Who's already masturbated today? – When radio was still bold

In the early 1980s, I sat in front of the radio listening to "Hallo Ü-Wagen". Back then, the WDR program was a phenomenon: a huge outside broadcast van drove through German cities, parked in central squares, and went live on air – uncensored, direct, with topics suggested by listeners. Host Carmen Thomas asked the questions no one else asked.

On that day, Günter Amendt was a guest, a sex researcher and author of "Sexfront". The topic: masturbation. Right in the middle of the program, out of nowhere, Amendt asked a question I have never forgotten: "Who has masturbated today already?" Loudly, clearly, and publicly directed at the crowd. Then he called on the people in the square to raise their hands. He raised his own hand.

Just one sentence – and that one, and with it the entire broadcast, has stayed vividly in my mind for more than 40 years now, as if it were spoken today.

Provocation and liberation

The reactions were said to have been intense. Outrage, rejection, complaints. But for many, it was also liberation. Amendt broke the taboo around something everyone did and no one talked about. He made visible what was otherwise kept silent. Live on public radio, in a marketplace, at prime time.

That was courage. That was provocation for the mainstream – but it was also an act of liberation.

And today?

More than 40 years later, we live in a time that considers itself enlightened. But where has the courage gone? Instead of provocation, there is self-censorship. Instead of liberation, there is rollback, pushed most aggressively by hypocritical evangelicals, instrumentalized by power-obsessed political elites. Instead of visibility, there is cowardice.

I run KUNSTWERK BILDER, a shop for gay art. I show images that never existed in art history: gay men in classical painting, in erotic intimacy, painted with the same dignity as heterosexual subjects. Images that show what 300 years of art history left out.

And I experience how difficult it is to make these images visible. Algorithms censor. Platforms block. People look away. Not because the images are bad, but because they show what institutionalized censorship would rather not see.

Visibility is not a luxury

Back then, Günter Amendt did not ask whether his question was appropriate. He asked it. Because visibility is not a luxury, but a necessity. Because taboos are only broken when someone has the courage to break them.

That is exactly what I do with my gay art. I show what art history has kept silent about. I make visible what otherwise remains invisible. Not because it is provocative, but because it should be taken for granted.

More than 40 years after Amendt's question, it is time to be bolder again. Time to demand visibility instead of hiding it. Time to show what must be shown.

"Who has masturbated today already?" Amendt raised his hand. I raise mine too – for gay art, for visibility, for courage.

And because today, as people used to say back then, I "did it."