Ajdarević-on-LGBT&much-more
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Help Micah and the United Nations Council stop the forced sterilization of trans person trend!
The link I present to you here is the blog page of the trans activist Micah Grzywnowicz.
He is a full time human rights activist, and at the moment dedicated to fight cruel injustice directed toward trans population.
He is a full time human rights activist, and at the moment dedicated to fight cruel injustice directed toward trans population.
He recently graduated from Human Rights studies in Sweden and in the meantime he established a contact with the United Nations´s Special
Rapporteur on Torture, who has crucial normative influence on states and how
they regulate forced sterilization.
Micah prepared and presented his submission which addresses the forced sterilization of trans people, which was not under the microscope of the Special Rapporteur ever before, and that was what drew his attention to team up with Micah and try to resolve this problem once and for all.
Now, in the first days of March, the Special Rapporteur will publish his report to the United Nations meeting in Geneva.Micah, as the person whose submission was used in creating the Rapporteur´s report needs to go to Geneva and address the problem through the presentation he needs to hold during the special lunch event.
This is the report that will be presented to all of the members of the United Nations in March.
And that is where he needs us.
Micah is not able to finance his departure to Geneva from Montreal, where he is stationed at the moment, and he asks kindly of all of us to try and help him raise funds so he can finance his trip to Geneva and the presentation on the problems of trans people around the world there.
If any of you is able to help him with even smallest possible donations, every penny will be very important and helpful.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Why a Bible belt conservative spent a year pretending to be gay
It is Monday, October, 15th, and I just came across one truly nice article about a guy who pretended for a year to be gay... And this is why he did it...
PS: I do not agree with the last sentence of this article, as I noticed that the majority is full of hatred, not minority... but nevertheless... enjoy the article! :)
Taken from ˝Guardian˝
Timothy Kurek, a graduate of the evangelical Liberty University, decided to 'walk in the shoes' of a gay man and emerged with his faith strengthened
Timothy Kurek grew up hating homosexuality. As a conservative Christian deep in America's Bible belt, he had been taught that being gay was an abomination before God. He went to his right-wing church, saw himself as a soldier for Christ and attended Liberty University, the "evangelical West Point".
But when a Christian friend in a karaoke bar told him how her family had kicked her out when she revealed she was a lesbian, Kurek began to question profoundly his beliefs and religious teaching. Amazingly, the 26-year-old decided to "walk in the shoes" of a gay man in America by pretending to be homosexual.
For an entire year Kurek lived "under cover" as a homosexual in his home town of Nashville. He told his family he was gay, as well as his friends and his church. Only two pals and an aunt – used to keep an eye on how his mother coped with the news – knew his secret. One friend, a gay man called Shawn – whom Kurek describes as a "big black burly teddy bear" – pretended to be his boyfriend. Kurek got a job in a gay cafe, hung out in a gay bar and joined a gay softball league, all the while maintaining his inner identity as a straight Christian.
The result was a remarkable book called The Cross in the Closet, which follows on the tradition of other works such as Black Like Me, by a white man in the 1960s deep south passing as a black American, and 2006's Self-Made Man, by Norah Vincent, who details her time spent in disguise living as a man. "In order to walk in their shoes, I had to have the experience of being gay. I had to come out to my friends and family and the world as a gay man," he told the Observer.
Kurek's account of his year being gay is an emotional, honest and at times hilarious account of a journey that begins with him as a strait-laced yet questioning conservative, and ends up with him reaffirming his faith while also embracing the cause of gay equality.
Along the way he sheds many friends, especially from Liberty, who wrote emails to him after he came out asking that he repent of his sins and warning that he faced damnation. He does not regret their loss. "I now have lots of new gay friends," Kurek said.
But it was not a straightforward journey. Early on Kurek decided to try to acclimatise to Nashville's gay scene by visiting a gay nightclub. Entering alone, he soon found himself dragged on to the dance floor by a shirtless muscular man covered in baby oil and glitter. As the pair danced to Beyoncé, the man pretended to ride Kurek like a horse to the disco music and called him a "bucking bronco". It was all a bit too much, too soon. "I want to vomit. I need a cigarette. I feel like beating the hell out of him," Kurek writes.
But soon things started going better. In order to avoid unwanted sexual passes from men, Kurek recruited Shawn to act as a faithful boyfriend and he rapidly became part of the Nashville gay scene. He explored gay culture and found it to be as diverse and interesting as any other slice of American life. In one gay bar, Kurek was stunned to discover gay Christians earnestly discussing their belief in creationism. "I found gay Christians more devout than me!" Kurek says. He became active in a gay rights group and wound up joining a protest outside the Vatican's embassy to the United Nations in New York.
However, there was a cost to the experiment. In order to gauge his mother's true reaction to the news that her son was gay, Kurek read her private journal. In it he found that she had written: "I'd rather have found out from a doctor that I had terminal cancer than I have a gay son." But Kurek's journey also became her own. Eventually she too was won over and changed her views. "My mom went from being a very conservative Christian to being an ally to the gay community. I am very proud of her," he said.
Kurek also experienced firsthand being called abusive names. Though he himself had once called gay protesters at Liberty "fags", he found himself on the other side of the fence of insults. During a softball practice session in Nashville, a man walking his dogs called Kurek and his team-mates "faggots".
Kurek had to be restrained from confronting the man and then broke down in tears at the shock. "When I was first called that for real, I lost it. I saw red. I felt so violated by that word," he said.
