ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on German cases of women and militancy. Women participating in political violence in the 1970s and 1980s ran counter to a core principle of many Western feminist theories and political movements of the time: that a feminist subject rejects violence as a patriarchal mechanism of oppression. A major way in which gender impacts the discourse on political violence is in the question how far feminist politics can or should include militancy or direct political violence. Much political analysis by militants integrates militancy as an important way of resisting violent and oppressive states and social orders. The feminist militancy of women willing to engage in political violence is linked to feminist politics more broadly in that it is a specific response to a shared affect and its violence constitutes a form of feminist practice.
