ID: 8807  -  Rita Svandrlik  -  Firenze Type: Text Format: Medium: Book Extent: 180 pp. Identifier: Source: Aufruhr der Weiber und das Dritte Geschlecht Title: Aufruhr der Weiber und das Dritte Geschlecht Subtitle: Alternative: Agents: Creator: Asenijeff, Elsa Role: Author Name: Asenijeff, Elsa Created: 1898 Date: Issued in/on: 1898 Language: German Rights: Relation: Personal Relation: Personal Qualifier: Friedrich Nietzsche Qualifier: Jakob Bachofen Coverage: Place: Leipzig, Vienna Time: 1898 Description: Subjects: Wo/Men Subjects: Places Subjects: Places Subjects: Cultural Practices Subjects: Identity Keywords: Asenijeff, Elsa Keywords: Leipzig Keywords: Wien Keywords: female thinking Keywords: sexual identity Query Subject+Keyword: (Wo/Men, Asenijeff, Elsa) Query Subject+Keyword: (Places, Leipzig) Query Subject+Keyword: (Places, Wien) Query Subject+Keyword: (Cultural Practices, female thinking) Query Subject+Keyword: (Identity, sexual identity) Comment: It is a kind of pamphlet which contains a strong and caustic polemic against emancipationist women, called "the third sex". The polemic thrust was now and then blunted by impassioned appeals to women to come to their senses and realize that, althouh it was already late, every vendication and achievement of equality really meant lowering themselves to men's positions, an action equivalent to an irretrievable loss of identity. Emancipated women were simply aping men, assimilating their non-values upon which "Zivilisation" had been built, whereas what was truly women's innate quality was the capacity to generate the superior "Kultur". Emancipationist women were "femmes à rebours". Feminine nature is in symbiosis with cosmic energy and is fulfilled in motherhood. Turning to her own readers, Asenijeff proclaimed with enthusiasm: "Everything that ennobles humankind is within you. A man flits about life a butterfly, his destination the mere result of chance. A woman is like a flower (the word "Blume" is feminine in German), that is rooted in and united with Mother Earth. That is why a man's ideas can change, and those most advantageous for him will always be imposed by him with force. We (women) must remain true to ourselves: the benevolence towards all that is born is a maternal inheritance" (p.67) The author acknowledged that the aims of the emancipationists were right, but that the direction taken was wrong: what women had to fix as their objective was "das Mutterecht" (this is the word used by Bachofen for "matriarchate"). Women had to create their own arts and sciences, this was the appeal underlying her work which contained a political programm as well.