This site shows the speeches of the Pride as written texts.
Antifascist Initiative Löbtau (AIL)
Dear queers and allies of all colours!Dear activists, dear friends, dear comrades!
We from AIL want to dedicate our speech to solidarity amongst FLINTA (a german abbreviation for women, lesbians, inter, nonbinary, trans and agender people)
In English there is the beautiful term Sisterhood. A word for feminist solidarity – for the union of those who want to resist patriarchy, who must resist to not be silenced or pushed to death.We are still looking for a suitable german word for this cohesion – but we are also looking for the action! Days like today show that collectively, as FLINTA we can achieve a lot. In our everyday struggle against sexism, again and again we see very strikingly how important our sisterhood is. At the same time, there are also a lot of dividing mechanisms among us that make our struggle for a better life more difficult.Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for FLINTA to belittle each other. A comment about the silly pink jacket, a forgotten invitation to the next meeting or ignoring concerns during actions. Again and again FLINTA get in their own way. We have to name this problem clearly: it’s called internalised misogyny and trans-hostility.
When we perceive people with make-up and braids as “too effeminate”, there are consequences. If we take our voices less seriously than those of cis men, people may assimilate to male standards. But Feminism shouldn’t just mean sweatpants and sneakers, we can also emancipate ourselves within a dress and stilettos. These prejudices are no surprise. We as well grow up in a society where selfishness is rewarded, not solidarity. So we have to keep reminding ourselves to create structures where everyone has a place. Let’s do that together! And dear cis men: please question your prejudices, role models and clichés, too! We think this Pride is a good space to break down barriers. Let’s start talking about how we can better band together. Let’s continue to build our alliances, make new friends and support each other in all circumstances. We look forward to fighting sexism every single day.
We would like to thank everyone who organised the day and made it possible. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FLINTA GANG! FOR MORE SISTERHOOD!
Ausländerrat Dresden
Hello, I am Yolanda, 32 years old and I come from Georgia. I want to talk about the situation of LGTBQ people in my home country and why they flee to Germany, for example. The Georgian state is on the side of violence. Georgian authorities do nothing to protect queer people. We don’t have the right to assemble and are often victims of violence by homophobic and transphobic people. Only traditional heteronormative families can live in peace and quiet. Queer couples cannot. The change of gender in the passport goes only after an operation and homosexual marriage is forbidden. The anti-discrimination law exists only on paper. For all these reasons, a free and self-determined life is not possible for us in Georgia. There is no place for us in this country. I am very grateful that I can live a life here as I imagine it. I have found myself and I can be what I want to be. But there are difficulties here too. For example, limited options for hormone therapy for asylum seekers or waiting times for changing the gender in the passport. Here, too, queer people experience discrimination and exclusion on a daily basis. So there is still a lot to do.
Alexia Metge
We are celebrating our Queer Pride here on Dresdner Streets – loud, glittering, empowering. But not everyone can party with us! Our society is trans*-hostile, stigmatises people, pushing them into poverty, precarious job situations and homelessness. Trans* and nonbinary people are often exposed to state repression and face jail. In prison, people are then deprived of many rights. Until now, medical support for transition can be refused on the grounds that people should transition when they get out of prison. People are forced to abandon treatments they have started. This is inhumane! Queers in prison need our solidarity!We wrote letters to trans* people in prison at a Queer Pride event in June. Among others, to Alexia in Cologne Prison. She fights for the rights of trans* and intersex people in prison. With her supporters group called ‘Solidarity1803’ she published a list of demands. She wrote a speech for us and you, which we will read out now
___________________Contribution to Queerprideby
Alexia Metge [It’s about] trans* inter* and queer* people in detention.[It’s about the] changes in everyday life in detention and the consequences of the effects of detention.
There are many trans* inter* and queer people in detention. The situation is not sustainable for many. Hostilities, discrimination and isolation are the order of the day. Be it from fellow prisoners or also from the staff and the management of the prisons.This has to changeThere must be no more black and whiteIgnorance and intolerance need to disappear.
There must be changes in prison laws. [These are: ]
- 1. participation of individuals in decisions about placement in two-sex men’s and women’s prisons
- 2. flexibility in prison and reintegration planning, taking into account the increased risk of poverty for trans* inter* and queer people upon release
- 3. access to specific health care (such as hormone replacement therapies, gender reassignment medical procedures and regular medical monitoring of these)
- 4. possibility of changing name and personal status during imprisonment
- 5. protection from psychological violence and physical violence
- 6. access to the internet for contacting counselling centres
- 7. case-by-case decisions on searches and the possibility for non-female prisoners to be housed together with their children.
