2020, here we are ! Your fresh lesbian wishes.
Throughout history, angry women have been called harpies, bitches, witches, and whores. They’ve been labeled hysterical, crazy, dangerous, delusional, bitter, jealous, irrational, emotional, dramatic, vindictive, petty, hormonal; they’ve been shunned, ignored, drugged, locked up, and killed; kept in line with laws and threats and violence, and with insidious, far-reaching lies about the very nature of what it means to be a woman—that a woman should aspire to be a lady, and that ladies don’t get angry. Millennia of conditioning is hard to unlearn… (Bitch Magazine – Burn it down by Lilly Dancyger)
This year has been one of supposedly inaccessible dreams and goals to be reached … A little 2019 anthology of what we have accomplished inside and outside EL*C. All this was possible thanks to the incredible energy of the extraordinary EL*C Dykerectors and team, but also thanks to all of you who have never stopped encouraging, promoting and supporting the actions we are carrying out for more lesbian visibility and for building our community. Well, since at this time of year, place is givent to wishes and love declaration, we must admit that, thanks to you, with you all at our side, we feel good, really good.
No doubt, we form a hell of a team !
…TALKING OF TEAM, WE HAVE A NEW BOARD !
We are happy to announce the elections of a new board. Discover the faces of those #Lesbiangenuis who are now in charge of 6 new positions. We will tell you more about those genius soon, very soon ! 
2020, will be empowering and full of suprises, stay tuned ! Meanwhile, find out what we’ve been doing this last year to unlearn conditioning with anger and class.
Happy New Year and best lesbian wishes.
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ELC SWEET 2019 SOUVENIRS ARE MADE OF THIS…
EL*C Berlin for pioneer european lesbian research !
Part of EL*C badass squad went to Berlin this November, to present the first outcomes of the ongoing research about the past and current state of lesbian organising in Europe ! Read the details here.
EL*C is a partner of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, which funds this research and will be organising next november 2020, a huge institutional European conference on lesbians with full room of ministers and policy makers listening to lesbian stories and needs ! We also seized the opportunity of being in Berlin to visit the great team of L-MAG which was always a wonderful support to EL*C.
EL*C HITS NEWSPAPERS FRONT PAGES !!!
The #lesbiangenius did well in the press last month. Our Media Dykerector, Alice Coffin, got long interviews in National Geographic and in Le Temps.
The Swiss newspaper also put EL*C on its front page !!!
Because Alice Coffin’s interview was next to Melinda Gates’s one, Silvia Casalino, Chair of EL*C and Alice’s partner, asked the team « Do you think, that means I will become as rich as Bill? ». No guarantee, but as you can read in the full interview published on National Geographic website, when asked about which advice to give to young women starting in lives, our dykerector answered « Be a lesbian! ».
Links to both interview:
https://www.letemps.ch/societe/alice-coffin-aujourdhui-lesbienne-employe-un-gros
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Gulzada Serzhan is one of EL*C wonderful team member and an active member of Feminita, a Kazakhstan feminist initiative that protects and defends the rights of LGBTQ community members. Gulzada’s interview was originally publish by The Village, a kazakh newspaper. It has been now translated in french and highlighted by Novastan.org, the only media in French and German specializing in Central Asia. This was during the week of actions fighting domestic violence organized by LGBT feminists and activists in Kazakhstan. Gulzada’s are fierce, empowering and filled with confidence.
A translated extract from her interview
I am a lesbian and before, for security reasons, I hid it. When I finally understood my sexuality and studied human rights, I became an LGBT activist and was able to come out. Some people can blame me for not hiding my sexual orientation. But that will not change my essence. To condemn me is useless.
Read full article (in french) here.
“Lesbian Rights/ Lesbian Fights” ELC at the feminist festival Les Créatives in Geneva.
We were invited to a round table on « Lesbian Rights, Lesbian Fights » in Geneva on November 23. Alice Coffin attended the panel along other lesbian* activists. If you missed it you can still. watch the full round table here.
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THE INTERNATIONAL FAMILY EQUALITY DAY 2019 REPORT IS OUT with great tribute to EL*C
The International Family Equality Day 2019 Report (IFED) is out and we are grateful to see in it so many faces who made EL*C possible. Maria von Känel, Dettie Gould, Henrie Dennis, Andrea Rivas did a lot to organise or participate to EL*C.
Read their words, enjoy their pictures, along many other facts, figures and stories here.
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HURRAY TO KIKA FUMERO
The discourse of the far right is very damaging, basically because they deny and make invisible a reality that is demonstrated.
Hurray to our wonderful team member Kika Fumero, one EL*C wonderful team member, is now the General Director of the Canarian Institute for Equality. She gave an interview to El Diario del Canarias on the necessity to fight back far right discourses and actions. Read below more translated excerpt of the interview.
There are international laws and treaties, positions of the United Nations and the European Union. The figures are there. They are touching very sensitive issues, touching lives, identities, and want to take away rights to LGBT people or migrant children. To this, we are reacting from anger, and we are wrong. Calm must be keeped. We know what their speech is, that generates hate and anger, so we have to respond intelligently, with head and not with guts. Today, we can still lose many rights, which are conquered but not insured, and we can go backwards. Of course, if one day they get to power they will find us on the street, not the four feminists of yesterday, but a very important part of society, men and women. »
DYKES IN TIRANA
EL*C team travelled to Tirana-Albania this past month for a multi purpose visit: taking part in the women-loving-women caucus event at the ERA Conference, internal discussions on network creation and planning the work ahead, and finally taking part in Albania’s first ever Dyke March. 
Participating in the ERA Conference women’s caucus gave EL*C invaluable insight into the current state of lesbian organising in the Western Balkans and Turkey. All three meetings were a huge success!
WE FORGIVE, BUT WE DON’T FORGET
In this video, our lesbian dykerector Joëlle Sambi delivers a testimony that questions a multitude of themes : slam as a poetic weapon, activism in Belgium, identity, colonialism, the norm, etc.
She also addresses the particular situation of the belgo-congolese LGBT community through the evocation of Pinkshasa Diaspora, her documentary in progress. The interview is in french but worth a look.
L WORD, a catch up session.
Come on! None of you can make us believe that they have not heard, trembled – even very slightly – with indifference or emotions at the announcement of the release of the new L Word: Generation Q! Really ? Okay, well, if you missed that, here is an interview well conducted by the journalist of Grazia Magazine and to which our dykerectors Silvia Casalino and Joëlle Sambi answered, among others. Catch up session !
Full article (in french).
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So, we will wrap it up here by wishing you to have, in 2020, friendS, loverS, relativeS that are for you what Nigeria is for Jamaïca.
The miss, not the country. Take care. Very very best wishes.
