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En tant que participant.e en ligne, vous pouvez animer des sessions, vous connecter et converser avec d'autres, et faire l'expérience directe de la créativité, de l'art et de la célébration du Forum de l'AWID. Les participant.e.s connecté.e.s en ligne bénéficieront d'un programme riche et varié, allant des ateliers et des discussions aux séances de guérison et aux spectacles musicaux. Certaines activités seront axées sur la connexion entre les participant.e.s en ligne, tandis que d'autres seront véritablement hybrides, se concentrant sur la connexion et l'interaction entre les participant.e.s en ligne et celles.ceux qui se trouvent à Bangkok.

AWID In-Person Exhibit Booth

📅Tuesday, March 12
🕒 9am-5pm EST
🏢Armenian Cultural Center, 630 2nd Ave. corner of 35th St

Les féministes affirment depuis longtemps que le privé et le personnel sont politiques. Le festival Crear, Résister, Transform a créé des espaces de discussion permettant aux féministes d'aborder les questions relatives au corps, au genre et aux sexualités, et a exploré les interconnexions entre ces questions qui sont à la fois des expériences profondément incarnées et un terrain où les droits sont constamment contestés et menacés dans la société.

Le pouvoir des mouvements féministes repose sur la façon dont nous organisons et menons des actions coordonnées, non seulement au sein de nos propres communautés et mouvements, mais aussi pour des causes et aux côtés de groupes alliés œuvrant en défense de la justice sociale. Cet espace a permis aux mouvements de partager et de renforcer mutuellement leurs stratégies d'organisation et leurs tactiques.

La pandémie sanitaire mondiale liée au COVID-19 a mis en évidence les échecs du capitalisme néolibéral comme jamais auparavant, révélé les fissures de nos systèmes ainsi que souligné la nécessité et les possibilités de forger de nouvelles réalités. La reprise économique et sociale féministe doit être le fruit de notre travail commun à toustes. Cette édition du journal, en partenariat avec Kohl : a Journal for Body and Gender Research (Kohl : une revue pour la recherche sur le corps et le genre) explorera les solutions, propositions et réalités féministes afin de transformer notre monde actuel, nos corps et nos sexualités.

Vous pouvez explorer les articles en ligne ou
Télécharger le PDF

Chapitre 4

Un réseau complexe et mouvant d’antidroits exerce une influence croissante dans les sphères internationales et les politiques locales. Souvent soutenu·e·s par des financements d’origine imprécise, ces acteur·rice·s renforcent leur impact en créant des alliances tactiques entre thématiques, régions et croyances.

Alors que les discours des fascistes et fondamentalistes sont tout à fait nationalistes, leurs assises idéologiques, alliances politiques et réseaux de financement ne connaissent pas de frontières. Parfois soutenus par des flux de financement d’origine obscure, en lien avec de grosses entreprises ou des partis d’extrême droite, ces groupes concluent des alliances stratégiques, voire avec des sous-groupes de mouvements féministes et pour les droits des femmes, dans certains cas, tout en s’éloignant d’éléments ouvertement extrêmes pour acquérir davantage de légitimité. Ces acteur·rice·s diffusent et reproduisent également partout dans le monde leur modèle d’organisation antidroits : leurs manières de faire campagne, de faire pression ou de mener des actions stratégiques en justice.

Sommaire

• CitizenGo
• Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)
• Le financement des antidroits
• Les liens entre féministes antitrans et fondamentalistes chrétien·ne·s
• Exercice : Cartographions le paysage
• Histoire du mouvement de la résistance. Catolicadas, un outil de communication efficace pour promouvoir l’égalité des genres et les droits sexuels et reproductifs

Lire le chapitre complet

¡Síguenos!

A través de eventos presenciales, lives en nuestras redes sociales, un stand de exhibición y más. Nos presentamos para convocar, amplificar y apoyar las voces y la participación de nuestra membresía y aliades.

Juntes vamos a Reclamar Nuestro Poder Feminista al elevar las alternativas y visiones feministas en torno a economías que centran los sistemas colectivos de cuidado y nutren tanto al planeta como a las personas.

