One day, when hundreds of millions of women around the world will probably live like any other day. They will face the same injustice, ignorance, violence and oppression. And, like any other day, they will use strength, intelligence, imagination, resilience, courage, solidarity and hope to face the many challenges they will meet.

But March 8th is also different. Because more and more, in every far corner of the world, the word has reached that this Day exists – that on this Day, millions of people celebrate the achievements of over a hundred years of women’s movements and stand up for the values of respect, equality, justice and human rights, the same values that the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia will also make resonate on May 17th.

Because we share these fundamental values, International Women’s Day and so many other international days are moments for us to express our solidarity and highlight the links. Because, yes, we feel part of International Women’s Day. And not only because thousands of Lesbians, Bisexual women and Trans women will be taking part in both celebrations.

We feel International Women’s Day is also ours to celebrate because many of the underlying causes of the injustices and inequalities that women have to bear are the same ones that also create homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, even if the experiences of these patriarchal structures are as individual and diverse as the people themselves. Societies which exalt power, aggressiveness, domination, possession and other such values have turned masculinity into an instrument of oppression of women, homosexuals and transgender people alike.

Increasingly, a global movement is forming, that unites all people in a new vision of what constitutes human bonds, away from stereotypical gender roles and socially predetermined behaviours and desires.
Because homosexuals and bisexuals, but most of all transgender people, have during their lifetime struggled with gender representations, and sometimes reinvented more nuanced gender roles, desires and behaviours, our stories meet the ones of the many straight women and men who, each day, reinvent different ways of coming together in real human bonds, away from patriarchy and machismo. And also, increasingly, from homophobia, transphobia and biphobia

Because International Women’s Day is a Day when to celebrate this new vision, we join in !

Interview By Nevin Öztop.

HeJin Kim is from Gender DynamiX in Cape Town, South Africa. The organization is the first African-based group solely focusing on the transgender community.

Born in South Korea and raised Belgium, HeJin’s geographical and inner transition to various countries made her see various, and yet so similar, forms of gender-based oppression and violence. If you visit her webpage, you will immediately see that “having been a sex worker, she isn’t remotely ashamed of anything, rather she’s proud of her experiences in life and will never allow the world to tell her she’s a victim.” This powerful statement is one of the many reasons why we are are highlighting her words and work on March 8.

You have lived in different parts of the world. Born in South Korea, you now live in Cape Town, South Africa. Please tell us a bit about the inner journey…

I was born in South Korea, grew up in Belgium, and lived in the Netherlands for years before returning to South Korea and then relocating in South Africa. I think many parts of this journey were shaped by specific needs; I stayed in the Netherlands specifically to access gender-affirming medical care which was not as easily available in Belgium at that time. Returning to South Korea was a part of a desire to reconnect with my own heritage, and since then I have simply taken the road ahead, not really that focused on the actual location it would lead me to.

What are the concerns and social and legal needs of trans men and women in regions you have live in? And let’s focus on South Africa a bit more…

When it comes to transgender persons, there are common strands that I have found everywhere I’ve been: Transgender persons face stigma, discrimination, and violence due to their gender non-conformity. Societal norms regarding gender might differ from place to place, but the consequences of breaking them are almost always bad. Beyond that, local context is everything, as the legal landscape can either severely empower someone or severely limit them, as just one example.

March 8 is a global celebration day, but also a remembrance day for all the economic, social, political and sexual violence women have been suffering for centuries. How would you like to address the day yourself? What would you like to underline on this day?

March 8 is a day that talks to women, however it has mostly been about cisgender women. For me, many things that happen on this day are a reflection of this. It is important to understand the diversity within what we call “women” and the fact that we all need to be reflective of any exclusion, whether intentional or unintentional. For the most part, I think March 8 should be about gender, and remembering all those who have been discriminated and violated based upon their gender, which includes transgender persons, as well as gays and lesbians.

Endless debates and discussions are taking place about the place of trans people within feminist activism. Of course feminism did advance in the last decades and broke its gender-binary frame but debates still continue at different levels. “Trans-inclusive feminism” is used often but I will ask you to describe to us how you imagine a feminism that cherishes and grows only with the presence of gender variances.

The issue is with the diversity within feminism; there are a lot of feminists that are inclusive and progressive, while many are conservative and rigid in their application of a binary male-female framework. What boggles my mind with transphobic feminists is the fact that they fail to grasp a simple reality: Cisgender women and transgender persons face stigma, discrimination, and violence based upon their gender; in the end we have a lot more in common than not.

To deny that transgender women are in fact women, is to enforce the rigid binary system that feminism is trying to break down. I think it is also an issue of privilege, where we need to understand the power dynamic between cisgender and transgender women. Those emphasising woman-born-woman are in denial over the privilege they have as cisgender women in framing such exclusion.

Interview by Claire House

I met and talked with Sonia in the offices of ABIA (the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association) in Rio de Janeiro. The ABIA offices also house the NGO Sonia co-chairs, Sexuality Policy Watch, which reports, intervenes on and supports research on sexual and reproductive rights issues around the world. Sonia has been active, particularly, in feminist and HIV/AIDS related activism and policy thinking since the 1980s, and is a well known source of expertise on the inter-relations between feminist activism and other forms of sexual and human rights rights struggles. Though she was tired after a difficult day’s work (especially given a wider context of financial constraints facing the social justice sector in Brazil), she welcomed a March 8-inspired opportunity to reflect on some key issues facing contemporary sexual and gender rights activists, with a particular focus on what feminism and LGBTQI rights can do for one another.

I began by asking Sonia if she could offer a commentary on how homophobia and transphobia are, at root, feminist questions? She laughed as she started to respond:

Well there is a short answer, a long answer, and a pretty short answer – a nutshell – which is that fighting against, trying to contest and criticising homophobia, transphobia and lesbophobia necessarily implies interrogating and undoing the heteronormative pact! Which is something that the feminists have been doing for some time, using a different framework, which is basically the framework of patriarchy.

