April 13

Ableism 101

As some of you know, I am studying sign language at a university in Germany, which means a huge part of that is also disabled studies in general. I don’t want to say I am an expert in the field, but I might do know a few more things about it than the average person does. And today is one of these days where I feel like I should share some of that knowledge I have gained with you.

The difference between the words “able” and “disable”

To talk about this topic we first need to define some of the words I will be using throughout this post, let’s start with the difference between “abled” and “disabled” people. Someone is considered “able” when the body they have been born into fits the criteria of what society views as “healthy” and “normal”, meaning just because of their body, they won’t be held back by society in any way(let’s ignore things like racism and sexism for the sake of this explanation). “Disabled” people, on the other hand, are born with or without something, which makes participating in our society harder for them.

So let’s imagine someone who is born with legs that can run, take stairs and be independent. Someone born without or with broken legs in some way, can’t run, can’t take stairs and often is not as independent, not because of their disability, but because society often forgets about them. They make buildings without ramps, without accessible toilets or even without big enough doors for a wheelchair to fit through. And because of those things, they are not able to be independent oftentimes.

In Germany, the translation of “disabled” is actually “behindert”, which would literally mean something like “being hindered to do something“. In this case, a wheelchair user would be hindered to access a building for one or multiple of the reasons I stated above. Their problem would not be their wheelchair in this case, but the fact that whoever build the building did not think of how a wheelchair user would enter. And that’s the general problem disabled people face in life, no matter what kind of disability they have.

What is ableism?

As I said earlier, for the sake of that explanation, we tried to not think of racism and sexism, which I think you all know the definition of already. Ableism is very similar, only that the minority group which is being discriminated against in this case are disabled people. This discrimination can look very obvious, in that for example someone is bullied for their “strange look” because the person might be fully blind and thus has nothing to focus on. But it can be less obvious too, sometimes people don’t even know that they are acting ableist.

A good example of that kind of behaviour is what led me initially to write this post. As you certainly know, there are different kinds of gadgets already developed, which are supposed to help disabled people be more independent in life. The wheelchair is one of the most obvious, but there are many many more. One thing that comes to my mind is a plate that has some cavities and a little stopper, to position food into. It was made to make people who only have one hand or one arm, be able to slice their food without someone else’s help.

But those two Gadgets seem very obvious and self-explanatory to me, and it looks like there are others, which confuse people. Just recently I saw a video of a chef making fun of a device which I can best describe as an egg cracker, but one that does the job for you. You lay an egg into position, grab the handle and press down and the raw egg falls down into your pan, ready to be cooked. This chef in the video did make it seems as if that was an “unnecessary contraption” and it would be so much easier to just break an egg with your hands, “it only needs practice”. That is straight-up ableist behaviour because not everyone has the dexterity or just the right body parts to be able to crack an egg open like that. So making fun of helpful devised is very discriminative, even though I am pretty sure, the chef from the video did not even think of what that gadget might have been actually used for.

Gadgets that benefit disabled people, can benefit us all

This indirect form of Ableism often springs from a lack of education, like it’s the problem with many different things. People often just don’t know and somehow don’t find out, that some devices have been invented with disabled people in mind. And not all of them only benefit them, many of them actually benefit everyone in society. Let me give you some examples.

With TikTok being at an all-time high and Instagram basically trying to copy its functions, short video-based content is all the rage these days. POV, subtitles, Speech-to-text and Voice Recognition are all already part of our daily lives, but have we stopped one second to think about how they are actually helping disabled people more than they help us? Subtitles may not have been designed for deaf people, but they help them engage with said media content, which would otherwise not be available to them. Speech to text is making writing texts digitally easier for blind people, and audiobooks basically only exist because of them.

Curb cuts, which I have often used owning a scooter since last year, were designed to help wheelchair users get across the street. Typewriters were originally designed to help blind people write a letter, back when that was still popular 😉 Even electrical toothbrushes were designed to help those limited motor skills and this list could go on for quite a while longer, but I think I got my point across.

Fin

With this post, I only hope to spread some more awareness and educate people on topics, which at least in my school time, were sadly on no one’s mind. Disabled people do exist in our society, they are part of it and should be treated as such. So next time you pick up something, which seems useless to you, before discarding the product altogether, think about how it might be able to help other people. Who knows, maybe it even sparks an idea for a new gadget in your head, which will become so popular in the future, that everyone will use it. I think in general, we should just think of other people more often and some of the problems we share on a worldwide level would disappear.

