s are attacked. The foreigners must leave.  Jessica doesn t dress like a skinhead anymore.  I had to find work, and nobody need know what I think. But what I do after work is nobody s business.  Doreen, also 20, comes from a small town in eastern Germany. She is furious that nothing has  happened  after the firebombing attacks in Rostock and Molln.  The government must close the border. But not only skinheads are against foreigners; some quite normal people are as well. We are at least doing something. 
 Men practice violence; women are the victims.  For many years this was the basic formula underlying feminist theory and practice in the West German women s movement. Everything could be explained from that standpoint.  By assuming the role of victim, one finds a way of legitimately rejecting an awareness
From Ms., May/June 1993, pp. 18-21. Reprinted by permission of Ms. Magazine.   1993.
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8. THE ETHNIC FACTOR: CHALLENGES FOR THE 1990s
of one s own unjust acts, as well as an awareness of the injustices committed by one s own society. In other words, the others are worse than we are.  This was written by Christina Thiirmer-Rohr in a recent article entitled  White Women and Racism.  The Berlin professor and psychologist is one of the best known theorists of the women s movement in western Germany. Three years after the political and social upheaval in Germany and Europe, she is sending an urgent appeal to the  white, Western women s movement to reject the romantic Western view of the white woman as victim, to renounce the self-indulgent self-definition as helpless and incompetent.  It s a harsh and sweeping criticism, but it hits home, revealing the weak point in the German women s movement. Already in the 1980s much of the West German women s movement had given up a global political vision in favor of a pragmatic  here and now  reformism. Feminists focused their energies on developing numerous social and cultural projects: they founded businesses, worked in political parties, unions, and state institutions, and fought for better status for women and for equal representation in government. Slowly but surely, the slogan  women s liberation  turned into  self-actualization.  Internationalism lost ground and the issue of racism ceased to play an important role in discussions. Thiirmer-Rohr writes:  Feminism became a limited intellectual model, a therapeutic instrument for the liberation of the white middle-class woman. 
Then came November of 1989, a turning point in East Germany. Suddenly, at demonstrations and rallies of the citi-
zens  opposition movements, feminist slogans appeared next to demands for more democracy slogans such as  The country needs a new kind of woman  and  Those who don t fight end up in the kitchen.  Seemingly overnight, a more political, activist women s movement emerged in East Germany. The movement participated in the process of change at all levels of society, demanding, in a radical and very imaginative spirit, a new, nonpartriarchal society.  It was a great feeling we would change everything. We sat in grass-roots political committees, outlined a new constitution, sent our representatives to parliament; we even had a feminist cabinet minister for women s affairs.  Ulrike Bagger, who in late 1989 helped found the Independent Women s Alliance of the GDR, today remembers those times as a dream. Within a few months, there were women s centers, cafes, and shelters, as well as municipal offices for women s rights in East Germany s larger urban centers. For a short while, there were indications that the awakening in the east might rejuvenate the women s movement in West Germany.  In many ways they reminded me of our own beginnings in the 1970s. What a fantastic impetus for us. But I also felt that all this wouldn t last long,  says historian Ursula Nienhaus, a feminist activist from western Germany
As soon as it became obvious that the former East Germany would be assimilated into the Federal Republic, the Cassandras from the east and west raised their voices. They warned of the consequences of unification, which for East German women meant the loss of previously unquestioned social rights such as guaranteed employment, day care facilities, and virtually unre stricted abortion rights. In the west, women who during ie Dast 20 years had managed to sensitize the society to gender
discrimination feared that in a  united Fatherlan political discourse would gradually disappear from Reunification meant more power to men, conservat alism perhaps worse.

Feminists from the two parts of Geri are drifting farther apart.
The  united Fatherland  has been a reality for and no unity has been achieved. Shortly after the fell, both sides realized that they are not really  o that 40 years of separation produced two differei mind-sets, even linguistic differences, and, final social differences between east and west remainec ters  are now separated by a new German wall: disappointment, distrust, envy, and competitivenes! in the west say that their eastern counterparts havt how to fight, that they have relinquished their rij feminists in eastern Germany, their western sisters s itarian, overbearing, and egoistic. Instead of orga actions, feminists from the two parts of Germany interest in one another and drifting farther apart. At saying goes:  Women are losers in the unification   is a seldom mentioned common denominator for women; common because women from both side themselves in the familiar role of victim. With th broad-based political vision, there arc now few sign part of Germany of an assertive and responsibl movement.  I have a feeling that many women here paralyzed. They are preoccupied with their persona Women may still attend self-defense classes or carry but that seems to be it,   says Ulrich, who remarks t not accept the victim role because she knows  na' renders many feminists incapable of reacting to whai in their country.