But the fact is that – and this is where the nutshell becomes complex – using this idea of patriarchy, or even androcentrism, does not automatically take you to a critique of heteronormativity. You may criticise differences in power relations, economic relations, you may want to produce different legal frameworks, but you remain caught up in the binary logic structurally framed on the basis of man-woman, male-female, masculinity-femininity. This gramatics which is all over the place and taken for granted as unequivocal, inexorable and inevitable.

And do you see the LGBT movement sometimes repeating these binaries?

Of course! Pierre Bourdieu has this insightful elaboration in his famous paper on male domination – a phrase which I have been quoting so many times. He describes the systems of gender symbolic domination as being in our minds, in our bodies, in spaces and objects. This form of domination is about how your body is construed by culture, about how you perceive it, how you perceive the bodies of others, it is about how spaces are divided between male and female zones and also about how objects are attributed to gendered uses or even gender denotations, as in languages as Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish that engender “things”. The system is like a Matrix, as in the movie. You disembark in a world determined by this binary matrix embedded in unequal power relations and will be domesticated by it, deeply. Bourdieu was was talking about male domination but the same applies to heteronormativity, as a structural contract organising societies. There may be variations in the way the matrix defines roles and distributes power, such as the matrilienar Trobriand system described by Malinowsky in the early 20th Century, which differs from the strictly patriarchal frame of Chinese, Indian and European culture. Today these systems are in flux, but yet they are everywhere – at the centers but also at the margins of social and cultural systems. So it is not exactly possible to entirely escape in our self constructions and relationships with others from underneath patterns of misogyny, patriarchy and gender binary logics, even when a person or a group is situated at the margins.

Suffice to critically think of the social construction about and practices of the LGBT movement. To start with, it is “normally” called the gay movement, by the press, by institutions, by movement actors themselves. The LGTBIWYZA is an extremely heterogeneous crowd, different bodies, different gender expressions, a wide variety of desires, but reporters, TV, state institutions to a large extent keep saying “gay”, thereby subsuming this richness under the dominant umbrella of gay bodies and desires. This is not about heteronormativity, it is about male dominance in Bourdieu’s classical terms, although it is taking place outside the heteronormative structure. Not surprisingly we then have all these tensions concerning categories, terminologies and even the order of the “alphabet soup”. What is at stake in these battles is the male centrality in gender and sexuality social constructs.

Do you think that’s changing?

It is, it is, definitely because there has been much internal contestation in the last ten years. The global emergence, expansion and consolidation of trans movements is perhaps the more palpable sign of this transformation. Yet it remains very hard to really shake the way in which gender and sexuality markers are imprinted in minds, bodies, spaces and objects because these systems of meaning are so deeply articulated with functional, linguistic and symbolic structures of societies. A gay man is is still a “man”. Gay men might be at the margins, which is the case in most societies, because they do not fill the scripts deployed by heteronormativity. But gay men can also be powerful or occupy the higher echelons of male hierarchies. Examples abound: multinational CEOs, the Catholic Church priests or even bishops and cardinals, politicians that do not disclose their orientation. And because they are men, they can get more easily caught into reproductive patterns of dominant masculinities, which are of course, mediated by many different structures and mechanisms across cultures, and cannot be fully grabbed if we do not take into account class and economics, race and ethnicity, location, social segments. In any case there are gay men who – though they are not hegemonic males themselves – share political values and social practices of what Raywen Connel has defined long time ago as hegemonic masculinities.

This can even be said, in very rare cases, of trans men. And this necessarily always implies complex power and exclusion dynamics. A few years ago I read this amazing story of a female biologist of Stanford University, if I am not wrong, who transitioned to become a trans man. Being a biologist working at an American University in the 21st Century is to occupy a place high up in the global social hierarchy. But even today at that high level there are sharp gender disparities, suffice to remind that just 5 percent of the big multinational CEOs are women and this why Sheryl Sandberg, the Google CEO, wrote her book. But the story is that at the first conference our biologist attended as a male presented his findings, and one male participant goes to him and says: Dr. Sparr I want to congratulate you for your intelligence and intellectual brightness. Incredible findings. Have I told I’ve met your sister before, she’s also smart, but your brains are better!

This example provides a deep glimpse into the complexities I am speaking of in terms of how gender and sexuality systems operate through continuous mechanisms of exclusion and heirechization. This person can be said to have lived many years as a woman professionally located at the higher echelons of global academia. Then she transitions as a man and we can suppose that this implies moving further up. But this is not really so because in the system logic she is not a “real man”, despite all his other intellectual, or even class attributes. If exclusion and disqualification happens at that level it is not hard to imagine what happens at lower end of the pyramid – if somebody is poor black trans man born and living in a country in the global South.

So until now I have been talking about the effects of power dynamics, in particular male dominance or androcentrism in the dynamics of LGBTQI politics. But we must remember that cis women, even feminists are also caught into the same webs of meanings and related asymmetries. The better known illustration is found in those feminist currents that do not problematize “women” as a constructed category and firmly believe in the existence of “real women” whose fundamental marker is a natural vagina. Furthermore they do not conceive feminisms as world visions – something that is fundamentally constructed in our minds, between your ears – but as also dependent on this “real vagina”. These are the streams that I often call expressions of “vaginism”.

Sexuality Policy Watch usually addresses reproductive rights together with sexual rights?

Yes we do not see these concepts or related struggles as isolated but rather connected though also distinct domains. We give particular attention to abortion because it is the issue that is now located at the very troubled political front lines, everywhere. But there are many important reproductive rights issues that also deserve to be constantly visible, such as prohibitions of contraception that are not unrelated to prohibition of condoms. Or yet more compelling, the problem of forced sterilization of trans people, which is as critical a violation of human rights as the massive forced sterilization of women in India that, once again, has reached the front pages.