¡Síguenos en las redes sociales para más detalles sobre cómo participar! Sea parte de las conversaciones utilizando los hashtags #AWIDatCSW68 y #RecuperarNuestroPoderFeminista

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Hybride comme jamais auparavant

Pour la première fois, le Forum de l'AWID propose trois modes de participation :

En personne

Les participant.e.s se réuniront à Bangkok, en Thaïlande. Nous sommes impatient.e.s de vous y retrouver!

Para compartir tu experiencia con el financiamiento de tu organización.

Always be willing to explore new experiences!

Listen here!

Tshegofatso Senne is a Black, chronically-ill, genderqueer feminist who does the most. Much of their work is rooted in pleasure, community, and dreaming, while being informed by somatic abolitionism and disability, healing, and transformative justices. Writing, researching, and speaking on issues concerning feminism, community, sexual and reproductive justice, consent, rape culture, and justice, Tshegofatso has 8 years of experience theorising on the ways in which these topics intersect with pleasure. They run their own business, Thembekile Stationery, and their community platform Hedone brings people together to explore and understand the power of trauma-awareness and pleasure in their daily lives. Tshegofatso believes deeply in the individual and collective potential of regenerative and sustainable change, pleasure, and care work.

The body. The most permanent home we have.

The body, not the thinking brain, is where we experience most of our pain, pleasure, and joy, and where we process most of what happens to us. It is also where we do most of our healing, including our emotional and psychological healing. And it is where we experience resilience and a sense of flow.

These words, said by Resmaa Menakem in his book My Grandmother’s Hands, have stayed with me.

The body; it holds our experiences. Our memories. Our resilience. And as Menakem has written, the body also holds our traumas. It responds with spontaneous protective mechanisms to stop or prevent more damage. That is the power of the body. Trauma is not the event; it is how our bodies respond to events that feel dangerous to us. It is often left stuck in the body, until we address it. There’s no talking our body out of this response – it just is.

Using Ling Tan’s Digital Superpower app, I tracked how my body felt as I travelled around different parts of my city, Johannesburg, South Africa. The app is a gesture-driven online platform that allows you to trace your perceptions as you move through locations by logging and recording the data. I used it to track my psychosomatic symptoms – physical reactions connected to a mental cause. Whether that be flashbacks. Panic attacks. Tightness in the chest. A fast heartbeat. Tension headaches. Muscle pain. Insomnia. Struggling to breathe. I tracked these symptoms as I walked and travelled to different areas in Johannesburg. And I asked myself.

Where can we be safe? Can we be safe?

Psychosomatic responses can be caused by a number of things, and some are not as severe as others. After experiencing any kind of trauma you may feel intense distress in similar events or situations. I tracked my sensations, ranked on a scale of 1-5, where 1 were the instances I barely felt any of these symptoms – I felt at ease rather than on-guard and jumpy, my breath and heart rate were stable, I was not looking over my shoulder – and number 5 being the opposite – symptoms that had me close to a panic attack.

As a Black person. As a queer person. As a genderqueer person who could be perceived as a woman, depending on what my gender expression is that day.

I asked myself.
Where can we be safe?

Even in neighbourhoods one might consider “safe,” I felt constantly panicked. Looking around me to make sure I wasn’t being followed, adjusting the way my T-shirt sat so my breasts wouldn’t show up as much, looking around to make sure I knew multiple routes to get out of the place I was should I sense danger. An empty road brings anxiety. A packed one does too. Being in an Uber does. Walking on a public road does. Being in my apartment does. So does picking up a delivery from the front of the building.

Can we be safe? 

Pumla Dineo Gqola speaks of the Female Fear Factory. It may or may not be familiar, but if you’re someone socialised as a woman, you’ll know this feeling well. The feeling that has you planning every step you take, whether you’re going to work, school, or just running an errand. The feeling that you have to watch how you dress, act, speak in public and private spaces. The feeling in the pit of your stomach if you have to travel at night, get a delivery, or deal with any person who continues to socialise as a cis man. Harassed on the street, always with the threat of violence. Us existing in any space comes with an innate fear.

Fear is both an individual and a socio-political phenomenon. At an individual level, fear can be present as part of a healthy well developing warning system […] When we think about fear, it is important to hold both notions of individual emotional experience and the political ways in which fear has been used in different epochs for control.
- Pumla Dineo Gqola, in her book Rape: A South African Nightmare

South African women, femmes, and queers know that every step we take outside – steps to do ordinary things: a walk to the shops, a taxi to work, an Uber from a party – all of these acts are a negotiation with violence. This fear, is part of the trauma. To cope with the trauma we carry in our bodies, we develop responses to detect danger – watching the emotional responses of those around us, reading for “friendliness.” We’re constantly on guard.