But some feminists have begun to react, espe November 1992, when a group of extreme right-win; to a house in Molln that was occupied mostly families. 1\vo Turkish women and a small girl were result, the subject of racism to which lewish, in  African German women have been trying to direct tl of white feminists suddenly acquired a terrifying significance that could no longer be ignored. A grow responsibility among white feminists has result actions that, although lacking in coordination at impact, are a beginning. In November, the Germa Council, an umbrella organization of womens gi demned all xenophobic and racist attacks. It also work on integrating immigrant women into the co activism of women's organizations in Germany-same time, Berlin feminists created an antiracism g Women s Action Alliance, modeled after the eW Women s Action Coalition. Other groups have set uf respond to calls for help when foreigners homes are
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Campaigning Against  Frauenhass 
EMMA, Germany s leading feminist magazine, was the first of its kind in Europe when it was founded in 1978. It was also the first western German magazine to be distributed in the east, according to its founder and editor in chief Alice Schwarzer. EMMA has now initiated a campaign against frauenhass, or  hate of the woman,  during a time when the country is struggling with fremdenhass   hate of the other  in hopes of illuminating the connections.  This violence is not, as is being reported, the violence of young people, because 99 percent of it is being committed by young men,  says Schwarzer.  The source of hatred of the  other  is the hatred of men for women, because the woman is the first  other  for man.  She notes that in 1992, 12 people were killed because they were not German, while 800 women were killed because they were women, adding that  what we are seeing is the first generation that has been entirely  pornographized,  that has its head full of the association of desire and violence.  Schwarzer says that EMMA, having coined the term frauenhass, is lobbying the justice system to begin collecting statistics on hate crimes against women.
 Jana Meredyth Talton
and have organized protective vigils. Some women have taken refugees into their homes to help them adjust to life in a new country.
Feminists are also fighting to change the country s proposed constitution, due to be adopted this year. One of the principal demands is immediate asylum for women who have been persecuted because of their gender. In addition, activists are hoping to inundate the constitutional commission with letters from women requesting that Germany s citizenship requirements be revised. Activists say that every person born in Germany should, as a matter of course, be given German citizenship, and dual citizenship should be readily granted.  It s unacceptable that people who live beyond the Urals and do not
45. Walls That Have Yet to Fall
speak a word of German but claim that their blood is German are instantly granted citizenship. Others who have been living here for 30 years, or who were born here and whose mother tongue is German, remain foreigners,  says Emine Demir-buken, spokeswoman for the Association for Immigrants from Thrkey.
Alisa Fuss is a 73-year-old antiracism activist, one who knows that racism and anti-Semitism are closely connected in Germany. In 1935, she fled from the Nazis to Palestine. She returned to Germany in 1976. In September 1992, the Jewish barracks of the old Sachsenhausen concentration camp were set on fire. Within hours, Fuss had assembled a few hundred people at the site of the camp. On another occasion, she organized a  solidarity  convoy from Berlin to Hoyerswerda an eastern German town where, in 1991, asylum-seekers  homes were attacked for an entire week. She also set up protective vigils in front of refugees  homes.  There can only be a united struggle against racism and anti-Semitism. We know that this always starts with the most vulnerable group. Today it s the foreigners, the refugees, then we move on to the disabled and everybody else who is different. And finally, there are always the Jews. 
One of the few feminist organizations that have for years been dealing actively with the connections between misogyny, racism, and anti-Seminitism is Orlanda Frauenverlag, a Berlin publishing house. In 1986 Orlanda, inspired by the African American writer Audre Lorde, published Farbe Bekennen, Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte [Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out], African German women thus publicly confronted white German women with the following truths: racism in Germany cannot be neutralized by slogans including the word  xenophobia ; racism has nothing to do with nationality and everything to do with color; and white Germans, men and women, have a hard time accepting  others. 
Discovering that racism is harbored not only by extreme right-wingers, Nazis, and men is a painful process for many white feminists. And this realization triggers feelings of guilt. But guilty feelings, as Audre Lorde once wrote,