THE PROJECT
the aim
#FEELTHEAILENI is a non formal educative project, that try to provide a chance to experience and discover, through movement, contemporary dance, the drag art and photography a creative way of showing hate speech and hate crime targeting people and organizations in Europe, based on sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics.
A laboratory of two days, that tries to raise awareness and understanding, promoting equality and counter misleading or false narratives, crucial, as paradigm, shift in social and cultural understandings of gender equality and the rights and freedoms of LGTBQ+ community.
At the end of this project, the participants will have the chance to be audience of a open performance that implement all the knowledge that was teaching in the laboratory, experiencing the performing art as a form of social activism.
THE DNA
Over the past few decades, significant progress has been achieved towards making equal rights a reality for LGTBIQ+ people throughout Europe. This significant advance is today under threat by hate speech, violence and hate crime occur in a broader context in which highly conservative movements seek to stifle the identity and realities of all those who challenge social constructs which perpetuate gender inequalities and gender-based violence in our societies.
The trend of politician verbally attacking LGTBQ+ people is reported to have grown significantly. We can find examples as Armenia in 2018, when two proposals were introduces in the parliament, one proposing to make it criminal offence for persons for the same sex kiss in public and another one was to make it an administrative offence to “propagate non-traditional sexual relations amongst children”.
In Turkey, in 2016 the authorities restrict LGTBQ+ events till 2019. A pride event of that year was violently dispersed by the police, where 22 people were arrested, and this also repeat in the following years.
In Chechnya, in 2017, was some claims about the abuse of the authority against LGTBQ+ community, promoting a campaign of persecution, including cases of abduction, arbitrary detention and torture of men presumed to be gay.
In Poland during the 2020 presidential campaign, the incumbent candidate expressly denied LGTBQ+ people’s dignity, equality and humanity, stating, “they try to tell us that [LGTBQ+] people are people, but it is an ideology”.
In base to protect minors, new laws are promoted, preventing access to objective information on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics, that place young people at far greater risk of harm, and do nothing to break down stigma and create a more open, accepting society.
Murders motivated by anti-LGTBQ+ hate also occur. To mention only a few cases reported over the recent years, at least four transgender women were killed in Turkey in 2018. In 2019, a young lesbian was killed in Italy by a man seeking revenge after she refused his advances. In 2020 the TGEU reported the murder of 11 trans people in Europe.
In 2021, in Latavia a gay man died after experiencing burns to 85% of his body, when his clothes were soaked with fuel and set alight. In the same year, in Spain, a gay young man was beaten to death. In 2022 two gay men were shoot outside LGTBQ+ bar in Slovakia, by the son of a former candidate for a far-right political party. Also, in Armenia a couple decided to commit suicide together after receiving multiple hate messages in their social media.
In Italy, the largest LGTBQ+ right group, Arcigay, registered more than 100 hate crime and discrimination cases each year. In October of 2021, a proposed law that could criminalize violence and hate speech against LGTBQ+ community was bring down by the senate. And this year a trans girl in Italy, decided to commit suicide, after feeling emotional abandoned in her own house as in the school.
Actions to raise awareness and understanding, promote equality and counter misleading or false narratives are crucial, as paradigm shifts in social and cultural understanding of gender equality and the rights and freedoms of LGTBQ+ community are still needed in many societies to achieve genuine equality for LGTBQ+ people.
