1 - Eighteenth-Century #MeToo: Rape Culture andVictim-Blaming in Heinrich Leopold Wagner’s DieKindermörderin (1776)

Summary

THE #ME TOO MOVEMENT has given rise to a virulentinternational debate about sexualized violence,repressive power structures, and rape cultures. The2017 launch of this hashtag, which revived a phrasecoined a decade earlier, dates back to a tweet bythe American actress Alyssa Milano on the socialmedia platform Twitter. Milano's tweet, whichinvited her followers to share their experiences ofsexual harassment or violence, received anoverwhelming response and kickstarted a movement.The fallout included publicized allegations leveledagainst the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein,who, despite his initial denial, eventually stoodtrial.

At first, #MeToo-related allegations were limited tofigures in the public sphere, especially in film,sports, and politics, but soon they expanded intoall social realms and across national borders.Millions of women around the world shared theirexperiences of sexualized violence in everyday lifethrough #MeToo. The immense scale of thesecumulative stories has shown the extent to whichsexism remains omnipresent and normalized insociety. Further, sexism not only exists in violentform, such as sexual assault and rape, but alsoencompasses structural discrimination andgender-based oppression. The German-languagedictionary Duden,which is representative of common usage, defines“sexism” as the “Vorstellung, nach der einGeschlecht dem anderen von Natur aus uberlegen sei,und die [daher fur gerechtfertigt gehaltene]Diskriminierung, Unterdruckung, Zurucksetzung,Benachteiligung von Menschen, besonders der Frauen,aufgrund ihres Geschlechts” (the notion that one sexis innately superior to the other; and the[therefore considered justifiable] discrimination,oppression, neglect, and disadvantaging of people,especially women, because of their sex). The idea offemale inferiority, deeply rooted in culturalhistory, is not new but merely a reactualizedversion of a stereoytpe that reaches back across theages.

While the #MeToo movement is a twenty-first-centuryphenomenon, a look at eighteenth-century Germandrama reveals an acute awareness of the tragediessurrounding gendered violence. Heinrich LeopoldWagner's (1747–79) bourgeois tragedy Die Kindermörderin (1776;The ChildMurderess), one of the most importantdramas of the Sturm und Drang movement, mercilesslystages sexual violence, unwanted pregnancy, familialand social constraints, and the precarious positionof women and their reasons for commitinginfanticide.