In leftist debate, queer identity politics and class politics tend to be dealt with separately. In real life, however, things are more complicated, as queer subjects always belong to social classes too. The precarious are neither all heterosexual, nor can they always be assigned to just one of two binary genders. Even in debates about connective class politics, queer perspectives are generally ignored. One problem in determining new class politics lies in the restrictedness of conceptualisations of (working) class subjects. Politics of representation – with their scope from aesthetic to political representation (Schaffer 2008, 83) – play an important part in this: Representation means depiction (Darstellung), conception (Vorstellung), and standing in for someone or something (Vertretung). These meanings are inextricably intertwined, inconceivable individually.
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Southerners On New Ground (SONG) is a regional Queer Liberation organization made up of people of color, immigrants, undocumented people, people with disabilities, working class and rural and small town, LGBTQ people in the South. We believe that we are bound together by a shared desire for ourselves, each other, and our communities to survive and thrive. We believe that Community Organizing is the best way for us to build collective power and transform the South. Out of this belief we are committed to building freedom movements rooted in southern traditions like community organizing, political education, storytelling, music, breaking bread, resistance, humor, performance, critical thinking, and celebration.
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Alex, you are actively involved with the platform »Keine Mehr« (Not One Less), whose aim is to bring the femicide debate to Germany. Why are you using the term femicide instead of talking about individual murders of women?

Femicide, or feminicide, is the killing of women and girls because of their gender. Every femicide involves the killing of a woman, but not every killing of a woman is a femicide. So it is not simply about differentiating between female and male victims.

Instead, the term is intended to make certain murders of women visible as a form of hate crime and to draw attention to the social context. On the one hand, this means understanding femicide as an extreme expression of unequal gender relations and a male desire to dominate. Numerous studies and reports have shown that the risk for women to be exposed to violence rises particularly when traditional gender arrangements are shifting – especially during and after a separation or divorce.
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The AfD’s family and gender politics

Racism, hostility towards refugees and authoritarianism are crucial elements in the ideology of the AfD (“Alternative for Germany”), the new right-wing party which gained around 12% percent of the vote in the 2017 parliamentary elections. When people are scandalised by AfD statements and actions, the focus is usually on these topics. They are central to the public image of the party and its parliamentary group also because the AfD links nearly all policies to the issue of immigration. At the same time there is a polarity within the AfD between the neo-fascist right and the national-liberal centre, mostly around where it stands on the social question. The right of the party is ethnicizing the issue of social conflict, while the centre puts emphasis on a nationalist policy of market radicalism. This dichotomy that is also closely linked to power relations within the party is bridged and blurred by an overarching broad consensus in another field. The issue of family and gender politics is crucial for the party’s ideology and articulated in a fiercly antifeminist way.
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‘Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.’ (Leo Strauss)

In his contemplations on political science in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), Leo Strauss described the condition of political science through scathing references to the Emperor Nero, supposed to have been playing a fiddle as Rome burned. This analogy metaphor is an accurate reflection of the progressive elites of the post-Brexit, post-Trump era; they maintain a business-as-usual attitude while the foundations of liberal democracy are challenged.
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In 1990, I watched the Polish film maker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blind Chance (1981/1987) without registering the paralyzing potential of a particular scene.

The protagonist, Witek, meets an old Communist by chance on a train. As a result of that meeting Witek decides to join the Communist Party. Later, again by sheer chance, he runs into an ex-partner, also his first love. A beautiful, tender and fierce sex scene follows. In the calm of the after, Witek, almost absentmindedly, whistles the Internationale. His partner murmurs something approvingly. And then Witek says ‘How would you like it if I sang this everyday?’ The young woman recoils. She knows he has joined ‘The Party’. She leaves the room and his life.
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A year before #MeToo erupted in the United States, women in Argentina were fighting against an epidemic of violence against women in which, on average, one woman was killed every thirty hours. At noon on October 19, 2016, thousands of women all over the country walked out of their jobs and stopped doing unpaid housework, as well as carrying out the emotional work required of political organizing. The strike was Argentinian women’s response to the growing number of femicides in the country, and specifically to the brutal murder of the young Lucía Pérez. But in their call to strike, they connected the many forms of violence that women experience in an economic system based on their oppression and exploitation:
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Recent years have seen a global wave of feminist protests. In the US, the Women’s Marches brought hundreds of thousands to the streets, while #MeToo raised public awareness for sexual violence. In Poland, Ireland and Argentina similar numbers protested against restrictions on reproductive rights and the 8th of March mobilized masses from Berlin to Buenos Aires and from Istanbul to New Delhi. In Spain, around 5 million people participated in a feminist general strike. These protests appear as the only successful transnational social movement of our times that is challenging right-wing populism as well as authoritarian neoliberalism. At the same time, right-wing parties and movements are gaining momentum, attacking the achievements of the women’s and LGBTIQ movements. They portray feminist issues as elitist and as a threat to allegedly ›natural‹ gender roles and ways of life. On the one hand, they build on existing racist and sexist attitudes and intensify them. On the other hand, they successfully articulate widespread discontents with social inequality and lack of democracy in the age of neoliberalism, presenting themselves as the voice of the ›common people‹.
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