And do you think that there are some parallels between abortion and LGBT rights? Perhaps because they are both questions which confront conservative and religious ideas about reproductive sexualities?

Yes, the Catholic doctrine is a a strategic place for us to look at to grab the connections, because it a discourse that at once aims at fixing the natural and unchangeable woman and man binary structure. This thereby makes non-heterosexual expressions of desires or identity – which the Church intellectuals define as polymorphous sexuality – abject, and centres this male-female natural relation’s procreative capacity. And thereby stigmatizes all forms of non-procreative sexuality – except of course priests’ and nuns’ celibacy. This radical condemnation evidently includes the refusal to procreate, which is abortion.

But Catholic doctrines change, as we do know, and in recent years it has absorbed the calls for gender equality in its own way, admitting that women deserve “dignity” – a very unstable concept in this context as it may be interpreted as honour – and have started to openly condemn violence against women. But at the same time they have sophisticated further, their doctrinal conceptions of the gender binary and its intrinsic imbrication with procreation. From the feminist and LGBTIQ movements perspective, therefore, the struggle against this conception would be an evident common political platform.

Yet this is not happening. Very concretely, in Brazil and elsewhere feminists have not many allies within the LGBT movement in their hard fights to contain regressions in relation to abortion rights. And I suspect that if an open discussion is triggered about the issue many people within the wider LGBT community will reveal that either have not thought properly about it, or else that in fact they are against abortion. Another factor playing a role in this disconnection, that makes it difficult to move towards a wider and more inclusive consensus on sexual and reproductive rights, is definitely, on both sides – meaning feminists and LGBTQI communities – the perverse effects of identity politics. Having said that it is also important to say that in various countries lesbians are doing incredible work in relation to abortion. Also if and when alliances are established they are solid and very creative. In Brazil, feminists struggling for abortion rights have few but very committed allies in the LGBTQI movement.

And we should also address in this discussion the ways these “rights” have also become subject to perverse games in the realm of state strategic politics. A large number of governments have started in recent years to play games with LGBTQI rights on the one hand and abortion on the other. The firsts sign of this trend was detected in Nicaragua in 2007 when the Penal Code reform at once stroke down the sodomy law and entirely prohibited abortion. Since then in the Americas we have witnessed the same pattern emerge elsewhere: the US, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, even though in Uruguay after eight years of battle an abortion law was approved (which however is not as good as the one vetoed by President Tabarés in 2008). These games are being played, amongst other reasons, because governments are juggling with the pressures of conservative opposition forces and decide to give them the rings of abortion rights, to retain the fingers of LGBT rights.

I would say the same patterns applies now to the UK where we see David Cameron happily playing the LGBT rights agenda, in fact deploying discourses that have been correctly interpreted as a new wave of imperialism to African countries, which is not a very productive strategy as it fuels the mills of conservative social sectors and state actors. But from what I understand, on reproductive rights and, in particular, abortion, the Cameron administration is decidedly regressive. They are speaking of and investing on maternal mortality and family planning in ways that can easily be described as back to the future of health and population policies of the 1970’s. Rather pathetic. Not to mention that DFID has been funding the sterilization program of the state of Rajasthan in India that quickly became one of the tragic novel examples of reproductive rights violations in the 2000’s. There are very few places where this double bind policy model is not being adopted. The Federal District in Mexico and the Colombian Constitutional Court are two exceptions in delivering progressive policies and decision in the two domains. But they are drops in an ocean.

Why do you think this is happening?

We need more fine investigations of this trend. But I have a hypothesis. Firstly, dogmatic religious sectors and other conservative forces have been able, in the last 30 years, to construct a very negative image of abortion. They have really succeeded on that front, much more than in relation to relation to non-normative sexualities, at least in the case of Latin America. Not accidentally, the attack on same sex relations and desire became their main target more recently. The other possible explanation is that LGBT rights in terms of expressive politics – meaning the ability of state to deliver speech acts and write documents – more easily projects the image of modernity, of being in tune with contemporary cultural and market trends: it is the exaltation of diversity! LGBT rights are also about individuals “being themselves”, the right to express yourself, which is also very akin with the market oriented societies right? Last but not least it is about love, it’s about Valentine’s Day. Why can’t people love each other? Love is such a good thing. Right? It’s so easy for them to argue in favour. Not to mention the economic interest on what in US critical circles is called the circuits of the “pink dollar” – the huge amounts on money now circulating in the domains of LGBT tourism and market niches.

Whereas in the case abortion, it is not exactly easy to embark in a similar stream of discursive and policy deployments. Yes, the right to decide, implied in abortion, also speaks of autonomy and freedom. But abortion can not be addressed without also referring to health risks, suffering, violence, cruelty and pain. Furthermore, as I said before, the adversaries of abortion rights have been able to systematically build upon the negative and painful dimensions of abortion to their benefit. State actors caught under pressures in relation to these two sets of rights claims quite easily opt for the easiest way – the comfort zone. Even when in reality things are much more complicated because LGBTQI rights are also about violence, killing, pain.

Violence against women and against LGBT people also have parallels, right? And, maybe it’s also important to highlight that men are often the perpetrators of both, right?