The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court on the so-called ‘third option’ of 10.10.2017 must finally be implemented. For all vulnerable groups of persons! After all, we are no longer living in the Cretaceous period. [simple: stone age]In this spirit, Alexia Metge
________You can reply to Alexia. To do so, write letters to:Alexia Metge, Rochusstraße 350, 50827 Cologne, Germany.
M* from Halle
Hello people. I am happy that I can be your guest here today. First of all: Yesterday there was a trans* and queer-hostile event in Halle with the title “Expulsion of nature: On queer and trans ideology”, organized by the so-called AG Antifa – a shitty club [Scheißverein] that has often been associated with cis_sexist and anti-sex work positions, as well as anti-Muslim racism. We decided to oppose that shit! We organized a teach-in with speeches, information material and super-nice music, we broadcast a radio report – and most of all: we really annoyed the TERFs at their event!
FIGHT TERFs, FIGHT SWERFs, FIGHT ANTI-MUSLIM RACISM!
We no longer accept structural and systemic exclusions! We name and actively fight them. We are here because we fight for one another and with one another. Fight for a society in which racialization, class, gender, body, sexuality, visible and invisible handicaps, religion, the piece of plastic in your pocket called a passport and age no longer form the basis for exclusions.
Thinking about discrimination only on a personal level does not work, however. We don’t want to hurt; we don’t want to exclude and yet we do. We all do it. Every single person was and is shaped by a society that has devised a wide variety of discriminatory structures over centuries and continues to adhere rigidly to them to this day. It is time to recognize, name and break these power structures. We have to begin to understand our own positions in society and to take the responsibility that arises from it seriously. We have to question ourselves and our behavior in society. We have to understand that some people are marginalized in several ways and that forms of discrimination are intertwined. That we understand the struggles of others as our struggles; that we move through this disaster called society in solidarity with one another.
Feminist spaces in particular like to refer to themselves as “Safe Spaces”. Spaces created and dominated by white cis women. However, this ignores the fact that discrimination has a structural effect and that there are no places that are free from it. There are no “safe spaces” in a discriminatory society; they cannot exist. And it is ignored that there is a question of power behind it, who can declare which space as a “Safe Space” for themselves. These rooms lack perspectives from people who experience racism, from trans , non-binary, a_gender people, from people who completely reject the categorization ‘gender’ for themselves, from dis_abled people. They are missing because the rooms were not made for them. People who are discriminated against by society in multiple ways often only find rooms that cover one form of discrimination. Autistic spaces exclude me as a trans person; spaces of neurotypical trans* people exclude me as an autistic person. Cis-feminist spaces exclude me as a trans* person and as an autistic person. There are rooms in which I feel safer than in others, but I am never safe – that’s why I prefer the term “safer space”.
And shit, I’m tired of people trying to explain one thing with the other and vice versa. Imagine, Karen, one can be trans* and autistic. In rooms where I belong to the clear minority, I have to expect to experience discrimination at all times. I have to expect that I will have to do free educational work. As a individual, I am perceived as a representative for the forms of discrimination that I experience – the statements that I make from my perspective are misinterpreted as generally valid. But the perspectives on these topics are also enormously diverse within the communities. I cannot, do not want to and will not speak for all queer people, for all trans* people, for all autistic people. That’s why I’m here alone and not on behalf of a collective or an organization. I – and I really only speak for myself – am happy when uncertainties are admitted and communicated. I am happy if people don’t beat around the bush, just so as not to hurt. Let’s talk to each other, but don’t leave the educational work to the marginalized people – create an appropriate framework and at least pay us for it. Above all, if you want to learn, you need to be motivated to learn. Ask for materials if you don’t know where to start. Asks for texts, books, films, YouTube channels. Deal with the topics independently and understand the intersections of power structures that exist or could exist in your spaces.
Recognize obstacles to the participation of potential comrades and remove them. I know it’s exhausting, but we are all in a process. We can’t do everything right overnight, but we can work today to make it a little bit better tomorrow.
Understand the struggles of people who experience discriminations different to yours as your struggles. Don’t just support us when we’re there. Be loud against any form of discrimination and recognize its intersections – whether it’s on the Internet, at a family birthday or in the streets! Let’s fight together! In solidarity!
Gruppe POLAR
we are gruppe polar, we engage in struggles for the right to the city
Flex for a Queer Right to the City
The struggles for a right to the city are feminist ones as well. The lack of affordable housing is a specific problem for those trying toescape domestic abuse and violence. There is lack of slots in women’sshelters. Not only because there are too few of them but also becausemonths may pass until the women find an apartment and their slot becomesavailable. Women, queers and people of color are in more need of publictransportation in spite of it not being safe for them. Harassment andfear of being outside in the dark belongs to the everyday for many ofthe LGBTQIA Community .
