United states gay rights düsseldorf
Over a hundred years ago, on October 9 th , , Anna Rüling held the first famous lesbian political speech known worldwide about " Homosexuality and Women's Movement ". It took place at the annual general meeting of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee SHC Wisssenschaftlich humanitäres Komitee, Whk in the Prinz Albrecht Hotel of Berlin.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs is renown as the main inspirational source for the gay movement. The legal expert lived as a professed homosexual: Calling himself an Urning and his homosexual sisters "Urninds" he had unsuccessfully tried to establish an "Association of Urnings" representing homosexuals.
In 12 brochures about " Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmänlichen Liebe " Research about the mystery of love between men, Ulrichs developed the first well-knit theory of innate male homosexuality. Derived from Venus Urania he coined the expression "Uranism".
In the beginning he published the work under the pseudonym Numa Numantis in order to protect his family. In the United States of America Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was celebrated in on Michael Lombardi-Nash's initiative, a historian from Florida. On the occasion of Ulrichs' st birthday a commemoration at his grave in Italian L'Aquila will take place in the end of August Die Männerliebe der Griechen, ihre Beziehungen zur Geschichte, Erziehung, Literatur und Gesetzgebung " Eros.
Anna Rüling is the name of one of the lesbian pioneers. In autumn , on October 9th, she spoke in front of the SHC and an interested audience of about people, hitherto known as the first political speech about lesbians. According to the police report about people attended, among them about 60 women.
Those few documents which have come down to us were written in sexologist contexts, where lesbian love usually was pathologized.
Gay rights in den usa: ein überblick für reisende aus düsseldorf.
During her lecture Anna Rüling criticized ignorance and tabooing of homosexuality by the old Women's Movement. Even those women who had been living together for decades and were relating to each other deeply did not call themselves homosexual, a label constructed at the end of the 19 th century.
Anna Rüling maintained that the Women's Movement was a "historico-cultural necessity" and homosexuality a "natural historical necessity", an "innate sexual instinct". This was politically more than brave at that time. She argued for female emancipation, against contemporary sexism and misogyny and also against any sexologist pathologizations of homosexuality.
Then a piece of scandal, today covered up with tolerance and liberalism. And biological explanations come back with a vengeance again. Since the middle of the 19th century sexology had developed to form a discipline in its own right and was based on several natural sciences, mainly in the context of medicine and psychiatry.
Sexologist knowledge became the standard way of behaving for state and mainly legal discussions about homosexuality. Lesbian women weren't criminalized by legislation; however, since the turn of the century the expansion of paragraph criminalizing male homosexuality on women was being discussed again and again: the main argument was the seductive charms on heterosexual women.
According to Anna Rüling the public awareness of homosexual women was not as great as that of gay men due to the legal criminalization of the latter only, she supposed. But "emotional pressure" due to discrimination of society was extremely high, as Anna Rüling noticed, especially because lesbians had to manage life on their own, both socially and economically.
A rather controversial call from Anna Rüling was that the Homosexual and the Women's Movement should "help each other to achieve rights and acceptance" and settle this "injustice" for good. According to Anna Rüling it was the "duty" of the Women's Movement to support the homosexuals' fight, because the feminists too were fighting "for the right of free personality and self-determination".
Furthermore she referred to homosexual feminists in the movement in a rather provoking manner. Anna Rüling explained the close relationship between emancipation of the two movements in a very impressive and plausible way. It carried the heading "Schamlos freche Agitation" Barefaced and impute agitation and was presumably the doing of Marie Stritt , editor of the paper.
Her article expressed clear dissociation and repugnance against lesbians and gays. The spokeswoman of the more moderate wing of the middle-class Women's Movement, Helene Lange , had expressed her anger about Ruling's speech, too.