Yes, we can definitely say that dominant forms of masculinities are the origin of both gender based domestic and sexual violence, and homophobic hate crimes and other related violations. But at the same it is also very important to underline that men themselves are are also those who are more killed and injured by violence, which also talks about the highly detrimental effects of gender constructs that spill over in all directions. I can give you the Brazilian example. In 2007, we had 47,000 homicides in Brazil and this is, by and large the level of lethal violence in the country in the last ten years (between 40,000 and 50,000 people killed, which corresponds to the number of American soldiers who died in the whole of the Vietnam war. just to give you a scale). Of that total figure 5% are homicides of women, and I would say it would not be exaggerated to estimate between 500-1,000 homophobic killings, because the data we have collected by GGB is based on press reports and certainly we have a high level of under notification. This means that more than 90% of people killed are men killed, mostly by other men. The majority of these men, we do know for quite a long time, are young Afro-Brazilian poor. This is not to say that lethal violence against women of homophobic hate crimes are unimportant. They are important because, amongst other reasons, quite often they imply extreme levels of violence and cruelty. But it is vital to situate gender and sexuality driven lethal violence in relation to the wider landscape of structural violence and its deep gender imprints. This data should lead us to interrogate the elements in the gender systems and constructs of masculinities that lead men to kill other men, women and gender non-conforming persons in such a scale.

For more information on the work of Sonia and Sexuality Policy Watch, see their website or follow SPW on facebook.

Interview by Rebekka Eisner. Photo: Mariel (right) on set of short-film A Domicilio / At Home (2009)

Mariel has been involved in organising various film festivals such as the LesGaiCineMad Festival in Madrid, where she worked as Artistic Director. She is also Executive Director at MICA (the Iberoamerican Network for Women in Film and Media). Originally from Argentina, Mariel currently lives in Germany where she is working as a programmer with the International Women’s Film Festival (IFFF) which will take place in April in Cologne.

I started by asking Mariel if she could see any trends in the topics addressed by women producing films, who presented their work at the festival in recent years.

I have just started working here now but I am working in film festivals for a long time, and I know this festival for years, so I know the films that they show. And I don’t think there is any topic or anything that has been the main focus. I actually think that sometimes it is a stereotype of women in film to suppose that women have to have other types of themes or do special things. That actually is not true, it is just another point of view on the same themes. Or not even another point of view, it is just a film. The actual problem is that women don’t have the possibility to be in the front row of projects, so it is really complicated because there are only 7% of films that are directed by women in the world. These are really bad numbers because we are talking 93% of movies that are only directed by men. In these 7%, or 10% depending on the country, you can find any topic, any genre, action films or also comedies. There is not a special topic because being a woman is not a topic just for itself.

And the film-making?

One thing that can be interesting in films of women is that women characters have more relevance, that the women are more intelligent. There is a funny test which is called the Alison Bechdel Test. A lot of people in the industry started to use it. It says if you can find a movie where there are two women talking to each other with no men there, and the conversation they have is not about a man, but it is about something else that is happening to them, then this movie passed the test. It is really funny because a lot of movies don’t have that, they don’t even have two women talking about something other than a man.

With these types of things we can see that it is not the theme that is different but the point of view, about prostitution, about hitting women or other violence. It is not that there is no violence in the films by women but the violence is not always against women, and of course there is not that sympathetic view on the violent man, for example. In a lot of films there is kind of an excuse for the man to be violent. In women’s films there is usually not this view, there is another responsibility for violence, for rape or the way that rape is shown. These types of things could change when a woman directs the film but not the theme itself.

You have been working in Madrid and with MICA as well. The film festival in Madrid is a specific Lesbian, Gay, Bi & Trans Festival. In the work that you have done there and the work you are doing now for the IFFF, is there a difference in the approach, in the audience, the participants?

For the audience there is of course a difference because it is not the same to program something for German people or for Spanish people. For example, maybe in Spain you program more comedy or more sex than here where you might show other things. The audience is different and also the other difference is that in Madrid the whole festival is queer. I was doing half of the program because I was in charge of the Lesbian and Latin American films and the other Artistic Director was in charge of most of the Gay and Transsexual issues. I was programming 50 films, around that number, and here I only have six programs, so maybe around 15 films, with short films and everything. This is one of the differences, the amount of films. But I think this is just normal because this film festival screens the same amount of films like the LesGaiCineMad in total but here we have another focus.

Another thing is, that maybe in Lesbian Cinema we have more different things because the sections were about themes, for example. You can have documentaries about transsexual issues, you can have experimental themes, you can have different types of contents for different audiences because everything was about LGBT. So there we had that possibility to have sexual documentaries, experimental projects, etc. But here, since there are six programs, we just have to focus more and also the competition for the filmmakers is stronger because if you get 200 films in the selection and in the LesGaiCineMad Festival you can screen 100, then it is a 50% chance that your film is going to be screened. Here in the IFFF there are only 15 films that get screened so chances are only 20% or less.

And from the approach side, did feminist filmmakers also engage in the festival in Madrid and try to combine women related issues, for example right to abortion, reproductive rights, violence against women, with LGBTI issues?

Yes, of course. As I told you before, there are more possibilities to explore different themes. And Madrid also has a really big community of feminists and queers. So there are a lot of connections and collaborations with NGOs and other people. Actually, the Madrid film festival was organised by a NGO and there are lots of connections, so we talk a lot about HIV/AIDS and we make campaigns together. The film festival also lasted 10 days and so we had a variety of venues, free universities, we had panel discussions and so on.

I think there is such a connection every time – of course I don’t know all the film festivals but I have been to many of them and I think all the time they are connected. If you are talking about women or talking about freedom or sexuality, the other themes just come with it. You cannot talk about sex and sex all day, you are talking about a lot of things that are part of identity, of being free and respect for the others. And so if you want to be deep and more profound in the experience you have to know about more things.

There are also a lot of people from academies, from universities and from other academic institutions who are interested in the film festivals, so there is always a collaboration with them and that enriches the audience because then it is not only about showing the film and then go home. You show the film, then there are debates about it and people get together. In Madrid, my experience is that most of the people go there as a social, political experience, not only to watch the films. The experience to watch the films with people and then talk about it, it is a big thing.

In Madrid there are people traveling from all over Spain just to visit the festival because there you can find a lot of different themes. And if there is no such connection, when I have the possibility to program something, I connect it because I think it is important. I am not so much into labels, I mean I don’t know if I am a feminist or queer or LGBTI. I try to be open and to respect and to learn a lot of new things every time. So, I think everything is connected and this is why I try to put it in my programs, as well.

