Freedom of religion is a fundamental right guaranteed in the Federal Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as is parental freedom to raise children. However, this is limited by the best interests of the child. Thankfully, sending children to school in Nazi uniform does not qualify as “educational freedom”.
Not quite as disturbing as yesterday’s Hitlerism, but also oppressive for me, is that more and more elementary school girls are walking through Vienna in the traditional chador. And so learn from an early age that it’s better if you don’t really see them in the first place. So much lack of freedom at such a young age!
So yes, it’s very good that from the next school year girls are not allowed to wear a headscarf at least at school until they are 14 years old. Some teachers complained in advance about the alleged additional workload and pointed out religious and educational rights. These were also the arguments of those two girls and their parents who objected to the first version of the headscarf ban in 2020.
Hopefully this time it will be worded more easily. Because as Iris Radisch once correctly wrote in “Zeit”, the veil does not symbolize educational freedom, but rather parental authority and a patriarchal worldview in which women are considered unclean and subordinate to men.
On the other spectrum of sexuality and self-portrait, the thing with dick pics is not entirely clean. Who has more? And who are the bigger ones? As a Facebook and Instagram abstainer, I was only informed in passing that quite a few men – including prominent men or those who at least think they are – show off their dick pic digital collections, i.e. close-up photos of male sausages of all sizes.
Admittedly, my world wasn’t really poorer when I didn’t know about this collecting craze. It’s none of my business as long as the images weren’t taken as part of child abuse. And as long as such photos don’t end up in my mailbox unwanted.
Men allegedly particularly like to please women with photos of erect limbs. Do they want that anyway or see it as harassment? They don’t really care. But it shouldn’t, because sending penis photos has been a criminal offense in Austria since September 2025: Anyone who harasses other people with dick pics must either be behind bars for up to six months or be fined up to 360 daily rates, unless another person has expressly requested that they be sent.
In fact, the punishment is better threatened than imposed anyway. Only recently two cases were discontinued by the public prosecutor’s office, among other things because the disruptive value was only low anyway. In addition, the two men said in their defense that they had not wanted to harass anyone and that they did not know that sending dick photos was punishable by law.
“Two cases were recently discontinued, among other things because the disruption was low anyway.”
Interesting. Ignorance protects against punishment? Cool! Will this also apply in the future to speeders who speed along the motorway at 200 km/h because they have never heard of legally regulated speed limits? Or for those who beat up women and children who simply don’t know that violence within the family is forbidden and therefore punishable?
More than a thousand rapes and attempted rapes are reported in Austria every year, and almost a third of the victims are minors. Anyone who doesn’t know that rape is a serious sexual offense and who might also claim that the woman enjoyed forced sex anyway goes unpunished?
The two phallus-obsessed strawheads also probably believed that it was incredibly funny for women to have their mailboxes littered like this. Yes, that’s crazy. Not funny.
About the author: Dr. Andrea Schurian was an ORF presenter, head of culture at an Austrian daily newspaper and editor-in-chief of the Jewish magazine “NU”. She lives and works as a freelance author, presenter and filmmaker in Vienna.
