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Looking to the Future of LGBTQ+ Identities in Eastern Europe and the Slavic Diaspora

Broadcast Jan. 9, 2021 - 58:12

SPEAKERS

Rebekah Robinson, Gala Mukomolova, Damir Imamović, Mateusz Świetlicki

[Into Music]

Rebekah Robinson: Hello, and welcome to the West Meeting Room. On today's episode, hosted by me, Rebekah, one of the producers here, you'll hear part of a conversation that I moderated titled, Looking to the Future of LGBTQ Identities in Eastern Europe and the Slavic Diaspora, which took place on Zoom on Monday, November 2, 2020, and organised by the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department here at the University of Toronto. I sat down with writer and poet Gala Mukomolova, Dr. Mateusz Świetlicki, and musician, Damir Imamović, to discuss the role of culture and activism in the community as they look toward the future. I would like to thank professors, Dragana Obradovic, Zdenko Mandušić, and Angieszka Jezyk, for putting together this conversation and inviting me to moderate. The bios for these accomplished speakers will be available in this episode’s show notes.

Rebekah: I've been really looking forward to this conversation over the past few weeks. And so, I'm hoping in order to get started, that each of you could briefly tell us about the context in which you're coming from, and the work that you do. And if the cultural context from which you're coming from influences your work in any sort of way. I know, we've mentioned that a little bit during your bios. I'd like to get into it a little bit more. And let's start with Gala on this one.

Gala Mukomolova: Okay, sure. Um, well, I am primarily a writer, and that's what I do. I write a lot of astrology things.

[chuckles]

And that is, I mean, I feel it's interesting already, just to think about like musicians and philosophers and rebels, and literature scholars as a point of conversation around world events. I think that I came to astrology writing sort of by circumstance. And I've mostly tried my best because it's very commercial and I work for a major syndicate to subtly or unsubtly move large masses that would otherwise be un-politicized by my like weekly astrology writings. And all my writing work that's more creative or personal, like the essays or the poems that I write, are very influenced by my upbringing, and I guess, just where I'm at, right. So I was raised, but, I mean, I was born in Moscow. My family's Jewish. We had to immigrate to Brooklyn, around the wave time that everybody else did. 1992 / 1993, I was raised very much in, in a kind of, like, understanding of difference as marker, right. So it's like the idea that who we are is always in relation to who we are not, or history. And I think that what I'm interested in, actually, in this discussion is, is learning more about people who are in place. Like I think I come from, my writing comes from being displaced. And, yeah, I don't know, I feel like there's so much, I mean, it's just who we are always influences what we make, right? I think that I also am very invested in a queer post-Soviet perspective, and that's really particular because I, I have an okay relationship with my family now, but I was disowned for many years and didn't speak to them. And the idea of being like, queer, or lesbian was antithetical to being Russian, to being Jewish -- Russian Jewish, because we're like, Well, you know, like, when you're, when you're a Jewish person from Moscow, but like, my family doesn't identify as Russian. They identify as Jewish. So it's like a particular thing to say, but, um, I think understanding the amount of disavowal that happens amongst like, how people come to define themselves. Like, with my family, being like, “Well, you know, if you're choosing this aspect of yourself, then you're not one of us, right?” But the “one of us” mentality has to come from a fear that you need to keep being like, non-Western. I'm just, like, kind of like creating this idea of devotion to the to the national idea. I don't know. So, which doesn't claim you, right, the national idea which doesn't claim you. So like, Russian people for so long, did not really claim Jewish people as one of their own. And yet, like to be clear, like Jewish Russia is to create a disavowal from the country that you come from, which we actually disavow to begin with.

Rebekah: Thank you so much, Gala, I think that's, I like the idea of, you know, or I find the ideas fascinating about being displaced within, like these different communities. You know, and I know you mentioned your work with astrology. And I'm hoping that you can about how these sort of intersections and ideas maybe even play into like contributing to your writing these astrological pieces. And as well as just know who we are is in relation to who we are not. Like, that's especially prevalent in today's politics throughout Eastern Europe and throughout the world, really. You know, everyone's trying to juxtapose themselves. And there's this fear of othering. So, I hope we can touch on that in this conversation as well. Let's move over to Damir, if you could introduce us, tell us a little bit about the work that you do. And if you find that your cultural context is influencing your work as well.

