Why Feminism(s) Had No Chance to Be Taken Seriously –
|
Read the text (you can also listen to the audio (sent to you via email and/or Moodle site (please contact me if you do not have the audio files)
Follow the links and the extra materials to know more about the points of argumentations. Answer the question at the end of the lesson? |
1. No country for women. Introduction.
In writing, produced by women, pride manifests itself, disregarding humility imposed on women for centuries
(Krystyna Kłosińska, 2001)
No country for women (To nie jest kraj dla kobiet) – says the title of the 2017 article in Polish weekly, Polityka - paraphrasing the Joel and Ethan Coens’ neo-Western crime thriller, No Country for Old Men (To nie jest kraj dla starych ludzi). Indeed, Katarzyna Zdanowicz, the author, sees the experience of women in Poland in the thriller-like setting taking into consideration: the appallingly weak system of protection for victims of violence, lack of legal and institutional shielding and no satisfactory help for the victims of rapes, a lack of abortion rights, no rights for the dignified hospital care for violated women, along with miserable state-based provision of care for pregnant women, and no decent care for old women, or understanding of the needs of elderly members of the population.
Poland seems to be a particularly tough country for women. This became clearly apparent in October 2016, when thousands and thousands of Polish women dressed in black, carrying black umbrellas, went out into the streets of Polish cities to demonstrate against the radicalization of 1993 abortion law, a legal move proposed in the Spring of 2016 – these protests, known as Black Protests, found their way onto the front pages of all world’s magazines.[1] Polish women had to unite in marching together and fight for their basic rights in their own homeland, rather than be forced to give birth even in cases of pregnancies resulting from rape or incestuous relationship, or else even if the foetus is not developing properly, or else the pregnancy is a threat to the woman’s life. Poland is no country for women, or – as the title of a popular 2001 book about women in Polish political life indicates - Polish public life is a World Without Women.[2] In this talk I will review the past two decades which lead to this “world without women” in Poland and we ask why it is still the case – a world in which feminism and women-centered activities are still treated with mistrust, rather than enthusiasm, support and understanding. We look into the notion of feminism(s) and their aims as emerging in Poland since the 1990s set against a series of cliché views concerning feminist agendas, resulting both from Poland's Communist past and its attitude to the so called “bourgeois” feminism of the 1930s and then 1970s, as well as numerous sexist phenomena present in popular culture since the 1980s which have affected Polish cultural memory. The general negative attitude to feminism in the 1990s jeopardized any chance of serious discussion about women’s rights and actual recognition of a situation that required an increase in awareness and tolerance towards issues such as gender identity, the LGBTQ+ communities’ rights, gendered health and safety issues (access to contraception, sexual education, abortion, pregnancy support) and the issue of domestic violence. I see the above-mentioned issues as key-points which mark the hot-spots of conflict directly connected to broadly understood feminism and feminist agendas. [1] Very interesting publication of stories/private testimonies collected by Kazimiera Szczuka: Mój #czarnyprotest (2017). [2] The book by Agnieszka Graff in 2001. See also Graff 2008. It is important to stress that the history of feminism in Poland is very complex. See: Chowaniec 2012, 2012a. It is also crucial to stress that Polish women got their political, active and passive rights immediately after the end of WWI, making Poland one of the most progressive countries from a global perspective, and also the Interwar time witness very dynamic development of women’s movement. |
|
2. The 1990s and development of feminism(s) and LGBTQ languages
There is no doubt that the 1990s witness the rise of feminist interests, especially in academic circles: the Western scholarship has been brought and adapted, discussion on the women’s literature, women’s creativity has been flourishing. The very division of sex/gender has been introduced to cultural studies (mainly in literary studies, before cultural studies started to emerge). Despite the most conservative move on abortion and introduction of the restrictive anti-abortion law, feminism and gender studies seemed to be on the rise, including the development of feminist language, publications, dictionaries, and including the fact that academic feminism was popularized. Also the feminist social initiatives were dynamic, there were publications about feminism, there appeared eFKa, the first feminist centre for women, the first feminist magazine Pełnym Głosem (In Full Voice), the first discussion debates, lesbian groups and awareness raising activities. There is also a strong artistic presence of feminist sensitivity, namely and most prominently the art of Katarzyna Kozyra, and her 1996 Olympia,[1] demystifying illness and stressing the fact that it also has its gendered aspects. Another emancipatory art work of the artist were her projects, Łaźnia (Bath House, 1997) and Łaźnia męska (Man’s Bathhouse, 1999), juxtaposing pictures from public bathhouses with classic art works and this way exposing the workings of the gender stereotype and canons of beauty. I witness this emancipatory movements as a student: one of the first feminist events I went to as a newcomer from the small town to Kraków in 1996 was a meeting with lesbian poets at eFKa. It felt as a revelation to me, then, coming from a little town where staying in the closet was an obvious (and only) choice, or not even a choice, but something one did without considering any other options. 