That is really cool because my experience is that a lot of times, either within the LGBT community or within the feminist scene, there is a sensitivity for the ‘other’ issues but often there is not really the connection. So, it is great to hear that you are always engaging in making the connections and enforcing the linkage.

The thing is that I always fight with people who don’t do that because I think you cannot fight against the people that you should work together with. The fights between the movements are just feeding the system and make it stronger. If we are fighting each other all the time, then the system is laughing at us because they are still doing whatever they do and they don’t care.

It is something that we talk about a lot in the discussions. I organise a lot of things all the time – like talks, debates, these type of things – and when I always see the same people in the audience or people who always just agree with me I wonder why it is like this. Especially when we do something with women’s organisations and there are only women there, when we want to talk about women’s issues, such as women’s leadership in cinema or equality, then I think: OK, there are only women here who are already into the issues, they know everything we are going to talk about, maybe there are little things we can discuss and have a friendly hour but we actually need to be in other places, so people can know what is happening.

How do you do that?

One of the things that we did was to make statistics of the films that are directed by women. We took them to film institutes and we talked to the film organisations and governments, presenting the statistics. For example at the Berlinale or the San Sebastian Film Festival etc., we try to go to the events where all the people are and talk to the people who actually don’t want to hear us. It is good that we can have this community, that we can talk together and make us stronger by supporting each other but at the same time I think we need to go and talk to the people who don’t want to hear us. And then tell them things that they are hearing for the first time. I think it is important to be out there and it is also very important that when we are together we discuss in a constructive way. I don’t see any benefit in separating, if you are queer, if you are trans, if we are going to fight for marriage or not, or whatever, if the people separate themselves from each other, it is bad.

Another question I have is about issues concerning intersexuality or intersex people. From my little experience in that field, intersex groups often feel left out when it comes to actions by the LGBT community but also the feminist movement. Many intersex groups have a different focus in their work, for example fighting against genital mutilation of intersex children, but there is that critique of being left out or just being attached at the end, like the LGBT’I’.

In my case, I can say the same thing. I try to include every film that we can get, dealing with different topics and try to have variety in the program. There are two problems. I will give you an example for the first one. While I was looking for films for the program for this year, I contacted a director, a trans director, and I gave out the invitation to send a film to us. And so he wrote me and he said: ‘Well, but you are a women’s film festival. I don’t want to be in your festival because I don’t identify as a woman, so I don’t think I can, I don’t fit into the program.’ And then I explained to him that actually this is the queer section of the festival. Of course, the festival has the focus on women because women are under-represented, there is a really big problem in the industry that women cannot be directors. But if the festival does have a queer part then the important thing is the experience of being queer, to understand what it means to be queer and to know what is happening to queer people. So I talked to him, he understood my point and he actually sent me the film. I also told him that in the children’s program there are sometimes films directed by men but because of the topic the people in charge decided to program it, because the theme of the film is about women which they want to address with the children. In that case it is because of the topic. We have to be open and understand that not all can be separated.

The other issue that I want to address is a more profound problem and it is not specifically about the film festival. It is more about the filmmakers because a film festival cannot screen a film that does not exist. If there are no films about intersex people, or also about a lot of other things, the festival cannot screen it. The problem is not the festival, it is a much more complicated thing. It is about who is making the films, who has the possibility to do it.

Sometimes there are films about intersex people, and then I think every film festival is eager to show it because they are really open to program things, even if the quality of the film is not like a Oscar-nominated film, because queer programmers understand that the people who make these films don’t have the means and the money or the support of the government to provide money to make big budget films. So, for us it is not about budget but sometimes there are no films. For example, this year there are only few lesbians fiction films, so it is not only intersex or other groups that are left behind. There are really few films in the world this year and I can tell you this because I was looking for them for six months. I went to the Berlinale, watching Sundance Programs, wrote them, all the main film festivals in the world and there are only really few films about lesbians. At the Berlinale there was not one film about lesbian issues in the whole program.

Do you have any idea why this is?

Maybe there are many reasons, I don’t know. The thing is that the cinema is in crisis because of piracy and these types of things. So there is less money and all the industry is suffering, but the first ones that you can see suffer are the groups that have less money. Being a woman and lesbian are two levels of discrimination at the same time, so I think this is one of the reasons that the ‘weakest’ in a crisis are the first to fall. It is not that we can stop thinking about intersex films, of course, but the problem is really much broader than that. It is really difficult to make a program for a festival if there are no films.

This festival and many others are into working not only with institutions, but also with the production, trying to get people together – scriptwriters to be in collaboration with directors, directors with camera people, etc., so they can create groups and can make films. The problem for film festivals is that if there are no films you cannot screen them. To answer your question, we really want to have different films and we want to have films from different countries talking about different issues because we don’t want the same films to be screened all the time.

We have experienced an uprising of reactionary movements, such as the religious right, right-wing nationalism, etc. in recent years who are fighting for traditional family values, for the traditional role of women in society, who fight against abortion, who are anti-LGBTI. There is an obvious link between the issues that they are fighting for or against.

Has that also been a topic for the feminist film productions or women’s film productions, has it been discussed or used in movies?

Yes, there are a lot of groups that are really involved in societal issues. I have one example which is really cool. It is something that happened in Spain in the last few months. In Spain there is a lot going on about abortion right now because they want to go backwards with the abortion laws. When it was coming out in the news that the government wants to change the laws, there was this group of people who organised something called the Liberty Train. There were women coming from all over Spain to Madrid to make a big parade to show they are against this new law. And there is the Women in Film Association in Spain for which I was working before as well. That group of women, 60 filmmakers, made a collective documentary about the Liberty Train.

