I have lived in the self-proclaimed ‘queerest city in the world’ since 2011. In that time, I have experienced homophobic violence (for no other reason than being visibly queer in public) on six different occasions. One of these attacks resulted in a black eye, two broken ribs and a fractured orbital bone. After that incident, an acquaintance of mine asked me to write an article for a local Berlin magazine, to which I agreed.
In the article, I described what happened and where I was, and I gave a brief description of the attacker and his girlfriend. She was wearing a hijab. This was an important detail to include in the story because it allowed a group of white German men to scream, “Hey, Ausländer!” at the attacker while trying to break up the fight. A homophobic attack rapidly turned into Islamophobia right in front of me. I fled.
What I decidedly did not write in the article, much to the later chagrin of the editor, were any physical descriptors of the assailant that would belie his race or ethnicity. I simply did not think they were important. I am fortunate enough to have travelled all over the world, to every continent (except Antarctica) and every major ethnic region. I have also been attacked, the entire 40 years of my existence, for being queer, mostly at the hands and mouths of self-righteous white Christians or those culturally socialised by Christianity. I have never once known homophobia to have a particular race or a religion. Everyone and everywhere is homophobic (even Antarctica, I would imagine). The most homophobic places I have ever experienced were the southern United States, southern Italy and right here at home in good old ’Schland. When given the opportunity to write about something that happened to me in my city, I did not feel the need to provide any details related to the race of this person that might be different from mine as if they were a reason for the attack. Because they were not. The editor disagreed.
It will only get worse as we are used for fodder in the forthcoming political discourse.
Revisions were sent back and the word ‘Turkish’ had been inserted as a repeated descriptor for this man. I felt myself morphing into the steam nose emoji; there were so many things wrong with this surreptitious action. First, I did not type those words because it did not matter. Second, I have no idea where this person was from and neither did the editor. We had been speaking Berlinerisch Deutsch, so I assumed he was born in the neighbourhood we were standing in at the time of the attack. If the editor was referring to this man’s genealogical background, then I would go out on a limb to say that his origins were not Turkish at all, but rather from any number of other countries in the region and beyond. The irony of being the actual Ausländer in this situation has never been lost on me. This is how subtle racism imbeds itself into our everyday if we allow it to go unchecked. Third, it completely changed the tone of the article and turned the reporting of a homophobic attack into a race war diatribe – something that was never my intention. I refused the edits and said that under no circumstances were these words to be printed. They published them anyway. “For tension,” they later spat. Let this column serve as the official redaction that I was bullied out of writing all those years ago.
I recount this memory for a very specific reason: this type of response is not a unique experience. Any time I have conveyed the tale of one of these attacks to a white German person over the last 15 years, I am immediately met with questionable statements about the race or religion of the aggressor. Every time. Without fail. It could be understandable if this type of response only happened once or twice… but no. It is the rule, not the exception. This constant reaction is a deep cultural sickness that we must examine and remove from within ourselves for the next generation.
I am reminded of this once again in the aftermath of the horrific assault that took place at CSD Berlin this year. My initial thoughts as I lay in bed and scrolled through the stories on my phone were, ‘Please do not let this person be Muslim or have any connection to the Global South’. I did not even have time to mourn the victims; I just knew the German media was already foaming at the mouth waiting to lay blame on Islam as a whole or any person with the faintest hint of ‘Migrationshintergrund’. I just knew that politicians from every party were going to be wringing their hands with empty sympathy while simultaneously vomiting xenophobic vitriol solely for the possibility of personal gain in the upcoming elections. So far, I have been proven right repeatedly. It will only get worse as we are used for fodder in the forthcoming political discourse. What is this German phenomenon of immediately responding to homophobia with racism? In what world does that actually protect queer people? Homophobia occurs at the hands of white people every day, but the journalistic antiphon is never the same. I will not allow my grief to be weaponised for further evil.
I will not allow my grief to be weaponised for further evil.
While the attacker from CSD did have Lebanese roots, he was also born and raised in Germany. His homophobia came from this place. Not imported. Homegrown. Right here. He learned it in the halls of his Hauptschule while also, undoubtedly, experiencing deep-seated racism from his white German peers. I am certainly not defending his despicable actions, but I am most definitely tired of racism being used as the default answer to homophobia. Do better, Berlin.