1996 was also a year when In Full Voice, the first feminist magazine (later re-names as Zadra) published the debate on how strong is feminism in Poland. This debate is mentioned by Agnieszka Graff in very popular article Lost between the Waves? The Paradoxes of Feminist Chronology and Activism in Contemporary Poland (2001), where she suggested that feminist historiography in the West must be different from the one in the Communist countries[2]. The Polish feminism especially resisted the metaphor of waves, Graff claimed, since the waves has not really happened, or not in the same way. While arguing this, Graff referred to the 1996 discussion, in which majority of the discussants were skeptical about the strength and effectiveness of feminism in Poland (following also the debate of impossibility of feminism after communism, Grabowska 2018, Goldfarb 1997, Snitow 1993, Watson 1993). They want more, they expected more. But for me the very feminist magazine and women’s centers, possibility for women to be openly gay have already been a sign for the great chance, for the better future, as Graff summarized the situation in Poland of 2001:
"no doubt that [feminism] does exists in today’s Poland. It is a social movement, a style of thinking, a media debate, a much-ridiculed stereotype, a “fashionable” topic in women’s magazines, as well as a thriving academic field. There are several gender studies programs (Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź) as well as dozens of women’s centers and NGOs. There are countless discussion circles, workshops, self-defense classes, a nation-wide coalition for bringing women into politics, a feminist bookshop on the web, a group called Ulica Siostrzana [“Sister Street”] organizing summer camps for women, and a feminist theater collective. There are feminist street demonstrations attended by hundreds, and recently even thousands, of supporters, and feminist conferences to choose from almost every month. We have five feminist magazines ranging from the academic to the popular, as well as innumerable zines, websites and organizational bulletins. Last, but not least, there is a long list of feminist books on topics from women’s literary history to politics – books numerous and popular enough to have triggered the appearance of shelves marked “gender” or “women” in many bookshops."[3] The late 1990s and beginning of 2000s, the days of pre-accession to EU was also the time for “meeting the requirements”, introducing the gender equality policies in the work law, creating plenipotentiaries for equality between men and women, initiating the campaigns for increasing the visibility of lesbian and gay communities (such as Niech nas zobaczą/ Let Them See Us, 2003). It is also a time of funding for gender studies: university courses, Ph.D. research on feminist archeology of women’s and feminist movements, gender seminars, and publications. Development of language: equal chances, gender transparent regulation, gender theory, queer theory, coming out, women’s support groups. In many cases the gender sensitive language used English vocabulary. There are annual feminist demonstrations, the Manifas, days against homophobia, Culture for Tolerance (Kultura dla Tolerancji) festivals, LGBT Months, feminist Internet platforms. [1] The curatorial website: http://katarzynakozyra.pl/prace/440-2/ accessed January 15, 2018. [2] Magdalena Grabowska in her recent book, Zerwana genealogia. Działalność społeczna i polityczna kobiet po 1945 roku a współczesny polski ruch kobiecy (2018) critically refers to the comparison of the waves and West/East discourse on women’s movements that puts the Western model at the point of comparison to the others. [3] Graff 2001, p. 101/102. |
Agnieszka Graff's article from Journal of International Women's Studies
Ulica SiostrzanaFeminotekaMANIFASKampania Przeciw HomofobiiSee also HERE |
3. Something in the air: SEX MISSION and their stereotype-creation
Yet, there was something in the air, a popular attitude towards feminism was not even negative but patronisingly dismissive in the 1990s. Why? I think the answer lies in antifeminist popular culture, so easily assuming that feminist goal is a simple shift of power. When thinking about feminist voices seen through popular culture in Poland, one immediately thinks about the title of the 1984 film Seksmisja (Sex Mission) directed by Juliusz Machulski - a cinematic speculation about the world without men after a nuclear catastrophe: in this world women do not need men for reproduction, they control their sexuality by pills, and they re-write the history as the triumphs of women. In the world of Sex Mission two men (previously hibernated) are brought back to life and they ultimately “save” the world from the only-women tyranny (the synonym of feminism, and also of communism). Feminism is here seen as disturbing the “natural” (heterosexual, masculine power) order. The real secret of popularity of Sex Misson as a comedy if the fact that it uses subtle critical references to communism: the women-only society is based on totalitarian rules, with a strong dictatorship, all the time scared of the possibility of political and ideological rebels. The comedy, taking a theme of women-only dystopia, in fact, exercise the dog-whistle politics, which made it an unquestionable cinematic hit of 1980s.