Damir Imamović: Thanks Rebekah. No, yeah, of course. I was born in 1978, during the time of Socialist Yugoslavia. And probably, mostly the kids at that time, end of 80s, I was what 10, 11, 12 when the war, when the dissolution of Yugoslavia started that I, 14, 13 and a half, something like that. So I somehow feel that most of us who are coming from that geographical area , we we carry this mark and this, most of our interests of that generation, or are of those generations are still colored by this, you know, traumatic event that happened in Yugoslavia. In the beginning, I started playing music during the war when Sarajevo was under the siege. I was in a shelter. And us kids, we were bored basically, so I had to do something. You know, you can't go out you can't do much. And some days, you cannot even go to your apartment upstairs. And I picked up a guitar and started learning songs. And, but actually, and of course, traditional music was always big around me in my family of traditional musicians. But I also, my first songs that I fell in love with were, you know, rock and roll, jazz. It was 90s. So, the whole Nirvana. But somehow in Bosnia, in Sarajevo, especially this sevdah traditional music, which was strongly rooted in Slavic oral culture, but also had a strong Turkish Ottoman Empire influence was always around, you know. So I just, I woke up as a 20 something year old and realized that I know all these songs. You know, in the day, I even use them not only as songs, I speak in that way sometimes. You know, they're some little pieces of those songs, some parts of it, I use it in everyday speech and it's so much a part of me. And then I realized only actually several years back that I was always interested, because this trauma really formed me. And my primary school class completely dissipated when the war started, you know, and suddenly, we became strangers. And that's why even today, I'm still probably quite close, closer to my friends from primary school, because I was in seventh grade when we started, then with later on high school, friends and university friends and other people. And I realized that without me knowing that all of my themes I was really interested in, you know, like, after high school, we have this system where we write at, like, a final paper in high school. Some kind of a diploma or something. And, of course, the University the same. And just when I look back, I realized that all of these things were actually connected to the same topic. And it is, how is it possible that people become strangers to one another, you know, when I, I never had the problem, intellectual or artistic with people being, you know, foreigners, people being unknown to one another. And you discover something that you don't know, but this very feeling that due to some act of politics, history, whatever, you become stranger. You become this foreign person, you know, and of course, coming out is a big part of that. Because it's, you know, the situation when you have some friends, you have family, and after coming out, and that's what a lot of LGBTQ people know, you suddenly become somebody else and you're still the same fucking person. But there's this estrangement, or whatever the word is in English, that happens, you know. So a lot of what I do is is kind of colored by that. Even without me knowing that I - That's actually one thing I'm rediscovering about what I do. But I have, you know, I always had diverse interests. I always loved literature, history, philosophy. Music was just a part of it. And after studying philosophy in Sarajevo, I had my ideas of pursuing a career as a philosopher means mostly sitting at one place and thinking, anyway. But I was lucky enough that I, just by chance, I was offered a gig as a musician, and I did it. And it was a big success. And I just felt that that's what I love doing, you know. And of course, later on, after that, I realized that I don't have to give up on my intellectual interest, you know. But I can still write, I can still, you know, research stuff and, and I realized that you have to, if you have an opportunity, you have to take over this place in mainstream society and speak with a different voice from there. You know, it's not, because mostly, I mean, the whole of Balkans, meaning former Yugoslavia, plus other countries in Eastern Europe, is actually today a place people are mostly forced to leave if they want to live their dreams, you know. And I remember this, this first Pride parade in Sarajevo last year at which I played. There was one moment when I literally wanted to cry. And that was when I saw all these guys and girls, queer couples of all kinds who are from Sarajevo, usually, both of them, you know, from a couple they were both from Sarajevo, but they've been living in, I don't know, all over the world for 15 plus years. And then they came back for that particular date was such a strong message, you know? So that's just for starters.

Rebekah: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I feel like you brought a lot of food for thought. e\Especially, I like the concept of how even within a specific region, you know, you become a stranger to one another through force of trauma, but also how that can also impact how LGBT people are also impacted as well. Especially when coming out from to their families or to their society, to their communities, on how you can even be ostracized and a kind of stranger in that way too. So, I hope we can explore that idea of being considered other and this estrangement that you mentioned later on in our conversation. How about you Mateusz?.

