Tag: celesteh

Yay! I have a room in London!

Today, I exchanged money for a key to a house in Lewisham, London. I have a gigantic room that looks out on a garden. The garden is magnificently overgrown. Somebody planted many lovely flowers several years ago and then it’s been neglected for years, so the flowers grow and twine in glorious tumult. The room has tile floors. It’s kind of echo-y, but that will improve as I move my stuff in. It’s large enough that I will be able to set up my gear and have enough room left over that I think I’m going to try to freecycle a couch.
I found the room via Outlet, a gay flatmate-finding service. I don’t know if the owner is queer herself or not, but she’s part of that community in that she makes costumes for drag queens. She’s off to some week long festival in Scotland to work with a drag troupe. She also has a gigantic german shepherd (alsatian). Xena get along famously with the other dog. And the owner’s daughter is willing to make pocket money dogsitting, so it seems I won’t have to find a kennel when I go to that States in July.
Lewisham is in the south east of London. South of the Themes is not considered as hip as north, but I’m not hip. This room is big and the rent is less than my mortgage used to be, so I’m happy. After I let the room, I walked into the center of Lewisham. There was a market going on, which was unremarkable except that a march came through it. There was a guy with a bullhorn and some chanting people and another guy with a trumpet, who would play a lick in between the chant lines. The chant lines didn’t change, so neither did the lick. He played the same 3 or 4 (out of tune) notes over and over and over again. I thought it was weird just on the basis of that, but then as they approached, it turned out that they were doing publicity for a faith healer. Friday night!
Is this every friday night? Is this a one time thing? How do you get 50+ people to march around chanting and handing out pamphlets for a faith healer? As entertaining as this spectacle was, it was also kind of alarming as highly-motivated Christians don’t tend to get on well with my people.
Nearly everyone marching was black. The rest of the market was mixed. After they went by, the commentary among the spectators was amusing. They mostly seemed confused, actually. I’ve always thought of faith healers as an American phenomenon. Some of the commenters were clearly unfamiliar with the concept and not exactly open to it.
The area has a very Oakland-like vibe in general. Including both diversity and snark! I went to a nifty diner and chatted with some people there.
I went to see two other flats on Saturday. The landlords for them were also really cool. I hope I can keep in contact with them. I had two more to see, but canceled, since I’ve got this room.
So I’m going to be moving in the next week.

I might as well be trying to move to Mars

I’ve called or emailed more than 30 landlords. I’ve called 10 or 15 letting agents. I’ve seen two flats, both of which silently rejected me. I’ve got an appointment to see one more. My existing rental contract runs out in 10 days.
The most productive conversation I had today was with a letting agent that suggested I give Xena away. Right. I’m going to give up my loving companion so I can have a shitty studio.
Brits have a reputation for being a nation of dog lovers. But when I think about it, the only people who say that are, themselves, British. No foreigner ever remarks on how beloved pets are. In fact, most Brits seem to be afraid of dogs. If they’re not afraid of being bitten, they’re afraid of some other, unspecified evil. Dogs smell bad. They shed. They might chew things. They might spontaneously burst into flame and destroy the entire neighborhood as they run around setting it on fire.
French people – they love dogs. The Dutch are fond of dogs. Brits? They wet themselves in terror. Which should not be surprising as that seems to be their response to anything slightly out of the ordinary. I cannot believe that these are the same people who beat the Nazis. I think that evil Nazi scientists must have introduced a mutation into the British gene pool which causes a general inability to cope with anything.
I don’t know why I think it would be better to live in London than Brum. It will still be in this fucking country. Sure, they have the NHS and Doctor Who and an active squat scene, but just because their infrastructure is slightly less dismantled than US infrastructure . . . well, I mean, at least America is full of Americans. We might be all a bunch of fucking cowboys, but cowboys can cope with shit. Also, cowboys like dogs.
My budget for a studio is now greater than my mortgage payments were for my house in Berkeley. And I probably won’t find anything. I’ll be lucky to find anything even if I stay in Brum. It was only a fluke that I got this place and it’s sort of falling apart and it’s the best that I’ll ever be able to do in this fucking little country.

Edit: 21 June 2008

I deeply regret any pro-cowboy comments that I’ve made.

