#queer berlin

Musk Ming - Queer Power (Official Video)

I released a new song on Friday, it’s been an interesting experience putting stuff out there and I’ve gotten all kinds of responses. Some people think it’s great and well produced, some people think it’s boring and stupid, some people told me I was going to hell and some added it to their radio station lineups. Personally I think it’s fun to finally do something again that kind of exists in the world, but it’s going to take some time to carve a niche and feel like I have a thing going or know what I’m doing with it. Before 2020 I had finally found a place in the world that made sense to me, traveling and performing my incredibly strange little mix of performance art, poetry and experimental music, building something where I was actually getting paid for it, collaborating with and giving opportunities to others when I could, it felt like a vocation - I had something of meaning to offer the world, and the world accepted. Something I was blessed to learn in the past few years is that I still have value even when I don’t have something to offer, and I’ve gained some needed distance between my sense of self and my artistic output. But I’d like to find more of a place amongst others again, within my new limitations and outlooks. So that’s what I’m up to. Hope it resonates with some. You can hear the new project here:

For the censorship theme, I wanna talk about the film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), released in Germany in 1919. TW suicide, holocaust mention, antisemitism mention, homophobia, nazi mention

It was the first movie to address the social and legal difficulties faced by homosexuals (and portrayed this as a bad thing). It's about a violinist, Paul Körner, who falls in love with his male student. He is eventually blackmailed for this and, although the blackmailer gets jailed, the violinist also gets a nominal sentence for it and loses his musical career because of it, leading him to commit suicide. It was essentially a condemnation of Paragraph 175 (the law that criminalised homosexuality in Germany, the same one the Nazis used to put gay men in concentration camps and that wasn't repealed until 1994), saying that homosexuality wasn't a crime or even an illness, just a different way of being, and that rather than prevent the "crime" of homosexuality, it in fact encouraged the crime of extortion/blackmail. As you might expect, Magnus Hirschfeld was heavily involved and even has a cameo in the film, as a doctor explaining homosexuality and the injustice of the law to the audience. Below are some screenshots:

(full film linked above, I seem to remember seeing at some point that it's technically not the *full* film since it was obviously censored/destroyed during the Nazi period so it's possible that some of the original scenes have been cut. But the above video has most of it I guess? With title cards in English, since it's a silent movie. Also subtitles in Russian for some reason)

The film was a box office success when it premiered but was quickly overshadowed by organised protests by conservative Catholic and Protestant as well as right-wing anti-Semitic groups. Even though the Weimar Republic (the German governmental system from 1918-1933) was relatively progressive and permissive when it came to homosexuality (hence Hirschfeld’s Sexological Institute being allowed to exist, hence the thriving queer culture in the form of bars, clubs, magazines in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany), eventually the film was banned from public screening because it apparently "only showed one side of the debate about paragraph 175" and "might confuse underage viewers about the phenomenon of homosexuality and be used as a recruitment tool" 🙄 From then on it could only be shown at Hirschfeld’s institute for educational purposes and special events.

However, despite facing the scrutiny of the censors, during the Weimar era there were a remarkable number of films released with queer/homosexual themes, even more about crossdressing. According to Robert Beachy in Gay Berlin (where I got most of this information from): "the freedom in the 1920s to depict realistic homosexual or lesbian characters, and their relationships, was all but unique to Germany."

I find this era and the art from this era so interesting because it was a time when there was relative freedom to express and explore queer sexuality, there was a concerted scientific and political movement to decriminalise (and to a certain extent depathologise) homosexuality but that still existed within the bounds of censorship and alongside the growing far right movement in Germany at the time. It's also important to note, I think, that persecution and protests of Hirschfeld and his research, while obviously stemming from queerphobia, also stemmed from antisemitism because Hirschfeld was Jewish.

It me. Hi. First off, get me out of that Kiez thank you

So okay seriously. I'm pre-T or anything genderaffirming and I can't even bind when I'm around my family. I really need something gender affirming which likely is a more masculine hair cut and since I like colours with split dye (probably blue or purple) sooo I'd love to have any of the haircuts below (it's eboy, I know, shame on me). I already have short hair which took me ages to convince my [unsupportive] family for me to do so (yes i am 20 i hate it) and is self dyed ginger. For now literally any hair stylist I went to refused to give me a masculine cut or dye it. So does anyone know a hair stylist anyehere in Berlin focusing on Queer Berlin?!??!?! Please I need help

(I had several dysphoria panic attacks today cause I had to go shopping. Please. I'm desperate)

If you live in or around Berlin or even somewhere else in Germany or the rest of the world, would you be so kind as to have a look at (and hopefully decide to follow!) the facebook page of Bi Berlin e.V. - the link is here.

I haven’t made it quite “public” on here yet but a couple weeks ago we founded a “Verein” (aka German bureaucratic Thing that makes us an Official™ club which will make it easier to get €€€ from funds and stuff). Along four other people I’ve been elected a member of the board and it’s quite a big thing for me. It’d be really cool if we could reach 500 facebook followers soon. Thanks.