Finally Kurek's journey ended when he revealed his secret life and "came out" again, but this time as a straight Christian. However, he says that one of the most surprising elements of his journey was that it renewed his religious faith rather than undermined it. "Being gay for a year saved my faith," he said.
Kurek also said that he felt his experience not only should show conservative Christians that gay people need equal rights and can be devout too, but that it can also reveal another side of evangelicals to the gay community.
"The vast majority of conservative Christians are not hateful bigots at all. It is just a vocal minority that gets noticed and attracts all the attention," he said.
PS: I do not agree with the last sentence of this article, as I noticed that the majority is full of hatred, not minority... but nevertheless... enjoy the article! :)
Taken from ˝Guardian˝
Timothy Kurek, a graduate of the evangelical Liberty University, decided to 'walk in the shoes' of a gay man and emerged with his faith strengthened
Timothy Kurek grew up hating homosexuality. As a conservative Christian deep in America's Bible belt, he had been taught that being gay was an abomination before God. He went to his right-wing church, saw himself as a soldier for Christ and attended Liberty University, the "evangelical West Point".
But when a Christian friend in a karaoke bar told him how her family had kicked her out when she revealed she was a lesbian, Kurek began to question profoundly his beliefs and religious teaching. Amazingly, the 26-year-old decided to "walk in the shoes" of a gay man in America by pretending to be homosexual.
For an entire year Kurek lived "under cover" as a homosexual in his home town of Nashville. He told his family he was gay, as well as his friends and his church. Only two pals and an aunt – used to keep an eye on how his mother coped with the news – knew his secret. One friend, a gay man called Shawn – whom Kurek describes as a "big black burly teddy bear" – pretended to be his boyfriend. Kurek got a job in a gay cafe, hung out in a gay bar and joined a gay softball league, all the while maintaining his inner identity as a straight Christian.
The result was a remarkable book called The Cross in the Closet, which follows on the tradition of other works such as Black Like Me, by a white man in the 1960s deep south passing as a black American, and 2006's Self-Made Man, by Norah Vincent, who details her time spent in disguise living as a man. "In order to walk in their shoes, I had to have the experience of being gay. I had to come out to my friends and family and the world as a gay man," he told the Observer.
Kurek's account of his year being gay is an emotional, honest and at times hilarious account of a journey that begins with him as a strait-laced yet questioning conservative, and ends up with him reaffirming his faith while also embracing the cause of gay equality.
Along the way he sheds many friends, especially from Liberty, who wrote emails to him after he came out asking that he repent of his sins and warning that he faced damnation. He does not regret their loss. "I now have lots of new gay friends," Kurek said.
But it was not a straightforward journey. Early on Kurek decided to try to acclimatise to Nashville's gay scene by visiting a gay nightclub. Entering alone, he soon found himself dragged on to the dance floor by a shirtless muscular man covered in baby oil and glitter. As the pair danced to Beyoncé, the man pretended to ride Kurek like a horse to the disco music and called him a "bucking bronco". It was all a bit too much, too soon. "I want to vomit. I need a cigarette. I feel like beating the hell out of him," Kurek writes.
But soon things started going better. In order to avoid unwanted sexual passes from men, Kurek recruited Shawn to act as a faithful boyfriend and he rapidly became part of the Nashville gay scene. He explored gay culture and found it to be as diverse and interesting as any other slice of American life. In one gay bar, Kurek was stunned to discover gay Christians earnestly discussing their belief in creationism. "I found gay Christians more devout than me!" Kurek says. He became active in a gay rights group and wound up joining a protest outside the Vatican's embassy to the United Nations in New York.
However, there was a cost to the experiment. In order to gauge his mother's true reaction to the news that her son was gay, Kurek read her private journal. In it he found that she had written: "I'd rather have found out from a doctor that I had terminal cancer than I have a gay son." But Kurek's journey also became her own. Eventually she too was won over and changed her views. "My mom went from being a very conservative Christian to being an ally to the gay community. I am very proud of her," he said.
Kurek also experienced firsthand being called abusive names. Though he himself had once called gay protesters at Liberty "fags", he found himself on the other side of the fence of insults. During a softball practice session in Nashville, a man walking his dogs called Kurek and his team-mates "faggots".
Kurek had to be restrained from confronting the man and then broke down in tears at the shock. "When I was first called that for real, I lost it. I saw red. I felt so violated by that word," he said.
Finally Kurek's journey ended when he revealed his secret life and "came out" again, but this time as a straight Christian. However, he says that one of the most surprising elements of his journey was that it renewed his religious faith rather than undermined it. "Being gay for a year saved my faith," he said.
Kurek also said that he felt his experience not only should show conservative Christians that gay people need equal rights and can be devout too, but that it can also reveal another side of evangelicals to the gay community.
