Article in the Preziöse

The queer magazine Die Preziöse has published an article about our project.

Symposium "Creating long-term global networks to sustain LGBT human right organizations"

From 18 May - 21 May the Salzburg Global Seminar runs a symposium "Creating long-term global networks to sustain LGBT human right organizations", hosted by the german foreign ministry.

You can follow all the conversations from the Global LGBT Forum in Berlin on Twitter via the hashtag #SGSlgbt. Interviews and recaps will be posted to the session page: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/545
Direct link for twitter news available without a twitter account:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SGSlgbt&src=typd

On the website of the event from last year  you can find futher information, ressources and interviews with the activists from different countires.

A Rainbow from Lisbon to Vilnius

On the 28.3. we had a public event "A Rainbow from Lisbon to Vlinius? Challenges and Strategies for LGBT Activism in Europe" in the premises of Transinterqueer.

You can find the presentation here.

our visit at queer leben

One of the best activities we had during our seminar was our visits to organizations working with LGBTIQ issues in Berlin. To be more precise it was Queer Lieben which  left me the biggest impression. They seem to be doing great job working with trans and queer people, helping to solve their everyday issues and just being there for them which is probably in many cases the mostly needed thing - to know, that there is someone who cares for you, who really wants to understand you and who treats you with a sincere empathy. We had a really nice and fruitful discussion at Queer Lieben (or better to say questions-answers session which was really enriching with all the information we got!), and I think now it is way more clear for me how such organizations work, and the ways in which the staff can be really helpful in allowing people to take time in questioning their identities, sexualities and experiences.

Dinner in the city!

day 4: tuesday 25.03.2014

That was a busy day!!!
After visiting LesMigras, LSVD and Queer Leben we went for a tasty dinner in the city center. We had a chance to try new asian tastes and enjoy the evenning. After that, we organized a small chopsticks-eating-competition, where some of the participants could learn how to use this complicated tool ;)

LSVD Presentation

On Tuesday half of the group was at the Lesbian and Gay Association Berlin-Brandenburg (LSVD). We were received by So-Rim Jung and three other members of the LSVD. So-Rim Jung gave us a presentation about the LSVD which you can find here. She also played a game with us, which was talked about in our group until the evening.

Anti-discrimination Center

On Monday we went to this anti-discrimination organization that provide counselling in several fields for different types of discrimination.

It was a really interesting experience getting to know there is a place where people can count on some help regarding legal, social and employment issues. From what I know there is no place like this in Portugal, especially one that can cover LGBT issues.

They don't cover only this issues, actually their scope of action  is quite wide:

- Race
- Gender
- Sexual Orientation
- Disability
- Age
- Religion

They run several campaigns focused on bringing awareness to these topics, aiming for a more respectful social environment. We also had an interesting debate at the end, sharing experiences from our countries.

Some Ideas about Lambda

Hello Everybody!

It´s really late and all are staying out at this time, but I think, I have to write a post about my ideas about Lambda and some connection to my youth-group!

I think, Lambda is really cool and interesting! I already like the way, which they choos to work with young people. I´m also very interessted in the movie, which (I didn´t remember her name -> sorry!) she show us the trailer about it, because our youth-group YOUnited have also in the future (31.5. and 1.6.) a little short-film projekt with Queerblick e. V. (a German organisation). The youth also worked alone at this workshop. I´m really curois about this, how is the short-film or whicht topic it have.

And sometimes our youth peoples organise also some things without our supporting, it´s also like lambda!

In the image-film from Lambda, one Boy said, that he firstly was a participant and one year later he change to the organisation of this group. It´s really funny, because it´s remember me at myself.
In Summer 2011 I was getting a participant and exactly one year later a changed to the leader and now a organised some bigger things and "lead" a really cool group, which meet also at private time and not only at youth-group.

I think, YOUnited is really close to Lambda!

So, now I´m to tired to think about this more ;-)
Enjoy the week and have fun!

