ZDF broadcast for sexism and homophobia under criticism

According to the ZDF, “Das Zockerhaus” primarily focuses on the friendship of several young online gamers. Critics also see sexism and homophobia in the reality format for children.

In the reality format “The gamer house“The aim is to answer the question of how friendships from online gamers can be transferred to the real world. Six teenagers who previously only knew each other online were selected for the quasi-scientific experimental setup. The minors then move into a shared apartment. Divided into three teams, they have to compete in different competitions. The losers are each “punished” and that is exactly what calls the critics to the scene.

As a punishment, the losers of the competitions have to paint their fingernails, put on a dress or present themselves in glittering face paint, among other things. According to Floris Müller-Reichenwallner and Sascha Verlan, “the Zochkerhaus” is “a deeply sexist format that serves unfiltered gender role clichés”. Müller-Reichenwallner and Verlan are involved with the association Clichéesc for the presentation of cliché-free diversity in children’s books and also run a negative price for sexist advertising with the “Golden Fence Post”.

In one open letter The association to ZDF states: “Eight of these punishments are sexist and aim to question the masculinity of the young protagonists by forcing them to do things that are considered feminine, ‘effeminate’ or gay. As a result, not only the protagonists are belittled, but women and homosexuals as a whole. ”Her demand: The ZDF should remove the program from the program and delete it from the media library, because it contributes to the fact that young people are restricted in identifying themselves by being sexist Reproduce clichés.

A reaction from ZDF to the open letter is still pending. On Twitter, the public television company only stated that an answer was in the works. When asked by the ZDF press office, it says: “We take the criticism we received of the program ‘Das Zockerhaus’ seriously. At no point was it our intention to make negative evaluations or to devalue any group of our society. Rather, the selected actions should enable a playful form of expanding experience and refute and level out common clichés. The program complaint we have received is processed in the ZDF television council and we take this criticism as an opportunity to deal again with the communication and reception of role models in our formats. “