Day after day. Year after year. Life after life. Generation after generation.

On the additional challenge of this learned defence system, author of The Body Keeps Score, Bessel Van Der Kolk, has said

It disrupts this ability to accurately read others, rendering the trauma survivor either less able to detect danger or more likely to misperceive danger where there is none. It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability.

As Resmaa Menakem has said, trauma is in everything; it infiltrates the air we breathe, the water we drink, the foods we eat. It is in the systems that govern us, the institutions that teach and also traumatise us, and within the social contracts we enter into with each other. Most importantly, we take it with us everywhere we go, in our bodies, exhausting us and eroding our health and happiness. We carry that truth in our bodies. Generations of us have.

So, as I walk around my city, whether an area is considered “safe” or not, I carry the traumas of generations whose responses are embedded in my body. My heart palpitates, it becomes difficult to breathe, my chest tightens – because my body feels as though the trauma is happening in that very moment. I live hyper vigilant. To the point where one is either too on-guard to mindfully enjoy their life, or too numb to absorb new experiences.

For us to begin to heal, we need to acknowledge these truths.

These truths that live in our bodies.

This trauma is what keeps many of us from living the lives we want. Ask any femme or queer person what safety looks like to them and they’ll mostly share examples that are simple tasks – being able to simply live joyful lives, without the constant threat of violence. 
Feelings of safety, of comfort and ease, are spatial. When we embody our trauma, it affects the ways we perceive our own safety, affects the ways we interact with the world, and alters the ways we are able to experience and embody anything pleasurable and joyful.

We have to refuse this burdensome responsibility and fight for a safe world for all of us. Walking wounded as many of us are, we are fighters. Patriarchy may terrorise and brutalise us, but we will not give up the fight. As we repeatedly take to the streets, defying the fear in spectacular and seemingly insignificant ways, we defend ourselves and speak in our own name. 
- Pumla Dineo Gqola, in her book Rape: A South African Nightmare

Where can we be safe? How do we begin to defend ourselves, not just in the physical sense, but in the emotional, psychological, and spiritual senses? 

“Trauma makes weapons out of us all,” adrienne maree brown has said in an interview conducted by Justin Scott Campbell. And her work, Pleasure Activism, offers us multiple methodologies to heal that trauma and ground ourselves in the understanding that healing, justice, and liberation can also be pleasurable experiences. Especially those of us who are the most marginalised, who may have been raised to equate suffering with “The Work.” The Work that so many of us have gone into as activists, community builders and workers, those serving the most marginalised, The Work that we struggle in order to do, burning ourselves out and rarely caring for our minds and bodies. The alternative is becoming more informed about our trauma, able to identify our own needs, and becoming deeply embodied. That embodiment means we are simply more able to experience the world through the senses and sensations in our bodies, acknowledging what they tell us rather than suppressing and ignoring the information it is communicating with us.

Being constantly in conversation with our living body and intentionally practising those conversations connects us to embodiment more deeply; it allows us to make tangible the emotions we feel as we interact with the world, befriend our bodies, and understand all that they try to teach us. When understanding trauma and embodiment paired, we can begin to start the healing and access pleasure more holistically, healthily, and in our daily lives without shame and guilt. We can begin to access pleasure as a tool for individual and social change, tapping into the power of the erotic as Audre Lorde described it. A power that allows us to share the joy we access and experience, expanding our capacity for happiness and understanding that we are deserving of it, even with our trauma. 

Tapping into pleasure and embodying the erotic gives us the expansion of being deliberately alive, feeling grounded and stable and understanding our nervous systems. It allows us to understand and shed the generational baggage we’ve been carrying without realising; we can be empowered with the knowledge that even as traumatised as we are, as traumatised as we potentially could be in the future, we are still deserving of pleasurable and joyful lives, that we can share that power with our people. It is the community aspect that is missing from the ways we care for ourselves; self-care cannot exist without community care. We are able to feel a deeper internal trust, safety, and power of ourselves, especially in the face of future traumas that will trigger us, knowing how to soothe and stabilise ourselves. All this understanding leads us to a deep internal power that is resourced to meet any challenges that come your way.