"The vast majority of conservative Christians are not hateful bigots at all. It is just a vocal minority that gets noticed and attracts all the attention," he said.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
A Very Interesting Text on Balkan and Queer
Text taken from : LGBT Vojvodina
Queer Balkans
Special Issue
Guest editor: Stanimir Panayotov
Background
The “Balkans” is a geopolitical, post-Cold War, “post-communist” concept that comes with an ideological burden, just as “queer” does. Both concepts were historically developed in Western/US Academia, although the origins of queer theory in Anglo-American literary criticism are now being throughly contested. There is a great promise and potential in insisting, like Kosofsky Sedgwick does, on deepening and shifting the meaning of queer, as it travels like a “stealth bomber” (Song Hwee Lim) throughout the world. After all, etymologically, the word “queer” means across, it derives from the Indo-European twerkw, “which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart” (Kosofsky Sedgwick and O’Rourke), the Spanish atravesar (Anzaldua), and the South Slavonic kvar, meaning trouble, malfunction or to cause malfunction, moral, systemic or machinic failure, to cause discomfort, imperfection, and being
distasteful among many other things. To travel queerly then is to transverse, twist, experience discomfort (Ahmed) and cause trouble. Queer is precisely the moment of theoretical and political travel, “movement, motive-recurrent, eddying, troublant” (Kosofsky Sedgwick). The aim of this call is to precisely trouble the meanings of the “q” words ( the noun queer, queerness, the adjective queer, the verb to queer, queering or the adverb queerly) as they travel to and through the Balkans.
While the “Balkans” (and “balkanization”, Todorova) comes to denote the post-communist/post-Soviet political spaces and has been an instrumental transitional paradigm and empowering term for political scholars and technocrats, “queer” (coined by de Lauretis, though heralded by Anzaldua) served to empower the political and cultural concerns of LGBTIQ people and left-wing academics in America and the West. Subsequently, queer gradually began to empower other regions influenced by the developmentalist paradigm.
We are thus aware that to conceptualize “Queer Balkans” means to work with two exported notions that have conflicting ideologies and design, which we too would like to address.
The Balkans
While the “Balkans” was/is the comprehensive concept for the fragmented “post-communist” countries and contributed to the designation of geopolitical areas previously recognizable through the watchwords of “communism” and “USSR”, “queer” appears to have similar containing force and appeal for the fragmentation of sexual identities. Joining these two terms together is in itself extremely problematic and contestable to the extent to which a conceptual academic apparatus serves as a colonizing force in a de-communized world. In the post-1989 world the assumption of liberation and democratic transition swept all ideas of political alternatives of liberal democracy - “de-communization”, “post-communism”, “anti-communism” are often the only content of liberal democracy, a world where the newly arrived market economy and free markets were the sole spring of all freedom. Apart from the derision and condescension inherent in
“balkanization”, it is very problematic to read the term “Balkans” as politically emancipating vehicle because it conceptualized and helped sustain the very notion of “transition” which was the other name of “neoliberalism”: deregulating the markets and eroding the social state, something which was seen as the hallmark of Soviet-model economies. In the process of (politico-economic) “transition”, the idol of free markets, unrestrained privatization and political corruption brutally swept away our conceptions of solidarity and sociality and replaced them with the social disparities produced by the brand new capitalisms of the Balkans.
Balkanism, a close relative of Orientalism (Said), is a Western discourse containing largely negative and disparaging ideas, attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, prejudices and sentiments that have circulated and hardened in “the West” over the last two centuries about the Balkans, its peoples, cultures and politics often generalized to such an extent that it deeply informs ‘Westerners” “actions and practices toward anything or anyone coming from the Balkans” (Todorova). Just a century ago, Western Europeans “added to its repertoire of Schrimpfworter, or disparagements” (Todorova) a then new disparaging word that has persisted up to this day. That word is “Balkanization” which has come to signify not only the “parcelization of large and viable political units but also had become a synonym for a reversion to the tribal, the backward, the primitive, the barbarian” (Todorova 2009). Lately, especially in American academia, the word has
been “completely decontextualised and paradigmatically related to a variety of problems” (Todorova), including it even in feminist and queer critiques of identity politics, which has been turned into a “anti-hero with a thousand faces” (Bickford).
As Todorova notes, what has been emphasized “about the Balkans is that its inhabitants do not care to conform to the standards of behavior devised as normative by and for the civilized [read Western] world” (Todorova). In balkanist discourses, the Balkans is not so much (Western) Europe’s Other, but it’s incomplete self, or even more precisely, the lowermost case of this European self, its “shadow, the structurally despised alter-ego” (Schwartz-Salant and Stein). As such, Balkanites can be read as a very queer lot. Any generalization is based on “reductionism, but the reductionism and stereotyping of the Balkans has been of such degree and intensity that the discourse merits and requires special analysis” (Todorova), which we propose to do here in the context of the relationship between queer theory and balkanism.
Todorova’s objection to balkanism as a Western discourse of frozen essentialist images about the Balkans, very much like Said’s critique of Orientalism, is that as a “system of thought it approaches a heterogeneous, dynamic and complex human reality [in the Balkans or the Orient] from an uncritically essentialist standpoint; this suggests both en enduring Oriental [and Balkan] reality and an opposing but no less enduring Western essence, which observes the Orient [and the Balkans] from afar and, so to speak, from above” (Said).
Balkanism is “not merely a Western imposition of a reified [Balkan or Oriental] identity on some alien set of people” (Todorova). As Todorova points out, it “is also the imposition of identity created in dialectical opposition to another identity, one likely to be equally reified, that of the West”. People who identify as “Westerners” define the Orient, and the Balkans, “in terms of the West, but so Others define themselves in terms of the West, just as each defines the West in terms of the Other” (Todorova). In this dialectical process of signification and identification, the West emerges as the hegemonic part in the dichotomic pair self-other, the “standard against which all Others are defined”, which is commensurate to the “historical political and economic power of the West” (Todorova) in the last two centuries. Queer theory, as argued below, does not escape this logic of identification and signification of who and what
can be properly called “queer” anywhere in the world.