Seeking London Lodging

I’m currently combing the internets looking at flatmate listings for London. I hope to find LGBT-friendly folks someplace fairly central that will take my dog and I for £110/week or less. This is more than double what I’m paying now and I’ll have to also ride trains a lot more. And yet, it’s still definitely on the low end of what’s out there. I have faith, though. Somebody will be taken with my dog or that I have a recipe for cactus chili (somebody was recently kind of amazed when I talked about eating prickly pear leaves, so you never know).
My queer-focussed ad says:

I’m a 32 year old ftm looking for London housing starting by July 1. I’ve been transitioning for about 6 months. Before that I was a dyke. I’m a post-grad student, with a dog. She’s an 8 year old lab mix. Friendly but reserved. She is old and spends all her indoor time sleeping and would not require any attention from you. She gets on very well with other dogs and has lived well with cats before (she’s overly curious at first, but soon returns to her sleepy state).

I’m looking for a home with some communal space and queer or queer-friendly housemates. I’m from California originally and like to think of myself as relaxed and easy to get on with. I’ve spent the last 3 years abroad and plan to live in England for the next 2 or 3 years while getting my PhD. I like to play music, but I’m not loud. I don’t mind if you are.

Feel free to contact me at celesteh@gmail.com or to pass along my information to your friends who need a housemate.

I really don’t want to have to be stealth in my home. Some of my mail gets addressed to Miss or Ms. I recently told my cable company representative that my bank had mistakenly listed me as “miss” because they thought I had a girl’s name. This story is apparently believable – different cultures/countries do gender names differently, but it wouldn’t explain why my former landlords were all using the wrong pronouns. So I don’t know how much choice I have about being out – not that I want to live in fear of being found out.
Part of what was nice about being in Holland is that I was kind of just a regular person again for a while. It would be nice to be like that more of the time.

I’m in Brum

I got to the ferry terminal before 9:00AM on Sunday. The check-in supervisor agreed to check in my dog then. She gave me a hard time about the dog having two chips and her rabies certification. At the time, I was alarmed that there might be an issue with getting on the boat, but I think the woman was just annoyed and wanted to give me a hard time.
I was super, super, super grateful. I expected to be told no or to have to pay a high last-minute fare, but neither of those things happened. Apparently, I had a very flexible ticket. So, it was with great joy that I learned I could get on the boat and wouldn’t have to buy a new ticket. Huzzah.
Checking in to the ferry means biking up to the check in booth where you present your travel documents and receive a cabin key. If you have a dog, they have a chip reader you must use. Then you bike up to the Dutch border patrol who inspect your passport and give you an exit stamp. The agent frowned at my passport and turned to her coworker and explained in Dutch that the picture looked like me, but the passport seemed to say I was a woman. There was obviously some kind of problem! She turned to me. “I’m transsexual.” I said in English. She asked if I had any documentation proving that. I offered to show her my testosterone ampoules. “You must have this problem with your passport a lot.” she said. Actually, a panhandler had called me “mevrouw” in the train station that morning. The agent looked shocked. How could anybody think that?! She let me on the boat. “Have a good trip, sir!”
One advantage of biking onto a ferry is that immigration at Harwich is not nearly as awful as immigration at the airport. I think this is partly because there are not conveniently located holding pens. If detaining somebody is really easy, then they’re more likely to do it. If it requires leaving your booth, finding a supervisor, etc etc etc, well, it’s too much trouble. I was barely hassled at all. Alas, the gender marker on my passport was not any kind of an issue.
But the problem with biking onto ferries is that they’re really meant for cars. Especially the daytime ferries. I was the only biker at all. I biked over to the train station to discover that no trains were running. I talked to somebody. “What train were you planning on catching?” she asked. Um. I wouldn’t think it would be making too much of an assumption that you could just get off one of the twice daily ferries and then get on a train at the attached train station. That’s just crazy talk! Finally a bus came by and refused to take me unless I folded everything. He came back for me an hour later. I’ve now been all over East Anglia by bus. It’s lovely country. Narrow country roads. Rolling farmland. Pretty little pubs. Bed and breakfasts. We went from tiny shut-down rail station to tiny shut-down rail station where nobody got on or off the bus.
We finally rolled in to a working station. I asked for an itinerary from the agent. “You can’t get there tonight.” he said. I could get as far as London, which my ticket specifically didn’t cover. Note to travellers: do not buy tickets between Brum and Harwich which say “not London” for the route, as such a route does not exist. The agent said I couldn’t go that way. I whined. He relented.
I called Paula and explained my predicament. She was not exactly thrilled. She had to go to work in the morning. I whined. She relented. It was a warm night at midnight, when I stood ringing her doorbell. I pondered pitching a tent on the grass in her courtyard. Presumably, the neighbors would complain. I kept ringing the doorbell. Mine wouldn’t wake me up either, actually. But hers finally did and she let me in.
The next morning, after peak hours on the train had passed, I biked across London to the cheaper station to Brum. My ticket still said “not London” and as I was on the second day of using it, I was not entirely sure about it. The station agent didn’t want to let me past the fare gates. I whined. He relented. Note to travellers: when facing disasters in the UK, try whining.
I called Eric, who had my keys. He was at school. So after my train came in, I biked to school from the train station. Brum is hilly once you get off the canal path. Also, all my stuff for gigging + bike touring stuff + dog. I got to school and drank some water and got my keys and then went home where I put on clean clothes. I desperately wanted a shower after sweating so much, but Nicole’s train (from the airport where she arrived that same morning) was past due. I just wanted to wear socks that hadn’t been worn for three days previous.
Nicole was not pleased at my lateness, but I whined and she relented. It took me voer 24 hours to get home. I’ve flown inter nationally and made train connections, etc and been home faster. Every time I try to cross the UK, something goes horribly wrong or near wrong. Also, biking down Oxford street really sucks.
People I would like to thank: Kendra for letting me sleep on her futon unexpectedly (and lending me a SIM card), Paula for letting me sleep at her apartment unexpectedly, Eric for being around with my keys.