These 60 filmmakers were all in different places, one was in London, the other one in Paris, another one in Madrid and other places in Spain. In Madrid there was the parade and, I think it was 12 groups with 60 filmmakers, they shot this documentary. Within these groups there were producers such as Isabel Coixet, Icíar Bollaín, all the well-known directors in Spain who are really famous and have had success in cinema for ages, all of them were working for free to make the documentary. They had a lot of images and now there are to women editors – who are also really famous because they edit really important movies in Spain – and they are working for free. This documentary will be released in two to three months, I think. It is the involvement of all the filmmakers that the Women in Film Organisation can do this documentary about the abortion law.

What were the motivations behind it?

The argument is that they [the government] start there, but they are going to take everything from us and we were fighting for it so long that we have to come together. And so everybody was there together, people who have different aesthetics, different type of films, different ideas about films or filmmaking. Some of them do documentaries, some of them do fiction, love stories, comedies, but there we all were together. That’s what I was talking about being together, that this is the most important thing. At this Berlinale, I was there and I gave a presentation and one thing I said there, and I will repeat it here, is that I think all the organisations work for different things. Some are working for queer issues, others are working for abortion, others do work about prostitution, there is Femen who decided to go naked, then there are other ones who decide to have leadership programs to promote women’s enterprise. Everybody has a different approach. But there is always something in the base, a common ground where we can be together. And that is what we have to find to actually achieve something.

When I was in Spain and the [same-sex] marriage law passed – it was one of the first countries – and that was something we couldn’t believe. I mean, here in Spain? But now I live in Germany and work here. I started to remember what was happening, every group, every LGBT, everyone was working together saying that marriage should be legal, even if I don’t want to marry and others are not going to marry, or they want to fuck with different people every night… it doesn’t matter because if the others have that, why are we not going to have it? And if I don’t want to marry I don’t get married but the thing is if there are people who want to marry each other and they cannot do it, then everyone works together. There wasn’t any group saying no to marriage.

But then you go to other countries that are supposed to be more evolved in some things, i.e. in queer theory, in university studies or research, and then, when you talk about marriage, you find within the LGBT community groups that will say: ‘No, we don’t want marriage. We want to be free and there should be polyamory or what ever.’ Or they say: ‘We don’t want it because then we are going to be in the system.’ So instead of being a million people asking for marriage, there is only half that, and the other half is also against it. If the people are against it because of religion, or because of politics etc., they have added against their own battle – the ones that are inside the community. There are then more people who don’t want marriage. The situation is that if we find a common ground then we can achieve things. And then, of course, you can marry or not and do whatever you want.

We can achieve equality for everybody together and then also argue together against marriage as an institution.

Or just do the opposite. Like: ‘OK, if we cannot marry, then straight people cannot not get married, either.’ Then we are also all equal. But if you are just a thousand people who say ‘I want…’ then you are not going to achieve it. I come from Argentina and there was a time when every day you have two or three parades or people speaking up. If you had three lesbians, you had four women’s organisations, formed by these three people. Everything was so dispersed that nothing really stayed and nothing could become strong.

Coming together to see where the same structures are causing problems, discrimination and so on, and fight together against these structures. Having different focuses and areas of work, of course, but still it is the same base that needs to be changed, the same structures that need to be changed.

And also be open about, for example, women’s film festivals, because there are a lot of people, I think, who have big prejudices. These prejudices maybe come from the 80′s or 60′s when there were other types of feminists and other types of festivals. And people think that we are feminists who still take out their bra and go into the street to burn it. That is something that in some places is necessary, but there is also a new wave of feminism – there are other people who talk about things in another way.

And the festivals are changing all the time, as well. You cannot keep on thinking: ‘Oh no, this is a women’s thing’. You don’t know if you don’t go there who is programming it, who are the people there. Over the years, the people change and things are changing, so I think people should be open to see what is there and actually realize that there are a lot of things to see and there are people who know how to program. For my section I have 200 films and I watch all of them and then we decide in the community which films we are going to program and why.

We also organise panel discussions, we’re going to have one about queer feminist porn and sex positivity, and we are bringing in people from Berlin and from Sweden to talk about it. Then we have a workshop that is about feelings and politics – how politics can make you feel uncomfortable with yourself. The workshops are free and there will be films about these topics, also about transgender and youth. What I want to say is that there are a lot of things to see and there are not enough opportunities to watch those. I think people should just pay attention to what is around them because in most countries there are women’s film festivals that also have queer films, not only in special sections but also in the programs. And the films are new, there are from this year. You can see what is happening now.

Some final words?

The most important thing is that cinema is a way of looking at society and of representing it. I think it is really important that the people who are telling the story – who are the directors, producers and the scriptwriters – can be women or LGBT or queer people – that they should be diverse. If we have a diversity of these people then we are going to have diverse films and then the film festival can program these films. It is not only about the film festival, it is about a lot of things that happen before and it is a societal thing.

If you are interested in Mariel Maciá’s productions and awards and want to know more about her life and work you can visit her homepage.

Click for more information about
IFFF – International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund/Cologne
MICA – Iberoamerican Network for Women in Film and Media
LesGaiCineMad – Festival International de Cine Lesbico Gai y Transexual de Madrid
CIMA – Women in Film association Spain

Photo: Milena Abrahamyan, contributor from Armenia & NYC

Egypt

“Egypt, as a conservative closed religious country, has a specific image on the hierarchy within its society. If you are not a heterosexual male in Egypt, you will definitely be discriminated against. And with the all the political and economical problems Egypt is having over the past years, people have started to express their feelings out very violently, and because they are still not able to face the authorities, they started taking it out on those who they believe they are the weakest links which are LGBTI and women. They believe when they do assault these categories, authority will be on their side this time, which is true. Now a lot of rape cases, sexual assaults, physical and verbal harassment, and attacks on Feminists and LGBTI groups and centers is happening in Egypt, and the authorities and media end up doing nothing as they believe that these groups are effecting public morals and traditions, and because they are very busy fighting political activists, they leave Feminists and LGBTI activists for the society to deal with.

