Анг

When Belonging is Not the Answer: An Essay about the Usage of Personal Experience in Daily Life Lesbian* Activism

Феминистический цех
Simona Dumitriu
Ноябрь 2024

The answer is not within belonging. A short conclusion-like statement to open and close this condensed essay, although an obscure one. The answer to what, you may ask. The question is harder to pinpoint, as it is not one, not always the same, it shifts its shape within a conglomerate: where do I place myself in a community, in a new configuration of borders, can one impose belonging onto others, and does the oppressed want to belong in the oppressor’s world, or is belonging, here, not the appropriate name? Can I still find belonging in the word queer?

Анг

An Analysis on Autonomous Feminist and Queer Safe Spaces: The Case Study of PHYL.IS. A.U.Th.

Статья журнала
Angie Pantzartzidi
Gregory Pritsas
Ноябрь 2024
The greek students’ Union for gender and equality “PHYL.IS.” was created on a whim, during the lockdowns of 2020, as a way for us to express our anger, frustration and resentment of not being heard or seen in spaces we thought we had reclaimed. Our efforts to unite our voices with the voices of people who wish to participate in feminist and queer discourses and fight for equality have led to the construction of a space of sisterhood, solace and support in a time of uncertainty when it was most needed. During its three years of function, despite the difficulties we had and still have to overcome, PHYL.IS. has become a solid entity shaped by its members’ experiences. In turn, the Union is now shaping us, its members. Through all the challenges we faced due to the entrenched inequalities and hostile systemic structures that exist in Greece, through all the mistakes we made, the stories we shared, the assertations we fought for, we found support in places we never knew existed, and we were taught valuable lessons of feminist and queer resistance. This paper is an extended rendition of the roundtable we conducted in May 2023 during the QueerFemSEE International Conference in Athens, incorporating comments and observations. By using the case study of PHYL.IS., we aim to examine the creation and preservation of autonomous feminist and queer safe spaces that survive the adversities of functioning in conservative, heteronormative and patriarchal societies. Keywords: feminist collective, safe space, feminist practices, resistance practices, grassroot spaces
Анг

“The West Is (Not) the Best” – Anti-Gender Narratives and Queer-Feminist Struggles in Greece

Статья журнала
Sofia Bempeza
Октябрь 2024
The anti-gender narratives and policies that attack women's and LGBTQ+ rights (gender, sexual and reproductive freedoms) come largely from right-wing parties, conservative think tanks, far-right political organizations and alt-right networks, authoritarian governments, and representatives of the Catholic and the Orthodox Church. The paper highlights current anti-gender politics, including reactionary discourses, strategies, and multiple (institutional) actors that seek to undermine societal and legal progress for intersectional feminism and the LGBTQ+ movement. In this vein, it draws attention to the anti-gender arguments and the imports of the white (male) supremacy ideology in the Greek context. More thoroughly, the paper outlines, on the one hand, the anti-gender movement and the ways in which nature, nation, and normality construct its main narrative as it sheds light on the alt-right discourse, ethnopatriarchy, and the heteronormative standards within Greek society. On the other, the paper traces local queer-feminist struggles and activist practices that seek to resist the continuum of gender-based violence, homophobic/transphobic violence, systemic racism, and discrimination. Queer-feminist struggles gained strength and new perspectives in the aftermath of Zak Kostopoulos/Zackie Oh’s murder and the eruption of the #metoo movement, whereas new collective struggles for defending women's and LGBTQ+ rights take place against rising fascisms and the neoliberal control of reproduction. Keywords: anti-gender narratives, gender-based violence, queer-feminist struggles, vulnerability, dissident voices
Укр

Втікаючи від окупації Маріуполя

Статья сайта
Юлія Сорока
Август 2024
Цю статтю написано на основі щоденника, який вела авторка Юлія Сорока, перебуваючи на початку повномасштабної війни в Маріуполі. Маріуполь – українське місто на березі Азовського моря, засноване у XVIII столітті. До російського вторгнення місто з населенням понад 400 тисяч осіб було портом, промисловим і туристичним центром Донецької області. 24 лютого 2022 року місто стало зоною бойових дій, на початку березня було оточене, а 20 травня окуповане російськими військами.
Анг

