on a white backround: "the idea that we are so capable of love but still choose to be toxic - rupi kaur" with an illustration of a scorpion on the right end of the page.

It’s one of her shorter poems, which again can be understood very easily but with the scorpion she choose to put on that specific page, it might tell a bigger different story. I see it as a nod to the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which goes something like this: A scorpion asks a frog if he can ride on his back to get from one side of the river to the other side. The frog asks “Why should I risk getting stung by you?” to which the scorpion answers “Why should I sting you on the river, if it would mean that we both drown?”. The frog sees the logic in that and decides to help the scorpion, but halfway over the river, the scorpion goes against his word and stings the frog. With his last dying breath, the frog asks the scorpion why he did that and doomed them both, and the scorpion answers “It’s just my nature”. So both the poem and the story play with the idea of people making bad decisions, hurting themselves and others in the process. But Kaur’s poems seem to condemn the actions more, going against the idea of “It’s just my nature” whereas the fable kinda leaves that more open to interpretation. With that in mind, I don’t think Kaur just put random art on the page to fill up her book, she did it because it was part of the art she wanted to create and maybe the message she wanted to sent.

Final Thoughts
So, all in all, I would say art is a very subjective thing, so don’t let other people tell you that something you enjoy is bad and always try to make up your own mind. From what I understand, Rupi Kaur’s work might be considered Level 1 poetry: fun to read, easy to understand, and aesthetically pleasing. It might not be comparable to Level 5 or Level 10 poerty, but that does not mean it’s not good or not poetry at all. So this might be a good book to get you started on poems in general, especially if you like the topics mentioned. It might get you interested in this form of art and that’s never wrong.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Book Review, Review | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 3

Covid 19: A German Perspektive (Part 3)

The pandamic was devastating for so many people on so many levels, I don’t want to seem like I am not acknowledging that when writing this post. I actually have already written two parts which you can read where I talked about the effect the pandemic had on my student life *here* and how the German public reacted to some of the rules that were made *here*. In this final part, I want to focus on the positive change that the pandemic might have brought to us as a society. I guess in all of that suffering there has to be some lessons or skills we have learned that might help us going forward.

All of the things I want to talk about are speculation on the basis of what we have developed in the last one and a half years, starting with digitalization. As I have mentioned in part one of this commentary, many schools and universities have adapted to digital learning, they have trained their staff, bought the licenses to various different digital programs such as zoom, and made everything available online. I know professors who have never before even thought about the possibility of digitalizing their work and now they make PowerPoint presentations and upload them every week. It’s because they have to and there is no other possibility to teach the students when it’s forbidden to meet up in a classroom. But of course, we could keep that up when the pandemic is over and try out a kind of hybrid model, which is already talked about in some places. It would mean that every student could decide by themselves what kind of learning environment they would prefer and that actually sounds awesome to me.

Home Office is another thing that was deemed impossible in many workplaces until it had to be tried out for the purpose of staying safe. And mostly everyone was puzzled when it indeed was possible, not only that but for many people, it was just more convenient. They would not have to drive 2 hours to work, which either made them have more free time or time to sleep, both great things. It might also have been easier for people to work in a comfortable environment such as their home rather than sitting in a cubical office the whole day. Companies could even save up on the money which they pay for renting an office building, so it does sound like a win-win situation for most people, right? Why have we not tried it out sooner? I know for some people mainly parents having a place to go to work can be necessary, but maybe we could have a hybrid model here too? Where people could decide themselves: Do I want to go into an office(which can be a temporary one, still cheaper than renting a whole building) or do I want to work from home?

Having work and learning digitalized can also have a positive effect for people who just can’t go there in person for different reasons. Maybe they can’t find an apartment near enough to be there in time every day. Maybe they can’t leave their house, maybe they have to care for someone and so on. I have learned that people from different german states are studying at my University in Hamburg now because it has become possible for so many! Sign languages for example is a subject that is not available to study everywhere, maybe people who want to study that but were not able to get here can now study it from home. My husband got a job in Hannover, which is about 2 hours away from here and would be too far to drive every day, but now he can participate from home too. How great is that?

Corona has also shown us where our system in general might have failed. When it comes to schools for example, because of the virus the public now found out that many schools actually have broken windows that can’t be opened. It came up because when the school took place in person, the teachers were asked to ventilate the rooms properly so that the risk of infection was as low as possible. Some schools just could not do that, which is horrible to know, but hopefully, it will be fixed now. People also began to think more about abuse at home, which has skyrocketed because of the many lockdowns, so hopefully, they will take measures against that too. It introduced wearing masks in public which many Asian countries already do for years and many people in Germany have said they want to keep them here in the future too, especially in cold seasons.