Mateusz Świetlicki: That's a difficult question. First of all, I want to say that I absolutely love my job. I love everything about it. It gives me satisfaction for a number of reasons. But before I say few things about these reasons, let me answer the question. Because your question was about, you know, the personal experience. I think that we cannot escape our personal experience at all. In order to, you know, succeed. You need to combine your personal experience. You need to stay, you know, truthful to your own self and your heritage and your identity. And, I was born in Poland. I lived in Poland when I was a child. I also lived in Germany. I also live in Louisiana, Shreveport, Louisiana. And I decided to stay in Poland. I decided to stay here because I do have hope. And I think that sharing my experience, sharing all of the things that I know. Sharing my you know, vision of the world, can actually help my students. And I absolutely do use my experience when it comes to my writing. When it comes to my teaching. When it comes to my writing, I have a degree in Slavic studies and Ukrainian studies and in American Studies. And I published a few things about Ukrainian literature, about Polish literature, about American literature. I try to write some things about gender, about men studies, about masculinity studies about queer things. I tried to find some queer themes in Ukrainian literature, but I always, I've always been interested in children's literature and YA literature and popular culture. I find this trash culture to be extremely inspiring. Now I'm working on a project on North American children's literature. By North American, I mean both American and Canadian. But, I'm writing about literature books written by Ukrainian and Polish authors. I mean, second, third, fourth generation Ukrainian / Polish authors. So books written in English, but books about the experience of being Polish, the experience of being Canadian, the experience of being Polish Canadian. The experience of being Ukrainian Canadian, experience of being Ukrainian, in Canada, and so on. So I think I'm trying to somehow combine my expertise. Like, I think this is the perfect topic for me, because I'm using everything of my knowledge. So I can use my Slavic studies, background, and my English studies, American Studies, background. And every single time when I want to write about, let's say, memory. When I want to write about something else, I always end up thinking about queerness, I always end up thinking about the ways in which sexuality or gender are, you know, constructed in the literature or film. And I think it is connected to my identity, you know. This topic, I cannot escape this topic, you know. I absolutely cannot escape this gender theme, and it's difficult to do that in Poland. And when it comes to the last few years, when you hear your president saying that LGBT is not people, LGBT is ideology. When you hear politicians saying that we have to make sure that gender ideology and the so called LGBTQ ideology doesn't destroy our children. And there's always the child to use as this political, you know, tool. It's, on the one hand, it's challenging to write about such topics. But on the other hand, I find it so fascinating and stimulating, intellectually stimulating. And I think that we should resist. And this leads me to what I said at the beginning of my little speech. My students, teaching is fascinating, really, and inspiring. And my students are absolutely brilliant. I am so privileged to be teaching a number of really intelligent, clever young people who are sick and tired of this situation. Who grew up in Poland, with the internet around them, who grew up traveling, you know, going on vacation to various different places. And there are queer individuals who want to live in Poland, and who want to, and who are proud or openly gay, or lesbian or transgender, and they don't care. And they don't want to move to America or to Canada or to Germany. They want to stay here and they want to make a change. And what I hear my students tell me that my classes made them want to fight. I'm shocked because I always think that my classes are ideologically neutral. So I always think that I'm not really that political in class. But it turns out that while I'm not trying to be political, I am political. So yesterday, my wonderful graduate student told me that during one of like, random classes, like ethics of academic work, stuff like that - I taught them about the phenomenon of angry white men in America, like Trump supporters. And someone, and I didn't remember that, I just used some basic examples of books, and I, and I asked them to come up with a list of Works Cited. And then she told me that because of this little class, the entire group, read that book. And that's why I find my job to be really, my profession to be really inspiring, because I can teach. I can write and my students really inspire me. So I, every single class influences my writing.

Rebekah: We'll tease that out, for sure. I really enjoyed this idea of Polish people who want to remain in Poland because that's like their home, you know. And just trying to make it a place. I think that's going to be one of the ending questions, you know, what are their hopes for the future? How can people you know, move to this place where they can build a society and build an area where they can be completely themselves. And so I want to hold on to that idea and bring that up a little bit later. Thank you. Gala, I wanted to go back a little bit to talk about your astrology workings. And I want to see how might your traditional Slavic values, maybe that you have been surrounded with ongoing in your life, how you maybe incorporate them a little bit into your writing astrology? Or how even being part of a diaspora community, how that might influence your work when writing about astrology?