Michulski’s films offers many popular jokes (mainly thanks to the fantastic actors' performances) and creates prejudices, which were in popular imagination taken as facts about gendered power relations, which – once distributed according to feminist principles – would lead to catastrophe. Not surprisingly, in the popular imagination, the feminism - associated with Sex Mission - was a subject of mockery. Yet, Sex Mission, indeed became a cult film. It also gave subsequent generations an overview of allegedly feminist utopian and aggressive attitudes towards men, and towards the world itself. Sex Mission became a mine of quotations, jokes, a satire of feminist goals, such as a quote from the film when one woman claims that “Copernicus was also a woman” (a joke which has given the postgraduate Gender Studies in Warsaw an image of Copernicus with a pink elements as a logo for advertisement). Sex Mission as dystopian story is based on mythical essentialist assumptions, where history and tradition legitimize some “natural” order. Even a genuinely feminist dystopian text, like Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915), a truly old school feminist utopia, may be accused of this conservatism, but Sex Mission is a parody of feminist thinking, a powerful, influential parody, to show that the world without men is disturbingly boring[1] and that power, true and sustainable control, belongs to men. What’s more interesting is that the tradition of the dystopian world “à rebour” has been particularly popular recently. It is here worth mentioning a 2016 novel by Naomi Alderman, Power, an excellent work of speculative fiction, detailing what would happen if girls and women would be given power within society, such as ability to electrocute by their hands, and how this power would come to be abused. In 2014 the viewers of You Tube could see a very popular French short film, Oppressed Majority by Eléonore Pourriat, about the change of power, a simple but clever representation showing a world when the sexes change roles. This film tackles the key theme of rape as social taboo and connects to it trauma, especially as vulnerable victims faces patriarchal institutions. This film is especially interesting because it may be seen as a direct reference to one of the first feminist films, dystopian world of women, Alice Guy Blaché, the first woman director, The Consequences of Feminism (1906)[2]. Both these French films expose the patriarchy of everyday life, but creating the world upside-down, they expose its mechanism of marginalization, oppression, dismissiveness and the consent to violence against the weaker party. Sex Mission was created for one purpose - to present that only heterosexual, men-centered and men-controlled society and gender relation (like love) is “normal’, acceptable and desired. The crucial questions when looking at dystopian narratives seem to be here, of course, the issue of execution of power and the question how power can be justly disseminated, or indeed if it can, or is it always the case that the power needs its vassals? The dystopia of Sex Mission exposes yet another vital element of the contemporary world (the world that is ended in the dystopian narrative): the uneven gendered character of the existential fear. Men in these dystopian narratives live in fear of women (which makes the narrative so powerfully disturbing), while in actual reality women live in constant fear and this is normalized (uneven treatment at school, uneven treatment in family, uneven treatment towards her bodily development, fear of sexual abuse, fear of unwanted pregnancy, fear of decay of the body). Agnieszka Graff in her book Świat Bez Kobiet (A World without Women) entitled the introductory chapter as Patriarchy after Sex Mission (based on her 1999 essay published in Gazeta Wyborcza , 19-20 June). The article followed Peggy Watson (1993), the British political scientist thesis, in suggesting that feminism in post-communist states had a very specific starting point: communism itself was advocating the de-politicisation of gender, the equality of the sexes was a part of ideology, but it has never translated into actual equal policies being enshrined in law. After the end of communism the old, traditional order between sexes needed to be restored, and it was seen in Poland through the fact that law against the legal abortion became one of the first issues. “Power must be exercised over someone; the power to feel power must imposed it over someone. In post-communist democracies women were found to be that ‘someone’”, states Graff.