Bankruptcies, bad luck and genders!
What’s going on in the German “singer-songwriter (pause) scene” was what ZDF television gardener Andrea Kiewel (57) wanted to tell the viewers on Sunday in the typical “Kiwi” quick-chatter speech.
The gender break caused a stir – because Kiwi underlined it with a sweeping gesture. When the hooting started, she explained: “Don’t make a face: I have to!”
I beg your pardon? Gender obligation in the television garden?
BILD asked. ZDF denied: “There are no instructions on gendering in the ‘ZDF television garden’. Andrea Kiewel is personally concerned to address everyone, which is why she used the phrase ‘singer and songwriter’ in connection with ‘must’.”
Aha. Some kind of dutiful compulsion? Or belief? A year ago, Kiwi spoke of “females” in the same place, which many thought was a joke.
► On Sunday, Kiewel made it clear to BILD: “Nobody, not ZDF and nobody else, tells me that I have to change. I’ve been using the masculine and feminine plural for a long time because I really want to and because it’s very important to me. It is important to me. And that’s what I meant on the live show. It can happen that in a two-hour live broadcast not every word fits perfectly. But it is so. I want it. I don’t have to.”
Kiewel defiantly: “Everything I say or write I do with the deepest conviction. That’s the way I am. A woman who cares about the inside. But also important: everyone should do what he or she thinks is right.”
By the way: “Singer-Songwriter” is English and has no female form. Unless we Germans teach British and Americans correct English.