Queer
Here, it is of crucial importance that homosexuality was now seen under the light of the new (post-Soviet) liberal ideology: that of human rights and dignity that are only possible under capitalist rule. Throughout the transitions in the Balkans, sexual difference was gradually de-pathologized and de-criminalized. This happened to a greater extent with the help (“aid”) of Western organizations and foundations and the international LGBT movement and its funding mechanisms. While helpful in so-called “normalization” of sexual difference, the very generation and support for the establishing of LGBT movements in the Balkans was designed and rather imposed with the combination of the Western “gay liberation model” and the “foreign aid” model. The results of these processes are very diverse and contradictory, often leading to disintegration among LGBTIQ people through the transposition/imposition of Western ready-made activism. In combination
with the transposition of EU legislation concerning all kind of minorities and human rights which led to anti-discrimination bills and criminalization of hate speech, today the plight of LGBTIQ communities stands in various oppositions to the morality and values prescribed by Western democracies and non-/governmental programs. Critical perspectives on (LGBT) identitarianism are rarely ever heard because the criminalization of hatred and protection against discrimination silence debates and issues inside the very LGBTIQ communities. As a result there is a very strict model (of values and ideals) that LGBTIQ movements, activists and theorists have to follow.
The usages of the “q” words or the “l”(lesbian), “g” (gay), “b” (bisexual), “t” (transsexual, transgender, or just trans) words in post-socialist Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) follow a different trajectory, since the sequence of Western, particularly US, historical events and the evolution of queer political and cultural theory–from the homophile movement in the 1950s, and early 1960s, gay liberation and lesbian feminism in the 1970s (identity politics), HIV activism in the 1980s, to queer theory and LGBTQI activism in the 1990s–was collapsed suddenly into the Eastern European “time of coincidence” (Mizielinska and Kulpa), where all models and forms of “Western” engagement (“homophile”, “gay and lesbian” and “queer”) seem to happen at once.
In a sense, after 1989 the “post-communist” region was colonized by both political “balkanization” and LGBT (identiarian) liberation. In this context the alternatives of the new socio-political repressions inside sexual (but also ethnic) communities are almost impossible. This complicates ideas of integration, social acceptance and sexual expression in the Balkans, especially when it comes to sexual difference.
Gays and lesbians in the Balkans are so far from gaining social acceptance despite recent significant legal victories under pressure from the “Western” core of the EU, the term “gay and lesbian” retains its counter-normative, queer edge, and both terms are often used as synonyms in lesbian/gay/queer/trans scholarship and activism. However, while the English term “gay” has gained wide currency in almost all Eastern European languages as a less pathologizing designation for homosexuals (Baer), with many male and female homosexuals in the Balkans widely adopting the term “gay” and “lesbian” respectively to describe how they see themselves, the term “queer” is used in the Balkans in quite small circles of progressive intellectuals and radical activists.
There are considerable theoretical, political and methodological issues with the whole LGBT and queer terminology, which “may travel very fast in our globalised world, [however,] conditions on the ground often prove recalcitrant, generating a fundamental problem of translation: non-equivalence” (Baer). Should we see in this issue of non-equivalence an unsolvable problem, or should Balkan queer theorists take up the challenge of providing a locally meaningful, semantically and etymologically relevant non-English translation of the “q” words and thus provide “exciting possibilities, and not only for the development for conceptualisations of sexuality, but for broader philosophical questions” (O’Rourke) globally.
Although queer theory’s raison d’etre is to take a highly critical stand against “hegemonies, exclusions, norms and assumptions” (Giffney), there have been too many instances that clearly demonstrate to what extent queer theory is already deeply plugged in balkanist, Orientalist and other exclusionary discourses, inscribing the very notions of “queer” and “queerness” “with Western hegemonic claims” (Baer), where US/Western European white middle-class queer experiences and social, cultural, political and theoretical development dominate, structure and authorize what can be said under the queer rubric anywhere in the world, including the Balkans, depressingly showing what Khayatt calls the “arrogant certainty” of queer.
In light of the described situation, our general questions are: what is the meaning of “queer” for the geopolitical region identified as the “Balkans”? What is queer’s role as a social alternative in theory, activism, and the social life in general? Can we assume that “queer” could counter the political rigidity of LGBT identitarianism in this specific anti-communist, right-wing (politically and economically) context? Can queer serve as a liberatory tool against the political demands of social atomism and LGBT consumerism imposed by the reigning neoliberal order and its variations in the Balkans? Could we “queer” the Balkans indeed, or are the Balkans already queer or queerer than the West? What is the methodological relevance of queer studies for the academia in the region? Is the very idea of “queering the Balkans” politically potent or is it our own self-colonization (Kiossev) and re-submission to imperialist and Western
conceptual apparati? Is queer disempowering in some way for the diverse cultural and linguistic contexts of the Balkans rather than empowering and capacitating? What are the viable alternatives that queer proposes to LGBT identitarianism and the mere legal re-codification of sexualities?
