When women are talked about and written about, it often sounds like elves or peaches.

The woman is lovely, helpful and good.

The journalist Ann-Kristin Tlusty divides this phenomenon in her book “Sweet” into three categories - gentle, sweet, tender - and makes it clear: “When I write about women here, I will (...) First learn femininity as that and often undoubtedly perceive an unconscious impulse to deny one's own needs and to give space to those of others, the impulse to anticipate what is desired - or simply to have no other choice. ”Tlusty shows something that cannot be ignored if you consume fiction: there the roles it describes are omnipresent.

Whether in the opera or on RTL.

Julia Bähr

Coordinator F + content and editorial SEO.

  • Follow I follow

This fiction, in turn, does not take place in a vacuum.

It goes back to a social expectation and it shapes the girls and women who look at it, listen to it or read it.

An extreme example of this is the Japanese kawaii culture, which propagates cuteness and is therefore not only, but primarily aimed at women.

Society shapes culture, and culture shapes the next generations.

But Tlusty does not go into such phenomena, it is not about the causes of the roles, but about their effects. First she dedicates herself to the gentle woman: "She selflessly takes care of all those who urgently need a gentle shoulder - and of course, with a mild smile, masters the innumerable challenges of everyday life for which women are supposedly predestined." The problem here is the lack of appreciation, as the author notes. After all, gentleness is a quality and not an achievement, so all the achievements behind it are in the nature of women. Do you always take care of everything and never complain? You don’t have to say thank you, that’s just her nature.

The second part does not mean sweet in the sense of cute, but rather: the woman as a sweet temptation, as a passive object of desire, "sexually ready at all times - and partly also under feminist auspices". Much in this chapter is worth considering. But the author seems to be firing on the topic in an untargeted manner and hits a number of things that don't belong there. For example, she cites the problem that, as a young woman, she had a preference for chocolate in an online profile and the Iranian businesswoman Anousheh Ansari said in preparation for her space flight that she didn't care what was to eat on the ISS, the main thing was 'Chocolate is on board. However, chocolate has nothing to do with the role it tried to describe earlier. It's not anti-feministTo have a preference for confectionery - on the contrary, it can even be emancipatory, because fat people eat chocolate in public with self-confidence.

This is only one of several passages that are evidence of lazy thinking.

Tlusty writes about vertical discrimination, in which wealthy women exploit poorer women by letting them do the housework.

There is no question of the possibility of paying household help fairly or well.

More than giggling maybe

Later it comes to sexuality and the “yes means yes” rule, which was created to prevent rape and sexual assault. Tlusty claims that this method is not as “gender neutral” as it initially appears: “By removing the consent principle from a person who asks and a person who answers, from a person who initiates and a person who reacts assuming a strong and a weak position, binary role assignments are continued. ”The author assumes that“ continue ”to ask the men and the women agree. Even if that's true, the assumption that the questioner is in the weak position is too one-sided.

Sex continues, because Tlusty lacks intermediate categories: “What if you don't want to say yes, but also don't want to say no? (...) Where is there room for the maybe, for the insecurities and ambivalences that are inherent in a lustful sexuality? ”That, in turn, is not thought simple enough, because very simply“ maybe ”means:“ Not yes ”. So first of all "no". “Maybe” is related to such charged phrases as “Not here” and “Not yet”. Everyone can say “maybe”, but nobody can take it as “yes”. Tlusty misjudges the seriousness of the debate, which goes beyond giggling maybe.

Her comments on the reception of Beate Zschäpe as a tender, innocent woman are again interesting.

Journalists raised the question early on whether Zschäpe knew anything about the murders.

"Couldn't she have had breakfast for fourteen years with two members of the largest terrorist cell in Germany after the war - but had absolutely nothing to do with their crimes?" It is noticeable here that the clichés do not only harm women or: they do not only harm women .

Some benefit from the fact that they are even more likely to get away with crime if they are believed to be a delicate creature.

And so the clichés also damage society: by obscuring the view of women.

Ann-Kristin Tlusty: "Sweet".

A feminist criticism.

Hanser Verlag, Munich 2021. 208 pp., Hardcover, € 18.