Gala: I'm just feeling inspired a little bit by all the hopefulness. I think that, I'll say this. I think that when I came to astrology as more of a work than a hobby or an interest, so much of it has to do with the fact that in ways I was raised with astrology, it's like a shared language with my family, because it's pretty similar in Russian or post-Soviet culture. Soviet culture, as it is in the West. That said, I don't know. I think that as Mateusz was speaking, I was thinking about, you know, what it means to have pride in place, or like a nationalistic love. I think that I was very much raised without it. Very much raised without place, and in some ways, like a kind of - like, I feel like I was raised in a refugee Jewish community, which had a lot of pride in the fact that they came from a Jewish lineage. And also, at the same time, kind of had no God, and no rituals, no practices, right? No, no prayers that we knew. And so, most esoteric practice was sort of memory based. We light a candle on this day, we don't wear shoes in the house, I can't tell you why. You know, things like that were just sort of based on like a rule, a rule you inherited that you follow blindly. And so for me, I think astrology as I got older, and as I found, safety and pattern was a place where I could connect to all these different types of rituals and understandings about the largeness of the universe, without being completely far away from where I came from. And I do think that now as I inhabit this world. And like the astrology world, is kind of a world because they're, you know, on a, on a level of who's creating it and how there are just so many social media facets. So many different types of writers, many different types of people who are offering the same thing. But I do think that astrology is inherently invested in like the domino effect or the collective effect, right? So there's this idea that what happens there affects us here, right? That the sun is not shining on one side of the planet, for no reason at all. And that there is a continuation, and also that there is a story that happened before us and is happening after us. And I think that being in a lineage of people who were moved toward the collective, who sacrificed a great deal for the collective is information. Like I don't think that I was raised to believe in the collective. Like I actually was, I was brought into a country, I was brought into your country with this premise that now we'd like that we would have individual lives, right. And that being said, I was then raised in this sort of, in a tense, what an astrologer might call a kind of square between two planets aspect between people who actually wanted to escape a collective, authoritarian, totalitarian really, rule, and people who actually valued collective ideology as more righteous and more ethical. So this idea that I wasn't just myself, I was part of my family and I wasn't just part of my family. I was part of a lineage of people who survived numerous mass genocides, you know. I wasn't just, I wasn't just learning to live in a country for myself, but at the same time, also, one could never go back to what those collective ideas and beliefs lead us, right. So that tension, that place for me is a lot of the place where I write from as well. I think when it comes to astrology, because I think that astrology has always been political, has always been, you know, used in rulerships of presidents and kings. So I think that there's a sense that the, the stars that you might be interested in, in terms of like your love life, or whatever, like your new job, are also the same stars that if one were to believe it so, are impacting the people who make it hard for you to get that job. Make it hard for you to be present in your love life. I think that if I can use whatever medium I have, that maybe people seek for just gentle comfort or some sense of accompaniment, some sense of like, pleasure or relief, if I can use that medium to let people know that not only are they connected to a larger picture, but that larger picture is also connected back to them and their daily behaviors and their daily lives and what they think about, then maybe I'm doing my job.

Rebekah: Absolutely, that's actually really beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I think this idea of using different creative mediums, whether that's through astrology, with your music, finding ways to connect, to connect these different themes and different ideas that are inherently political, that we sometimes don't always see as being political and reaching a larger audience that might otherwise not choose to engage with it. So, thank you for sharing that. And then speaking of music, I wanted to go back over to Damir and ask, you know, how do you take this genre of music of sevdah, and how might this traditional music make sense, and how do you incorporate that? How do you speak to this modern world in which you're producing this music? I'm wondering what that looks like for you?