As those living with deep generational traumas, we have come to distrust and perhaps think we are incapable of containing and accessing the power we have. In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde teaches us that the erotic offers a source of replenishment, a way to demand better for ourselves and our lives. 

For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavours brings us closest to that fullness.

I don’t say any of this lightly – I know that this is easier said than done. I know that many of us are prevented from understanding these truths, from internalising or even healing them. Resistance comes with acts of feeling unsafe, but is not impossible. Resisting power structures that keep the most powerful safe will always endanger those of us shoved to the margins. Acknowledging the traumas you’ve faced is a reclamation of your lived experiences, those that have passed and those that will follow; it is resistance that embodies that knowledge that we are deserving of more than the breadcrumbs these systems have forced us to lap up. It is a resistance that understands that pleasure is complicated by trauma, but it can be accessed in arbitrary and powerful ways. It is a resistance that acknowledges that our trauma is a resource that connects us to each other, and can allow us to keep each other safe. It is a resistance that understands that even with pleasure and joy, this is not a utopia; we will still harm and be harmed, but we will be better equipped for survival and thrive in a community of diverse care and kindness. A resistance that makes way for healing and connecting to our full human selves.

Healing will never be an easy and rosy journey, but it begins with the acknowledgment of the possibility. When oppression makes us believe that pleasure is not something that we all have equal access to, one of the ways that we start doing the work of reclaiming our full selves — our whole liberated, free selves — is by reclaiming our access to pleasure.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha has said in her article in Pleasure Activism (to which she contributed), 

I know that for most people, the words “care” and “pleasure” can’t even be in the same sentence. We’re all soaking in ableism’s hatred of bodies that have needs, and we’re given a really shitty choice: either have no needs and get to have autonomy, dignity, and control over your life or admit you need care and lose all of the above.

The power that this has? We understand our traumas, so we understand those of others; we embody the sensations we experience and tend to them rather than distract and avoid. We access pleasure in ways that make us want to share that joy with those in our communities. When we are trauma-informed, we give ourselves more room to experience all this and give ourselves, and others, permission to heal. Imagine, a community in which everyone has access, resources, and time to live pleasurable lives, in whichever way they want and deserve. In which spatial traumas are lessened because the people that occupy them are trauma-aware, are filled with a tender care. Isn’t that healing? Is that not working through generational traumas? Does that not build and sustain healthier futures for us all?

It is time we reconnected with the ancestral knowledge that we deserve to live full lives. We need to get back in touch with our natural right to joy and existing for ourselves. To feel pleasure simply for the sake of it. To not live lives of terror. It sounds radical; it feels radical. In a world where we have been socialised and traumatised to numb, to fear, to feel and remain powerless, to be greedy and live with structural issues that lead to mental illness, what a gift and wonder it is to begin to feel, to be in community with those who feel, to be healthily interdependent in, to love each other boldly. Feeling is radical. Pleasure is radical. Healing is radical. 

You have permission to feel pleasure. You have permission to dance, create, make love to yourself and others, celebrate and cultivate joy. You are encouraged to do so. You have permission to heal. Don’t bottle it up inside, don’t try to move through this time alone. You have permission to grieve. And you have permission to live.
- adrienne maree brown, “You Have Permission”

Somatic embodiment allows us to explore our trauma, work through it and make meaningful connections to ourselves and the collective. Doing this over time sustains our healing; just like trauma, healing is not a one-time only event. This healing helps move us toward individual and collective liberation. 

In “A Queer Politics of Pleasure,” Andy Johnson speaks about the ways in which the queering of pleasure offers us sources of healing, acceptance, release, playfulness, wholeness, defiance, subversion, and freedom. How expansive! When we embody pleasure in ways that are this holistic, this queer, we are able to acknowledge the limitation.

Queering pleasure also asks us the questions that intersect our dreaming with our lived realities. 

Who is free or deemed worthy enough to feel pleasure? When is one allowed to feel pleasure or pleased? With whom can one experience pleasure? What kind of pleasure is accessible? What limits one from accessing their full erotic and pleased potential?
- Andy Johnson, “A Queer Politics 
of Pleasure”

When our trauma-informed pleasure practices are grounded in community care, we begin to answer some of these questions. We begin to understand the liberating potential. As pleasure activists, this is the reality we ground ourselves within. The reality that says, my pleasure may be fractal, but it has the potential to heal not only me and my community, but future bloodlines.

