Desperately seeking sisterhood
Monday, 27 June 2005 04:07
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Ljiljana Zivkovic
Rada Grubacic
THE FIRST YEAR, 1995.
March 8, 1995. Pancevo. Women’s network meeting. Topic: Women’s reproductive rights. On the main Pancevo square members of the women’s groups from small Yugoslavia organize protest called Against abortion ban. Every one of us present is carrying a banner with a message or name of groups – meeting participants. On one of the banners there is a name of the Belgrade Gay and Lesbian Lobby – Arcadia; accidentally or on purpose I carry it. At that time there was five active lesbians of Arcadia. They are in Pancevo too supporting the struggle for women’s human rights. While we are walking, from the Pancevo women’s center – Isidora towards the main square, two girls from Arcadia are inviting me to walk along with them.
They are carrying messages: Lesbians for women’s reproductive health rights and Lesbian motherhood. This is my second meeting with Jelena and Maja. Six months ago I shivered when I thought about coming out in front of other lesbians, but still, it is a special day. After protest, a couple of us present lesbians from Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosova and Germany demanded from the meeting
organizers a space for the workshop “Lesbian existence in Yugoslavia and Germany” and “What to do about it?” Some of us came out of silence for the first time on this workshop.
Workshop conclusions:
- Lesbian existence in Germany
- More gay than lesbian clubs
- Lesbians, discarded from their families and communities, get independent and go off to bigger cities
- Higher percentage of lesbians in Berlin
- School education does not mention homosexuality
- Lesbians get support by other feminist organizations
What to do in Yugoslavia?
- More space in media
- Celebrate June 27th – Gay Pride Day
- Organization and participation on lesbian seminars
- Opening of a lesbian bar
Only two days later, on March 10, on the meeting of “Arcadia” members we made agreements on starting the so-called Little Bulletin that would inform about happenings within the lesbian section of “Arcadia” and lesbian life and existence in general. Then, we also made agreements on the opening of archive and work on the project “Homophobia” as well as networking with other lesbian groups from Eastern Europe.
On March 18, at the meeting, the lesbian section of “Arcadia” was called “Labris”. One member changed her original surname into Labris.
By March ’95, members of “Arcadia”, men and women, acted as a group, with joint meetings, workshops and initiatives.
We submitted to “Arcadia” a proposal for autonomy of sections (independent workshops, meetings and other initiatives) along with the establishment of a coordination board consisting of representatives, men and women, of both sections, on which information related to the work of both sections, preview of lesbian and gay scene in general would be exchanged together with some
agreements on the joint projects of “Arcadia”. Couple of months later Labris became an autonomous group.
Jelena, Maja and I were supposed to work on the Little Bulletin. We gave up the original idea at some point when we started to talk about our needs – what we would like to read most. The hunger for any information about lesbianism was clear and present with all of us. We started to gather texts and articles from the press, domestic and foreign, and from some pieces of literature and we
realized that there were so many things that might be part of our bulletin. There were many articles and not all of them were about the work of Labris. We decided to make the first lesbian newspaper called “Labris”. Since our fund was empty we used our imagination. We printed articles on the computer and with some added photographs we made collages and we had them photocopied later on. I would like to point out here that we used the space and equipment of Autonomous Women’s Center against Sexual Violence.
We had meetings every day; exchanged and shared ideas, information, got to know each other better, talked for the first time about some small/great personal secrets. We stayed late at the Center, sometimes even nights.
The first issue of the newspaper “Labris” was published in April ’95 in 100 copies, in A4 format, on 5 pages. Reactions among lesbians and feminists were different. We knew that every following issue would be of better quality as we grew up and got better informed. Then we imagined better technique, some future members/activists, street protests and demonstrations on Gay Pride Day, great lesbian center and many other things.
The other issue of “Labris” newspaper was published in June ’95. Thanks to the private donation of Beata Bartsch we managed to photocopy the issue. Jelena brought the material to be photocopied that we were supposed to pick up two hours later. When we showed neither copy was finished. The worker was confused with the contents and scared at the same time because he did not start before we had showed him the money.