As a Feminist and lesbian activist, I feel that my goal is to try to tie the two cases together and work on both of them. I believe that if I don’t have my full rights as a woman, my rights to have proper education, proper health treatment, political rights, the right to control my own life and make my own choices, I will not be able to express my gender and sexuality freely. Also if I skip all that and just focus on LGBTI problems like criminalizing it or the right in marriage and adopting, I will still be discriminated against as a woman. It is basically like a chain and each end is linked to the other, either we keep it tied up or break it and make it easier for anyone to step in and destroy all our hopes and dreams.”

– Maha Youssef, Bedayaa Organization for LGBTQI of the Nile Valley Area

Switzerland

“If feminist and LGBT activism aim at transforming power relations, we have to ask ourselves what justice entails for whom. Switzerland was comparably ‘late’ in its political and legal recognition of women and is still reluctant to fully recognize LGBTI claims. Whilst it is tempting to reduce March 8 to a celebration of measurable feminist achievements such as anti-discrimination legislation or principles that make inequality comparable such as the gender pay gap, why not think about those women whose experiences have been outside of what has been accomplished. On March 8, it deems important to broaden our understanding of justice and violence. Many experiences of sexism and queerphobia cannot be accounted for in the existing legalistic framework yet they still matter.

As LGBTI and feminist activists, we have to ask ourselves who we are allowing to set the political agendas. If Swiss feminism is so concerned with women’s economic independence and the gender pay gap, which in Switzerland currently hovers around 20%, why are we not concerned with the precarious labour conditions of sex workers and domestic workers? And what about the specific difficulties trans women, non-conforming genders or lesbians face in the work place? The discrimination Muslim women have to deal with, especially if they dare to wear a headscarf?. These are all feminist issues that have not made it on the mainstream feminist -or LGBTI- agenda in Switzerland.

Intersectional workings of queerphobia and sexism are particularly difficult to contest if the subjects who represent them are always marked as ‘marginal’. Queer-feminist activists worldwide have shown that a critique of power relations -also within feminist and LGBTI movements- has to go hand in hand with their political claims. In Switzerland this became particularly pertinent in 2009 when the country voted in favor of banning minarets. The campaign led by the Christian-Conservative front was using gender equality as an argument to push through their racist agenda. The violence against Muslim women and queers emerging from that campaign was subsequently contested by anti-racist feminist activists and researchers.

March 8 therefore is an opportunity to come together and think about the power relations that inform our work as feminist and LGBTI activists. It starts with who is allowed to take part in the marches, whose claims are deemed important and whose have ‘no priority’. Creating justice is also a result of power relations.”

– Maria von Känel, General Manager of the Swiss Rainbow Families Association and co-founder of NELFA (Network of European LGBT Families Associations) & Stefanie Boulila, a Swiss queer-feminist researcher from the University of Leeds

Japan

“Lesbian, bisexual women and transgender people have always been in women’s movements. Those of us who fight against homophobia and transphobia believes in women’s rights regardless of one’s sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity, gender expression or bodily diversity. On this day, let’s celebrate diversity among women all over the world.

Happy International Women’s Day from Japan!”

– Azusa Yamashita, Co-Secretary General, International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)

Armenia

“March 8th is ultimately about fighting for respect. It is not, as is common practice in Armenia, about giving flowers to women to highlight how fragile and beautiful they are. We shouldn’t live in a world where our only value is beauty, and where we are deemed fragile creatures to be protected, especially when we certainly aren’t protected from the violence of patriarchy.

To me, feminism is simply put the act of loving women, which ultimately means loving humanity. This is meaningful to anyone who has ever loved a woman not for being their sister, not for being their mother, not for being their wife or lover, but for being a human being. When girls are harassed in their own homes, when young women are shamed for expressing their sexuality, when women are subjected to violence by their husbands or partners, when feminists fighting for women’s rights to equal status in society are attacked by street mobs, when LBTI identified women are harassed, attacked, discriminated against at all levels of their lives, we are given a clear message that we live in an anti-woman world. The kind of love this world wants to give women is rooted in dehumanizing them to the level of sexual objectification or submissive servants. This is not love. This is disrespect.

March 8th is my everyday, the conscious act of loving women, and thereby loving and respecting what is human.”

– Milena Abrahamyan, Armenia & NYC

If you would like to add your voice, email us at contact@dayagainsthomophobia.org

This year’s IDAHOT was marked by a big wave of mobilisation in the South Pacific island of Fiji – where all events keyed into the 2014 focus on Freedom of Expression. FEMLink Pacific, a grass roots women’s radio station had a day of broadcasts around the day, featuring the participation of 30 rural women’s leaders, amongst many other highlights. Haus of Khameleon, Emerging Leaders Forum Alumni and Drodrolagi Movement organized a “Family Fun Day OUT!”.

FemLINK Events

The IDAHOT inspired events were built around FemTALK 89FM’s “Rainbow Connections” radio programmes, which were launched in February 2014 and are produced and hosted by SOGI activists including The Haus of Khameleon, Oceania Pride and Rainbow Women’s Network. 28 participants including rural women leaders, members from Oceania Pride, Haus of Khameleon and the Rainbow Women’s Network came together through FemLINKPACIFIC’s rural community media network and affirmed that regardless of sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion, everyone’s development priorities are the same.

The theme for their community radio 10th anniversary campaign was “Communicating Peace, Development, Diversity, Security and Freedom” which connected with the IDAHOT 2014 focus on Freedom of Expression.

The programmes covered issues ranging from Gender Equality in Disaster Risk Management and Responses, Economic security and equality in decision making, access to services, and disability rights. A youth speak out session also discussed current youth priorities, including mental health and well being.