Category: Info Post | LEAVE A COMMENT
February 2

Normalizing violence against children on TikTok & other video-platforms

The “Throw A Shoe” Trope

I know this is a bold headline but hear me out. I don’t have TikTok, but I use Instagram a lot and since they “invented” the Reel feature, many TikTokers repost their stuff on there too. So without actually using TikTok, I have an idea of how the app functions and know that there are many different things you can do with it. What started as a platform where people would mostly sing and dance to tunes, is now used for educational tutorial videos, cute pet videos and also comedic videos. The last one is what I want to focus on today, because that was the most problematic I have seen. I don’t want to condemn anyone, I don’t want people to unfollow anyone, I really only want to spread awareness of the topic, because I feel like many creators just don’t know what kind of impact their work can have. So if you are interested in what I have to say and what I find out, this post is for you 🙂

Scrolling through the reels on Instagram has become some kind of routine for me, to do when I am bored. And I mostly adore the cool art videos, cute pets to look at and I do laugh and many videos with a comedic intention behind them too. But from watching these videos so often, there is one trope in particular which I have seen being used very often and very naively. Oftentimes, when I see a video situation or a POV describing a child – parent relationship, it’s about the kid doing something “wrong” and the adult either actively using violence or at least treated to use it. And the comedic idea behind this seems to indicate some kind of shared childhood memory of parents beating up their children. The trope which I have seen used the most is a parent, using their shoes or sandals to hit the child or throw at them.

You see where I live, in the whole country of Germany, beating up your children is actually against the law and I do know it’s not the same everywhere. But I still think hitting an innocent child, to make them “understand” something is never the right way to deal with a problem. It can even lead to trauma in the child, physically and psychologically and it’s always the better option to talk it out or choose non-violent penatlty like house arrest to raise children. The world is changing and I think beating up your children really is not modern anymore and might even be forbidden in more countries than you would think. Especially now with Corona and families being forced to stay in a house together for longer, that topic has arisen again.

Children between 12-years and 17-years use TikTok on a weekly basis

The problem I have with those kinds of videos is not the shared memory behind it, which is a concept often used in comedy. Where we laugh about something because we experienced it ourselves and have this “Yes, that’s true!” -moment, often amusing us and taking us back to a certain experience. I guess with violence, it’s more of a dark humour kind of thing, which I am not against in general. But if we think about who the audience of apps like TikTok is, mostly young children and teenagers, we should think more about how it affects them. Because for them, seeing such behaviour and adults laughing about it, will make them think it’s normal. And when they think it’s normal and gets beaten up themselves, they won’t do anything about it.

I don’t think children should be strong enough to defend themselves against an adult physically and mentally, but in a situation like this, they also won’t consider asking for help, because they might fear they get laughed at, just like people laugh at these videos. So what I would want to propose is for the people who make these comedic videos to stop and think about if they need to portray a story they want to tell in this way, or if there is no other way to deliver the message, without normalizing violence for all the children watching. And also, to not include these kinds of tropes in videos with a totally different meaning.

Hitting children seemingly has become a part of pop culture

Because what actually got me to want to talk about this topic here on my blog, is that I found this trope being used in a completely different context. Instead of describing a child – parents relationship, it was used in a POV for Squid Games. Basically, the video was about how Squid Games could look like in Germany and what kind of games might be played and it is joked about crossing the road. For context: In Germany, people really stop at a red light as pedestrians and only cross the road when the green light comes up. Mostly because if you don’t do it that way, a mother, a father or some old people will actually come up to you and scold you, saying stuff like “Think about the kids and what they will do when they see you crossing the street when the red light is up“, which is especially ironic in the context of this post.

Instead of being scolded like I just mentioned the person in the video was actually hit with a shoe by the grandmother who saw them cross the street with the red light on. And the thing is: the message could have been delivered in a very different way. You could have made the grandmother stare you down, animated superman-like laser eyes or actually have them scold you. But instead, the creator choose to use the trope normally connected to beating up children, because it was considered to be a “funny thing”. And now think about the children and what they will think, seeing us laughing about something like this.

As a creator, you always have the responsibility to think of your target audience when creating and this gets more and more important in modern times. I see many activists talk about their topics with Trigger warnings or videos being subtitled so that deaf people can have fun with them too. Why not think about why you choose to portrait violence in such a unique way and if it’s necessary, next time you make a fun video. That’s all I want to achieve with this post, for people to just think a bit more about their actions and act accordingly. I don’t want to tell anyone how to live their life, but to try and stop sharing unnecessary violence, not just for the children, but for a better society in general.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Info Post | LEAVE A COMMENT
January 19

Happy Birthday to us!