It might sound like I only want to see the good things, but sometimes it’s necessary and it helped me keep my sanity in this kind of situation we all were and still are in. I am sorry for all the people who lost family and friends in these times, to everyone who lost their jobs, had to close their shops or lost part of their childhood, could not live the proper student life, were not able to travel and see the world. The crisis has taken much from us, but we have to see the light in the dark. I hope you still enjoyed this kind of german perspective of the things that have happened. The idea was actually sparked because many people in Germany are currently raging against the vaccination and I wanted to make a kind of journal-like entry about what the vaccination was like for me. But then I thought I should talk about how the situation in Germany is in general and thus you have my three parts now. I think I might still do the vaccination dairy thing, so keep an eye out if you want to know more about what that was like for me.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 1

Covid 19: A German Perspektive (Part 2)

So last time I talked more about the german student experience with Corona than I had actually planned. If you have not read that but would be interested in it, check it out *here*. Today I want to focus more and the general situation in Germany, how the people felt, and why it might have been so different than in other countries. Again I want to talk about things that got to my attention, I am not talking for every german person who lived through the pandemic up till now and not every student, everything I talk about here is my own opinion and my own take on the things that have happened over the last one and a half years.

Let’s start right off with the events my penpals were most surprised about, to hear that people were protesting against the Corona rules. I don’t have a definitive answer to why people are fighting against the government that much, but I have some ideas that could have lead to that behavior. The first one is anger: My mother and her boyfriend actually wanted to go on a big vacation, after years of not being able to go they booked a flight to Turkey and wanted to go there in April 2020. But then it was canceled due to Turkey not wanting tourists to come in anymore for obvious reasons. The first reaction of my mother’s boyfriend was anger, he was angry not to go on that vacation he had planned and earned himself and he needed to direct this emotion at someone. That’s where reason two comes into play: Fake News. He read an article shared on WhatsApp about Trump developing and spreading the virus to gain some kind of control over the world. That’s when his anger found a scapegoat: he wanted to believe Trump is responsible, to be able to be angry at him since he could not really be angry at a virus he did not understand. It was easier to believe in a shadowy figure with bad intentions than an invisible thing that acted irrationally.

There were many different articles like that out there, blaming multiple different people for the pandemic and its consequences. They were shared in person and all over the internet and people did not only wanted to believe them, some did not even have any other source to tell them what was going on. In their confusion and urge to wrap their heads around what was causing the government to make such harsh decisions they were eager to jump at the first opportunity for someone to explain to them what was going on, even if it sounded crazy because what was happening around them was crazy too. When the government later tried to explain more, it was already too late, people had made up their minds and they did not plan on changing them. A big distrust between a part of the public and the government with their doctors trying to explain what happened with science arose. Again: it was just easier to believe in an organization of criminals who created the virus than to listen to the explanations about how a virus from a bat was transferred to humans and why it was now necessary to wear masks because of it.

I don’t want to say those people were dumb, but maybe a bit naive and easy to manipulate. Which was sadly almost instantly used by the people who had problems with the government before. Basically, every group left or right who had some kind of issue with either our Chancellor Merkel, the form of government we have or something related to that used the chaos Corona caused to get more people to march with them. The so-called “Querdenker(lateral thinker)” movement was born out of the unity of all those people, which actually surprised everyone since it must have been the first time ever where people from the far left and the far right came together. They organized so many different protests all over Germany that if you have seen a news report about protest, you might have seen photos of them marching through the streets, neglecting the Corona safety rules, and not being stoped. Why have they not been stopped but at some point even lead by the police, is what you might be asking and it’s a good question, hard to answer though.

In a democracy you should always have the right to protest, if you have not and have to fear getting beaten up or arrested for speaking your mind, you live in a dictatorship or something radical like that. So in general I guess having these protests is a good sign of democracy working or it shows the flaws of it, depends on your point of view. Anyway, that’s the biggest reason why Germany could not just forbid events like that. They have tried to make them as safe as possible, by ruling that protests can only take place with enough distance between the participants and them wearing masks. But as I have already mentioned that was mostly ignored and when hundreds of people, in some cities even thousands of them do not obey, what is the police able to do? Leading them through the streets, trying to prevent them from harming others, and hopefully ending the event as soon as possible, was the most reasonable thing I guess.

It was still hard to see that happening on TV for many people, who had to buy and wear their masks to go grocery shopping or to work. Masks and the ruling on them is a whole topic for itself actually. We began using cloth masks for the start of the pandamic, they could be made by anyone at home, which was not only cheaper but also the only possible option. The demand for medicals masks would have been so big, that the government could not have provided enough for everyone. But when they had bought enough from who knows where they ruled that now people were not allowed to wear cloth masks anymore, only medical masks were deemed safe enough. That was a huge problem because it was also advised to not use the medicals masks more than once, meaning that we went from cheaps masks that you could wash and reuse to having to buy a new mask every time you wanted to leave the house.

So again people got angry, about being forced to buy masks and spend money some might not even have, while thousands of protesters were shown not doing that on TV every day. Small businesses were angry about not getting the help they were promised in time, causing some of them to have to close. Parents were angry because they did not know when and for how long schools would open again, and how to balance their work-life with having to care for their children 24/7 and the list goes on and on. What I want to say is that it’s totally valid to feel confused and be angry about what has happened in this time of crisis. But I hope many people have also learned and maybe changed their minds about what caused all of this to happen and why the government acted as it did. It might not have been perfect, not all decisions made were the best but it was the first time for all of us to deal with problems like this. And maybe we will be more prepared for future situations because of it, not future pandemics I hope, but children learning from home, a new perspective on Work-Life-Balance and working together for a common goal. That’s what I want to talk about in my final entry of this series: positive change.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT