A man hater's diary

Organizing this festival makes you think – that's a logical consequence and nothing to get worried about. There are some things you have to go through before you die and it's all over, and thinking is definitely one of them, even if some people seem to do their best to avoid it. Ooops – see how easy it is to go there!? Allready two sentences into the text and i'm allready writing about some people.

Some people live and some people die, some people wear pink clothes and some people don't have any civil rights, some people believe in global warming and some people go to art school, some people like to get stoned every day and some people think that we have to consume our way out of the crisis... Ah, those people! And what about those feminists, what do they think about the state of the world? Hey you – Feminist! What do you think about the sexism in alternative cultural centers today?

Hja... Honestly, I have better things to do than to get upset about sexism 24 hours a day. What I'm interested in is what you think? Don't you have an oppinion of your own? As an anarchist, carpenter, teacher, artist, doctor, engineer, environmentalist, vegan, heterosexual, polygamist, christian, woman, ateist, journalist, transsexual, curator, neoliberal, man, vagabond, DJ, consumer, muslim, hacker, farmer, gastarbeiter, immigrant, emmigrant, nationalist, stripper, diplomat, director, secretary, insomniac, alcoholic...? Do you think? I'm sure you do.

Lets take prostitution for example, a hot topic on this years festival. Do you think that sex is a consumer goods just as any other or do you believe that the very act of buying and selling sex is equal to patriarchal violence? Is sex a civil right that should be substidised by the state, or should Johns be criminalized and sent to psychiatric institutions for reprogrammation? Do you believe sex work should be treated as work or exploitation? Does male and female sexuality differ in any way and if you believe it does – how? Is trafficking and illegal immigration gender issues or class issues? And what's the difference anyway? Those are not-so-simple-questons-at-all and don't stop to think that feminists (as a rase) agree about the answers. But as questions that are obviously concerning sexuality and gender I don't see how you could push it away from you as if you had nothing to do with it.

So why would you care what I think about it, don't you wonder what you think about it yourself? Instead of wining about those feminists that apparently got "issues", that feel "discriminated", that want "equality", that hate "men", that like "womyn" (oh, i love to play with those ironic little quotation marks...). You can project whatever prejudice you want on me, the only thing it says about us is that you can't handle the field where personal and political questions overlap and get complicated. We're not here to deconstruct our gender identities to a mythological prebinary zero, we're here to get our hands dirty with present day reality.

If you ask me, neither women nor men are automatically emancipated. Just because your mother ate food doesn't mean you can skip that step. Emancipation is about lifting yourself above predestinations and act as an independent human being. It's about transgression and growth. It's about exploring your human potential. It's to learn from experience. It's to demand justice not only when you're the one that's been done wrong. It's about ethics and responsibility. And the result is not some politically correct, perfect, sterile, androgynous clones – but authentic people! Authentic people that have the strenght to struggle with the contradictions of life. People that can love and be loved. But it's hard work of corse. A labour of love.

Oh, and I love men... I love men that take risks and dare to be self critical. I love men that take responsibility for their actions. I love horny men that feel secure about their sexuality and are curious about border crossing. I love men that challenge sterotypes and give others the same privilege without making a big deal about it. I love men that aren't afriad to loose their face in public and laugh in the face of power. I love men that don't bury all possibilities for change in narcissistic self destructivness and cynical self loathing. I love men that look at the future with hope, even when there's no reason to be positive at all. And yeah yeah, just for the record – that goes for women too. And all the rest of you. And me. And me. And me.

Anna Ehrle

Trafficking women and forced prostitution: some conclusions and thoughts after a book presentation

Mary Kreutzer and Corinna Milborn published in March 2008 their book "Merchandise Women. On the traces of Modern Slavery from Africa to Europe" ("Ware Frau. Auf den Spuren moderner Sklaverei von Afrika nach Europa.").
On Friday, the 6th of March they presented it at the Red Dawns-festival; telling about how they came to the idea to make such a book, about the talks they had with different people, about the problem of trafficking for prostitution in general and about how this problem is linked with racist European politics and more specifically how it is linked with Austrian politics.
The idea for the book came to the authors because they got into touch with Joana Adesuwa Reiterer, a Nigerian actress who is living in Vienna. Her personal story is linked with the issue of trafficking because when she followed her husband to Austria she had to recognize that he was a trafficker. Instead of joining him she talked to the public, finishing the silence around the topic of trafficking and forced prostitution, and founded a NGO which offers advice and help to concerned women. (links below)
The book "Ware Frau." presents the special topic of trafficking which leads towards forced prostitution and the trafficking of Nigerian women to Austria. It doesn't seem that special anymore considering that forced prostitution brings a lot of money and is one of the main versions of trafficking and: most of the Nigerian women in Austria seem to be concerned by trafficking.