By now my blog will be exactly one year old, my first post was published on the 19th or January 2021 🙂 Congrats to me and thanks you to all of the people who have read my posts, talked to me about it and subscribed to this little project of mine! When I started, I did not really know where I was going. I just wanted to write about stuff I am passionate about, connect with people and maybe share some of my views. After one year, I think there are some things I want to try and change for the better. Posting more regularly, structure my longer posts in a better way and just make it a greater experience for all of us! You could say those are my new years’ resolutions(or at least some of them) for 2022 😉

Though the start into the new year sadly was not a great one for me personally. I really wanted to make a post about our new years’ traditions, but we did not get to do all of them, because we had a tragic loss in the family. As I want to keep my privacy, I won’t explain that further for now, but please be a bit patient with me, especially about my new years’ resolutions and what kind of posts there will be within the next weeks.
I have not yet decided which subscriptions to keep, which ones to cancel or which new ones to take on. I also have not yet published reviews about all of the subscriptions I started last year and I can’t say when they will be scheduled. So if you were looking forward to monthly reviews of subscription or mystery boxes, it might take a while until it’s all sorted out. But when it is, I hope that we will all be happy with it 🙂

There are also will be some more commentary-like posts in the future, which I had actually already written last year but I was not happy with how they looked and how they were structured. As you may have seen with my last post about Sexism in Cartooning, Manga and Anime, I already tried out something new. Don’t hesitate to let me know how you liked it! Some similar posts might be coming soon since as I just mentioned I basically already prepared them months ago and it’s a bit easier for me to finish and upload them than to come up with totally new stuff right now. Still, those posts are talking about some topics which are very important to me, so they are not bad (I hope) but just different to the posts you were used to seeing here. But I promise there will be light-hearted posts and reviews still in the future!

The picture at the beginning was drawn by myself and I am very happy about the progress I have made so far. Drawing people is still hard for me, I have learned some really useful tips and tricks for digital drawing in the last weeks! Surely I will tell you some more about it in an upcoming post too. Currently, I am still thinking about creating a new Instagram account just for my art, if I do, I will let you know 😉 Maybe I will even post some more drawings on here, we will see 😛

And last but not least I have something reaaaaally exciting to tell you! Since most of my regular viewers here are actually some of the penpals I have met on the App “Slowly”, I know from many of them that they want to learn German^^ I am no teacher myself, but they have told me that exchanging letters with me in German from time to time is really helpful 🙂 So I decided that I want to at least try(we will see how well it works later xD) to write my posts in both English AND German! I will have to see in which order I will update the later posts, hopefully, all of the posts in the future will be available in both languages. Maybe it’s just interesting for you to switch between them and try to understand some German 😉 Or maybe it really is helpful for your learning progress! Either way, I am really excited about this, as another feature for my blog in 2022!

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Info Post, Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
December 1

Other Books in the Grishaverse (as possible Christmas presents?)

I had some trouble recently, which is why I was not able to upload any posts for some weeks. I do not only want to apologize for that, but also inform you that this post was meant to be uploaded at the beginning of the month xD But I guess if you still need to find a last-minute Christmas present, it could be a cool idea or just to plan any presents for the future, an upcoming birthday perhaps 😉 Enjoy!

It’s December and 2021 is ALMOST OVER! That does not only mean we have soon successfully lived through another year with Covid but also that Christmas is coming. And even though I am not the biggest fan of Christmas tradition and celebration, of course, I love the gift-giving part 😉 In this post, I not only want to talk about some books I bought but also why they might be the perfect Christmas presents for some of your loved ones! The books I will be focusing on are all written by Leigh Bardugo the famous author of the books on which the Netflix Series “Shadow and Bone” is based on. If you are following my blog for at least some months, you know that I have recently reviewed the series on Netflix and the books and then compared them. That’s why I won’t be talking about them in detail, but of course, if someone has neither seen the Web series nor read the books, those are the ones you should start with, to introduce someone into the story. So they alone make a great present. But if you know someone loved the show or read the first books already, here are some more they will love <3 (Spoiler-free!)