Damir: Well, there are many ways of course, and the very act of doing that today, at least at a time when I was beginning 16 / 17 years ago, the very act of doing that was in a way that you know, I was already, you know, quite active in, as a student in many feminist and queer organizations. I was already, you know, doing different stuff. And I remember some of my friends told me, come on, you're a young hip guy. You should do jazz or rock or pop or stuff like that, why would you do sevdah? You know, because sevdah was similar to the folk music in United States. You know, or country music was some kind of, you know, popular, extremely popular music, but it was some kind of a redneck music. One part of it was some kind of rural community music, you know, not all of it. And, but for me, I always saw other things in it. You know, I saw how important it is. And, and it was actually at the time end of the 90s beginning of 2000s, when actually quite a lot of music, musical groups or individuals started to see, like - I remember this, they were really good at the beginning, actually from Poland. So, they were doing Polish folk music, but in a really punk way. On the on the other hand, on this kind of research side, I completely feel what Gala just said, about finding some structure in this whole you know, crazy crazy world. And I remember when I was a kid, I read a poem by Rita Mae Brown and she said at some point, like you know, she's having cancer, she's queer, and she had so many layers of her personality and her body and her everything, but she said at some point like, which one of me, of I's, will survive all these changes? You know, what will be left at the end? So, I feel that what God said that this need to find some order in this crazy world, and for me, it's it's music theory and scales of this sevdah music because it's when you see it from that point of view, it's actually sevdah music, as a lot of Balkan music, is situated between two worlds. Two worldviews of music you know, one is a Western European, and another one is this oriental, usually Ottoman history gave us this, this oriental way of thinking about music, you know, which is different. And it's not like, completely different but they, you know, that they're places where they connect. So when you do theory, in Bosnian, in sevdah music, you're constantly with one leg you're in this Eastern world of hearing music and thinking about harmonies, melodies, and everything. And at the same time you're doing, you're doing it in the western medium. For me those scales and teaching them, researching them, and then teaching them and trying to find some order in that is also a way of doing that, you know. And of course, there are a lot of, you know, everyday usage of music in many ways. And that's sometimes with artists, it's hard to control it, you know, what your music is. How you convey it. And how will people use it.

Rebekah: Thank you so much for all that. I did want to ask in terms of like your music, are there any themes or ideas that you try to incorporate, like modern themes into your traditional folk music? And how do you incorporate those, like, what kind of language and stuff do you use, especially considering the, I guess, the traditional structure of the framework of music, how you choose to go about doing that?

Damir: Well, when I started doing it, I realized that this music was codified in the socialist time, in the time of famous socialist radio stations. So, there was a time when this, in former Yugoslavia, every different ethno national groups had their own cultural expression. And I realized that behind that there's a, there's just a peak of an iceberg, you know. A huge, huge, there's a whole iceberg of music, you know, that we just see the top of. And I realized that, that's why that's where I wanted to go. And there I found a crazy humane, everyday, everyday world of old recordings, interviews, everything, you know. And I was especially happy to find, and I used it in this exhibition I curated in 2015, in Sarajevo, where I can try to portray the history of this music behind what people usually know, through, you know, all the different materials. And I included many, you know, of course, queer stories, all the different other things that were just left out of official histories, you know. But for me, my idea, talking about writing about this music and researching it was, I never wanted to write the queer history of sevdah music. And I've spoken to many of my friends who are, you know, queer activists, or activists in different fields. And they taught me that, you know, if you do only this "small thing," you become some kind of expert in queer stuff, and that's your field. In that way, I realized that there is no history of music. Nobody, it has never been written by anyone on any, not even a positivist stupid, dumb, you know, kind of a book. And then I said, Yeah, I'm gonna write a history of the music. I have to take this mainstream position, you know, and push it. And my music and what I do artistically is completely different. And I, to be honest, I have no control of that. I was lucky enough to be invited to do music for films and theatre, a part from my scene of the stage work and performance quite early. And I started in 2007. And when I realized that I can do that. I can write, you know, when you work, in so called in functional music, which is theater, film and stuff that you have a director, you have a need for a particular music, you know, in a scene. So nobody asks you: What do you like? You have to do that, that as a craftsman, you know. You just do what's needed. So when I realized, you know, I can write the rock and roll song, I can arrange for chamber quartet, that I can do stuff for a choir and stuff. Then I realized, maybe there's a way for me to write sevdah songs, you know, because it's been decades since new sevdah songs kind of appeared. And that's how I started in 2007 and writing for myself and other people. My first song was traditional lyrics and my own melody. It's called Dva Se Draga Vrlo Milovala: Two Darlings Caressed Each Other. And that's a beautiful lyrics about two souls in love, but of course, mother and father forbids it, so they have to separate and they die and they buried them together, blah, blah, blah. It starts with this gender neutral description of two darlings. You know, Dva Se Draga Vrlo Milovala, for those of you who speak language, you recognize the pattern. And, there's been a lot of these songs in the history of sevdah genres and neighboring genres of music, but they were abandoned because they were, you know, modern culture didn't tolerate this gender neutral. So they become male and female, in the second part of the song, after mother comes in, and prohibits the marriage, or them being together, you know, and everything in this song separates into, you know, into genders, into graves, into everything. So I was so inspired by the lyrics that I wrote the melody to it, and that's how it started. So these days, luckily enough, this sevdah genre, I wrote a lot of songs for myself and other musicians, other performers. There are other people writing new songs. So, I think something is happening there. And a significant part of it also has this queer, I mean, there are different kinds of people in this in the scene. But there are also people who are who are pushing this new idea of what tradition is.