Men often may stroll around the city without worries. Women and Queerstell of discrimination and threats, but also of appropriation andempowerment in the streets. “To flex” some queer feminists have calledthis strolling of women and queers. And that’s what it’s about: to gainvisibility and to take over the city for everyone – everyone should beable to dwell in the streets, in the squares. Because we don’t want torush through the city but quarrel with it and remake it.
The right to the city calls for a queer city. It is the right todifference. The city is a space for meeting, recognition andcontroversy. A city where we don’t just rush past each other but wherewe enter in relationships with one another.
After today’s pride we will continue to make the city more feminist, toqueer the city. So meet up for collective strolling, lingering, feetdragging, wandering around — basically to flex.
Leo Lentz
Dear demonstrating people,
my name is Leo and I am a member of the Dresden City Council. Last year on 04 October a gay couple were the victims of a knife attack in Dresden. One of the two people died from the injuries. An Islamist murder attack out of homophobia and an act that leaves us speechless. We regret the death and express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the victims. Such crimes are unfortunately not isolated cases. In 2018, for example, a young man was brutally murdered in Aue by three members of the extreme right scene. They were driven by their hatred of gay people. Queer hate crime is on the rise and is only reported in a few cases. We as queer people live with the constant fear of discrimination and violence. We had to experience the peak of violence last year in Dresden. No matter if it is right-wing ideologies or Islamism. Enemies of democracy and human beings are not only to be found at the Monday Pegida demonstrations. They can also be radicalized in other ways. But it is not religion itself but its interpretation that causes the problem. We need to understand how such radicalization processes arise and how such developments can be prevented. It is important to remember and to remind, but we cannot stop there. We are fighting for a fear-free and violence-free society. What counts, therefore, are concrete measures to prevent such acts.A memorial alone will not prevent the next attack on the trans* person going home from the party. But: a memorial creates visibility and helps to ensure that the acts are not forgotten. It can be a place of silence and mourning but also a place that shows how much remains to be done and can push us. This is one of the reasons why the city council is currently discussing creating a place of remembrance for the victims of homophobic and transphobic violence. The public vote on this is expected to take place next Thursday at the next City Council meeting. Already a few weeks ago, at the request of the Left Party, the City Council dealt with how we can and must, in addition to remembering and reminding, take measures that lead to lasting changes in society. The discussion on this: partly progressive, partly frightening.Instead of understanding, the motto for many is: walls and deportation. But that is a mendacious response. We do not allow ourselves to be instrumentalized by right-wing agitation. There are organizations, projects and initiatives in Dresden whose work makes an important contribution to enabling a self-determined life. Their work must be appreciated and constantly expanded. Only in this way can we counteract anti-human attitudes and finally prevent violence. The act leaves us speechless, but we will not be intimidated. We are here, confidently claiming our place and standing by those who experience violence because they do not fit into a heteronormative or fundamentalist worldview.Thank you to all of you who are on the streets today for Pride and also to those who cannot be here today and who are fighting together with us for a world in which everyone can live freely and self-determined.
Gerede e.V.
Support for Levi – justice for us all!
Hello, we are Martín and Alex from Gerede e.V., the association for sexual and gender diversity in Dresden and East Saxony.
We think it’s great that people in Dresden got together to organise the first alternative queer Pride. Thanks to you, this is possible today!
We are taking the opportunity to make a speech to call for support: Support for Levi – Justice for us all!
Levi, a young person from Saxony, needs support in a legal dispute against the Free State of Saxony. Levi is fighting for getting the correct gender entry in the state recognition certificate, in order to be able to be called “state-recognised social worker/social pedagogue”, for example. However, the lack of a state law implementing the third gender entry does not yet allow for this or similar designations.
Levi successfully completed a degree in social work at the Evangelische Hochschule in Dresden in July 2018. With the completion of the Bachelor of Arts degree and the examination for state recognition, Levi had consequently applied to the Saxony State Directorate for the certificate of state recognition in November 2018. The Saxon Social Recognition Act Article 1 paragraph 5 states that the designation can only be issued in male or female form. There is no possibility to have the certificate issued for people with other gender identities. A 12-month dispute with the authorities followed. Within the procedure, the state directorate turned twice to the Saxon State Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs and submitted the relevant documents. This protracted dispute remained unsuccessful. On the 6th of November 2019, the Saxon State Directorate finally issued an objection notice, so that the last resort was to take legal action before the Dresden Administrative Court. Levi contacted the law firm geRechtsanwältinnen in December 2019 and, represented by lawyers, filed a lawsuit with the Dresden Administrative Court on the 20 of December 2019.