The Demon in the Wood
This is a rather small book, thus not even published as a paperback but available as an eBook everywhere online! With around 50cts this is one of the most affordable out of all the gifts and it’s about the biggest Villan of the Series! Basically, it is a short story about how he became the man we got to know in the books and the Netflix series. I really look forward to reading it myself and actually, when I heard there was a book about him, I had hoped for a 400-page long one, but I will take the 60 pages with little remorse. I am sure they are interesting still, just finished very quickly :/ But beware, this story will hold big spoilers for people who have never seen the series or read the books(especially book 1), everyone else should be able to enjoy this story spoilerfree^^

The Tailor
Same as “The Demon in the Wood” this one is a short story as well, roughly around the same price point and with the same amount of Spoiler alert! But instead of being about the main villain of the series, this story is about a character who is highly debated upon by fans, whether she was a good or bad character. Some say that this eBook helped them understand her and her actions better. Also for completion, every fan of the series will LOVE to have this in their hands 😉

The Six of Crows
The Duology of the Crows chronologically takes place before the Grishaverses original trilogy, but it’s technically not a prequel because it’s not about Alina and Mal from the books, but rather about the band of thieves you get to meet and love in the Netflix Series. Netflix actually took the characters from these books and wove them into the Sun Summoners Story, which for me personally was a great choice. I was actually a bit disappointed to not read about them when I picked up the first books. So if your friend or partner was as excited to see the group on screen as I was, they will love to read these books about their origin story. Some even say they prefer these over the main story books because of their amazing writing and narrative, but I let you or the person receiving it as a gift decide on that 😉

The Lives of the Saints
This one is actually not a storybook, in the sense that it does not bring something new to the table if you have already read the OG trilogy. But rather it’s a book that is mentioned in that story and has a big significance for the characters and their goals. I am sure everybody who loves the series, would love to keep something like this as a collector’s item maybe or to feel even more immersed into the story than before, by holding the book in their hands, which Alina holds in her own. It’s beautifully illustrated on the cover, but also on the inside. Every new chapter begins with a piece of artwork and I can see how this resembles some form of holy text for some in the Grishverse, it certainly looks like it 😉

The Language of the Thornes
Similar to “The Lives of the Saints” this book could be found in Ravka, but as far as I can remember it was not really mentioned in the Trilogy. It’s less significant than the other book is, but you could kinda compare it to the fairytale books published by J.K. Rowling as a kind of add-on to the Harry Potter series. It’s said to be a collection of folklore told in the world of the series, some more insights into peoples lives, and some further information for fans to better understand the world, one of their favourite stories takes place in 🙂 Like “The Lives of the Saints” stories are fully illustrated too and the way they did it is really cool and kinda magical!

The Severed Moon
This one is especially gift-worthy because it’s actually a diary! You might have heard about the new diaries which have writing prompts in them, said to motivate people more to actually write something down daily. “The Served Moon” is such a book, created by the author of the Grishaverse books for fans of the series. It holds some magical writing prompts and quotes from the books, with beautiful illustrations on the out and on the inside. And it’s said to last for a year, what great gift to give on Christmas for a friend or a loved one to start the new year with 🙂 We all need some magic in 2022 I believe xD

Kings of Scars & Rule of Wolves
This Duology I have saved for last, because technically to avoid all kinds of spoilers you should read these books last. They take place after the story of Alina and Mal ends one way or the other with the third book of the original trilogy. And they may or may not(really trying not to say anything wrong here xD) lead on some stories of characters we have already gotten to know, but they most likely will point to events that have already happened. So to be safe, I would only gift this to someone who I know has already finished or at least bought all the other books, so that they can read them in the correct, spoiler-free order. But if you are very generous this Christmas and want to gift all of the Grishaverse books to someone(who will be very thankful, I am sure) then these books should not be missing, because as far as I know, they will conclude all of the stories Leigh Bardugo told in her magical series.

I hope you have gotten some gift ideas now and I guess I wish you all a Merry Christmas already! Celebrate if that’s your thing or try to get through the time like I do and look forward to next years Halloween again xD

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Book Review, Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 28

What’s Halloween like in Germany?

It’s October, the spookiest month of the year leading up to Halloween! I am actually always pretty excited about this time of year, I love the aesthetics very much and you could say it’s my favourite holiday! Since it’s the first time Halloween comes around while I am writing for this blog, I decided to make a post about it and tell you what Halloween is like in Germany. I hope it will be fun and interesting and if you still have any lingering questions about it, feel free to ask them in the comment section^^

First things first, technically Halloween is not a Holiday in Germany, meaning that you don’t get a day off because of it. But you will either have the 31st of October be a holiday or the 1st of November, that’s because most of Germany’s holidays are actually tied to the christian religion and those, in particular, are celebrated because of Martin Luther and his reformation of the church. I actually know no one who is actually “celebrating” that in any way, but still, we get a day off and I think most people actually use it to celebrate Halloween 😉 This is actually why some older or very religious people are against it being celebrated at all. They feel robbed in a way, but more on that topic later.