In Fiji, IDAHOT 2014 was merged with the 10th anniversary celebrations of FemLINK – a grass roots feminist community media project.

Family Fun Day Out

Haus of Khameleon, Emerging Leaders Forum Alumni and Drodrolagi Movement held a “Family Fun Day OUT!” to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2014. The call for the event said “The daily struggle that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) communities encounter in our endeavours for Equality, Diginity and Humanity would not be as substantial to the movement if it weren’t for the firm and unwavering support of our loved ones – families (chosen and biological), partners and friends.”

The Family Fun Day OUT involved activities for children, games, music, creative expressions and a candle light vigil followed by an after party.

From the Source: One of the many photos from today as we mark a belated International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia at the My Suva Park. Vinaka shukriya and thank you to all those who brought their friends and families along and made today so special and memorable! More photos coming later. ‪#‎IDAHOT‬ ‪#‎Fiji‬

In a write up of the event in The Fiji Times, organiser Kris Prasad said: “This is a belated celebration. We were supposed to have the fun day on May 17, on the actual International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia but couldn’t because of bad weather… This day really is to bring everyone together. Our previous events to mark May 17 were always on the serious side. We wanted to have a family fun day so we can enjoy fun activities with our friends and family, and especially the children.”

Media Coverage

• The Fiji Times: LGBT Community Hosts Fun Day

Palestinian women’s groups held a day long program to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia 2014. The programme included a session with the participation of students and school authorities.

Palestinian women’s/LBTQI group ASWAT had a study day for school counsellors to raise awareness about sexual orientation and gender identities.

You can find out more about Aswat on their website.

Iranian LGBT and feminist activists commemorated May 17, as a way of promoting freedom of expression for LGBT people, and for all, in Iran. One of the goals of the campaigns was to end hate speech against, and scapegoating of, LGBT communities and women in the media, and to promote free expression for all.

May 17 in Tehran: No homophobia in Persian media!

Lesbian & Gay – Knowledge, Education, Rights, News (LG KERN) coordinated a joint media/journalism campaign among Farsi speaking activists. Around IDAHOT 2014, they aimed to raise awareness about homophobia online, especially via all global Persian websites or media. Activists monitored information on media messages which contains hateful and homophobic messages, and promoted their own campaign images, texts and videos in their place.

Source: LG Kern

A special focus on media in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan

The goal of this action was also to recognize, report and fight against hateful messages and news worldwide, with a special focus on media in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Source: LG Kern

Feminists organise in Tehran

Also for May 17, 2014, a group of feminists produced and launched an online publication releases in Tehran about heterosexism and sexism.

Flashmob Video

LG KERN also disseminated a flashmob video filmed in Tehran. The video features someone walking through the streets of the Iranian capital, using the rainbow flag as a cape. The video is accompanied by Googoosh’s song “Behesht”, a song she recently dedicated (in 2014) to the fight for equality, regardless of the gender of who we love. Googoosh is a famous Iranian pop star, and the video tells the story of lesbian couple.

To watch the flashmob video, click here

Further Information

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lgkern2
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LGKERN2

The Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights marked May 17 with a statement that demands the protection of the human rights of LGBTQI individuals and allied human rights defenders. It also calls for the protection of the right to freedom of expression and the revocation of any discriminatory law against LGBTQI communities. LGBT Voice Tanzania also released a brief statement of support for May 17.

On May 17, the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) joined its voice with LGBTQI individuals and human rights activists worldwide in calling for respect for the right to freedom of expression, both of LGBTQI individuals and allied human rights defenders.

The statement was sent out from the Tanzania Office, as well as the Philippines and Mexico Offices, to members, partners and allies (more than 1,000 individuals and organizations). Special messages were put on their website, Facebook and Twitter.

The Network, a Southern-based global, member-driven network which builds and strengthens movements for Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) and justice. Established in 1984 in the Netherlands, WGNRR has 30 years experience of mobilizing and campaigning on SRHR issues. In 2008, WGNRR relocated the Coordinating Office from Amsterdam to Manila, where it is currently headquartered.

You can read the full text of May 17 statement here.

Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights Webpage here.

LGBT Voice Tanzania statement

LGBT Voice Tanzania released a brief statement of support for May 17 around the world on their facebook page. The statement follows in full:

“Today Saturday, we honor the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT), an international celebration of sexual and gender diversity. IDAHOT is a day for all of us to demand an end to violence and discrimination against LGBT people. This year’s theme is freedom of expression.

Together we can-and we will—create a world that is safe and welcoming for all of us, no matter who we love or how we define ourselves. With warmth and solidarity.”

LGBT Voice Tanzania are currently appealing for funding for a pioneering research and documentation project on LGBT lives in Tanzania, via a crowdfunding campaign. You can find out more here and via their website.

Several Women’s associations mobilised this year to celebrate the Tunisian International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, whilst a Facebook campaign invited people to show resistance against homophobic hate.

A day of meetings, debates and cultural events was held to lay the foundations of an activists’ movement uniting lesbian, bisexual and transgender women and feminists in Tunisia. This event, coordinated by the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women and the organisation Chouf (“Look!”) marked a milestone in the emergence of “a space for expression and construction”, which women who have sex with other women find extremely difficult to access, given the dual oppression which they confront daily in Tunisian society.

The debates focused on developing human rights arguments for advocacy, and on web security, in a context where online activity is potentially dangerous for LGBTI communities.

Poster for IDAHOT 2014 in Tunisia

The organisation Damj also launched a Facebook campaign to alert people to the state of homophobia in the country, and also to invite resistance. Campaign visuals depict a bruised face with the caption ‘your punches won’t hurt me’, in a bold message that violence will not silence Tunisian LGBTI communities. Damj also organised an afternoon community discussion on confronting myths and realities about homosexuality.

“Your punches won’t hurt me” IDAHOT 2014 online campaign from Tunisia