Katharina Rutschky

Katharina Rutschky (born 25 January 1941, Berlin – died 14 January 2010, Berlin) was a German left-wing, pro-porn sexual liberation feminist, an educationalist and award winning essayist and author. She became known in 1977 for editing a collection of sources on 18th and 19th century pedagogy, which she gave the succinct title Black Pedagogy (Schwarze Pädagogik). The book described the use of physical violence in education. In relevance to MAPs, Rutschky was a prominent critic of leading anti-MAP feminist figure Alice Schwazer. Rutschky's 1992 book Erregte Aufklärung. Kindesmissbrauch: Fakten & Fiktionen (EN: Excited Enlightenment. Child Abuse: Facts & Fictions), opened a heated debate on the feminist approach to the issue of Child Sexual Abuse. With mutual dislike between herself and Schwazer, Rutschky dedicated a 1999 book to criticizing the anti-porn and anti-MAP/AAM magazine Schwazer was known for: Emma. Her book was titled Emma und ihre Schwestern. Ausflüge in den real existierenden Feminismus (EN: Emma and her sisters: Excursions into real feminism).

Biography

At the age of 15, Rutschky was a member of the Socialist Youth of Germany - Die Falken, and later studied German and history at the University of Göttingen and the Free University of Berlin. At the beginning of her studies in 1960, she became a member of the Berlin SDS. On May 30, 1999, Rutschky received the Heinrich Mann Prize for Essay Writing. Jan Feddersen called her "one of the most important post-war essayists".

Rutschky once described her relationship to feminism in two sentences: "Is a [i.e. "I am a feminist in"] feminist in Italy [...] Is an anti-feminist in Germany, because the level of feminism here has not risen politically or intellectually beyond Alice Schwarzer's private [i.e. personal] level."

Rutschky felt herself to be a staunch defender of the 1968 / '68 generation to which she belonged. She died of cancer in 2010.

Quotes from Child Abuse: Facts & Fictions (1992)

Child abuse, plus feminism, equals child sexual abuse.

The mission with martyrs, who today are of course called victims, needs adult women. In their monotony, their stories resemble litanies in which the same thing is always said. Whether this is in the nature of things or in the compulsion to fulfill the feminist requirements, to do justice to the scheme of perpetrator/victim, power/powerlessness, guilt/innocence, speech/silence and so on and immediately, is an open question. Men, those who were sexually abused as boys, talk about their memories noticeably more personally, more nuanced, and often noticeably ambivalent about the sexual experiences.

What the mother achieves by accusing the divorced man of abuse is the destruction of the good relationship that two little girls had with their father and father with them.

The puritanism of modern societies no longer manifests itself in the police, censorship authorities and public prosecutors intervening when a naked breast appears on the screen, but in the compulsion to repeatedly occupy the freedom spaces opened up by reason with panic, fear, and to indulge in wild catastrophe fantasies. Groups that used to be without rights, such as women and children, who were once the most severely affected by immobility and moral repression, suddenly appear [...] as victims of a liberal social order in which they can be ruthlessly exploited, disregarded and abused.

The bourgeois discovery of the child in the eighteenth century and the development of pedagogy as a strategy for its careful nurturing and education went hand in hand with the most absurd moral terror against the child. How much paper [...] has been wasted on the discussion of masturbation

Also to be considered is the foreseeable harm that a general climate of distrust and fear of sexual depravity will bring. A recent guide to the treatment of sexually abused children and their families from the United States gives a fair indication of how quickly the initially intended protection of children from adult and/or violent sexuality expands to the pursuit of any sexual initiative even among children of any age group.

Relevant Publications

• Excited Enlightenment. Child Abuse: Facts & Fictions. Klein: Hamburg, 1992. (Erregte Aufklärung. Kindesmissbrauch: Fakten & Fiktionen).

• Emma and her sisters. Excursions into real feminism. Hanser: Munich/Vienna, 1999. (Emma und ihre Schwestern. Ausflüge in den real existierenden Feminismus).

• With Reinhart Wolff. Handbook of Sexual Abuse. Klein: Hamburg, 1994. (Handbuch Sexueller Mißbrauch). [Note: This collection includes Rudiger Lautmann's chapter "The scenario of modeled pedophilia" (Das Szenario der modellierten Pädophilie).