the setting which makes trafficking possible and profitable
One important thing talking about trafficking is that we are talking about a way making migration possible. we are talking about an illegal way to enter a country.Because migration is often seen as only an economic issue and migrants are devided in "good" ones and "bad" ones. There are the ones who can somehow get a visa or even a passport because their skills, their "human capital" promises to increase the financial standard of a country. Bad ones are the other migrants: those, who just have reasons to leave their countries or those who even haven't reasons beside that they want to live in another country. The selection between good and bad works with the terms "legal" and "illegal". But it isn't exactely as simple as that. Illegalised migrants may be said to ruin countries, may be put, in the public discourse, into the role of "bad" migrants. But not every illegalised migrant should really go. Economy lives through and with the aspect of illegalised working persons. For example migrant domestic workers make it possible for western European women to participate in the market of paid work.
The possiibilities of legal migration from Africa to Europe, more concrete: from Nigeria to Austria, are low.

you can not stop migration
But: migration is a fact. It happens. And if it can not happen legal, it happens illegal.
Trafficking is a result of refusing the right for the freedom of global movement.


women as concerned persons, women as victimizers:
some thoughts about a feminist point of view

During the presentation of the book it became more and more clear, how complex and complicated the issue of trafficking is and also the different roles overtaken by different persons and including different amounts of power.
Trafficking which leads to forced prostitution is a well organized system:
First you have got the ones who are called traffickers, the ones who anyhow managed to make it to another country and , if to manage somehow to survive or if to make profit out of it, started to fetch persons from their fromer home country and then forcing them into illegal jobs where they have no rights, no possibilty to reclaim them.
Then there are those persons, who are organizing the prostitution in the countries where people arrive. The persons who are also making profit out of the whole trafficking thing. And: In that case, for Nigerian women came with traffickers to Austria, it's mostly women who are doing the job of the pimp; they are called "madams".
Then you have the prostituted women themselfs and the clients.
This system is running with money.
Because leaving Nigeria isn't easy anyhow trafficking persons, bringing them out of Nigeria and to an European country, is a well-paid "job". And there are no ones who have the power to really help you, if you have just arrived and have to recover that the demands of the traffickers are nearly impossible to achieve. So when the trafficker brought the women to, in our case, Austria, he (mostly it's men) tells her that she would have to pay for her journey- and that is an amount round about 40 000 euro. What means that the women, are more and more forced into prostitution, because that's the job the trafficker offers them and so, because they don't have any papers or even a working permission, it's the only possibility to earn money and to break free from the trafficker circle. women and their families are threaten with psychological and physical violence.
But it's not "only" the amount of money they have to pay for the journey the women has to pay to the trafficker and the madam, they also have to pay for things like a bed, something to eat and "working stuff" like condoms.
It nearly seems impossible to pay back such a huge amount of money. But it isn't totally impossible.
One way to make more money than with prostitution is to get involved into the business of trafficking yourself, to start as a trafficked and forced into prostitution woman, exploiting women by yourself. One common way to do this is becoming a madam.

So that's a real difficult fact, also if you try to have a look on it out of a feminist point of view.
Telling the cruel story about trafficking connected with forced prostitution women are mainly put into the position of victims: they are the victims of the traffickers, of the pimp and of the clients. There seems to be no perspective to find a way out of the circle of dependencies, force and violence. Only to earn enough money.
In one way, you could regard the madams as a prove that the victim-position of women aren't that straight as they may be prentended to be. Madams could be seen as women who are changing their situation, managing to get out of forced prostitution and into a position with much more power.
But, if you have a close look at the different aspects of trafficking and changing power positions within the trafficking-system, it's totally clear that becoming a madam can't be really seen as a feminist self-empowerment. Still, as a madam you're not autonomous and free in what you're doing, you're still depending on traffickers, on men. And with the strategy to climb higher in the hierachy of trafficking it's not possible to quit it all, you're still moving within the same circle. And that's clearly a male-dominated, women exploiting circle. Sexism is a main part of its structure.
But further on it's important to don't look as the women who are becoming madams as bad victimizers who don?t give a shit for women solidarity. It's no use in moralising, it's necessary to have a look at the circumstances.