In this issue there was the first recorded article about violence against lesbians in public place, titled “Those who refuse to be kept down were attacked”.On May 5, 1995, somewhere between 11 and 11.30 PM, during the filming of “The Balkans journey” – by the Canadian women’s crew about women’s groups in Belgrade – four members of Labris were verbally and physically attacked in Kralja Petra Street. Beside kicking and fisting, the perpetrators pulled off Jelena and Lepa’s glasses and crushed them.
Having heard what happened, various feminist and lesbian groups and individuals from Croatia, Austria, United States of America, Bosnia, Germany, Hungary and Great Britain sent us numerous letters of support.
I prefer the letter of support received on June 1 by Viviane Vercruysse from the Netherlands:
“We cannot stand in silence anymore. What I really want to say to you in Yugoslavia is the following:
When you cannot walk WE WILL WALK
If you are not able to speak WE WILL SPEAK
When nobody listens to you WE WILL LISTEN TO YOU
When nobody wants to share with you your horrible suffering WE WILL SHARE IT
Our passions and dreams will come true because WE WILL NOT REMAIN INVISIBLE TO YOU
If they ever refuse to publish your messages WE WILL PUBLISH THEM
We will be each other’s witnesses.
And let the world know that WE EXIST. And that we will no longer accept their violence against you.
YOU WILL NOT WALK ALONE ANY LONGER.”
In the same issue, the article titled “Eastern European news” tells us about Vera Kozmik, Slovenia, the chief of the government office for women’s issues, who said on the Slovenian national television, March 23, 1995, that the same-sex marriage would be legalized in two years.
There was some other news like the one about the Hungarian constitutional court that legalized same-sex marriage in common law in March 8, 1995. In Hungary, common and formal marriage had the same legal status. Every couple living together and having sexual relationships is considered a married couple in common law. Court decided that the legal limitation to the original attitude that the marriage in common law “was the one between grown-up men and women” was unconstitutional.
I cite these pieces of news in order to conjure what hope they brought out of us, the beginners, at that time.
This issue of Labris was also on A4 format and had two pages more than the previous one and also more headlines.
June 27 – Gay Pride Day was celebrated with a closed – type tribune organized by Arcadia and Labris.
One of the aims of Labris is improvement of developments and presentations of lesbian culture. We printed two books of poetry: Women in network by Stefi and Indifferent Woods by Ljilja and Lady M, Jelena’s novelette. Stefica published her first violet book explaining that she would use all rainbow colors for her books of poetry. The presentation of Jelena’s and my book was held in a gay/lesbian club, the Greek club. The party was open for all our friends no matter if they were active in a lesbian and feminist movement or not.
We finished this year with a New Year’s party organized by Labris in a gay/lesbian club, together with our friend from Novi Sad.
THE SECOND YEAR, 1996.
The number of active members of Labris and those who came to only to meet us varied all the time. It was difficult to make a steady concept of work in such an atmosphere. Lesbians came to socialize and hang around, to talk about themselves, meet other lesbians, engage politically, and help themselves or the others. We started to gather every Friday, from 8PM. Working program for 1996. was the following:
– Workshops;
At that moment there were more and more women who organized and facilitated workshops.
-Group meetings
Where we exchanged
information about the group work or what was new on the world lesbian scene.
-Publishing activity
Meant printing the newspaper “Labris”, pamphlets, books
Participation on the world conferences, manifestations, meetings
Lesbian studies
Cooperation with media.
Media campaigns that Labris conducted were related to June 27 – Gay Pride Day. Others were conducted in cooperation with the Belgrade feminist movement, related to some important dates from the feminist movement history and human rights campaigns.
-Organizing parties
-Video projections
Of women’s and lesbian documentaries and motion pictures.
The oldest among us turned sixty
and the youngest was seventeen. We were all equal and every one had the right to
start an initiative.
Only three of us had the experience of work in non-governmental, non-hierarchical groups out of around thirty lesbians who attended meetings, workshops and parties. There was the need for a new language, different relations than those that surrounded us in the patriarchal world. Some women were confused because nobody ordered them anything and asked nothing of them. Some other women, like me, were angry because most women did not have any initiative. Many lesbians had resistance to workshops and did not want to be “cases”. On the other hand, some women liked to share personal experiences with other lesbians because they believed it helped them to strengthen their identities and personal growing-up. Some women came just to know that they were not alone.