Queer Balkans
Special Issue
Guest editor: Stanimir Panayotov
Background
The “Balkans” is a geopolitical, post-Cold War, “post-communist” concept that comes with an ideological burden, just as “queer” does. Both concepts were historically developed in Western/US Academia, although the origins of queer theory in Anglo-American literary criticism are now being throughly contested. There is a great promise and potential in insisting, like Kosofsky Sedgwick does, on deepening and shifting the meaning of queer, as it travels like a “stealth bomber” (Song Hwee Lim) throughout the world. After all, etymologically, the word “queer” means across, it derives from the Indo-European twerkw, “which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart” (Kosofsky Sedgwick and O’Rourke), the Spanish atravesar (Anzaldua), and the South Slavonic kvar, meaning trouble, malfunction or to cause malfunction, moral, systemic or machinic failure, to cause discomfort, imperfection, and being
distasteful among many other things. To travel queerly then is to transverse, twist, experience discomfort (Ahmed) and cause trouble. Queer is precisely the moment of theoretical and political travel, “movement, motive-recurrent, eddying, troublant” (Kosofsky Sedgwick). The aim of this call is to precisely trouble the meanings of the “q” words ( the noun queer, queerness, the adjective queer, the verb to queer, queering or the adverb queerly) as they travel to and through the Balkans.
While the “Balkans” (and “balkanization”, Todorova) comes to denote the post-communist/post-Soviet political spaces and has been an instrumental transitional paradigm and empowering term for political scholars and technocrats, “queer” (coined by de Lauretis, though heralded by Anzaldua) served to empower the political and cultural concerns of LGBTIQ people and left-wing academics in America and the West. Subsequently, queer gradually began to empower other regions influenced by the developmentalist paradigm.
We are thus aware that to conceptualize “Queer Balkans” means to work with two exported notions that have conflicting ideologies and design, which we too would like to address.
The Balkans
While the “Balkans” was/is the comprehensive concept for the fragmented “post-communist” countries and contributed to the designation of geopolitical areas previously recognizable through the watchwords of “communism” and “USSR”, “queer” appears to have similar containing force and appeal for the fragmentation of sexual identities. Joining these two terms together is in itself extremely problematic and contestable to the extent to which a conceptual academic apparatus serves as a colonizing force in a de-communized world. In the post-1989 world the assumption of liberation and democratic transition swept all ideas of political alternatives of liberal democracy - “de-communization”, “post-communism”, “anti-communism” are often the only content of liberal democracy, a world where the newly arrived market economy and free markets were the sole spring of all freedom. Apart from the derision and condescension inherent in
“balkanization”, it is very problematic to read the term “Balkans” as politically emancipating vehicle because it conceptualized and helped sustain the very notion of “transition” which was the other name of “neoliberalism”: deregulating the markets and eroding the social state, something which was seen as the hallmark of Soviet-model economies. In the process of (politico-economic) “transition”, the idol of free markets, unrestrained privatization and political corruption brutally swept away our conceptions of solidarity and sociality and replaced them with the social disparities produced by the brand new capitalisms of the Balkans.
Balkanism, a close relative of Orientalism (Said), is a Western discourse containing largely negative and disparaging ideas, attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, prejudices and sentiments that have circulated and hardened in “the West” over the last two centuries about the Balkans, its peoples, cultures and politics often generalized to such an extent that it deeply informs ‘Westerners” “actions and practices toward anything or anyone coming from the Balkans” (Todorova). Just a century ago, Western Europeans “added to its repertoire of Schrimpfworter, or disparagements” (Todorova) a then new disparaging word that has persisted up to this day. That word is “Balkanization” which has come to signify not only the “parcelization of large and viable political units but also had become a synonym for a reversion to the tribal, the backward, the primitive, the barbarian” (Todorova 2009). Lately, especially in American academia, the word has
been “completely decontextualised and paradigmatically related to a variety of problems” (Todorova), including it even in feminist and queer critiques of identity politics, which has been turned into a “anti-hero with a thousand faces” (Bickford).
As Todorova notes, what has been emphasized “about the Balkans is that its inhabitants do not care to conform to the standards of behavior devised as normative by and for the civilized [read Western] world” (Todorova). In balkanist discourses, the Balkans is not so much (Western) Europe’s Other, but it’s incomplete self, or even more precisely, the lowermost case of this European self, its “shadow, the structurally despised alter-ego” (Schwartz-Salant and Stein). As such, Balkanites can be read as a very queer lot. Any generalization is based on “reductionism, but the reductionism and stereotyping of the Balkans has been of such degree and intensity that the discourse merits and requires special analysis” (Todorova), which we propose to do here in the context of the relationship between queer theory and balkanism.
Todorova’s objection to balkanism as a Western discourse of frozen essentialist images about the Balkans, very much like Said’s critique of Orientalism, is that as a “system of thought it approaches a heterogeneous, dynamic and complex human reality [in the Balkans or the Orient] from an uncritically essentialist standpoint; this suggests both en enduring Oriental [and Balkan] reality and an opposing but no less enduring Western essence, which observes the Orient [and the Balkans] from afar and, so to speak, from above” (Said).
Balkanism is “not merely a Western imposition of a reified [Balkan or Oriental] identity on some alien set of people” (Todorova). As Todorova points out, it “is also the imposition of identity created in dialectical opposition to another identity, one likely to be equally reified, that of the West”. People who identify as “Westerners” define the Orient, and the Balkans, “in terms of the West, but so Others define themselves in terms of the West, just as each defines the West in terms of the Other” (Todorova). In this dialectical process of signification and identification, the West emerges as the hegemonic part in the dichotomic pair self-other, the “standard against which all Others are defined”, which is commensurate to the “historical political and economic power of the West” (Todorova) in the last two centuries. Queer theory, as argued below, does not escape this logic of identification and signification of who and what
can be properly called “queer” anywhere in the world.