I am a whole system; we are whole systems. We are not just our pains, not just our fears, and not just our thoughts. We are entire systems wired for pleasure, and we can learn how to say yes from the inside out.
- Prentis Hemphill, interviewed by Shar Jossell

There’s a world of pleasure that allows us to begin to understand ourselves holistically, in ways that give us room to rebuild the realities that affirm that we are capable and deserving of daily pleasure. BDSM, one of my deepest pleasures, allows me a glimpse into these realities where I can both feel and heal my trauma, as well as feel immeasurable opportunities to say yes from the inside out. While trauma keeps me stuck in a cycle of fight or flight, bondage, kneeling, impact, and breath play encourage me to stay grounded and connected, reconnecting to restoration. Pleasure that is playful allows me to heal, to identify where traumatic energy is stored in my body and focus my energy there. It allows me to express the sensations my body feels through screams of pain and delight, to express my no with no fear and revel in the fuck yes. With a safety plan, aftercare, and a deeper understanding of trauma, kink offers a place of pleasure and healing that is invaluable. 

So whether your pleasure looks like cooking a meal at your leisure, engaging in sex, having bed days with your people, participating in disability care collectives, having someone spit in your mouth, going on accessible outings, having cuddle dates, attending an online dance party, spending time in your garden, being choked out in a dungeon, 

I hope you take pleasure with you wherever you go. I hope it heals you and your people.

Recognising the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world. 
- Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”

Este informe recuerda y celebra el primer año del nuevo plan estratégico de AWID, cuando dimos nuestros primeros pasos hacia los resultados deseados: el apoyo a los movimientos feministas para que prosperen, la impugnación de las agendas antiderechos, y la creación conjunta de realidades feministas.

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Trabajamos con feministas para desestabilizar las agendas antiderechos, y logramos importantes victorias, peleadas y ganadas dentro del sistema de Naciones Unidas, cuando se logró la inclusión de lenguaje innovador sobre discriminación estructural, derechos sexuales y obligaciones de los Estados en una cantidad de resoluciones. Sí, el sistema multilateral está en crisis y necesita un sólido fortalecimiento, pero estas victorias son importantes, ya que contribuyen a la legitimidad de las demandas feministas, brindando a los movimientos feministas más puntos de presión y más impulso para promover nuestras agendas.

Ensayamos y pusimos a prueba distintas formas de construir conocimientos con los movimientos feministas a través de seminarios en línea, podcasts y conversaciones «en vivo». Desarrollamos guías de facilitación con educadorxs populares para recuperar saberes en pos de la justicia social y de género, incluso sobre un tópico tan aparentemente opaco como los flujos financieros ilícitos. Auspiciamos blogs y opiniones sobre cómo los grupos feministas obtienen fondos y recursos, y señalamos las amenazas que enfrentan nuestros sistemas de derechos humanos.

Dentro de AWID, pusimos en práctica y aprendimos de nuestro enfoque de liderazgo compartido, y relatamos la historia de las dificultades y tribulaciones de dirigir conjuntamente una organización global virtual. No tenemos una respuesta definitiva sobre cómo es un liderazgo feminista, pero un año más tarde sabemos que el compromiso continuo con la experimentación y el aprendizaje colectivos nos ha permitido seguir construyendo una organización  con la cual nos entusiasma contribuir.

Al recordar este año, queremos agradecer a todxs nuestrxs amigxs y promotorxs, colegas y compañerxs, que han aportado su tiempo y han compartido su bagaje de conocimiento y sabiduría con nosotrxs. Queremos agradecer a nuestrxs afiliadxs, que han ayudado a construir nuestro plan estratégico y se han unido a nosotrxs para formular demandas feministas. No podríamos hacer este trabajo sin ustedes.

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Why should I take it now?

Feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements around the world are at a critical juncture, facing a powerful backlash on previously-won rights and freedoms. Recent years have brought the rapid rise of authoritarianism, violent repression of civil society, criminalization of women and gender-diverse human rights defenders, escalating war and conflict in many parts of our world, continued perpetuation of economic injustices, and the intersecting health, ecology and climate crises.