Yours,
Nino

Thougths About Our Terminology Discussion

There were so many thoughts going through my mind during our terminology discussion that I thought I write a separate blog post instead of a comment. So here are my ideas:

• About transgender including non-hetero sexual orientation
  I think this does make a lot of sense since we are talking about discrimination, and in my opinion the discrimination is usually about not conforming to gender roles and the people perceiving non-conforming people, don't really care about what exactly is not conforming. Often they don't know the differences anyway:
  Especially trans women are often seen as "gay" and actually are targeted because of homophobia, not transphobia. They are also targeted because of sexism and the connection of that is sometimes called trans-misogyny.
  Also people (especially men) are often called gay, not because they show a certain sexual orientation, but because they behave in a gender-nonconforming way (for men, especially if they behave feminine). So here also the discrimination is not because of who they have sex with, but because of gender presentation/behavior. I think it is similar for women who present "butch", but because of sexism it might not be as strong.
• About the term cisgender
  I was quite amazed how hard it was to find a conclusion about the definition of the term. Maybe that is because we are in the process of defining the term, switching from transgender vs. normal to transgender vs. cisgender, just as the switch was maybe in the 70ies from homosexual vs. normal to homosexual vs. heterosexual.
  I found it interesting that it was mentioned that cisgender (or more specifically cis man) was considered to be used as a pejorative (=bad word) in feminist circles about men who are not reflecting their male privilege. I think I have been in discussions that could have been perceived that way, but I think it was meant differently, probably more as a broad statement about cisgender men, who are often the ones who create problems for those who are not cisgender men (privilege).
  Something that is sometimes done to clarify that a bit is that the definition of "cisgender" is extended to people who have never thought about their gender identity. So the definition would be "people whose gender identity matches the gender they were assigned at birth or who have never reconsidered their gender identity".
  Also it would be an interesting line of thought to continue about the fact that the talk about problematic cisgender men in feminist circles (which is the main reason why there are women/lesbian/trans spaces created in feminist circles, for everybody except cisgender men) is so strong that "cisgender men" can be perceived to be a pejorative. Are there other ways to talk about it? Is there a way to include gender role aware cisgender men in feminist spaces or is everyday sexism so strong that it wouldn't really work? What kind of words are useful to distinguish between feminist men and non-feminist men? What about allyship? etc. Lots of things to think about.
• About the F in LGBTQ*
  I really like this idea to include feminism in queer movements. Usually the circles I work in are called queer-feminist anyway and to find a word that embraces both would really be cool. Obviously than the group is not a minority anymore, but marginalized nonetheless.
  But this brings me to the interesting question about broad movements versus specific movements that was raised in the discussion. And I think both make sense. For one there is the political strategy of strategic essentialism, to reduce the political fight to one issue like gay marriage or change of gender marker on identity documents because it is easier to fight for something like this and easier to explain, and on the other side there is the concept of intersectionality, the idea that all forms of oppression are linked anyway and that if people are affected by several forms of oppression (for example lesbian women of color) this creates a whole other set of struggles than those forms of oppression separately.
  In her book Excluded, Julia Serano tries to find a common concept for many different types of oppression, more looking at the dynamics, like marking, double standards, double binds, universal assumptions, stereotypes etc. than the specific forms of oppression, but as was already mentioned in our discussions, these concepts might be to complicated to be useful in political work.

Ok, that's enough for now, have to get to work. Have fun at the seminar!

Presentation On Situation Of Trans*people In Germany And Political Strategies

Here are the slides of the presentation.

Also for further reading I recommend the following books:

•  Julia Serano, Whipping Girl
  Best explanation of transsexuality and its connection to queer and feminism that I know of.
• Julia Serano, Excluded
  How to make feminist and other activist movements more inclusive
• Janet Mock, Redefining Realness
  Transsexuality from a PoC perspective

And these blogs and internet ressources:

• Julia Seranos Blog with lot's of interesting stuff.
• Transgender Murder Monitoring Project
• Since we talked about intersex as well, here is a good German language ressource and an English language ressource 
• And my personal blog, where I also write about trans, queer and feminist issues. Most of it is in German, but there are some English posts and even more English links on it :-)-

Have fun and enjoy your time in Berlin!