Queer
Here, it is of crucial importance that homosexuality was now seen under the light of the new (post-Soviet) liberal ideology: that of human rights and dignity that are only possible under capitalist rule. Throughout the transitions in the Balkans, sexual difference was gradually de-pathologized and de-criminalized. This happened to a greater extent with the help (“aid”) of Western organizations and foundations and the international LGBT movement and its funding mechanisms. While helpful in so-called “normalization” of sexual difference, the very generation and support for the establishing of LGBT movements in the Balkans was designed and rather imposed with the combination of the Western “gay liberation model” and the “foreign aid” model. The results of these processes are very diverse and contradictory, often leading to disintegration among LGBTIQ people through the transposition/imposition of Western ready-made activism. In combination
with the transposition of EU legislation concerning all kind of minorities and human rights which led to anti-discrimination bills and criminalization of hate speech, today the plight of LGBTIQ communities stands in various oppositions to the morality and values prescribed by Western democracies and non-/governmental programs. Critical perspectives on (LGBT) identitarianism are rarely ever heard because the criminalization of hatred and protection against discrimination silence debates and issues inside the very LGBTIQ communities. As a result there is a very strict model (of values and ideals) that LGBTIQ movements, activists and theorists have to follow.
The usages of the “q” words or the “l”(lesbian), “g” (gay), “b” (bisexual), “t” (transsexual, transgender, or just trans) words in post-socialist Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) follow a different trajectory, since the sequence of Western, particularly US, historical events and the evolution of queer political and cultural theory–from the homophile movement in the 1950s, and early 1960s, gay liberation and lesbian feminism in the 1970s (identity politics), HIV activism in the 1980s, to queer theory and LGBTQI activism in the 1990s–was collapsed suddenly into the Eastern European “time of coincidence” (Mizielinska and Kulpa), where all models and forms of “Western” engagement (“homophile”, “gay and lesbian” and “queer”) seem to happen at once.
In a sense, after 1989 the “post-communist” region was colonized by both political “balkanization” and LGBT (identiarian) liberation. In this context the alternatives of the new socio-political repressions inside sexual (but also ethnic) communities are almost impossible. This complicates ideas of integration, social acceptance and sexual expression in the Balkans, especially when it comes to sexual difference.
Gays and lesbians in the Balkans are so far from gaining social acceptance despite recent significant legal victories under pressure from the “Western” core of the EU, the term “gay and lesbian” retains its counter-normative, queer edge, and both terms are often used as synonyms in lesbian/gay/queer/trans scholarship and activism. However, while the English term “gay” has gained wide currency in almost all Eastern European languages as a less pathologizing designation for homosexuals (Baer), with many male and female homosexuals in the Balkans widely adopting the term “gay” and “lesbian” respectively to describe how they see themselves, the term “queer” is used in the Balkans in quite small circles of progressive intellectuals and radical activists.
There are considerable theoretical, political and methodological issues with the whole LGBT and queer terminology, which “may travel very fast in our globalised world, [however,] conditions on the ground often prove recalcitrant, generating a fundamental problem of translation: non-equivalence” (Baer). Should we see in this issue of non-equivalence an unsolvable problem, or should Balkan queer theorists take up the challenge of providing a locally meaningful, semantically and etymologically relevant non-English translation of the “q” words and thus provide “exciting possibilities, and not only for the development for conceptualisations of sexuality, but for broader philosophical questions” (O’Rourke) globally.
Although queer theory’s raison d’etre is to take a highly critical stand against “hegemonies, exclusions, norms and assumptions” (Giffney), there have been too many instances that clearly demonstrate to what extent queer theory is already deeply plugged in balkanist, Orientalist and other exclusionary discourses, inscribing the very notions of “queer” and “queerness” “with Western hegemonic claims” (Baer), where US/Western European white middle-class queer experiences and social, cultural, political and theoretical development dominate, structure and authorize what can be said under the queer rubric anywhere in the world, including the Balkans, depressingly showing what Khayatt calls the “arrogant certainty” of queer.
In light of the described situation, our general questions are: what is the meaning of “queer” for the geopolitical region identified as the “Balkans”? What is queer’s role as a social alternative in theory, activism, and the social life in general? Can we assume that “queer” could counter the political rigidity of LGBT identitarianism in this specific anti-communist, right-wing (politically and economically) context? Can queer serve as a liberatory tool against the political demands of social atomism and LGBT consumerism imposed by the reigning neoliberal order and its variations in the Balkans? Could we “queer” the Balkans indeed, or are the Balkans already queer or queerer than the West? What is the methodological relevance of queer studies for the academia in the region? Is the very idea of “queering the Balkans” politically potent or is it our own self-colonization (Kiossev) and re-submission to imperialist and Western
conceptual apparati? Is queer disempowering in some way for the diverse cultural and linguistic contexts of the Balkans rather than empowering and capacitating? What are the viable alternatives that queer proposes to LGBT identitarianism and the mere legal re-codification of sexualities?
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Croatian Prime Minister answers question on situation of sexual minorities in Croatia
Complete text of the council of Europe session at this link:
http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/Records/2012/E/1206271530E.htm
Mr HAUGLI (Norway) – Prime Minister, today, this Assembly is debating the state of democracy in Europe and how the rather negative attitudes towards minority groups are exploited for political purposes. Sexual minorities form one such group, and I want to congratulate you on your statement on securing fundamental rights for all. How do you view the situation for sexual minorities in Croatia, particularly when it comes to partnership law and violence, including police violence?