[3] And the popular culture reinforcing the traditional intuition, following the assumption that the world is normal when it is as has always been. The traditional/conservative argument helped in the exercise of power over women and along with women against any kind of gender and sexual minorities. Those popular clichés involved in thinking about feminism can have an impact, an impact bigger than academic speculation, bigger that the political changes in equality measurements. This became visible in 2013/2014 – the time of the ridiculous debate on gender as dangerous, disturbing concept, the beginning of so called “gender wars” (Chowaniec 2018, Duda 2016). This homophobic, transphobic, antifeminist “wars against gender” exposed how marginal was feminism. It is the time when “gender” is “accused” by Church as anti-family ideology, and becomes a mysteriously monstrous term, and there was no mechanism, no general education that could have stop the spreading of the popular belief that gender is simply threatening. And this absurd social debate exposed the actual lack of language, the lack of communication. All these vocabulary since 1990s: gender, queer, coming-outs, intersectionalities, inclusive politics appear to be oblique in Poland and become another closet for what was supposed to be part of new transparent politics, politics for more inclusive, open, tolerant, less hetero-normative society. [1] See interview with Janusz Michulski, Jestem feministą (I am a feminist) in Wysokie Obcasy, 22.04.2017, where he state that the initial script with no men was just boring and only when men appeared in the story it created a needed conflict. Interesting analysis of the gender relations in Sex Misja offer Błażej Warkowski (see his book, Różowy język, 2013), where he shows how heteronormative from the start is the world of Sex Misja, Women are controlling their desires by pills (it is also the political allusion, as to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and many others, for example interesting Swedish author Karin Boye, Kallocain, 1940). Warkocki also pays attention to the main leader of the dystopian only-women world, who turns out to be a men in disguise, a queer figure, sort of a drag queen, which in a way plays a role of proving that the only normality is within the heterosexual society. See. Warkocki 2013, pp. 55-57. [2] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4w2GPMbvC8 (accessed January 19, 2019). [3] Graff 2001, p. 19. |
|
4. "Sins" of Polish feminisms
What are the reasons why feminisms could not work? Weak state with no civic tradition of women’s and feminist activism, the conservative popular culture, pre-transitional myths and shortcomings on what is feminist and equality movement, and - on the other hand - the quite straightforward colonization of feminist theory over post-communist countries (the Western feminist third-wave theory could not possible match the Polish movement that has the second wave ideals). There is also a problem of language, the Anglicization of discourses, lack of language, lack of respectful communication, and perhaps lack of strong, united communities made Polish feminisms (liberal, conservative) very weak and unconvincing. Perhaps, these factors made Polish feminism weak and expose it to current backlash. In the controversial, somewhat conservative article in Wysokie Obcasy from March 2015, Natalia Waloch-Matlakiewicz explains “why we are pissed of with feminists” (“Dlaczego wkurzają nas feministki”) enumerating the “sins” of Polish feminism. The list shows that not only Sex Mission created the stereotypes, but that those stereotypes can create a goggle through which we analyze the reality, even when we are sympathizing with feminism. Let’s see what Waloch-Matlakiewicz called “sins: fist it was a method, the negative and angry attitude seems to be problematic by contributing to building an image of a feminist as a shrew. The feminist constant provocation and scandals seem to be the problem of Polish feminist. Another problem is a hierarchy of problems. The author of the article accused feminist to deal with the selective issues: it is argued that feminist agenda was rather the cultural studies and symbolic deconstruction then the actual anti-liberal politics that would aim at creating a sphere of help for women (kindergarten, preschools). Hence, feminists were often absent where they should offer their solidarity: for example fight for the right to alimony from state for single parents). Polish feminism was seen by Waloch-Matlakiewicz as elitist, aim at intellectuals, excluding the non-academic circles and the Catholic circles. There was no women solidarity. The thesis of the article seem to be that the good feminist should rather get rid of the angry attitude and stop being a fighter but the all-embracing activist. Even through, I do not like the religious connotation of the word “sins”, this enumerations is very interesting: indeed it points out weak sides of feminism: lack of solidarity, no united fronts, visibility rather in cultural sphere then the social issue, but it forgets of two problems: feminism has always been marginalized and never had a chance in decisive levels therefore the provocation, ad-hoc activism, and scandals was a method, it is a method of the weak, but there was very little to choose from: the social anger is a result of a serious mistreatment and it can also be a powerful methods. Perhaps, there is time to express solidarity with the anger?
