In this starseries, we ask people from all walks of life what it means to them to be a woman or a man, to live as a trans person or to not feel like they belong to any gender. We set out to find what shapes our sense of gender.
Recorded by Lisa Frieda Cossham
Luci van Org, 52, was the frontwoman of the band “Lucilectric”, which scored the hit “Girls” in 1994: “Don’t argue, man, because I’m going to win anyway because I’m a girl,” was the refrain that everyone heard back then everyone knew. The girlie anthem of the 1990s is about sexual liberation; the themes of self-determination and equality run through the singer’s artistic work. Today Luci van Org lives and works in her home in Scotland as often as possible. She has been writing novels and scripts for ARD series such as “In aller Friendship” and “WaPo Bodensee” for many years. She also still makes music today. Last year her novella “The Five of Us and Me and the Dead” was published (Outbird Edition), in which she deals with her difficult childhood. Luci van Org is married and has an adult son.
I remember the first time I heard “The Cure” on a friend’s cassette player. I immediately fell in love with Robert Smith’s voice. And then I saw that he was fat. At home I was always called the fat madam. When I look at photos today, I think: I wasn’t fat at all. The fact that Robert Smith didn’t look slim was comforting to me. When he was on stage he still had such magic! It took two months for me to transform from a teased girl with thick glasses and pigtails into a New Wave girl, wearing crass makeup, mostly with blinking eyes because the hard contact lenses hurt so much. Suddenly boys noticed me too, and I realized that being a girl also has advantages. I was eleven then.
I barely survived my childhood. I grew up in an educated middle class household, humanistic high school, Biedermeier furniture, Käthe Kruse dolls. But blood can also splatter on the walls when dolls sit there. Doors can also be kicked in if Biedermeier furniture is in the room. Domestic violence is a problem that can occur in all walks of life.