The Last Day

Evaluation

So on the last day to the ETC, we started out with an evaluation. It was a big love-in. “I love you guys! You’re all so great!” It was a nice, positive vibe. There was some discussion about privacy and posting images from the con and some also about possibly having some equipment or an organization. The stream was constantly screwed up, so maybe an org should buy a computer for streaming instead of trying to recycle junk computers into a stream machine every time?
Aileen spoke up about how she was happy that there was no organization and it was all kind of ad-hoc. She talked about how people could just do things and it would all fit in some how. She said that since people wanted me to come, they had just changed the policy on who could come and that was that. An organization might be limiting.
I felt all warm and fuzzy. Aw, they really do like me! I’d spent the whole week feeling awkward about whether I was really meant to be there. Was I intruding? Were people annoyed by me? Was it all in my head? When people shortened “women and gender minorities” to “women” what did that imply for my presence? Aileen’s statement was not contradicted at all. Clearly my nervousness had been in my perceptions only! I felt pretty good and thanked people for letting me come.
That was a weird thing to do.

Beach

Then, we rode the train north to the the dunes and walked several km to the beach. It was a bit cold and cloudy, but still very nice. The beach had a strange, thick foam. We sat out and picnicked. Some people tried to swim in the frigid, foamy north sea. After a while, we moved to a cafe where we drank tea and hot coca and beer. It was on the beach, but had glass set up to obstruct the wind, but not the view. Some ETC people starting climbing up the outside and juggling and otherwise being silly. I laughed so hard my sides are still sore.
It started to rain, so we went back to A’dam. Some of us went to a benefit dinner for migrants. A few others, including me, went to get stuff from our space, with a vague promise of dinner.

The Discussion

There was no dinner. Instead there was a lot of discussion about the future of ETC. I felt really uncomfortable during it because it talked a lot about trans issues. Some of the people there felt like there should have been discussion before the definition of who was to come was changed.
What I was thinking at the time was, “I’ve only been transitioning for a few months. I’m not fully secure with it. Anything talking about this is like poking a fresh wound. I want to be proud of who I am and my queer identity, but I still feel sad that I failed at being a woman. I really tried to make it work, but couldn’t.”
I don’t have a clear memory of everything that was said. Because unless somebody is saying something like Aileen said, it feels like poking a wound. In fact, some of the things said were transphobic. It mostly wasn’t personal (it never is), but I felt terrible afterwards.
Right now, my inclination is that I will not go to another ETC event. Last year was really the last time I went into a gendered space as a woman and it was so positive and the contacts that I made so valuable, that I had hoped I could still participate. Part of my pre-transition identity really had a lot to do with being in a certain kind of gendered space: feminist spaces where variance is welcome. ETC was the perfect combination: feminism, tech, green, free culture. All these progressive elements have synergy and it was so wonderful to be around others making the same connections.
A generation ago, there was worry that lesbians would somehow mess up feminism. Now it’s transgender people. C’est la vie. I’ll do my own sort of gender liberation, you do yours. I’m in search of a community. God knows where I can find it.

