Ethnosexism. Phantasms about Muslim Migrants and Refugees in Germany

The talk deals with a recent flare-up of debates around sexism which occurred on the occasion of the moral panic surrounding the sexual harassment of women by young Muslim migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees at New Year's Eve 2015/16. This special brand of anti-Muslim sexual politics will be elucidated by the introduction of the notion 'ethnosexism' as a twofold enterprise. Firstly to invest the category sexism with a more intersectional approach, and secondly to remind of the fact that sexism should be understood as a gender-neutral term targeting not only women, but homosexuals (heterosexism) and ethnically marginalized men alike. Ethnosexist discrimination supports the idea to apprehend migration as a sexual problem. These claims will be exemplified by the description of media-figurations serving to object Muslim migration such as the 'sexually aggressive and dangerous young Muslim refugee'. Finally the above mapped discourse-interlocking will be projected on Foucault's axes of critique: sexuality, truth, knowledge and power. It will be asked lastly, if the notion of ethnosexism as a lens for research questions will help to shed new light on the dispositive of sexuality in general in particular in times when cultural racisms loom large.