|
POLKI
|
5. Towards the Deconstruction of Heteronormativity and Positive Anger.
What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love, which takes a thousand forms
(quote from the film Mädchen in Uniform, 1931)
Feminisms as an emancipatory project for women in the last three decades did not succeed at making Poland the more women-friendly place. Polish women and feminist organization faces growth in homophobia, the lack of any non-binary sexual education, the issue of domestic violence, the high level sexual harassment, inequality at work, in business, in academia. I think that the future has no other option but witness the re-birth of feminism or many new feminisms. The contemporary movements, such as social mobilization and what we witnessed in the Black Protests 2016-2017, present the scale, in which that women’s movement can be developed. The 2017 Women’s Congress in Poznań (an initiative, probably the biggest association and movement now in Poland, organising the annual meeting since 2009) was celebrating The Black Protest, and out of the talks, debates, exhibitions one could clearly see the level of recognition of the situation, growing healthy anger and mobilization to action. As it was seen in the exhibition curated by Izabela Kowalczyk, Polki, Patriotki, Rebeliantki (Polish Women, Patriots, Rebels, Poznań, 2017). As the curatorial text had it, the exhibition was triggered by the anger of Polish women against their treatment by politics:
The impulse for organizing this exhibition was the events that took place during 2016, when plans to tighten Poland’s anti-abortion law were made public. This triggered a wave of protests unprecedented in scale (among these were In Our Cause on 9 April 2016, the Black Protest, and the Polish National Women’s Strike on October 3, 2016). These demonstrations brought together atheists and Catholics, anarchists and women belonging to various political parties, the wealthy and the poor, the parents of disabled children, single mothers, people involved in culture, students and a great number of other diverse individuals. These people were expressing their anger, and the massive scale of demonstrations across the country showed the government that it only takes a spark to ignite the masses. [1] The exhibition aimed at exposing and mocking the lack of women in the national discourses (despite the fact how many times it is stress in political discourse that women are important)[2], the objectification and appropriation of women’s body and does it in the interesting, brave, ironic and very powerful way. The exhibition was the result of an anger against this silences, lacks, gaps. Anger is a tricky but worth analyzing strategy. The women’s use of anger as a vengeance has its cultural connotation; of course, woman’s anger is often portrayed in connection to the Greek mythological Erinyes (Furies), the Greek deities of vengeance who take the vengeance on men whosoever sworn a false oath. The notion of falsehood and disloyalty is essential here when we think about the use of anger in the feminist movement: it is anger against injustice, and men are here seen not as the co-victims the sexist, patriarchal structure but the very agents of it, the agent who betrayed women. Anger in this understanding is an awareness of unjust gender relation, a strategy aiming at disclosing the mistreatments of women in society. Women’s anger expose also heteronormativity of culture: women are treated as object of desire of men, who – as the agents, subjects - feels entitled to posit themselves above the object of desire. Such anger as strategy can be seen in many of the feminist movement, in the European and the world’s suffragists movement. Anger is a method, a strategy, which – through popular culture, like the Sex Mission, gave birth to the stereotype of angry feminist. Such anger can be traced in the first seriously politically involved lesbian community in 1970-1971 in Washington DC, the Furies (who created the magazine, called The Furies, Goddesses of Vengeance: a new lesbian/feminist monthly magazine). The Furies Collective[3] was an exclusively lesbian collective. The Furies have been revolutionary: they wanted the decisive change in terms of education, sexuality, reproduction and it was also a strongly anti-capitalist movement. It was seen as separatists, as hurting the women movement, the “lavender menace” (“we can’t have it”, said Betty Friedan on behalf of the NOW, National Organisation of Women). The Furies Collective story is the metaphor of the ultimate rejection of everything which is associated with patriarchy. The first line of the magazine reads: “a lesbian is a rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion.” Interestingly enough, the first Polish lesbian magazine is also called furia (fury), Furia