The Party

So, feeling like shit, I started biking towards a drag party. At least I can do drag, right? Or something. I was really feeling low wondering how I will ever be able to have a coherent sense of self if I have to pick between my own gender and the political issues that I see as so vital. Part of what motivated me to transition was that guys a few years out say that they don’t really have to think about gender anymore. It’s something that for years now, I’ve had to think about all the time. Now my hopes to be able to move on to something else seemed to be doomed. I wanted to just keep biking forever and not stop.
But I did stop and there was a sign on the door which said, “you are now entering a gender-free zone.” Well, that’s a positive development. I paid my cover and went to get a beer and one of my (awesome) hosts was behind the bar dressed as a pirate! She took me around backstage where I painted on a goatee. There were people in all kinds of drag. Butch women in dresses. People presenting some female drag items paired with some male drag items. Hairy cleavage. Goatee and eye makeup. Every kind of genderfuck. I started feeling better.
There was a burlesque show / drag show / comedy show / whatever fun thing. Dykes, bis, trannies, queers. It was awesome. Afterwards there was dancing. This being amsterdam, there was also more booze and more pot and it was totally awesome.
And suddenly, instead of being some irreconcilable fringe character, I’m all sexy and cool. Girls were after me!
I’m in puberty right now, for the second time. It’s cool, but it’s still weird. I haven’t been feeling especially attractive. But there, suddenly, people wanted to kiss me! I was out dancing and being drunk and stupid until the sun came up.

The Next Day

I went to help clean the bar. I was supposed to help clean the ETC space, but the bar also needed cleaning. And I had happier feelings about it. There were people I really wanted to see while doing ETC cleanup, but my last conversations there had sucked so much.
So I got things out of going to ETC this time, but I think it was a lot about seeing people I had met before and being in a country that I want to return to. And being in queer spaces that were just coincidental to ETC.
I don’t know anything about anything. I kind of like being foreign, obviously, or I would move home. But, I guess that’s a broad category of experiences and some are great and some are not. I was thinking of trying to play on the Ladyfest circuit, but right now, I’m wary of it. Part of being foreign is creating communities of outsiders, of expats, of artists, of queers. I felt it sometimes in ETC, with some people. Some folks there were awesome.
I need something right now. English isolation = not so great. Somebody in the discussion of doom suggested that I start a group. I guess I have to.
Anyway, that’s the last about ETC. I’m ready to move on and feel some complexities some place else. Maybe in music. I’m supposed to be a composer.

Gendered Spaces

Why Limit by Gender

We live in a patriarchy. People who are perceived as male have privilege over people who are not. This starts from very early childhood and continues through adulthood. Statistically, people raised as girls tend to be steered away from science, technology and math. Children internalize these messages, so as adults, people tend to think of men as being good at technology and women as not. This is easily observable by phrases like “the mom test” or “the girlfriend test” for software usability. Women are dumb, so if they can manage the user interface, it must be really good, because even a neophyte can handle it. Because your mom could never be a software engineer. Your girlfriend could never be a hacker.
There’s a million arguments already made about how mtfs share this sort of experience. Many are aware of their gender identity from early childhood and internalize all of this crap too. Finally, when they do transition, they get all the discrimination against women, and also all the discrimination against trans people. And ftms tend to also be around these kinds of places. We were perceived as girls through our childhood. I had a lot of access to technology as a child, but definitely felt unwelcome in my highschool’s computer room. The boys used tools like degrading pornography to enforce the male gaze and male dominance (and heterosexual dominance) to keep others out.
Women and gender minorities, therefore, tend have a shared experience around technology. It is an experience of being discouraged, of being not taken seriously, of being excluded.