Rebekah: I really love this idea of incorporating, you know, different ideas and queer elements of culture into this new tradition of music and going forth, like in that way. And that's something that more and more people are starting to get involved with. And I like this idea of representation of like, the queer communities, especially if even if it's gender neutral, that it's part of the history. It's not like just made up, it's an ongoing thing. And so how can we modernize that and shape that for a new audience? And also thinking about representation? I wanted to turn to Mateusz and think about what does representation look like, especially concerning LGBT interests in young adult literature and children's literature? And how does that look specifically within Poland? And do you think that students and children are getting their needs met or interests met within literature?

Mateusz: That's a very good question. Um, there's a number of LGBTQ themed Polish books, mostly picture books and YA novels, and of course, there are a number of translations, mostly from English, but not only from English. And similarly to Ukraine and Hungary, such books usually become, quite, let's say, political, or maybe not the books themselves become political, but they become political tools. And this, you know, political, anti-LGBTQ+ discourse. For example, there's this really interesting book: Kim Jest Slimak Sam. I'm not sure if you've heard about it, probably not. So, yeah, it was published in 2015. By it's a picture book by Maria Pawłowska and Jakub Szamałek illustrated by Katarzyna Bogucka. It's quite similar to And Tango Makes Three, let's say, became similar because it caused a number of controversies because its protagonist Sam the snail, who is just starting school is a hermaphrodite. He's a snail. Yeah, I mean, Sam is a snail. Interestingly, both advocates and opponents of the book seem convinced about the power of literacy. In this book, when a teacher asks pupils to split into two gendered groups, Sam does not know what to do and hides inside their shell. And the school psychologist asks Sam to prepare a report on the storm that passed the area the day before. And to do that, Sam needs to meet and talk to several queer animals inhabiting the nearby woods. While the picture, while this picture book is biologically accurate, some Polish Education Officers ordered the book removed from school libraries as inappropriate for young children and for its potential to promote "gender ideology." And this is not surprising when we remember that an educational supervisor from lesser Poland tweeted that LGBT is an endorsement of pedophilia. And when we remember the fact that the former Minister of Education, Anna Zalewska, tried to ban Rainbow Friday. Rainbow Friday is a name of events aiming to show queer children and teenagers that school should be a safe space for all. And it's worth mentioning that despite the years of progress, the situation of LGBTQ+ individuals in Poland has deteriorated under the role of the populist Law and Justice (PiS) Party, resulting in the increase of number of suicides among queer teenagers. We have gay celebrities like Jacek Poniedziałek, Michał Piróg, and allies, great allies of the LGBTQ community, like Anja Rubik, who is a top model, you know, fashion model, Beata Kozidrak, this iconic Polish Madonna, let's say, or Taco Hemingway, who is a Polish rapper. You can read about him and the latest issue of New York Times, if I'm not mistaken. So when it comes to equality, Poland, a member state of the EU is closer to Ukraine and Russia than its EU neighbors. And of course, I'm talking about politics. But we do have a lot of books, like Sam the Snail, also translations like I Am Jazz, this picture book about a transgender girl, but what I find particularly interesting is that we don't have books about same sex parenting in Poland at all. And what, yeah, it's quite interesting, because when you compare Poland to other countries, including Ukraine, usually the first queer, let's say, I'm using this term really frivolously, let's say, usually queer themed, usually the first queer themed books are picture books about same sex parents, that's the pattern. When it comes to practically every single country, which has queer themed books, but in Poland, we don't have same sex parenting books. We have books about transgender children, we have books about like, YA novels about gay characters, gay and lesbian characters, of course, and I think that is quite - you know, literature, children's literature, YA literature is really crucial in the development of young people, and representation is fundamental. We all know that. When we compare the, like the number of picture books or just books, children's books in general, depicting children belonging to different ethnicities, the representation, like disparities in the representation are shocking. So most books present white children. Yeah. So there is this discussion about the need to include other types of children. And Poland is a very specific country. I want you to remember about the fact that 96% of Poles are white. Most Poles are culturally Catholic. I'm using this term "culturally Catholic" on purpose, because most Poles do not go to church at all. But being culturally Catholic is a totally different thing. It's all about customs, traditions. And this guilt. I don't go to church. I'm not part of this institution. But you know, cultural Catholicism is stronger. Yeah. So, though I was, okay, I was talking about children's books, and then I started talking about, you know, the church. Okay, so when it comes to the need to include such themes, it's quite similar. There are queer children, queer adolescents in Poland who need to see that they are normal, you know. And such books should appear in the book markets, such books should be published and should become part of the mainstream. And it's not enough to have translation of Love Simon and, you know, American YA novels. I think it's crucial to have local books, including local themes, or references to our local culture. And I think that it's crucial for the development of young people. And I know that I also take, I believe in the power of literacy. But that's what I've heard from a number of students who, throughout the years have told me “When I was growing up all of the books and all of the characters and YA books and children's books were just straight. And I've always thought that I'm weird.” I think that it's amazing that this situation has started to change. That we do have queer books, that we do have books featuring non heteronormative, let's say, elements. And you know, I've already said it, children are the future.