Since then, Levi has received legal and political support from a number of queer activists. This lawsuit is unique in Saxony so far, although it can be assumed that the lack of a state law implementing the third gender entry in Saxony affects many more people. Levi’s lawyers expect proceedings through all instances – but ultimately with good prospects of success. On the one hand, the legal proceedings need personnel and time capacities, and on the other hand, above all, financial resources. That means it costs of around 5,000 € for the first two instances. This is an amount of money which Levi alone cannot afford.
In order to be able to successfully pass the trial, pay its costs and fight for Levis rights, the support from all of us is necessary – financially, legally and politically.
The fight for Levi’s rights is not only a fight for sexual and gender self-determination but also a fight for the recognition of all gender identities in Saxony. There must be a right to state recognition of Levi’s own gender identity! And we all have a right to demand that the Free State of Saxony finally implements the third gender registration without discrimination!
So please keep your eyes and ears open in the coming weeks for news and calls for support.
kosmotique (HOT TOPIC 1)
Sex is a lie!
We stand here today because of our courage and the struggles of those brave before us! Our contribution comes from “Hot Topic” a song of joy coming from a place of frustration. “It was 1999 and the riot grrrl movement was kind of over, or it had imploded,” says Kathleen Hanna. The former Bikini Kill frontwoman had formed the feminist, queer electropunk band Le Tigre, and she was determined to make a song to counter the depressed tenor of the times that she and her bandmates felt. “Look,” she recalls of the band’s decision, “to get us out of this funk, we need to celebrate all the people who inspire us.”
Carol RamaCarol – Rama explored the body, sexuality, desire and madness throughout her 80-year career. Her first exhibition in 1945 was declared obscene by the Italian police and banned before it even opened.
Eleanor AntinEleanor Antin : A performance, installation, and video artist. Her landmark 1972 installation work CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture is a series of 148 photographs of Antin’s naked body, documenting the 10 pounds she lost over 37 days of dieting. She revisited this work in 2017 at the age of 82 with CARVING: 45 Years Later
Yoko OnoYoko Ono – despised for decades by mostly male music fans, and repeatedly portrayed as a reference to the figure of the evil female interloper. she rewrote her song “Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him” in 2004 to support the fight for gay marriage. The song is now also available in the version on lesbian and gay love.
Carolee Schneemann – Even before artists like Valie Export or Marina Abramovic became known with similar works, Carolee Schneemann lived her own body and her own sexuality as body art in lustful choreographies. Her 1975 performance “Interior scroll” essentially consisted of her standing on a table while slowly pulling a narrow roll of paper out of her vagina and reading aloud from it.
Gretchen Phillips – Texas, Austin … queer folk punk? Yes! Gretchen Phillips is a lesbian singer-songwriter who is considered a folk-punk legend in the Austin music scene. In the 1990s, she formed two all-female groups, Girls in the Nose and Two Nice Girls. Two standout songs, “I Spent My Last $10 (on Birth Control and Beer)” and “The Queer Song:
I’m gonna take you to queer bars I’m gonna drive you in queer cars You’re gonna meet all my queer friends Our queer, queer fun it never ends We’re gonna have a happy life Both of us are gonna be the wife I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be It’s queer queer fun for you and me
Cibo Matto – In the late 90s, Cibo Matto was pretty much everyone’s favorite band and one of the top five bands to ever perform at the Bronze in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Formed by Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, Cibo Matto made music that was a delightful and clever subversive blend of trip-hop, pop, and food obsession.
Leslie Feinberg – Remember me as a revolutionary communist. Passed away in 2014 at 65-years-old, Feinberg saw herself as anti-racist-white, secular-Jewish, feminist, transgender, lesbian, and identified with the working class as a “revolutionary communist.”
Faith Ringgold – Faith Ringgold is an American artist who played a leading role in the movement to open museums to women and artists of color in the 1960s and 1970s. About herself she says: “I became a feminist because I wanted to help my daughters, other women, and myself achieve more than a place behind a good man.
Mr. Lady – Mr. Lady was a feminist and queer record label. Le Tigre released their first two albums there. In the late 1990s, the label was involved in a controversy surrounding the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and the festival’s decision not to admit transgender women, which led to protests and boycotts directed primarily at Mr. Lady acts.The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival was last held in 2015. The organizers bid farewell, saying, “There have been struggles, there is no doubt about that. The festival has been the crucible for nearly every critical cultural and political issue the lesbian feminist community has faced for four decades.
Laura Cottingham – Laura Cottingham is an artist and art critic whose 1998 video essay Not for Sale: Feminism and Art in the USA during the 1970s was a much-needed exploration, about feminist art at a time when exhibitions on the subject were rare.
Mab Segrest – Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946-) and Mab Segrest (1949-) are white middle-class lesbians that both came of age during the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement in rural Alabama. Today, they are considered influential figures in feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) literary movements and recognized as important activists in late twentieth-century feminist, LGBTQ, and anti-racist political struggles.
