No dating, no heterosexual sex, no marriage, no motherhood—these are the four “no’s” of South Korea’s 4B movement, which an increasing number of Americans have been joining since Trump’s election. Sex strikes or celibacy as a political identity, detached from religious connotations, have already been tried as a form of feminist resistance in the ancient comedy Lysistrata and in women’s movements since their first wave. Today, this heteropessimistic strategy is receiving renewed attention.
However, it requires further explanation how various discourses on abstinence can be politically situated. After all, celibate ideals are also central to Puritan, conservative, and anti-feminist ideals. Abstinence-oriented education, for example, is regarded as a repressive strategy of the right. In trends such as NoFap, in which pornography and masturbation are renounced, there is sometimes an attempt to establish status and hegemonic masculinity through self-disciplined control of emotions. Not least, the concept of celibacy has received media attention due to misogynistic acts of violence and terror perpetrated by self-proclaimed Involuntary Celibates—or Incels, for short.
What is the status of the ambivalent role of the sexual and the non-sexual in our society? What about the significance of romantic relationships compared to friendships or entirely different kinds of relationships that go beyond the privileging of bourgeois, white, patriarchal, and heteronormative ideals?
During the panel discussion, attempts will be made to categorize and define these phenomena in order to avoid hasty comparisons between them and to explore new connections.
Beata organized this panel discussion in collaboration with >>VERLAGE GEGEN RECHTS and invited the following panelists to join her in exploring how contemporary discourses on sexual abstinence should be understood in a political context:
Susanne Kaiser
is a journalist, political consultant, and author of *Political Masculinity: How Incels, Fundamentalists, and Authoritarians Mobilize for the Patriarchy* (Suhrkamp 2020) and *Backlash: The New Violence Against Women (Tropen 2023). Her primary areas of focus include power dynamics between men and women in Muslim and Western societies, organized misogyny, and sexism.
Andrea Newerla
holds a Ph.D. in sociology, is the author of *The End of the Romantic Dictate: Why We Should Rethink Intimacy, Relationships, and Love* (Kösel 2024), and currently works as a relationship counselor. Her areas of expertise include online dating, care structures, intimate relationships, and sexualities.
Beatrice Frasl
is a podcaster (including Große Töchter—the feminist podcast for Austria) and a cultural studies scholar specializing in feminism, gender studies, and queer studies. Her most recent book is *Detromanticize Yourselves! A Wake-Up Call for the Abolition of Love* (Haymon 2024).
SCHEDULE
Fri, Mar 28, 2024
1:00 PM
LOCATION
Book Fair – Leipzig
LANGUAGE
German
PRICE
starting at 19 euros
WITH
Beate