Couple of us held on to the idea of the first year of starting lesbian SOS hotline.
We wrote a project proposal. The problem was the space too. We moved from the space of Autonomous Women’s Center against Sexual Violence to the space of Women’s Studies. Our archive was scattered in many places. We used technical equipment of the above-mentioned women’s groups. Jelena moved from one computer to other, and I tried to sort the archive. All mail came to Lepa’s personal address. We had the need for “the room of our own”. We wanted to make info archive and establish different programs in our work. Jelena and me did not have patience enough, Lepa waited for some better times, and the others did not care much. That year, like years before, some women went abroad.
This year brought with it the biggest number of given interviews to the media. We were not satisfied because journalists gave up our previous arrangements. They put pornographic pictures of women next to our articles. In one word, they held on to their own concept that we knew nothing of. We worked out tactics for cooperation with the media. Thanks to those interviews we had given many lesbians came to Labris. Mostly Lepa, Jelena and me gave the interviews for newspapers. Lepa was the first contact person to meet for many lesbians. Interviews having been published, women called her on the phone came to her house or asked for her in Women’s Center. Every one of them had their worked out tactics.
Later on, when they talked about it, we found it funny and amusing but their feelings when they had thought that they were the only ones in the world who loved women or when they developed strategies how to find a lesbian group were not funny or amusing at all. Every one of us had their own story and they were all different, but quite the same in their essence. When we talked to each other about ourselves sometimes we laughed, sometimes we were sad. We all found Labris a safe place. It was the place where we took off the old skin and put on the more comfortable one. We were aware of the fact that everyday we were exposed to denial of our existence in all social aspects. Labris served as a battery charger. We all needed to derive from Labris something positive for ourselves – something that would make us fairer towards ourselves, stronger and more self-confident. Some of us understood a poem by Adrienne Rich, lesbian theoretician and poet:
"Pravila pucaju kao termometar,
živa se prosipa preko iscrtanih sistema,
mi smo u zemlji bez jezika,
bez zakona, jurimo zebu i gavrana
kroz klance neispitane od zore
šta god zajedno radimo čista je invencija
mape koje su nam dali zastarele su
već godinama...
vozimo kroz pustinju pitajući se
da li će biti dovoljno vode
halucinacije se preobražavaju u obična sela
muzika sa radija dolazi jasno -
ni Kavaljer s ružom ni Sumrak bogova
već ženski tihi glas koji peva stare pesme
novim rečima, tihim kontrabasom, flautom
koje sviraju žene izvan granica."
Labris published the second book of poetry by Stefi, a green book titled
Women of comet.
At the beginning of November I started an initiative for founding a Lesbian counseling.
The main issue was that of working space as well as other members’ lack of motivation for this kind of engagement. That was just one of ideas that remained what it was at the beginning: just an idea. In summer we celebrated the first lesbian wedding in Yugoslavia at the meeting of Women in Black in Novi Sad. On this year’s FEST two lesbian movies were shown: When Night is Falling and The Butterfly Kiss.
THE THIRD YEAR, 1997.
Beginning of 1997, we printed the third issue of our newspaper. One of the founders of the group and its newspaper also, Maja, left the group at the end of 1995. And continue her independent lesbian activism. E.L. joined the editorial staff. The newspaper now had more pages and visually looked different: articles were sorted in columns, there were photographs… We gave up making of collages and did technical part with the help from Bobana, a member of Labris, also known in women’s groups for her skills in computer graphic design. The feature piece was Lesbians with their families. This issue was also specific because it featured an interview with a mother of a lesbian – it was the first recorded story in Yugoslavia of a woman whose daughter was a lesbian.
Besides this column there were also reports on the world conferences attended by the members of Labris, presentation of some world lesbian organizations, lesbian health with texts about lesbian patients and their rights and preventive sex among lesbians. The column “Culture” featured reviews from literature and filmography. One article dwelled on the year of death of Gordana Stosic, a poetess, professor and feminist.
This issue of Labris newspaper had twenty-six pages.