The Butchies – Focus of the all-female butch punk band the butchies was often on lesbian and queer issues.Also embroiled in the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival controversy, singer Kaia Wilson emphasized the great need that exists for inclusive spaces as well. I think both should happen all the time and as often as possible. It’s important to build a strong community that extends to all people who are fighting against the big, bad system that is trying to kill us.
Tammy Rae Carland – Tammy Rae Carland is dedicated to the Bikini Kill song “For Tammy Rae” and created one of the most popular riot grrrl zines I ♥ Amy Carter. Carland celebrated lesbian culture with the zine and made it visible at the same time.
Sleater-Kinney – Carrie Brownstein as the guitarist and singer of Sleater-Kinney and co-creator and main performer of the sketch comedy show Portlandia was outed by a publication at the beginning of Sleater Kinney. In one post, it was mentioned that she went on a date with her bandmate. She felt “fragmented and shattered” that day, “I hadn’t figured out who I was yet, and now I was robbed of the opportunity to do so publicly; to be in the flow.
Vivienne Dick – Vivienne Dick was born in Ireland in 1950 and settled in New York City in the 1970s. She was an important representative of no-wave cinema. About her time in New York and her friendships she says: In New York, some of the women I was with were gay. They were “queer,” but that word didn’t exist then. People like Pat Place, for example. These were women I thought were just doing what they wanted to do.
kosmotique (HOT TOPIC 2)
1 Lorraine O’ Grady! „The main reason my art is ‘political’ is probably that anger is my most productive emotion.” –said performance artist Lorraine O’ Grady about her exploration of black female subjectivity.In 1980, under the persona of Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire she staged invasions of artgalleries wearing a dress made of white gloves and armed with a whip, to critique the racialdivide in the mainstream art world.
2 Gayatri Spivak! Gayatri Spivak – an intellectual, a professor of literature and as such a theorist ofdeconstruction, postcolonialism, Marxism, feminism, the subaltern – all in all: the academicheavyweight of “Hot Topic”
3 Angela Davis! Famous, radical, adored, controversial – Angela Davis. Symbolic figure of the black civil rightsmovement, feminist philosopher and writer, her activism has included the Black Panthers, theSocialist German Student League, the Occupy movement as well as – sadly, unfortunately –nowadays the anti-Zionist BDS movement.
4 Laurie Weeks! Laurie Weeks: New Yorker author and writer; she wrote the screenplay for “Boys don’t cry”; her novel “Zipper Mouth” about a lesbian junkie in 90s New York beats the Beat Generation hands down.
5 Dorothy Allison! Dorothy Allison: US American novelist and essayist, her work has been critically praised as “acelebration of the vilified transgressive lesbian body” – read it!
6 Gertrude Stein! “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” – With her language experiments, Gertrude Stein belongs tothe literary avant-garde of modernist literature around 1900. With the autobiographical novel“Q.E.D.” she also wrote one of the first lesbian coming-out stories ever.
7 Marlon Riggs! “Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act.” said Marlon Riggs – poet, director andpioneer of black queer cinema in the 80s and 90s.
8 Billie Jean King! With tennis player and LGBTQ activist Billie Jean King, we finally get to sport – one of the lastbastions of biological determinism bullshit: In 1973, the number one in women’s tennis defeatedformer Wimbleton winner and chauvinist Bobby Riggs in a “Battle of the Sexes”. In 1981, shelost all her sponsors in consequence for her coming out as being lesbian – the first professional athlete ever to come out as homosexual, by the way.
9 Ut! UT was a No Wave band from New York, consisting of Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham and SallyYoung. Trademark of the three women: Improvisation and the radical refusal of a fixed divisionof labour through constant role reversal of songwriting, singing and instruments.
10 DJ Kuttin Kandi! DJ Kuttin Kandi: Queer feminist hip hop DJ and queen of the turntables, the first woman to be in the finals of the DMC World DJ Championships in 1998; she has also been an activist for theFilipino community in the US for over 25 years; her slogan: “Solidarity is a love verb in action”.
11 David Wojnarowicz! “It is exhausting, living in a population where people don’t speak up if what they witness doesn’t directly threaten them”, David Wojnarowicz, artist, photographer, filmmaker and AIDS activist in 1980s New York – Act up!
12 Melissa York! We don’t know how we would have survived the 90s without Team Dresch – one of the mostimportant riot grrrl and queercore bands at the time. Drummer of Team Dresch and later ofbands like The Butchies and Humble Tripe: Melissa York.
13 Nina Simone! Nina Simone – jazz, classic, blues, folk musician, singer and pianist; with songs such as”Young, gifted and black” and “Mississippi Goddam” she was one of the leading musical figures of the US civil rights movement.