So, what could be ways out of forced prostitution?
Changing the circumstances is necessary. To make trafficking, trafficking for forced prostitution really impossible, it's absolutely necessary to change laws or more: change the view on migration. It's necessary to establish a global right of movement.
But unfortunatley it seems obviously that we aren't close to reach that aim until now.
So we can see the thing Joana is doing by supporting trafficked women, bringing the topic into the public, as a self-empowerment, an anti-racist way to fight against the problems of trafficked women.
And, one step for sure, out of the silence which makes forced prostitution and trafficking so non-existing, is to know first of all about it.

here is a link for a short film telling about the book "Ware Frau.", it's mostly in German, but includes also some English spoken interview phrases:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et5XoPs8q0k

libussa

Exercise in interpretation »If you're a woman, become a man!«

Thursday's discussion on gender in Balkan fairy tales added
to fairytale opening of Red Dawns festival in Wednesday by
providing with theoretical frame and background. Lilijana
Burcar explained how fairy tales which challenge the binary
construction of masculinity and femininity were told by
women in literary saloon in Ludvik XIV palace as a direct
critique of his rule. Women who were forced into marriage
due to economic and political reasons found an escape in
fairy tales. Even though fairy tales are organic forms, they
do not change spontaneously only. Little Red Riding Hood, at
first sexually independent girl who manages to escape the
wolf, Perrault turned into a helpless child who ends up in
wolf's stomach, being saved only with a help of a male figure.
A strong moral dictum can be drown out of it: women, do not
wander in wood on your own, and do not be surprised if/when
you're violated if you chose to do so. With a different aim,
in the 19th century the fairy tales were transformed to serve
the strengthening of the national consciousness and
consequently the widening of the gap between public in private.
Grimm's Snow-White is in the latest versions asked to perform
more and more household work (also more explicitly determined)
for the seven dwarfs than in previous ones. It seems as that
the fairy tales lost its role in challenging the patriarchal
system.Those who attended the discussion had an opportunity
to listen to Zdena Gajser telling Balkan fairy tales where
distinctions between genders are shadowed and female figures
really are heroines. Nonetheless, even this stories to certain
extent confirm heteronormativity: the princess
(otherwise dressed as a men) has to change into the man to lie
with her wife. Neither homosexuality nor transvestism are
acceptable. What is then the possibility for a lesbian marriage
in the fairy tales, Suzana Tratnik asked herself, and in the
next breath answered: it is an utopia.
Not only that the heroines in fairy tales are not able to
maintain their homosexual relationships as such, also in real
life so-called 'virginjesha' assume on themselves a masculine
gender and do not really establish homosexual relations. Balkan
fairy tales which challenge the heteronormativity then do so
only to certain extent. I am ending with two questions that
appeared to me in relation to the discussion: to what extent
(will) contemporary Balkan writers and story tellers use the
potential of the fairy tales for a subversion of the patriarchal
system?
And why there is no known old Slovenian fairy tale that would even
attempt to do so?

Tanja Škander

DIYALA - friday night

Young, intensive, convincing, full of music. Every movement seemed to be the body expression of the lyrics and the music. Only watching was electrifying and nearly nobody, never mind of in other cases a fan of hip hop and electro, could stand still. Maybe one reason was the simple fact, that her music was not made to be categorized or it was simply the intensity of her show.

To get to know more about this remarkable croatian band watch: http://www.diyala.org/

Antje Höhne

Please, do not feed the Lesbian! - a comedian evening by Urska Sterle

Urska Sterle, a young female comedian, performed at Saturday night at the Rdece Zore Festival in the only lesbian club of the town, Monokel. The small room was already time before, totally full and entering only succedded with a strong will. At the end, people were trying to get the show also from outside... watching all this going on before, it seemed to become an interesting and good show.
But either it was my lack of knowledge about the brisance of the topic in Slovenia or my different understanding of humour. However from my point of view the presentation missed something less obvious and a deeper humour, than only a relatively open reproduction of the existing stereotypes. For sure the show of the young Slovenian comedian caused laughter also in me, but it was more a short and superficially one, than the deep one, that bumps up again and again also after the show, that I expected. Nevertheless it was an entertaining show and maybe the aim is already reached, if the majority of the audience enjoys the action.