Similar to Christmas when the spooky season starts you can buy candies and decorations in every store. Sadly it’s not 3 months or more before the actual holiday, but we are happy about what we get, right? You can buy bat-shaped gummies, sceletons, and cobwebs to hang from your door, and of course pumpkins! Although I have to say that not as many people will create Jack-o-Laterns to put up in front of their door in Germany. My family actually never did, but that was less due to us not wanting to have fun carving out a pumpkin and displaying it and more about not really liking the taste of it and not wanting to waste everything that gets scooped out. Maybe Germans just are not into Pumpkin spice as much as the rest of the world is xD

Everybody is celebrating differently, some people like to lead up to the holidays by reading spooky books or watching horror films, other people only wait for the 31st to come, so they can finally dress up. These days it’s pretty normal for children to dress up in mostly spooky costumes to go around trick or treading, ringing at doorbells and asking people for candy. Because it has become so popular in Germany, most people will actually have something ready to give them. And the very advanced ones will have their whole yard decorated to scare them 😛 I always loved to dress up and run around, it was not even about the candies I have collected, in the end, I often gave them to my friends anyways. It was just cool to take on a role and present it to everyone. I did it until I was 15 years old, when an old grumpy grandpa open the door and asked me how I dared to participate in these child-like activities. At my age, he supposedly was already fighting in a war or something.

It’s not that I have lost all of my passion for Halloween that night, but I was less eager to around and let old people insult me for what I loved. Gladly at that time, I was in a theater group and every year around Christmas we were asked to get dressed up and spook around a shopping area, to make it more of an event to go shopping around the holiday. It was really great because we not only went from shop to shop and screamed at people, we did really make a show out of it. Sometimes we would do something similar to a zombie walk or we would try and keep still for about 5 minutes, which was actually what fascinated the people the most. It was also pretty great to just have more options on what to wear with all the normal theater costumes and other people doing the scary makeup for you. My favorite Halloween costume I ever wore and got to act in was a broken porcelain doll. I got special white paint which cracks up over time and a very cute dress and when I walked in the shopping aisle I tried to do it as puppet-like as possible. Sadly I have no picture of it, but it will always be one of my favorite memories.

There are Halloween parties too for all the people who are too old to go trick or treating but still want to dress up. I actually can’t talk too much about it, because despite my love for this holiday, I never went to one. Can’t really say why maybe because the opportunity never came up or because I imagined these parties more being made for people to get drunk and less for spooking around in costumes. I am sure those are fun for some people and it’s great that adult people are allowed to enjoy the Halloween spirit there too. Maybe one day I will go to one, this year I have other plans, but we will see if that will work out for me or not.

Lastly, I want to talk about people who hate Halloween in Germany. Like I mentioned some Christians have a big problem with it, mostly because they have a holiday of their own where the children are allowed to dress up and go around asking for candies. But I assume it’s less fun because you are not allowed to dress up as a mommy or witch for example and not nearly as many people prepare for it. If I remember correctly their holiday is in January and if a child would knock on my door then, I hardly would have any candy to give them. Old people also often hate Halloween, not only because of the experience I have made, with them thinking it’s only for little kids, but also because of how Halloween changed over the years. Because I would say that yes, the Halloween we are celebrating in Germany today, is heavenly influenced by how the Americans are celebrating it. But that does not have to be a bad thing, right? Fewer people complain about how we celebrate Christmas and it’s basically the same thing. All influenced by Hollywood films 😛

If you’d ask me Halloween is for everyone who can enjoy it. If you don’t like creepy crawlers or skeletons being hung up, you don’t have to celebrate it. If you feel like it’s too much, stay inside and not answer your doorbell, it’s totally up to you. But if you get any joy out of dressing up, running around playing a role, or decorating your house with cobwebs, don’t let yourself be stopped. Other people like to crochet, you might be into pumpkin carving, age really does not matter here. Do what you love and what makes you happy. I plan to go on a little celebration in one of the tattoo studios I got tattooed in this year. They make different events like pumpkin carving, preparing a spooky Labrinth, and Halloween-themed games. I don’t think I will be able to attend all of them, but I really like the idea and effort behind it. And after last Halloween was very uneventful because of Corona, I try to enjoy it even more. Happy Halloween everyone!

Greetings and good wishes
The Madd Hattress

Category: Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
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 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