14 Ann Peebles! Ann Peebles, unsung heroine of early seventies Memphis soul, her song “I’m Gonna Tear YourPlayhouse Down”, ostensibly a swan song of a toxic hetero relationship, was also repeatedlyinterpreted politically – as an announcement to reverse social power relations.
kosmotique (HOT TOPIC 3)
1 Tami Hart! Queer solo sing-a-song writer who debuted as a teenager on the pro queer and feminist Mr.Lady label – naturally with the three Big L’s of teenage: Loss, Love and Loneliness. Afterwardsin several band projects – first bassist in the music and performance collective JD Samson &MEN, then frontwoman of Making Friendz and Teen Vice.
2 The Slits! British punk band of the first hour – all! women! Formed in 1976 by teenage girls – pissed off byprevious attempts to make music with men, who ended up controlling, taking over and running everything into the ground. One of the most influential and innovative bands of the punk movement. The best part: their sheer inability to compromise or sell themselves on their sex appeal.
3 Hanin Elias! Berlin: She ran away from home and founded the anti-fascist electro-punk band Atari Teenage Riot with other teenagers shortly after reunification, inventing digital hardcore along the way.Then founded Fatal Recordings, a digital hardcore label only for female and female-identifyingartists in a male-heavy music scene.
4 Hazel Dickens! One of the first women to break-through in the male-dominated world of bluegrass music,recording an all-women-album with her partner Alice in 1965. Provoked mainly solo with feministand union songs and became the voice of the West Virginia coal miners.
5 Cathy Sisler! Feminist lesbian performance and video artist, musician, writer in Canada, especially in the 80sand 90s. Themes of her work: Visibility and invisibility of women and queer people in publicspace, the deviation from normative forms of action, identity and conformity.
6 Shirley Muldowney! “First Lady of Drag Racing”, American female auto racer. She was the first woman licensed bythe National Hot Rod Association to drive a Top Fuel dragster in 1973. She won the NHRA TopFuel championship in 1977, 1980 and 1982, becoming the first person to win two and three TopFuel titles.
7 Urvashi Vaid! New Delhi-born, US-based lawyer and LGBT activist. Her belief: Society’s institutions must betransformed by the movement. Acceptance is not enough!
8 Valie Export! Feminist Artist using the name of a cigarette brand to shed her patriarchal birth and marriednames. Created some of the wildest feminist artwork in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s,addressing the availability and media access to the female body.
9 Cathy Opie! Photographer who portrayed queer subculture in great works, especially in the 90s, andrevealed society’s view of queerness in extremely painful self-portraits.
10 James Baldwin! One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Powerful and eloquent texts about blacknessand homosexuality, long before the social, cultural or political equality of these groups wasfought for.
11 Diane DiMassa! Feminist artist and writer. Created the cult underground comic Hothead Paisan: HomicidalLesbian Terrorist in the ’90s about a lesbian feminist named Hothead who makes it her missionto rid the world of male scum.
12 Aretha Franklin! The Queen of Soul. Number 1 hit: Respect! R-E-S-P-E-C-T – Find out what it means to me!
13 Joan Jett! Music Icon. Sang the most successful version of “I Love Rock’n’Roll,” but only after label afterlabel rejected Joan Jett after the breakup of the Seventies all-girls-teenage band “TheRunaways” – because of her androgynous appearance, with her too unfeminine demeanor.More than just an inspiration for the Riot Grrrl movement.
14 Mia X! American female rapper and songwriter. She was the first female emcee to be signed to the NoLimit Records label in 1994. She is called the mother of Southern Gangsta Rap.
15 Krystal Wakem! Maybe just a girlfriend. We, all, need a feminist friend.
kosmotique (HOT TOPIC 4)
1) REAL: Kara Walker is one of the most important American artists of our time. She makessilhouettes of caricatures in nightmarish ghostly scenarios she presents race, sexuality, genderand violence. She says: “On the surface, every image is often a lie or a bad joke and not animmediate truth. The truth of an image or situation within an entire work emerges when viewersare enticed to fill in the blanks. In doing so, they are confronted with the unpleasant realizationof the bizarre and sometimes violent fantasies of their thoughts.
2) REAL: Justin Vivian Bond lives trans and explains, “for me to claim to be either a man or awoman feels like a lie. My identity is somewhere in the middle and constantly changing. “Bond isan us-singer-songwriter and actor. To some, the best cabaret artist of his generation” and a”tornado of art and activism.”
3) REAL: Bridget Irish is a video and performance artist. She has played in punk bands andparticipated in the world’s first Ladyfest. She released a double album titled FREE to FIGHT andpromoted Riot Grrrls and Self-Defense.
