Spain - Far-right Vox Party wins seats in Spanish region for first time since Franco.
More than ever we need loud feminist (and lesbian!) voices in Europe. In Spain, for the first time since Franco, a far right party gained some seats in a Parliament. Vox is anti-feminist (against abortion rights, for the eradication of punitive laws against gender based violence, etc.) and hateful towards LGBTIQ+ people. EL*C is dedicated in its daily work and during the April 2019 conference in Kyiv to make it clear that lesbian voices have a strong role to play against the far right movement gripping Europe.
Here are the words of one of Spanish EL*C board member and Dykerctor Kika Fumero:
« I am so concerned about the situation in Andalucía, a 40-years-of-socialism region that has been hardly shook yesterday by the extreme right-wing party, VOX, which has gained 12 seats at the Parliament (that means 395.978 votes, so the 10,97% of the whole Adalucian population). It really is an alarming situation, specially if we take into account that if the other two right-wing parties (PP and Ciudadanos) make alliance with VOX (which is hardly probably), right-wing parties will govern and all the equality and LGBTI (social and educational) programs risk to be eradicated. »
France - Medically assisted procreation : on how French Republic discriminate lesbians.
For six years now in France, there is an ongoing discussion whether to allow or not medically assisted procreation (PMA) for lesbians. For now, it is still restricted to women in heterosexual partnerships. Emmanuel Macron like the previous French President, François Hollande, is making promises on this and once again he postponed the discussion of the law.
Thursday, november 22nd, the European Lesbian*Conference met with the French president Emmanuel Macron and left the meeting after a heated discussion on French Republic discriminating lesbians.
EL*C was represented by Alice Coffin, our Media Dykerector who is also a member of many lesbian organisations in France. She and Veronica Noseda from the NGO Les Dégommeuses were the two only representing of lesbian orgnanisations.
At one point during the meeting, Emmanuel Macron asked the lesbian organisations to « respect the republican frame » meaning they were talking too harsh, the answer of EL*C was « the Republic is not respecting lesbians. You, as heterosexual citizen, have more rights than me as a lesbian ».
A lot of articles were published around this event, and European Lesbian Conference and Les Dégommeuses leaving the room and denouncing the ongoing lesbophobia of French State. We are sorry they are in french.
The message we are sending to all European and Central Asian lesbian activists is:
do not hesitate to ask EL*C or use EL*C for representation. We know that in many countries, such as in France, there are none or so few lesbian NGOs and that therefore lesbians are not represetented in this kind of meetings. Tell us if you need any help on this and want to go to all those meetings on behalf of European Lesbian*Conference.
It proved very efficient in the French context. At the beginning, there were no lesbian NGO invited although the discussion was going to be on a lesbian issue. We criticized this publicly on twitter and managed to be represented along with Les Dégommeuses.
Here more articles (in french) on this topic here, here and here.
More than a just conference EL*C is also an umbrella, a task force, a label, a tool for and to be used by all lesbian activist. You can always contact us by email :
• General information: info@europeanlesbianconference.org
• Press: press@europeanlesbianconference.org
Or via our social media : Facebook & Twitter ()