Pierwsza (The First Fury), created by Olga Stefaniuk in the late 1990s. These coincidental titles of lesbian magazines, named after the goddess of vengeance expose the position of a Lesbian as a sign in society. An angry lesbian is here the sign of ultimate marginalization by society and the need of reclaiming one’s space. Fury, the anger, the rage and disobedience are at the same time the emotions of the vulnerable, those who are violated, whose boundaries has been trespassed, whose who need solidarity. In this solidarity it is the weakest and the most marginalized in the society that should be located at the center and as such placed as a measurement of acceptance and tolerance, perhaps this way even the feminists will measure their prejudices. Let’s have a lok at the recent lesbian feminist initiative, Lesbijka Inspira (Lesbian Inspiration). In September 2017, one of the most important online platform, a feminist foundation, FEMINOTEKA, gave space to an online action to increase a visibility of lesbians in Polish public debates and life. The initiative was entitled: Lesbian Inspiration/Lesbijska Inspira[4], a Manifesto against complete invisibility of lesbian issues, personalities and themes. The initiative met with constantly repeated argument that it is lesbians’ responsibility to do something about it rather than count on the solidarity voice. The leitmotivs of anger can be seen in all the contributions in the Lesbijka Inspira. The first response to the Manifest was a creation of a butch character by the artist Beata Sosnowska.[5] In the few drawings the character both tells how she is present everywhere (as lesbian can be everywhere, both on the left and the right side of political arena), how she wants to do everything what other people do, and how often she is rejected, also by other lesbians. Nevertheless, she is determined to claim hersef as a being in 100 per cents (hence her name Stuprocenta, the feminine version of “sto procent”, 100 %). The manifesto and Beata Sosnowska cartoon have been a result of recent article (rather like set of interviews/statements) with the leading lesbian figures in Polish public life (though still invisible figures and known only by “wtajemniczonych” (the informed), such as the other activists or academics working in LGBTQ issues or other engaged in social or scholarly debate lesbians). In these interviews authors openly stated the marginalisation of lesbians in both homophobic discourse and the LGBTQ discourses. Title (or titles) of this set of statements: “Why there are no lesbians? / Dlaczego nie ma lesbijek”, and then in online version: “Men, make some space for us”/ Faceci zróbcie miejsce…”[6] already expose the main political argument: straight or gay, the world is still masculine. While we, for example, look into the cinematic lesbian history in Poland, we see how underrepresented they are in Polish reality. The very first East European mainstream lesbian film is Another Way, a 1982 Hungarian film directed by Károly Makk, film that aimed at talking about a taboo theme of Hungarian Revolution and used the tabooed lesbianism as a smoke cover. Yet, this film dates the first mainstream lesbian erotic scene beautifully played by two Polish actresses Grazyna Szapołowska and Jadwiga Jankowska Cieślak. And it is more than 50 years after the first Western lesbian film if we count from 1931 in Germany Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform/Girls in Uniform (in 1961 William Wyler makes a similar theme film, The Children’s Hour, in UK released as The Loudest Wisper, with main characters played by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine). The very first Polish lesbian film was released last year, 2018 film Nina by Olga Chajdas. It is first lesbian film, not because the lesbians couple appear in it, but because lesbian love, relationship is not only at the center of the plot, but also brings up many lesbian life problems, like the only-women clubs or public spaces, kindergartens, openness to same-sex relationship or art. I mention Nina as a symptomatic phenomenon to see how slowly the actual emancipation in action comes in Poland, especially in such male dominated sphere as the cinema business. By the “actual” emancipation “in action”, I mean the active initiative to deconstruct the heteronormative binary gender project of society, like the queer films, feminist art exhibitions, open to non-binary education school projects, queer public festivals, feminist academic courses. Some of them happened as I mentioned in the article, mainly in the late 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. Yet, they often were too Westernized, following the latest queer jargon (transnational queer discourse), elitist rather than projects aimed at changing the consciousness of ordinary