Global Roundup: Italy LGBTQ+ Rights, Poland Abortion Laws Protest, Film on Sudanese Feminism, Black Trans Dinner, Innu Grandmothers in the Classroom
Curated by FG Contributor Samiha Hossain
People march in the Milan Pride parade 29 June 2024. Photograph: Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
Like neglected children, whose constant exposure to abuse has been shown to decrease their perception of maltreatment, discriminated-against minorities – LGBTQ+ people included – often don’t see abuse for what it is and instead are grateful for what they perceive as being partially accepted. -Viola Di Grado
Di Grado mentioned Italy’s hard-right government, led by prime minister Giorgia Meloni, and their attempts to obliterate LGBTQ+ people’s rights. For instance, It refused to sign an EU declaration on LGBTQ+ community rights on the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. She added how in 2020, Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, was instrumental in blocking the extension of anti-discrimination laws to cover members of the LGBTQ+ community when it voted against the proposal in parliament. There were cheers in the senate when the bill was booted out the following year.
Di Grado is critical of applauding people for simply tolerating LGBTQ+ people. An example she provided was that of her woman friend who is undergoing IVF to have a child with her girlfriend. IVF for lesbian couples is not approved by law in Italy; instead, doctors have the power to decide whether to approve the treatment on a case-by-case basis. Her friend’s gynaecologist, though against same-sex parenting, is still helping the couple without objecting. Despite the friend being thankful for the doctor, Di Grado does not believe this is enough. She thinks that LGBTQ+ acceptance should be a given and not something some people do out of the kindness of their heart. In order to build a counter-narrative, there needs to be more visible public figures in Italy who are out and proud, according to Di Grado.
We will only really know when Italy is starting to evolve as a more equal society when queer Italians, like my friends, are able to call out the discrimination that they continue to face. Unfortunately, in Meloni’s Italy this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. -Viola Di Grado
Copyright Czarek Sokolowski/Copyright 2024 The AP.
Earlier this week, Polish women's rights groups in Warsaw protested against the parliament's rejection of a bill aimed at changing the country's restrictive abortion law. Several women's groups organised the protest on Tuesday, the final day of session for the Sejm, Poland's lower house of parliament, before the summer recess began.
On 12 July, the lower house rejected the bill decriminalising abortion, which stated that anyone who assisted a woman in terminating her pregnancy would not face prosecution, with 215 MPs voting in favour and 218 voting against.
We are here because we want to show that abortion is something we need. We need it regulated now and we need what the government promised us. We voted for the government that promised us civil unions. We voted for the government that promised us abortion. -Protester
The right to a free and safe abortion was one of the reasons for the exceptionally high turnout in Poland's parliamentary elections in 2023. Many young people wanted changes after successive years of having the right-wing populist Law and Justice party, headed by Jarosław Kaczyński, in power. The liberalisation of abortion law was one of the main objectives of current Prime Minister Donald Tusk in his programme that brought his coalition to victory.
In mid-July, the Polish parliament rejected an amendment to the Penal Code that would have decriminalised assisted abortion and the termination of pregnancy with the consent of the pregnant woman up to the 12th week.
UK-based Sudanese filmmaker Sara had long known she was a feminist but did not know the term for it. While studying for her Masters in Gender Studies at SOAS in London, her supervisor noticed Sara's obsession with the theory of body politics, leading her to choose the Sudanese women’s movement, body politics, and the process of emancipation as her final dissertation topic. Sara realised that not many people were aware of this monumental period in Sudan’s history.
When I finished my Masters and was on my way back to Sudan, I told myself, ‘That’s it, I’m going to make a film. This information must reach everyone, starting with the Sudanese youth.’ Our youth have an identity crisis; they aren’t nationalistic and they don’t read a lot, and I think this is a problem in general in the Arab world. - Sara Suliman
Sara’s 95-minute documentary, Heroic Bodies, had its world premiere in 2022 at IDFA in Amsterdam, the world’s biggest documentary film festival. She says it took four years to make; there were specific individuals she wanted to include from Sudan’s first wave of feminists, and she travelled the world to interview them. In some cases, she had to wait over a year to secure an interview.
Heroic Bodies not only charts the multiple ways in which throughout history Sudanese women’s bodies have been exploited by a patriarchal society, British colonialists, and authoritarian rulers but also the long history of Sudanese women liberating themselves from customs and traditions that oppress and harm their mental and physical health. The Sudanese feminists in the film, such as Fatima Babiker Mahmoud and Fatima Al-Gaddal, share some deeply personal and painful memories of customs and traditions that were once widespread in Sudan, such as facial skin scarring or shulukh, FGM or khitan, and re-infibulation.