4) REAL: Juliana Lueking is an American musician, spoken word artist and video maker.Lueking’s videos were part of Picture New York’s 2007 fight to allow New York artists to shootvideos and photos free from police harassment. Punk rocker Kathleen Hanna describedLuecking as a mentor in her development as a feminist.
5) REAL: “I am a video artist for years and a painter for a few years. I am also a photographer,anti-theorist, and writer. Originally I made work about lesbian oppression, lesbian subjectivity,about community. My videos also explored and experimented with lesbian sexualrepresentation. ” says Cecilia Dougherty.
6) REAL: Woo – Merle Woo is a Korean-American lesbian poet and activist and part of RadicalWomen and the Freedom Socialist Party. Her Home Movies is a dramatic outcry against sexismand racism.
7) REAL: Ariel Schrag is an American cartoonist and television writer. She writes characterswho act realistically “disgusting, self-responsible, self-righteous or entitled” regardless of genderor sexuality.
8) REAL: The Need is an American queercore band formed in the mid-1990s by Rachel Carnsand guitarist Radio Sloan in Portland, Oregon. Riot not diet!
9) REAL: My Pussy is a Cactus released Vaginal Creme Davis in 2004. She is a US artist,painter, curator, composer, filmmaker and writer. Raised as an intersex woman in South Central,Los Angeles, Davis rose to prominence in New York in the 1980s, where she inspired the dragscene as a genderqueer artist.
10) REAL: Alice Gerrard is an American bluegrass singer, banjoist and guitarist. Some call her,”Queen of the Universe.”
11) REAL: Billy Tipton lived from 1914 to 1989. When jazz musician Billy Tipton died, the doctorsummoned to the family home was surprised to discover that Billy Tipton was not a male jazzmusician, but a female jazz musician. Neither his wife, nor his adopted sons had ever noticedthis. Tipton is now understood to be transgender and celebrated as a trans pioneer.
12) REAL: Julie Doucet, is a Canadian comic book artist. “The soundtrack to her comics couldhave come from the Riot Girls.”
13) REAL: Yayoi Kusama, one of the most important Japanese artists of the postwar period. “Torace through time until death and then live on forever in beautiful love for the glory of mankind.That is the highest goal of her art.” This often involved public nudity with the stated intention ofdissecting the boundaries of identity, sexuality, and the body.
14) REAL: Eileen Myles has been a poet and writer in New York since the 1970s. Mylesdescribes herself “as an angry white lesbian walking the burning streets,” a “bastard poet fromthe conservative diaspora” who came to New York to cause a stir. Myles has been using thegenderless pronoun “they” for a while. “I feel masculine and I feel feminine. I feel queer. I feeltrans. I feel like a dyke, I feel like a lesbian. I feel like a fag sometimes.”
kosmotique (LESLIE FEINBERG)
Queer prides take place all over the world, mostly in June, to commemorate the 1969 StonewallRiots in New York City. A good place to also remember the pioneers of the LGBTQIAmovements: one of them is Leslie Feinberg.
“Remember me as a revolutionary communist”. These were the last words of Leslie Feinberg,who died in 2014 at the age of 65. Feinberg, of course, was much more, seeing herself asanti-racist white, secular Jewish, feminist, transgender, lesbian, and identifying with the workingclass as a “revolutionary communist.” Leslie Feinberg became known for the 1993semi-biographical book Stone Butch Blues. It is the story of a working class butch lesbian goingthrough her self-discovery and fighting for survival and acceptance. The book is considered oneof the most important publications about lesbian women. Feinberg was also a leading memberof the American Workers World Party and editor of Workers World magazine. In her columnbeautifully titled “Lavender & Red” she wrote about the connections of LGBTQIA history andsocialist history. Feinberg spoke out in speeches and writing against wars, militarization,prisons, racist violence by state and government agencies, discrimination in the health caresystem, exploitation of workers (of color), and capitalism, co-organizing demonstrations andmarches. Most recently, Leslie Feinberg advocated for the release of CeCe McDonald.
We brought a song that references Leslie Feinberg’s book Stone Butch Blues. It’s called “ButchStone Blues” and was released by the Boiband consisting of Tucké Royale, Hans Unstern andBlack Cracker in 2017 for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. In the song, the Boibandsings about their sisters and brothers and laments the numerous violent or recent deaths oftrans*people, including those of Stonewall fighters Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Riviera, aswell as Brandon Teena, a trans man whose story and murder is the subject of the film BoysDon’t Cry. “Butch Stone Blues” becomes oral history: carry on singing the names of those killed,spread the word. We want to celebrate today, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to shedsome tears, remember and keep fighting!
kosmotique (QUEER BOOKING IN DRESDEN)
WHY? we are asked:
We answer:
BECAUSE we hate capitalism in all its forms and because our central goal is to share information. We don’t want to just make money or be cool according to the prevailing standards. Sounds right? Sure. Great quote from the riot grrrl manifest.
