Aiha Zemp

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Aiha Zemp (born August 26, 1953 in Triengen ; † December 14, 2011 in Rheinfelden ) was a Swiss psychologist , psychotherapist , disabled activist and feminist . Born with stumps of arms and legs, she defended herself against all kinds of discrimination and was a pioneer in many ways.

Life

After graduating from high school, she studied journalism at the University of Freiburg im Üechtland and graduated in 1978 with a diploma. Since she was unable to work as a media pedagogue due to her disability , because she lacked the motor skills to do so, she then studied psychology, pedagogy and curative pedagogy at the University of Zurich and graduated in 1983 with a licentiate . She financed this second degree as a freelance journalist at Radio DRS with political satires and social issues. In parallel to her psychology studies, she underwent a six-year Jungian training analysis and trained in astrology .

Aiha Zemp worked for many years in her own practice in Hausen am Albis as a psychotherapist and lecturer. In 1991, at a survey organized by the then Austrian Minister for Women, Johanna Dohnal , "In the night the man without a face comes back" , she pointed out for the first time the sexual exploitation of people with disabilities, especially women. On behalf of the Austrian Ministry of Women, she then worked together with the social scientist and gender researcher Erika Pircher in two pioneering research projects on this topic. In these empirical studies, in which women and men with physical and mental disabilities who lived in Austrian institutions were questioned, the frightening extent of sexual violence to which people with disabilities are exposed was scientifically proven for the first time. In 1997 she completed her doctorate in psychology on the subject of “Tabooed hardship: Sexual exploitation of girls and women with disabilities”.

Aiha Zemp was also an artist. She was involved in the 1977 documentary “Disabled Love” by Marlies Graf. In three different roles, she worked in 1981 in the film Freak Orlando of Ulrike Ottinger with in Berlin. She was introduced to the world of danceability by Alito Alessi. At the performance festival “Im Puls Tanz” in Vienna, Aiha Zemp appeared together with Daniel Aschwanden and Steve Paxton in “Crash Landing”. In the danced theater “Laune der Natur” by “Theater marie” she played and danced together with Stine Durrer, Salome Schneebeli, Alito Alessi and Erich Hufschmied under the direction of Christine Rinderknecht and Heinz Gubler.

In 1997 Aiha Zemp emigrated to Ecuador , where she had built an adobe house north of Quito. She justified this step by stating that a self-determined life with assistance in Switzerland would no longer have been financially possible. Due to a change in the law in Switzerland in 2002, which forbade the transfer of helplessness allowances and assistance funds abroad, she was forced to move back to Switzerland in 2002. From 2003 she set up the “Disability and Sexuality” department in Basel, which she headed as managing director until it was closed in 2010.

Zemp died of the long-term effects of her disability.

Fonts

  • Aiha Zemp, Erika Pircher: Because it all hurts with violence. Sexual exploitation of girls and women with disabilities (= series of publications by the Minister for Women. Vol. 10). Federal Minister for Women's Affairs, Vienna 1996.
  • Tabooed distress: Sexual exploitation of girls and women with disabilities. Central Office of the Student Union, Zurich 1997 ( dissertation ).
  • Aiha Zemp, Erika Pircher, Heinz Schoibl: Sexualized violence in everyday life with disabilities. Boys and men with disabilities as victims and perpetrators. GenderLink, Salzburg 1997.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ fabs - Disability and Sexuality Center - Against Sexualized Violence ( Memento from December 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), website by Aiha Zemp, accessed on December 19, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Zemp, Aiha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss psychologist, psychotherapist and activist for the disabled
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Triengen
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 2011
Place of death Rheinfelden