2018-05-03

Don't Be Ashamed of Your Sexuality!

Belin Delannoy by Shifted News

Sophia Hoffmann turned her passion into a job and worked as a vegan cook, author, food consultant and gastro presenter. She runs a popular youtube channel and the books she publishes are not only cookbooks but also filled with stories of females who are successful in the culinary world. Commitment to equality and social justice is a big part of her life as is a focus on sustainable living and conscious consumption. She is also a journalist and speaker and embraces the power of having a large female audience to highlight the importance of equality and empowering women. Such as through her talk "Us too" at re:publica where she is joined by her friend Theresa Lachner. Lachner runs one of the largest German-language sex blogs, called Lvstprinzip (Pleasure Principle). She talks a lot about being confident and being comfortable about one's sexuality. The internet has become a defining medium for both women enabling them to advocate for the empowerment of women.

Is internet a positive thing or not for women?

Sophia: I think it has two sides to it, generally internet can be a platform where you can share information and where you can basically change things, for example, the sensation that came out of the hashtag #metoo movement, but of course it can also be a bad thing because of the trolls within the internet, so I would say it is 50 – 50 .

Theresa: Personally, I would lean towards more to the positive side, the internet has brought me close to a lot of cool people who I really enjoyed connecting with. It gets easier to do as well.

Why do you think it is important to talk about problems regarding intimacy, or the harassment towards women, rather than just keeping it silent?

Theresa: I think it is important to talk about sexuality, and intimacy in general and not just about the positive effect of it, you have to include everything, not every sexual experience will be great , there will surely be bad things and good things at the same time, if you wanna talk about it in a wholesome way you really have to talk about the bad things that happen.

Sophia: Also the sense of motivation for women, just like what we (talked about), I want to give voice to the women who are not able to voice their stories, its important to talk about it as its one of  the very first step of changing something in society on how they perceive these issues.

Theresa: Change is definitely possible, we saw how the ’’me too movement’’ started out slow and yet has never stopped ever since it has been a wave. We can see the small changes, and how the people are looking at things differently, like asking, "is the status quo still cool" and "why is it like that?" For me that’s feminism - challenging the status quo - it is really amazing.

So what solutions do you think you can provide today in your talk?

Theresa: To stop shame. A lot of the times, talking about sexual harassment and rape is linked to shame, and how victims are still being blamed, just by talking about it, by making it visible is a really good start and hopefully will destroy the shame.