The group still functioned as usual: workshops, meetings… Again there was the issue of working space, which would, in Jelena’s and my opinion, provide us fuller and high-quality work. We were aware that girls with different needs came to the group, that years of engagement and activism broadened knowledge as well as ideas and need for them to be realized. Only lesbians, who lived abroad, and temporarily resided in Belgrade, understood us. Jelena came to the meetings rarely and I started to make my little protests trying at the same time to reconcile my own needs and abilities.
By the end of the same year the first double issue of Labris newspaper came out (issue 4-5). Rada joined the editorial staff.
We chose texts together, some wrote them, and some translated them. Besides the columns “Conferences”, “Organizations in the world”, “Health”, “Culture”, there were also columns “Biography”, “Rights”, “Media”. This issue had twenty-eight pages.
This year Labris was mostly focused on participation on the First lesbian week, on the territory of ex Yugoslavia titled “Lesbian rights are human rights” and held at Pohorje, Slovenia, from June 25 to June 30, 1997. Kasandra, a feminist-lesbian group from Ljubljana, in cooperation with Labris, organized the meeting. Lesbians from former Yugoslavia: Belgrade, Zagreb, Split, Skoplje, Maribor and Ljubljana together with our guests from Italy and Belgium attended the conference. The impressions from this conference are still being told today. The second important event for feminists, lesbians, our friends and us in this year was forming of the first feminist theatre “Put 5a”. Women from this little crew enriched our many evenings with their plays, Adriana and Whispering girls.
My little protests still went on – I felt the need for clearly defined group organization. I started a poll of activities inside the group. Every member explained her own interests. I suggested forming of the Working group consisted of the members interested in starting and realization of projects. The four of us made the working group. I suggested making a monthly program for days of our gatherings – thematic evenings (workshops, film, meeting, free evenings) – based on which every woman could decide if she would come on the particular day or not. Neither these ideas lived, at least not in this year.
Like every year, we start and finish this one with a New Year’s party organized by Labris.
On this year’s FEST one lesbian movie was shown: Bound.
THE FOURTH
YEAR, 1998.
Now while I am trying to make my notes of 1998. this year seemed to me further than the previous three. I am sure that this year also had some “new”, “old” and “former” members.
The three-day seminar, on the work on Lesbian SOS hotline, held by Cris Corrin from Glasgow at the beginning of September, aroused the same wishes. The training was supposed to continue but the bombing of Yugoslavia threats stopped the plan.
A week later after the seminar was over I left the group. Occasionally I went to video projections. Together with Rada I worked on issue 6-7 of Labris newspaper, Bobana introduced some graphic innovations. This issue had already mentioned columns. It was printed in forty-eight pages, which made it the largest so far. The front page had a photograph of three Sapphic women – the photo from a lesbian wedding in Novi Sad in 1996; it was one of the four postcards that Labris had printed for the 50th anniversary of UN declaration on human rights in 1998. Besides this photograph of Three Sapphic women that symbolized the Right to lesbian family, there was also Lesbian strength symbolizing the Right to lesbian visibility, then the postcard representing the Right to lesbian culture and the last one symbolizing the right to lesbian existence at work.
This issue also abounded in photographs from the celebration of Gay Pride Day in New York ’94. That year International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission gave Lepa the Felipe de Souza award.
Here ended my Notes because my further engagement in Labris was only in the newspaper...
Ljiljana Zivkovic
REMARK:
Short personal notes are the notes of my impressions, experiences and emotions about the existence, survival and work of Labris.
Labris is made of lesbians who founded and maintained it and those who came from time and time, who knew we existed and who supported and thought of us. Lesbians from Beograd, Novi Sad, Kikinda, Bačka Topola, Bačka Palanka, Niš, Jagodina, Skopje, Sidney, Amsterdam, London, Berlin...
Beside Rada, Lepa, Bobana, Stefica and Jelena
whom I mentioned before there are Tanje, Dragane, Maje, Sneže, Olivere, Marte,
Jelene, Romane, Milene, Biljane, Marijane, Vesne, Dunje, Ane, Vere, Kaće, Tijane, Sanje, Dušice, Rade, Zorice...
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