New Feminism

The ETC had a kind of interesting talk about New Feminism. (There were some issues with it, but whatever). One of the speakers, Rosy, was making a lot of generalizations, which irked many, but I think there were some kernels of truth in what she was getting out. She heavily disparaged identity politics, saying they were an aspect of capitalism and market segmentation. MTV was trying to sell us our identity. I bristled a bit about this, since MTV is most definitely not selling me my transgender identity. It’s something I have to constantly fight for. I asked her about agency. If an identity is being asserted in opposition to corporate culture, what does that mean?
She said identity politics were narcissistic and had several problems. If we say women should be equal, well, equal to what? Should rich white women become just like rich white men? Furthermore, it creates a context of victimhood. In order to organize for rights around a particular identity, you need to say that identity is lacking. I think she meant to imply that there’s a danger there of failing to see intersections. She noted that there are situations where lesbians were the dominant political power. If you see lesbians constantly as an oppressed class, you won’t see where you’re oppressing others.
Of course, you sometimes have identities forced upon you by others and organizing around that is vital. In the feminist forum that I help moderate (livejournal feminist), we have rules about “oppression olympics” where we require that intersectionality be taken into account. I think that Rosy’s thinking and our thinking is very similar. Yes, there is an institutional, hierarchical power structure in society which privileges some identities and bodies over others (the Patriarchy!), but we all function within it and might be upholding it in ways that privilege ourselves. A white lesbian is still white. A upper class gay man is still upper class.
There aren’t that many places where lesbians are at the top of the heap. But when you’re talking about women-only spaces, such a situation can arise.

Focussing on Women

Comparing oppressions is rarely a useful exercise, but if you wanted to do so, there are metric you could use. I would pick unemployment figures and salary gaps to look at economic discrimination. I would use hate crime statistics and domestic violence statistic to look at safety issues. There are a few other metrics that one could employ. People who are out as transgendered do worse on these metrics than do heterosexual women. They even do worse than lesbians.
So if you were the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, and you had a policy of only admitting people who had been born and raised as female and who were still female-identified, you would have a policy of excluding people who were lower on the ladder than you. I think most progressives can agree that there’s value in oppressed classes creating their own spaces. I think most progressives can similarly agree that there is not value in privileged classes creating their own spaces. A men-only event is different than a women-only event.
So excluding trans people is asserting privilege. Yes, it changes the vibe. But if a group of all-white women suddenly racially integrates, that changes the vibe too. If you bemoan that, you’re a fucking racist. Certainly, it’s more comfortable to be around people of your own race, gender, and economic class. But if you’re trying to do something political to benefit people who face gender-based discrimination and you’re all cisgender, bourgeoise, legally immigrated, white women, that’s kind of problematic. If you worry that changing that will change the vibe of your event, well . . . the response that springs most immediately to mind is “fuck you.”

Who gets Access

We’ve all heard the stories or perhaps even experienced a hostile male response to spaces that exclude them. I think the contexts of power and privilege make these replies different than trans people asking for access. Indeed, the entire justification and model of progressive, gender-exclusive spaces says these are different replies. But in the patriarcal challenge, the cisgender man says, “can I come if I wear a dress?” The annoyed feminist says, “no, fuck off.” How can we tell who is a man in a dress trying to start a problem and who is gender minority?

The Gender Police

We can judge them by how well they pass! Yes, in this fantastic model, we employ something I’m going to call the cisgender gaze. Gender normative people can feel empowered to determine how well transgender people are passing. It’s a fun diversion for cis people. And devastating to the identity of trans people! Yay!
When I try to explain the male gaze to people, I sometimes talk about a phenomenon that occurs on University Campuses in the US. Sometimes men will set up chairs along a bust walk way and make score cards like those used in the Olympics. A woman walks by and they all hold up scores on her attractiveness. 6.3, 7.5, 8.1. However, unlike the Olympics, these are just women trying to get to class who did not ask to be rated by their male peers. Indeed, they are no longer peers, there are judges and judged. A power structure is created where one class of people sits dominant over another class of people. Men judge women. In the context of a rape culture, this is especially alarming.
The cisgender gaze has a lot in common with the male gaze in that a rating and ranking system is employed. The people doing the rating have economic and social power (in a broader social context) over the rated. And we live in a society where the rated have to be concerned about experiencing violence at the hands of the class of people that is rating them.
Plus, this has the added bonus of kicking people where they’re already wounded. Trans people often have a lot of anxiety about passing, especially when they’re just starting on their transition. We can all wish this were not so. But nobody would transition if they did not with to be perceived as a particular gender. Furthermore, there is a safety issue when we try to get access to other gendered spaces, like toilets.
Would you tell a cisgender woman that she looks like a man and you would think she was one if you encountered her out in public? Then why the fuck would you tell a trans person that you were certain you could read them? Fuck you. A woman wh heard that would probably feel like shit about it. But some trans people are also fighting for their identity. I have to jump through a million hoops with the NHS. I have to come out to people. I have to struggle to assert my gender identity. You just told me I’m failing at a core aspect of my identity. I don’t even want to fucking hear that I’m passing very well today. Are we best friends? Do I get to tell you that those trousers might make your ass look big? No? Then shut the fuck up.
At last year’s ETC, we all went swimming naked in the Danube because it was hot as hell. I felt really weird being naked in front of other people, largely because of trans issues. At the time, it really felt ok. Now, though, I wish I hadn’t. People were talking to me last week about my breasts. Yes, they’re larger than you would think. No, they’re not especially masculine. I don’t want to fucking hear about my boobs from anybody, unless we’re snogging or something. They are not up for casual conversation! Again, shut the fuck up.

