Queer Berlin

I shan't kiss and tell, but here's a few interesting things that stood out in my visit to one of the world's great bastions of queer life.

First, we've got some new terminology to master! 
FLINTA* is a common German shorthand for 'everybody but cis guys.' We make a similar gesture often enough in North America, but without the benefit of an acronym that can stand in for a positive definition, rather than a negative one. I like this a lot. 

There's also TIN (I presume for trans, intersex, and nonbinary people) which add an air of metallurgical mystique to events postings---another positive.

This Ain't TERF Island
I'm sure they're out there somewhere, scurrying from corner or corner, but I didn't see any signs of TERFs around. Instead, there was a lot of emphasis on telling them, preemptively, to fuck off. Most pleasing.

Mapping the landscape
There is a density of queer people here that allows for the luxury of differentiation. This is also to say, there's isn't one queer scene, one queer geography. I asked several people to map out their sense of things, and I generally got the following groups: 

• The horny gay guys 
• FLINTA (political)
• FLINTA (non-political)
• FLINTA (got into a fight with their ex in the other political group and had to create another one) 
• Queer (generic)
• TIN 
• The kinky people
• subcategory: FLINTA
• subcategory: rope

Importantly, none of these groups necessarily overlap with the rest of Berlin's club/sex-positive scenes, though these are broadly taken to be queer inclusive. Just don't think that they're necessarily queer (that guy dancing in a neon mesh shirt at the techno night is probably straight.)

This is mind-bogglingly different from the contexts I'm more familiar with in Canada, where for both better and worse, everyone's stuck sharing the same spaces. That said, it's not like these islands don't intermingle. For one, the horny gay guy bathhouse is apparently doing a FLINTA night now, as well as a 'Cruising 101' class for FLINTA/TIN folks. I think the idea of classes is adorable and smart! I've also heard that some of these people are conflicted in their interests in using the gay sauna for cruising vs. actually being able to be comfortable relaxing in a sauna for once. Bread for all, and roses too.

Public Institutions Go All In for Inclusion

I'm sure there's exceptions and disappointments to be found (and contemporary fascism is definitely on the rise!), but I was really amazed at the amount and character of queer inclusion in public museums and monuments. Magnus Hirschfeld has a plaque; there are statues of flowers (trans-inclusive calla lillies!) commenorating his institute. Across the street from the memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust there is one for the homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis. It echoes the other monument's grey stelae, but adds avideo component. These images change year to year, and interestingly blurs the historical location of the violence we're supposed to be condemning. I had some emotions there!

But it's not all solemnity and remembrance. There is also absurdity and joy. For instance, in fealty to media studies, I stopped by the Communications History Museum, only to discover that pretty much a third of the place was given over to a special exhibit on sex communication. My hats off to the curators, who managed to create a fairly age-inclusive, but rigorously expansive, survey of the history of sex ed media and philosophies, followed by a sincere attempt to practice that for contemporary audiences. There were stations for taking selfies with a set of self-identity tags you could try on for size (including a taco???), a BDSM sex worker's kit arranged in a glass vitrine with appropriate respect, a didactic panel attempting to define 'heteronormativity' and so much more. I was agog. 

Ok, I'm still not over it. To make the whole thing even more surreal, all the exhibit didactics were written out three times: once in German, once in English, and once in simplified German (to, one presumes, make it accessible to as many people as possible who aren't confident English/German speakers, as well as young audiences). This amusingly made for really great German reading practice for me, and set up some humorous situations. Everyone: go to museums. You do not know what you will encounter there. It might just be a station for people to draw dicks and vulvas on a wall, with a challenge to 'do better' in three linguistic registers.