Because we are from riot grrrl and Ladyfest. We run and operate a space – the kosmotique. We are part of the subculture: and do it like this: feminist, queer and uncommercial, against capitalism,racism and anti-Semitism. We create spaces against compulsory heterosexuality, competitiveness,compulsory childbearing, beauty ideals and everyday constraints. We live in solidarity with eachother and ask little about what are you, but, instead, come <<if you feel like a lady >> or come as you are!
Only recently we were reminded by *sowieso* that we should record our own story, because no oneelse will do it. There is little to be found in the vastness of the internet, old websites have beendestroyed, the information from piecemeal information from poor backups of old computers gives us little. And so here it is:
In 2005 we organized the 1st Ladyfest – the 1st queer feminist art and music festival in Dresden. The reactions were – as they’ve always been, and are still today: backlashes of the most fucked up kind. Cultural headwind every time you thought for just a moment you had achieved something. But also a lot of luck and empowerment. So we decided to just keep going: Queer Booking for the small capital of the Saxon province. We didn’t have our own club but Ladyfest was successful and put our group on the cultural map. We got support in the form of good conditions, from enthusiastic bookers* – thanks to Queerbeat from Munich – who made suggestions, and in the end we saw – sometimes with few, sometimes with many guests – great acts of queer subculture playing here between 2005 and 2010: MEN, Kids on TV, Sugarcrash, Partyline, Maskottki, Rhythm King and Her Friends, Slux, Scream Club, Monotekktoni, Räuberhöhle, First Fatal Kiss, Gladbeck City Bombing, NORAH NOIZZZE & BAND and more. Why? Because we wanted to see them. A commercial career wasn’t achieved by anyone because that’s not what it’s all about. The main goal is to prevent financial loss. To invite and organize, because not very many of our stars are known yet.
Later we started other projects, opened new spaces. Some of the things we dreamed about havebecome reality. But the big issues that everyone has to face again and again, in each new generation: continue to be there. Some are the same, some are different. What remains: We can organize: ourselves and concerts and events that we want to see. If we want queer culture, we have to create it ourselves. Can we? We can!
Today there are many more house projects, open houses, queer-friendly projects, feminist festivalsand beliefs than there were when we started about 20 years ago.
And so today we celebrate Queer Pride in Dresden and remember the worldwide struggles, discussour ideas, our wishes and our culture that demands respect and creates solidarity.
We are not alone!
Kevin (Queer Pride Dresden)
Dear queer people,
I am Kevin, a small part of the great team that organised the Queer Pride Dresden.
Today we are visible for everyone as a demonstration in the city, but we want to be there on more than just one day. Queer Pride connects queer people in Dresden and beyond even outside the demonstration. I, for example, have met people during the preparation that I probably would never have met otherwise.
We all together are the Queer Pride Dresden, everyone is welcome, can get involved and cooperate. Unlike other organisations, we don’t have constricting, hierarchical structures in which individual dominant people set the agenda. There is also room for diverse opinions and wishes of smaller groups in our organisation. We are not perfect either, but we don’t want to divide the queer community, we want to bring the queer community together.
Because even within the queer community there is still a lot to do. For me, the question arises whether this queer community really exists or is only conjured up when it is helpful for one’s own plans and goals.
The gay, white cis-man is still too often the focus of attention. We want and need to draw this urgently needed attention to the many other, numerically smaller and often forgotten or too little visible groups of the queer community. Because while the gay, white cis-man has already achieved quite good equality, trans*- and inter*-people, for example, are still fighting for their most basic rights. Be it for a reform of the completely outdated transsexual law, which failed only this year, or for such everyday questions as being allowed to use the right toilet.
It should never be forgotten that it was not gay, white cis-men who led the first resistance of the queer community against an arbitrary and violent police raid at the “Stonewall Inn” on Christopher Street in New York on the night to Saturday, the 28th of June 1969, but lesbian trans* women belonging to the group of Black and People of Colour.
Don’t fight against each other, fight with each other. Don’t be discriminatory within the queer community, but be in solidarity with all people of the queer community. So that the question of whether this community really exists no longer has to be asked in the future.
Only a strong, solidary queer community can be successful in the fight for acceptance and equality.
All people must be able to be who they are. Love between two or, of course, more people, and living your own gender identity do not take anything away from other people and they do not hurt them. As long as this is not accepted everywhere in the world, especially in the more than 70 countries where homosexuality is still a crime, but of course also here in Germany, the queer community has to fight for it again and again.
Thank you to everyone who joined this fight today.