The New German Feminisms: Of Wetlands and Alpha-Girls

Abstract

It has been widely documented that women, and particularly young women, do not identify with feminism as a label or political movement (Aapola et al., 2005; McRobbie, 2004, 2009; Scharff, 2011). Indeed, McRobbie (2003, p. 133) argues that feminism has been expelled to an ‘abject state’. It seems that new femininities can do without feminism in the postfeminist era where feminism is taken into account, and simultaneously repudiated (Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2004, 2009). Against this context, it is notable that since 2006 the emergence of ‘new’ feminisms has been proclaimed in Germany, triggered by a public debate on demographic changes. While there was an active women’s movement in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s (Lenz, 2001) and in East Germany in the 1980s (Miethe, 2002),1 subsequent years were constituted by a quieter period for feminist activism (Gerhard, 1999). However, this has changed. ‘Without any doubt’, argue Hark and Kerner (2007),2 ‘the embarrassment is over and also in this country feminism has come back onto the discursive stage.’