Decolonizing Feminism: the NGO-ization Paradigm between the Global Circuits of Neoliberal Power and the Politics of Location. The Case of Romania

Статья журнала
Alexandra Ana
Июнь 2023
While the NGO-ization paradigm helped explain the institutionalization, professionalization, and bureaucratization of feminist movements around the world, from the late 80s and early 90s on, by focusing on the most visible actors, it often concealed the multiplicity of feminisms and their internal heterogeneity. By looking at the institutionalization of feminism in Romania through decolonial lenses, this essay aims to understand some of the transnational processes that have been overlooked or curtailed within the NGO-ization literature, the mechanisms through which certain forms of feminist knowledge and practice became hegemonic and institutionalized, and some of their consequences. The essay argues that the travelling and crossings, initiated by those excluded through these processes and who inhabit liminal, in-between spaces, contributed to making visible multiple worlds of sense towards a pluralist feminism, opening the possibility to build deep coalitions by engaging in complex communication.
Анг

A Queer History of Communism: Navigating Sexuality and Gender in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1989

Аналитическая рецензия
Alexandria Wilson-McDonald
https://doi.org/10.52323/208952
Декабрь 2022
Věra Sokolová's book Queer Encounters with Communist Power: Non-heterosexual Lives and the State in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1989 provides a welcomed and compelling historical contribution through an examination of the experiences of queer and non-heterosexual people's lives under state-socialism in Czechoslovakia. Sokolová explores how queer and non-heterosexual people navigated their identities historically in Czechoslovakia and the role of sexologists in defining concepts of identity and supporting queer and non-heterosexual people under state socialism. This work is crucial today in resisting the claims made by far-right and anti-gender actors that LGBT politics and "gender" is a "Western" import without a local history and struggle.
Анг

A Decade after “Theorizing NGOs”: The Entanglement of State, Feminism, and Neoliberalism

Рецензия
Andreja Mesarič
https://doi.org/10.52323/746592
Июнь 2022
The article reviews an edited volume about the prominence of NGOs in women’s organizing and gender-focused international development and how this has transformed feminist activism since the 1990s. The editors do not frame the book as a history of this “NGOization,” but rather as an open discussion of how feminist activism fares in this transformed environment bringing new opportunities and limitations. The volume also addresses how the global North-South divide structures unequal access to power and resources for NGOs and feminist activists. It includes several chapters discussing NGOs and feminist activism in Eastern Europe but, as argued by the reviewer, struggles somewhat to situate the region within the global North-South paradigm.
Анг

Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Feminisms of Postsocialist Europe

Рецензия
Jelena Košinaga
https://doi.org/10.52323/209382
Май 2022
“Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East-West Frontier,” edited by Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko, is a book that arose from a 2011 conference entitled “Why Is There No Happiness in the East? The Making of European Gender Studies,” at the University of Södertörn in Stockholm. The discussions at the conference mainly tackled the duality between Eastern and Western feminisms within the larger scope of gender studies. Aside from the introduction and epilogue, the book is organized into three parts, comprising ten chapters altogether.
УкрMUL

Своим и чужим голосом

Рецензия
Мариам Агамян
Дмитрий Ермолович-Дащинский
Февраль 2022

Идея представленного исследования родилась в горах Кыргызстана на семинаре журналистской и правозащитной сети «Unit». Сложившийся диалог о современном квир-театре и квир-драматургии оказался увлекательным и непростым: настолько многогранны и обширны эти явления, несмотря на табуирование этой темы в Восточной Европе. Однозначно, у них нет точного толкования, что открывает свободу творческого поиска и интерпретации.

Первую часть рецензии читайте на украинском языке.

MUL

Инструкция по солидарности от Дина Спейда

Рецензия
Мария Горбачева
https://doi.org/10.52323/679493
Ноябрь 2021
«Mutual Aid» представляет собой коллективную координацию по оказанию взаимопомощи, которая исходит из понимания бесполезности существующих систем (государства, политики, экономики). Также такая самоорганизация – прямое противопоставление концепции спасения, лежащей, например, в основе благотворительности и работы различных НПО, созданных в западном контексте для подавления масштабных движений XX века: за гражданские права, феминистского и других. Суть практики взаимопомощи можно описать такими слоганами как «Наша сила – в дерзости» и «Солидарность вместо благотворительности».

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