THE PRESIDENT (Translation) – Thank you. Would you like to answer that question, Mr Milanović?
Mr MILANOVIĆ –Our political programme stipulates that we will further extend freedom and equality for LGBT couples. We might not necessarily grant them the status that they enjoy in some Nordic and other European countries, but we will certainly go beyond the current standard. That has been our pledge, and that pledge will be fulfilled.
When I make my statements, I always bear in mind the future, the past and tradition. The tradition of a society, be it Christian, Islamic, Catholic or whatever, is not necessarily the best reference. Traditionally, husbands were allowed to beat up women. That was part of the tradition, not just in my country, but elsewhere. That was a very bad tradition. Things change. It takes time, but we will change the law and implement new standards, and we will talk and talk and talk. That is what the rule of law is all about. It is not just button pressing; it is about permanent conversation to do with the spirit of the law, what the law really means and what it stands for. It is about the element of trust and confidence. It is a lengthy and complicated process, but we think we are on the right and just path.
Only yesterday, two lesbian girls were beaten up in downtown Zagreb on board a tram for exposing their sexual affinity in a very mild and benign fashion. They were approached by a thug and he punched one of them. Such a thing has not happened in Zagreb for a very long time, and Gay Pride attracts very little attention. In Rijeka, there is no march at all, because there is no interest. It is fully open and liberal.
As you might know, in Split, another Croatian city that is very close to my heart, identity and ancestry, the situation is slightly different. If we strike too harshly against opponents who are not getting our message, we might just be paying lip service to the cause. We must do things slowly, permanently and diligently, step by step. Then things will change. Things are already much better in Split this year than last year. Last year, there was a police incident and a mob attacked the march. It did not bode well for my country politically, but things are changing.
Croatia is a country of diversity – a country of the Mediterranean, central Europe and the north, culturally and even in human appearance. It is a small nation, but very diverse.
http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/Records/2012/E/1206271530E.htm
Mr HAUGLI (Norway) – Prime Minister, today, this Assembly is debating the state of democracy in Europe and how the rather negative attitudes towards minority groups are exploited for political purposes. Sexual minorities form one such group, and I want to congratulate you on your statement on securing fundamental rights for all. How do you view the situation for sexual minorities in Croatia, particularly when it comes to partnership law and violence, including police violence?
THE PRESIDENT (Translation) – Thank you. Would you like to answer that question, Mr Milanović?
Mr MILANOVIĆ –Our political programme stipulates that we will further extend freedom and equality for LGBT couples. We might not necessarily grant them the status that they enjoy in some Nordic and other European countries, but we will certainly go beyond the current standard. That has been our pledge, and that pledge will be fulfilled.
When I make my statements, I always bear in mind the future, the past and tradition. The tradition of a society, be it Christian, Islamic, Catholic or whatever, is not necessarily the best reference. Traditionally, husbands were allowed to beat up women. That was part of the tradition, not just in my country, but elsewhere. That was a very bad tradition. Things change. It takes time, but we will change the law and implement new standards, and we will talk and talk and talk. That is what the rule of law is all about. It is not just button pressing; it is about permanent conversation to do with the spirit of the law, what the law really means and what it stands for. It is about the element of trust and confidence. It is a lengthy and complicated process, but we think we are on the right and just path.
Only yesterday, two lesbian girls were beaten up in downtown Zagreb on board a tram for exposing their sexual affinity in a very mild and benign fashion. They were approached by a thug and he punched one of them. Such a thing has not happened in Zagreb for a very long time, and Gay Pride attracts very little attention. In Rijeka, there is no march at all, because there is no interest. It is fully open and liberal.
As you might know, in Split, another Croatian city that is very close to my heart, identity and ancestry, the situation is slightly different. If we strike too harshly against opponents who are not getting our message, we might just be paying lip service to the cause. We must do things slowly, permanently and diligently, step by step. Then things will change. Things are already much better in Split this year than last year. Last year, there was a police incident and a mob attacked the march. It did not bode well for my country politically, but things are changing.
Croatia is a country of diversity – a country of the Mediterranean, central Europe and the north, culturally and even in human appearance. It is a small nation, but very diverse.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Backstabbers at work iliti Šta nisam znala da se može doživeti u tom okruženju
I dok Boris Milićević
Prajd 2011
Ove godine imam šta da kažem na gore pomenutu temu:
Ko li će ove godine da bude kriv pederima, biseksualcima, lezbejkama i ostalima pre, tokom i nakon parade? Opet država?
Ajde smislite nešto novo jer postajete odveć dosadni! Čak ni smešni...!
Kad će neko od vas više da uključi mozak i preispita te takozvane vajne aktiviste koji stoje i ne stoje iza tih prajdova i da okrivi njih za sve što se dešava i za sve ono što treba da se dešava pozitivno za lgbt populaciju a ne dešava se?
Ili ćete do svog sudnjeg dana da ostanete blentava, glupa, zaslepljena stoka koja jedva čeka neki prajd a ne zna ni šta čeka...
Plažim se da znam odgovor na pitanje ... >.<
Ko li će ove godine da bude kriv pederima, biseksualcima, lezbejkama i ostalima pre, tokom i nakon parade? Opet država?
Ajde smislite nešto novo jer postajete odveć dosadni! Čak ni smešni...!