recipients, projects aiming at increasing (or creating) the visibility of minority groups, and thus to seek for them the language of description and, therefore, understanding and acceptation. The foreign language (mainly English based terms) created the illusion that LGBTQ problems were always like “imports from the West,” which of course was used by the so called “gender enemies”. Poland needs its own stories to make the non-heteronormativity a norm: Polish stories, where the characters will have normal jobs and dreams everyone can relate to. Therefore, Nina is a particularity interesting debut film, somehow unnoticed and little-reviewed in Polish media, yet, it is a crafty project, in which the interesting main plot (a middle-age woman, Nina, falls in love with a young girl whom she initially wants to hire as a surrogate mother for herself and her husband) in connected to many actual problems of Polish context: the presence of Catholic church in your life - if not personal, the professional life, the conservatism of the parents and their resistance to teacher’s innovative methods (like inviting pupils to the feminist art exhibitions), the lack of spaces and child care for lesbian fife style. Poland, as many other countries, or as every country, need a national language of emancipation, it needs its own language of non-binary relationships, its own history of non-heteronormative thinking, and most of all the current stories and narratives, only then the translational cooperation would makes sense, and the transnational dialogue will be equal. Over 25 years ago in one of the first exclusively feminist issues of academic magazines, in Teksty Drugie[7], Halina Filipowicz, was advocating the similar thesis, when looking into feminist reading of literature not as a labelling essentially women’s writing but as a tool for exposure of the gender relations presented in the literature and literary world. Filipowicz presents the characteristic of Polish literature with its national-liberation movement of the 19th century and its patriarchal characteristic. Yet, she rightly stresses that: “We cannot retouch our historical experience - even if the researcher’s field of interest is ‘women’s literature.’ Anyhow, why retouch? Instead of adapting Polish literature to the patterns developed by Western feminists, it is worth using our cultural ‘foreignness’ and our stigma of national liberation movement”[8] The film Nina shows to deconstruct one’s historical prejudices is to tell a new story but enrooted in this tradition. Yet, feminist cannot be after of being radical, sometime the anger is a source of powerful energy. And there is plenty to be angry for in Poland, perhaps no country for women. Time to re-claim the anger as a positive reaction for injustice. Perhaps following the Furies Collective from America of 1970s. Perhaps, learning from the national/country-based stories, like Nina by Chajdas, it is a time for a constructive and positive anger. And perhaps following the example of Nina, as the first lesbian film, the lesbian and queer figure can be a proposition for the future to challenge again and again the traditional world until all gender identities and their basic safety will be secured, where health and well-being will be everybody’s priority for everybody. London/Stockhom, 2019. [1] See Kowalczyk, 2017, in: http://www.arsenal.art.pl/en/exhibitions/polki-patriotki-rebeliantki/ [2] See: Graff 2011, also Monika Świerkosz, 2014 writes about the myths of Polish Mother as a figure of strength and power of Polish women: “The figure of the Polish Mother, to which opposition (anti-communist - UCh) activists appealed, was used to stress nonsense of feminist efforts to grant women democratic rights to equality - after all, power and respect in Polish tradition have always been assigned to them. (…) [T]his personification of female / maternal strength was used to actually deprive women from autonomy and weaken their political agency….” p. 286. [3] The Furies Collective: Lesbian Seperatists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tz9L6NNk0 [4] See the website of the initiative here http://feminoteka.pl/lesbijska-inspira-manifest/ [5] The website of the first artwork by Beata Sosnowska: http://feminoteka.pl/lesbijska-inspira-beata-sosnowska-superprocenta-2/ [6] See Konarzewska, 2017 at http://replika-online.pl/faceci-zrobcie-miejsce/ [7] Teksty Drugie: “Śmiech Feministek”, 1993, no. 4-5-6. I am quoting after Nasiłowska 2001. [8] Filipowicz 2001, p. 234. It is also worth mentioning Inga Iwasiów thesis from her book Rewindykacje, 2002: “the time has come to look for ‘feminism in Polish’, above what has been learned from foreign languages and cultures,” p. 9. |
QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS (CHOOSE ONE, NO MORE THAN 600 WORDS):
|