Sara hopes that each person who watches her film takes away just one small idea that challenges their way of thinking. She says her film has resonated with viewers worldwide because they can connect with the idea that women are controlled through their bodies. However, Sara has not produced Heroic Bodies as proof to Western viewers that Sudanese women are oppressed. Rather, the film is a call for today’s Sudanese feminists to reflect on the ingenuity and skill of Sudan’s first feminists and to seize their rights.
The West has this saviour complex; that as Sudanese women we are victims. They look at us and assume that we have had FGM or that if we wear hijab it was forced on us…As women, we have to grasp our rights with our hands and take them by force – this is the only way for our rights to return to us. -Sara Suliman
Photo: Ramie Ahmed
The Angelito Collective, an evolving, New York-based group of creative, Black trans femmes co-founded by artists Demíyah and Sol Angel in 2019, has an ethos of leading with love. They recently hosted their tenth sitting of the Collective’s ongoing series called Black Trans Dinner, to which Them writer Michael Love Michael was invited.
Michael Love Michael writes about how the dinner’s menu fused Black soul food and Palestinian cuisine – hybrid nourishment that responds to intertwined, ongoing struggles for collective liberation. Ear seeding and acupuncture, herbalism workshops, and craft making from found materials were offered before dinner.
Sometimes nightlife is the only offering [within our community]. [We’re] really thinking about how to still take the beautiful elements that nightlife does have of the congregation of [the] community, bringing art into the space, bringing gathering. -Demíyah
Divine is a recent addition to the Angelito Collective. Newly living in New York from Detroit, she helped style a recent shoot the collective produced for Office Magazine. Joining Angelito Collective has not only been a boon for her professional career, which Divine says helps put more “girls like us in the rooms where our stories are told” – but for her personal growth.
[Events like these] connect you to the people that will love you and care for you and accept you for who you are. [The people] just want to see you thrive. You could just feel the love… which is really nice. -Divine
Michael Love Michael describes the three-course meal that was prepared by Chefs Julian Alexander and Elias Rischmawi of Sahoury Soul, an Afro-Palestinian food pop-up that prepares meals for queer events.
As Alexander, who is Black and a fourth-generation New Yorker, and Rischmawi, who is Palestinian-Chilean, invoke their ancestors, their voices resonate with palpable emotion. I glance around the table and see young and elder Black women closing their eyes to take in the beautiful, united display of peace and solidarity. -Michael Love Michael
Julianna Rich wanted to complete the program after dropping out of high school decades ago. Despite losing her daughter to an overdose in the middle of the two-year diploma, she graduated this spring. She wore her daughter's scarf to her graduation. (Heidi Atter/CBC)
Julianna Rich began the program as a great-grandmother at 60. She said she had always wanted to continue her education, but grew up in foster care, began losing her language and stopped attending school in Grade 10. Rich lost her 26-year-old daughter to an overdose in 2023. There were times when she wanted to give up, she said, but added she was inspired by the other women in the program and the memory of her daughter to continue. Rich wants other mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers to know they are not alone, and they can continue chasing their dreams even after losing someone.
Here I am. I can't believe I'm done. I'm doing this for my daughter. -Julianna Rich
Bernadette Piwas is one of the four graduates from Natuashish. The grandmother hopes to inspire Innu children to learn about their culture by sharing her own personal experience of growing up living in a tent and the Innu legends her father told her as a child. Piwas was taught as a child how to read the weather by the birds, the sun and by snowflakes. Today, children don't know how to harvest from the land and treat animals with respect, and don't fluently speak their language, she said.
I want to let them know that you can survive in the hardest, coldest weather…All the students are speaking English and I'm so, so sad that they're going to lose our language. And some of the words right now aren't used, and they're completely forgotten now. -Bernadette Piwas
Piwas wants to be part of the change. Beyond sharing her culture, she said she hopes to inspire others to follow their education dreams, no matter their age or the challenges. During the program, someone close to her died by suicide and she also lost her brother.
But I kept on going. I got 12 grandkids and I want to show them, even if you don't believe in yourself, you got to. It comes from your heart. You got to do it. -Bernadette Piwas
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Samiha Hossain (she/her) is an aspiring urban planner studying at Toronto Metropolitan University. Throughout the years, she has worked in nonprofits with survivors of sexual violence and youth. Samiha firmly believes in the power of connecting with people and listening to their stories to create solidarity and heal as a community. She loves learning about the diverse forms of feminist resistance around the world.