We are a small group of feminist activists who started to organize in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in 2022 as part of the worldwide protests, sparked by the murder of Jina Amini in Iran. The organizers of the Christopher Street Day (CSD) demonstration in Bochum initially invited us to contribute to the statements read during the demo and we gladly accepted. The CSD-Demo was to be held on the 29 June in Bochum with the motto “Radikal queer – Nie wieder Faschismus!”(“Radically queer – Never again fascism!”). As organizers had required, we handed in our text in time for the sign language to be prepared in advance. Yet, on the 27 June one of the organizers approached us. She insisted how much it mattered to her that we read our statement at the demo; however, made it clear that there had been much resistance against it in the organization team and some had left in protest of our text. The demo was canceled mysteriously the night before its due date. There are endless questions in our minds, yet we wish to share this text with you as it documents a moment of solidarity, empathy, passion and love for us with regard to causes to which we find ourselves committed.
We are a small group of individuals who have lived under the yoke of the patriarchal and criminal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran within the broader racist capitalist world order. We started to organize here in NRW in 2022 as part of the worldwide protests, sparked by the murder of Jina Amini. We know, thereby, gender apartheid and violence in its multifaceted depiction, from interpersonal violence to state repression and colonialism. As feminists, we know that the struggle for queer and women’s liberation is bound to the collective struggle against capitalism, nationalism and imperialism, whether we are fighting from or within Iran, the Global North, Sudan, Kurdistan or Palestine. We believe that just as systems of oppression are intertwined, it is imperative that we link and unite our struggles. There is no liberation that only knows how to say “I” and there is no freedom unless it is for all of us. And therefore, we mourn and care for the violence people around the globe are suffering at this very moment. At a time when all should be able to celebrate Christopher Street Day in defense of the rights of queer people everywhere. And we don’t want to accept that we cannot do this together, publicly.
Emancipation will never be complete without the liberation of all bodies of all systems of oppression.
At this moment of genocide, Palestine is our point of connection and a milestone in our path of solidarity, especially in Germany with its history of antisemitism which is continuing today. Standing on the wrong side of history again, the German state is funding the state violence of Israel today to annihilate all Palestinian lives, from children to olive trees.
Here, we quote a comment from an Instagram video by the drag performer, Crystal who had boycotted Eurovision to protest the genocide happening in Gaza. “I am a Palestinian from the West Bank and I came out to a lot of friends and family and they accepted me fully. Yes, homophobia is a thing, but people make it seem like it is in our blood or something.” Is homophobia in anyone’s blood? Isn’t it what the media is giving us: All Palestinians are homophobic, Muslim, dangerous as all Kurds are terrorists. A whole community is homogenized and their “difference” from “us” is in their blood. Isn’t it the same way our society at large used to treat queer people for a long time? “Their difference” used to allow the majority to dehumanize and demonize them. They were thus undeserving of our empathy, solidarity and love.
Audre Lorde famously wrote: “There is no such thing as a single–issue struggle because we do not live single–issue lives. Holding up the struggle for queer rights in order to reproduce racist stereotypes, eventually legitimizing the killing of people, can never be a way to liberation.”
Ozi, our trans-Iranian sibling, is tired of comments, stating that in Palestine, they chuck LGBTQIA+ people off of the rooftops and we quote: “There are no rooftops left in Gaza anymore (houses are razed to the ground), there are no more closets left to come out of.” We should, by all means, condemn homophobia, transphobia and all forms of gender violence as we rightly do when talking about Hamas’s appalling attack on Israeli women. For Palestinians, living as LGBTQIA+ means living not only under patriarchy but also under settler colonialism and now a brutal war.
We talk about intersectional feminism in our resistance. Do we have to strip away queer Palestinians’ identity to be able to empathize with them and show them love? As James Baldwin said, “Love has never been a popular movement. And no one’s ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair.” Through the Jin Jiyan Azadi revolutionary movement, we were reminded that all of us, literally every single one of us deserve to love and be loved and enjoy a life of dignity and respect. So we need to redefine the Universal human being in a way that makes violence against any human impossible! We repeat: we need to redefine the Universal human being in a way that makes violence against any one of us impossible! And this impossible is more than ever relevant for the Palestinian struggle today, where the ultimate form of violence, a genocide, is happening. This is the violence that kills over 15000 children. As professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian argues, they are targeted by the politics of unchilding. Palestinian children are turned into nobodies who are unworthy of global children’s rights. They are believed to be dangerous and killable bodies needing to be caged even in and after their death. Their killing is inevitable collateral casualties.
Let’s turn a moment of potential despair into an exercise of love. What many white queer feminists lack in solidarity with Palestine here in Germany and on this very local level is Love for everyone. Christopher Street Day is an occasion to remind us that everyone beyond their gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, body shape, mental and physical ability in every geography on the earth is lovable.
Our destinies are intertwined. We recognize ourselves in solidarity with all struggles across the globe, from Balochistan to Sudan, from Afghanistan to Congo, from Palestine to Kurdistan. Let’s make Love a popular movement everywhere!
We chant Jin Jiyan Azadî – in our thousands, and in our millions – for the freedom of our bodies, desires and destinies until Palestine is free! Free Palestine, biji Kurdistan, Jin Jiyan Azadî!