Up For Further Discussion

The change from Women Only to Women and Gender Minorities was made without much discussion. Nobody wanted to have an argument. Some people wanted me (and a couple of other transguys) to come, so the change was made.
That’s great for you that you don’t have to argue about who should access gendered spaces. But alas, I know you meant well, but then those conversations fell on my shoulders.
There might be a bajillion trans organizations and trans activist, but I’ve just come out in a foreign country where I don’t know that many people. I don’t know any such groups. I’m one person trying to get through multiple border crossings at the same time. I don’t have the resources to deal with extra shit..
My roots are in feminist spaces, in queer spaces, in women’s spaces, in doing tech. I’m not entirely pleased to be moving away away from certain aspects of my roots. When I first realized I was queer, I had several unhappy breaks from the institutions of my childhood. I lost my religion, for example. Former spaces of support suddenly excluded me. Now, it seems like the spaces that I found, that seemed so much better than the spaces that excluded me, are now breaking away also. This fucking hurts.

Educational video

This is a re-post, but in case some of you missed it the first time, I highly encourage you to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjqsB1huDxg
I’m still sorting through my thoughts about the last few days, but I’m feeling more and more negative. Just because I want to feel good about something doesn’t mean that I do. I can try to be forgiving, but that means I need to first acknowledge that there’s a sin to forgive instead of telling myself that everything is fine. What I feel is what I feel. Saying I feel something different doesn’t make it so.
I will write something less abstract later. Obviously, I’m going to talk about transphobia. On the one hand, it might be more appropriate to hash this out with specific people or on a closed list. I don’t want to do that for two reasons. One is a high-minded desire to educate, etc. But, more, I just don’t want to have these conversations further. And I shouldn’t have to.

crash

I woke up today at a noon and then went to help clean up the bar where I was dancing until 4 am. Got to sleep at 5-something this morning. I feel destroyed from tiredness, but not so much from hangover. Which is nice, since I had a lot of beer and pot but no dinner last night.
The last couple of days have felt tumultuous. Stress ameliorated through unclean living. I felt twice as outsider and twice as insider in the span of a few hours than I’ve felt in months. Also, twice as alive. I need to think about some stuff.
But I wanted to share that I’ve been trashed the last few nights in a row, as this seems to be expected behavior when one visits amsterdam.

LambdaIstanbul

this group was declared immoral yesterday. It’s an LGBT Solidarity Association founded in 1993. And a cultural center since 2000. Grassroots, non-hierarchical, volunteer based. They are anti-military.
They have commissions within the org. Trans, Women’s Group, Pride, Performance, Family, Human Rights Violations Reporting. Alas, the police have a lot more power recently and raid groups, including this one. The government insists that human rights are not violated. They work a lot with trans people including sex workers, trans women in feminism, etc. They do also legal aid for trans women harassed by the police.

April 7, 2008, 15 big police guys searched everything. They saw a trans woman coming in, so therefore they must be running a prostitution ring. (Because it’s really great for women to make prostitution illegal.) the government of Istanbul said the group violated public morality.
And then I had to g chase after my dog. Now the speaker is showing pictures from the pride parade. Apparently, this was an illegal protest? Last year, there were over 1000 people. Nobody is allowed to protest on the biggest street. But they were so small in the past, they were ignored. The police followed them last year, because of the size. It’s not a big party, it’s a protest march with chanting.
There was participation from some political figures, including a guy running for parliament and an italian politician.
she’s showing up a movie of another march which was stopped by the police and football hooligans. Turkey is not a great place to be queer.
and holy fuck. they were attacked by a giant mob, helped by the police and had to sit on the floor of a bus while people tried to break the windows while they escaped. mobs of men sang “die trannies die”