Rebekah: Absolutely, thank you so much for all of that. I think it's definitely important that the literature reflects local customs and traditions. And I think that every student should have the opportunity to be represented and feel represented, their family or themselves in general within this kind of literature. Because it's crucial to the development of young LGBT students and just other children in general to be exposed to such themes to learn about differences. I think that's incredibly important. But yes, I love the idea that you know, that things are starting to change. That there's, we're moving towards like a state of future. We're trying to incorporate more radical literature into like earlier settings in schools. And so my last question for you all is, what are your hopes for the LGBT communities from where you're coming from? We've mentioned radical changes within literature, talked about astrology, we talked about music. What does that look like for your specific communities?

Damir: Well, here's a good candidate, if you allow me this combination of nationalism and LGBT issues. An example of Bosnia, Bosnia is a small place. It used to have three and a half million people, when Yugoslavia parted. Now, I think it has, some people say not even 3 million people. And the thing is such a small place is really, it's really hard to have an authentic agenda for anything, you know, let alone the fact that we are completely politically paralyzed because we still live the consequences of dissolution of Yugoslavia. Because the Constitution of Bosnia is basically a peace agreement, which was signed in 1995. Like a ceasefire peace agreement. We still have that as a constitution, you know. So just to cement the opposing sides in the war, and blah, blah, blah, to stop the war. The problem with that, why am I mentioning that is that it's really hard to promote LGBTQ rights in Bosnia as an authentic need of the local people. And it's so easy, by opposing side nationalist fascists of all kinds from these communities, etc. to give it some kind of: "oh always this sort of guy, those are Americans, Angela Merkel, and Swedes are promoting you know, lesbianism" and that kind of stuff, you know. So that's why I think that's one of the reasons. And of course, the lack of tradition, why we only had Pride last year. And those people who are, who are doing it, activists, are brilliant. They really did a great job. We had a huge Pride, three and a half thousand people without any problems. It was a really beautiful day. And I see that, you know. But I guess and I would love maybe to hear if there's time for Mateusz, about, because Poland is such a big country with a strong culture and just in numbers, also huge country and market and everything. Is it in any way easier for such a big country to promote the need for queer rights as some kind of an authentic need? So you understand what's my problem? You usually have nationalists who are saying, you know, “yeah, but we never had gays around here. We were all straight. It's just when Americans came or whoever came, Germans, that we've gotten queer people.”

Mateusz: It's similar here, really.

Damir: I think, in a interesting way to connect nationalism and queer rights.