Antje Höhne

To get to know Joomla and some visa trouble

During the whole festival several workshops took place- part of them also the computer workshops or the gender changers. One of them was getting to know the wide world of making a web page with joomla given by Majda Puaca from Serbia, but still only until a few days before the festival it was not sure, if this workshop, as all the user actions, made by Serbians could happen at all.
The Slovenian embassy in Serbia is closed, as a consequence of the events after the declaration of independence of Kosovo and so it was nearly impossible to get a visa through the Slovenian embassy. The more easy traveling in Europe got for EU citizens, the more difficult it got for all of those, staying outside this "coterie". The positive part of the "Schengen-union", is that "people from outside wanting to enter" can take any visa of a Schengen country, not necessarily the one they are supposed to travel to, to enter EU- anyway again, another example of inclusion-exclusion mechanism and even though the festival was supposed to deal with the gender aspect of this mechanism a short improvised discussion or presentation of the events could have been interesting. Doubtless this fact was present for some of the participants anyway, sure not everybody even knew about it and I in my point of view, it can never causes you damage to realize in which environment you built up your "island" of festival, action, ...
In any case the participation of the Serbians got possible at the end and Majda could give a pretty motivating, relaxing joomla workshop, where people could really get a broad overview about the program, a delight for continuation of playing with joomla to figure out, the possibilities for the realization of what they always wanted to put at a web page, but never got to do. Furthermore at the end a short discussion with some participants started and the topic "entered", albeit in smaller group...

And for all interested i a nice example: http://www.eng.queerbeograd.org/

Antje Hoehne

New Feminism - a book presentation

The first action after the morning workshops at the first festival day was a book presentation of "New Feminism. Queer and Networking Conditions" (Loecker, Vienna, 2008) with the co-editors and two contributors of the book. The subtitle of the book is according to the co- editor Marina Grzinic "New Feminism is politics", but still it remains the question, what does it mean new feminism and can a new feminism begin and an old on ends or isn' t it more a new way in the development of feminism. The presentation of the book could not really give an answer to this and that could be also seen as a result of the way of presentation. The four presenters gave more or less a short overview of what they aimed with the book or in particular with their article but no real discussion came up - unfortunately. Unfortunately, because all of them had a very different view on what "new feminism" can be or what it is not and why the necessity for change in feminism exists. And for sure a discussion about this could have shown more precisely what is meant by their concept and maybe some open questions at the end could have been answered more easily. Anyway it got clear that the motor for publishing this book is the fact, that the publishers think that it became necessary to rethink feminism in new capitalism and that the need came up to write a feminism from a different perspective than the "white, western,middle class" one. They wanted to include an understanding that there is not THE feminism but a lot of different circumstances that brought up, feminist and queer movement in the so called "1st, 2nd and 3rd world" and that until now the situation for gender and queer movements are pretty different in all the different countries represented in the book.

But what is the political part in it? On the one hand the publishing of the book itself was described as a political act, in order to be a "writing against conventions" because it is a book that nearly nobody wanted to support and that got only a very little interest also among people dealing with the topic. But on the other hand the political part can be also seen in the fact, that at least some of the authors (61 authors were involved and so it is hard to generalize) tried to "re-politicize" feminism, that during the last period got more and more into a institutional status, by making it an active process again and showing that still feminism, gender - or queer studies are in motion and different in all the parts of the world. If that is enough to be called political again or how far beyond the common use of "political" it goes can hardly be answered without reading the book, but doubtless there might be found some interesting thoughts about "being political" in queer and gender movements in the 41 texts.

How the presenters of the book managed to reach their aim to explain why and why for "new feminism" or what is the aim of the collection of articles by gender, queer and feminist theorist and activist did not turn out clear during the presentation. However one fact got obvious, that this book may not redefine the world, but it reached to collect articles on the topic that were written by authors, that still are not perceived much in scholar discussions at the topic, at least in the so called "western world" and still to get a closer look of the idea, it is still up to you to read the book.

Antje Höhne