Call for contributions for an antipatriarchy-antiheterosexism focus at this year's European PGA conference in France
We invite you to contribute to nine days of debate, learning and - hopefully - organizing around questions of gender, the fight against male domination and heterosexism - this summer, from Saturday 19 to Sunday 27 August 2006, in the context of the decentralized part of the European PGA conference.
What is PGA?
PGA is a coordination tool of various groups and persons all over the world involved in anticapitalist and antiauthoritarian struggles and practices. Since 1997 the conferences have been occasions to meet for a few days, exchange knowledge and skills, make connections and organise for common actions. For more info see: www.pgaconference.org.
The 2006 conference will take place in two stages. The first will be a decentralized meeting in at least five different locations (urban squats, rural collectives...). The second stage will be a five-day meeting of all participants in one central location, with the aim of bringing the discussions together.
At the last meeting of the network STAMP (the convenors of this year's conference) on 8 April 2006 in Toulouse it was decided to create an antipatriarchy-antiheterosexism focus in one of the locations of the decentralized part of the conference. At the same time the intention to treat questions of gender, male domination and heterosexism as transversal thematics present in all debates was affirmed.
For an antipatriarchy-antiheterosexism focus:
Despite worldwide struggles of the movements of women, gays, lesbians, queers, transgendered people, intersexuals..., their oppression remains. Ideologies that legitimise the exploitation and oppression of women abound. For too many people, the oppression and marginalisation of all those who don't conform to dominant norms of gender and sexuality is invisible, or appears natural.
The forms of consciousness that enable this blindness are unchallenged in their global effectiveness. And in many radical and emancipatory movements the way gender and sexuality are dealt with is completely insufficient.
In our opinion, most radical, emancipatory, subversive movements the world over still think and act way too much in national frameworks. We believe much much more needs to be done in the way of international, transnational, antinational... meetings, debates and organisation.
Racisms, xenophobia, antisemitism, patriarchal gender relations, heterosexism, capitalism, state and nation exist world-wide – therefore the struggles against them must be global.
All the different forms of social power and domination are inseparably linked. The struggles against them must therefore also be linked.
The social construction of sexuality and gender takes different forms not only in different societies, but also in different scenes and movements. Accordingly the theoretical and practical critique of gender and sexuality must take different shapes.
So: What we want is to learn from each other, to inspire each other, to discuss and argue and develop new ideas and kinds of political action on an international level.
Some proposed topics:
- Gender, precarity and migration
- Orientalism, racism and sexism
- Feminist movements and histories
- Learning from Black and Third World feminisms
- Concrete solidarity across borders Work, exchange, exploitation: economic, emotional, sexual
- Gender and: love, sex, affective relations
- Transgender politics
- The construction of identities and queer reflexions
- Antisemitism and gender
- Feminisms and ways of life
- Critiques of the idea of nature
- Body norms and body politics
- Profeminist men's groups/initiatives
Contribute!
If you want to propose a topic, or you want to take responsibility for a certain discussion, lead a workshop, show a film, share your experiences, in other words, if you want to concretely contribute to this project in one way or another, contact us, the preparation group, at the following address: stamp-feminisms@pgaconference.org