Mateusz Yeah, it's always somebody else's problem when it comes to LGBTQ rights in Poland. I mean, rights, maybe not rights. So once again, the biggest problem in Poland is that we are a monoethnic country. So there are no "enemies," you know. It's quite difficult to find a common enemy. After all, culturally Catholic, all white. Someone has to be blamed for everything. So the last few months our politicians, right wing politicians have decided to use, once again, to use members of the LGBTQ+ community as this enemy of the nation, enemy of the state, say that these are not people. This is just a foreign ideology of the EU trying to destroy Poland, all over the country, trying to destroy Poland. These are not real people There's this Polish Regional Education Authority called Barbara Nowak, who said that after the Coronavirus, we'll get back to normal quickly, but what about the long term effects of gender and the LGBTQ ideology? Coming back to the, to your question Rebekah, I would love my LGBTQ+ students to know that it's okay to be Polish and LGBTQ+. That is okay to be Polish and non-Catholic. That it's okay to be Polish Jewish and gay. That it's okay to be Polish and Black, you know. We have Afro-Poles are also discriminated and so on. But and I think that most of our problems come from the fact that we are so monoethnic. And of course, we know that when it comes to our history, it all changed after World War II. Because before World War II, Poland was not as mono ethnic. Poland has no colonial history, in this traditional, of course, understanding of colonialism. We're not going to dig deeper into local like, Ukrainian Poland, Ukraine, Poland, stuff. But we don't have this, I mean, we Poles don't have this colonial guilt. What I find really problematic is that nationalists, the so-called patriots have decided to claim this one particular vision of being Polish. And there's no place for members of the LGBTQ community and this, you know, Polish label and this particular identity. And in the last few months, young people, mostly young people, young queer people, have rebelled against this notion, you know, maybe not notion, against this vision of Polish-ness. They've been fighting. They've been using, you know, acts of civil disobedience. They've been rebelling against this vision, they are unapologetic, they don't care. They are, they are not here to just, you know, talk. They're here to fight. And let's be honest, you're probably all familiar with the current situation in Poland regarding the abortion rights, of the protests, and so on. The first protests in Poland this year started in August and these were protests initiated by young LGBTQ+ individuals who fought really. And what's happening now, all of the nasty slogans used by protesters are quite similar to the nasty explicit slogans used by of members of the LGBTQ community in August. But back in August, they were criticised for, you know, for using explicit vocabulary for breaking taboos. And now, the mainstream, let's say mainstream protesters, are using their methods. And this, I think, shows us how effective our local LGBTQ+ community can be.

Rebekah: Yeah, absolutely. That's beautiful. Thank you so much. And I think that it's super important to highlight, you know, the people who are on the ground doing the actual work. And they're the ones out here who are trying to make a difference for themselves and the ones who come after them. How about for you, Gala.

Gala: I think I've just been - So I want to say that I was thinking this whole time about bubbling of ideology that can create this sort of flattening of human experience. But I think that if one were to apply this idea of the flattening of the human experience, what you know about what you're fighting for, what you're good at, what involves you, what affects you into a general hope, right, for the collective. Like for me, I think if I were to imagine my hope for queer people in the US, it would be the same hope that I have for people in every country, which is that they hold otherness as sacred and they continue to. And I think that when it comes to queer activism, right, like when we see it in action, the people who have made the most difference in a lot of activist spheres pushing against government have been people who have been invested in human otherness as sacred and integral. So if you think about I don't know, like what was happening in Chechnya. And so many activists, like so many Russian activists were from queer activists, were actually creating secret, like were getting people out of Chechnya, and creating like secret lives for them to live in Chechnya. Queer people are constantly in, especially in countries where queerness is criminalized, but also countries where it isn't like the US theoretically, are constantly being placed in this business to choose between this idea of being loved and being part of a nation and being themselves. Right. But ultimately, at least for the US, as an example, like queerness is a part of the national story here. It's a part of the American story, if you think about it. Like there is this idea that people inherit, right? That isn't necessarily true, that if they come here, they can be whatever they want. Right? And so, in some ways, that is like this, like false bat signal, right? Like you get to come here, and you get to be whatever you want in this country, which is inaccurate, because then you could wind up going to a nightclub with all your friends and get shot for being who you are. Right? So there's this idea, then that a lot of people who come with, like what I imagined is a true, I don't know, I don't want to give it value. But I think that queerness, or aligning oneself with queerness has to do with recognizing that it's not something that you inherit from an authority, right. And so I think that if I were to imagine a true optimistic hope it would be that queer people as they are pushed toward action, as they are pushed toward some acts of sovereignty, that they hold otherness as sacred, as opposed to falling into traps of homo-nationalism, where they can serve the nation state, but also whiteness. So queer whiteness against like, people who are anti-racist and against the carceral state.

Rebekah: Thank you so much for bringing that up. I am absolutely in love with this idea of holding otherness as sacred, you know. Because I think a lot of the issues where we get pinned against one another and trying to blame our issues on this other, there's a fear of the other. And I think that's an issue worldwide. And so if we can come to a point where we can hold otherness as sacred, I think that we can move forward to a more promising future.

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