Trauma, Violence, and Lesbian Agency in Croatia and Serbia by Bojan Bilić

Author:Bojan Bilić
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030229603
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

18For example, a lesbian activist from the United States financed the first issue of Arkadija Bulletin.

19However, such transnational contacts were not always smooth, but sometimes rather contentious and painful for Serbian activists. Tensions were mostly due to the unwillingness of Western activists to become more intimately familiar with the social and political context that Serbian and, more generally, Eastern European lesbian activists came from. For example, Jelica Todosijević (1994, online) attended the Vienna NGO Forum, a preparatory meeting for the UN Conference on Women in Beijing, which took place in 1995. She states: “I was dismayed at the patronising and dismissive attitude of the ILGA representatives, lesbians who were leading the workshop on lesbian human rights. They have no understanding whatsoever of our problems because our problems are so different from theirs. (If Eastern Europeans were better organised and more present at those thirteen ILGA’s Conferences, something like that wouldn’t have happened!) They kept asking for concrete suggestions with which I could lobby my government, not even realising that it is insane to suggest that anyone lobby the Serbian government. Fortunately, Rachel Rosenbloom, from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, was there. If they didn’t respect me, at least they respected her, and she somehow understood that those of us from the East have different concerns. For example, I pushed hard for the inclusion of education as a goal, because that is the only means we have for reaching the public—demonstrations are out of the question! I also suggested that we include the language “lesbians, single women, and women who are not attached to men” because many Eastern European lesbians do not identify themselves as lesbians. We were able to get this language into the document, largely as a product of Rachel’s efforts, but the final result was like we haven’t done anything during those two days (…) The main problem [of Eastern European lesbians], being invisible in their own countries becomes even worse by remaining invisible in the women’s human rights and the Western lesbian community as well. (…) I myself was confused by what was expected of me at such a conference, but now I realize the importance of being involved in drafting language for these large conferences. If I hadn’t been there, the language on lesbian human rights would not have addressed Eastern European lesbians’ concerns at all”.

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