Kad će neko od vas više da uključi mozak i preispita te takozvane vajne aktiviste koji stoje i ne stoje iza tih prajdova i da okrivi njih za sve što se dešava i za sve ono što treba da se dešava pozitivno za lgbt populaciju a ne dešava se?
Ili ćete do svog sudnjeg dana da ostanete blentava, glupa, zaslepljena stoka koja jedva čeka neki prajd a ne zna ni šta čeka...
Plažim se da znam odgovor na pitanje ... >.<
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Coz so far these are one of the very few words I still believe in!
460 BC – ca. 370 BC, a man called Hippocrates , or who was believed to be him , coined the oath of the medical worker and healer, today known as the Hippocratic oath.
And here it goes:
˝I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement:
To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art; and that by my teaching, I will impart a knowledge of this art to my own sons, and to my teacher's sons, and to disciples bound by an indenture and oath according to the medical laws, and no others.
I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.
But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.
I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.
In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.
All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.
If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.˝
When I was a child, whenever mom took me to see a doctor, I spent my time reading this oath that was in the office of every doctor, as it is today as well. The words of the oath found the way to the very core of my heart and being, and they inspired me to be a good person toward other human beings, and to the whole of the world. And I thought that those words were not only words, but the very belief of every single health worker around the world, therefore I had a huge respect toward medical workers and loved them very much! Until the moment I grew up and became a reasonable being very well aware of the things around us and the harsh reality of life! The reality that showed me that medical workers consider those words just empty words on a parchment and nothing else! And it tore my heart!
Nowadays, I m just one more witness of the cruelty, gluttony, greediness and evil of the most of the medical workers in Serbia. They do not give a damn about their patients, about their health, all they see is the prospect of earning well if you are involved in medicine, and the prospect of good life which comes along. But the price is paid by thousands sick patients in Serbia whose health is at stake and no one cares!
I, alone, am waiting for the knee surgery for two years now, and all I get is the promise that I will undergo that surgery one day, that my doctor is giving me, and nothing else. I knew that he didn´t have any intention to help me and do his job, but I lied to myself for two years and took the bait of those promises and believed him and hoped. I cannot walk without crouches, I cannot work because I am not able to walk on my own and no one wants to employ me. I I have no earnings and at 26 of age I have to beg my father for money, month through month and try to make my ends meet with that small sum of his charity because I cannot work and that is all the fault of the medical workers in whom I believed so much when I was a kid.
Not to mention that the medical workers were very cause of death of my grandmom and even my mother few years ago, and if you want me, I can tell you the story.
But my goal is to spread out the word about the state of medicine in Serbia, to make people see and witness what we, the patients suffer from day to day without having anyone to help us, anybody to support us and take our side.
And we clearly do not even have the idea where to go and ask for help outside of Serbia, because in Serbia no one cares, no one will help, as they, in medical circles, all support each other while we wait, suffer, our health issues get worse, and patients even die.
Yes, I maybe made it sound like a horror movie, but believe me it is a close call!
And I do not know what to do! And we do not know what to do!
If Hippocrates was alive, he d surely be ashamed of being the part of the medical profession in Serbia, that much I am sure of!
The Oath of the Warrior
From today on, I thank to every human being, every event and occurrence in my life, and every thing in my life that made me a warrior I am!
I ve been keeping that side of my self deep within for so long! I ve been afraid of hurting others by simply fighting for my survival, but no more!
From today on, I swear, just like Hippocrates swore once upon a time that he will cure and protect others (and I mention this because that is the only oat I see as the honest one and coming from the heart), that I will protect myself from now on, that I will fight for my self and others, and that I will follow my path of the WARRIOR, because that is what this life wants me to do! Because this is why I am here on the planet called Earth and in this Universe!
I ve been keeping that side of my self deep within for so long! I ve been afraid of hurting others by simply fighting for my survival, but no more!
From today on, I swear, just like Hippocrates swore once upon a time that he will cure and protect others (and I mention this because that is the only oat I see as the honest one and coming from the heart), that I will protect myself from now on, that I will fight for my self and others, and that I will follow my path of the WARRIOR, because that is what this life wants me to do! Because this is why I am here on the planet called Earth and in this Universe!
Let these words remind me of my oath and my determination whenever I find myself weak, afraid and in a doubt or confused!
So mote it be!
* * *
Na današnji dan, utorak, 25. januar 2012. , zahvaljujem svakom ljudskom biću, svemu što mi se do sada desilo u životu i svakoj stvari u mom životu, a koji su me izgradili u ratnika koji danas jesam!
Tu borbenu stranu sebe sam predugo i držala skrivenom duboko u sebi! Strahovala sam od toga da povredim druge prosto se boreći da preživim , ali od danas više neće biti tako!
Od danas se zaklinjem, baš kao i što se Hipokrat zakleo jednom davno (a njegove reči i zakletvu spominjem jer jedino njih smatram iskrenim i izrečenim od srca), da ću štititi sebe, da ću se boriti za sebe i druge , i da ću pratiti svoju stazu ratnika jer to je ono što život zahteva od mene, to je razlog mog postojanja na ovoj planeti zvanoj Zemlja i u univerzumu.
Neka me ove reči napisane ovde uvek podsete i ohrabre u trenucima slabosti, ranjivosti, straha, sumnjičavosti i nepoverenja! Neka me podsete na zakletvu danas sebi datu i na moju odlučnost!
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