On Traveling Alone: The Eastern/Central Europe Edition

As I got ready to leave Warsaw and write the quarterly report, I began to reflect a lot on the past three months and what I have learned, some of the wonderful and funny experiences and some of the more uncomfortble ones as well.  So, on top of the quarterly report, here's this bit of babbling on what I have learned from traveling alone generally.

When Kara, my Watson interview who was kind and couldn't have made the experience any better, asked repeatedly about mental and emotional health and personal safety, I thought I understood.  We're traveling alone for a year in places where we've never been.  We will be disconnected in any number of ways: language, culture, from our families and friends.  Our personal identities might cause trouble.  The nature of our projects might cause more.  Being in certain neighborhoods could make safety an issue. I thought I understood.  I knew that being butch, or butch-ish, would most likely cause some awkward interactions.  It happens at home; why wouldn't it happen abroad?  The same for my project topic. 

Spending four years at Rhodes and significant time outside of the gates in Memphis, I thought I had some idea of how not to confuse being personally safe and smart with being paranoid and disconnected.  I knew that I would feel a fool being unable to communicate and no matter how much I read about culture and custom, I might still do something rude. In Poland, for example, most people I've met greet with a hug and one or two kisses on the cheek.  No matter how happy I am to see someone, I have this idea of personal space that makes it impossible for me to see that as an immediate option, and by the time I remember, it would be bizarre for me to initiate.   Anyway, I thought I knew.  Nope.

Advance warning: this is a really, really long post. 


Where to Stay and How to Avoid the Creepers, Or: Yes, that man is going to walk around in his ill-fitting speedo:

Basically, avoid large dorm rooms, check hostel/Airbnb/family stay reviews carefully, look at neighborhood location, and if you don't feel comfortable, get up out of there.

Once again, I'm grateful to be able to stay in cities for long periods of time.  It means that I can rent an apartment and live by myself.  Many Watsons do homestays or couch surf, but for me, there were several reasons why this didn't seem like the best idea.  First of all, I'm traveling in a few countries where the social opinions about LGBT life would make it risky to reach out for a home stay.  There are many times when I won't feel comfortable, but I want to feel comfortable, minimally, in the place where I sleep and eat.  I also wanted to be able to reciprocate hospitality by cooking and doing things for others, something I felt might be more of a possibility in a kitchen of my own.  Living by myself also forces me to get to know a city on my own.  I have to find my own grocery store, get to know public transport, find restaurants, laundry, etc. on my own.  In Warsaw, this experience left me feeling much more connected to the spaces than I anticipated, and I hope to repeat that experience as I continue.  These were the primary reasons why I chose to rent apartments or seek private housing, mostly through Airbnb.

Still, when I am traveling or before I have an apartment ready, hostels are the cheapest and easiest answer to housing.  I try to look for hostels in gay-friendly neighborhoods (if there are any.  In the case of Warsaw, there is not one neighborhood or street, so I picked somewhere centrally located and not terribly far from the gay life I could find on the internet).  Hostels are great because they generally have free walking tours that they either put on themselves or advertise.  They create a social space.  They force conversation and interaction.  They provide an opportunity to meet people from all over the world.  I've had many, many conversations about LGBT identity and LGBT rights in hostels, with people from countries around the world. Still, with regard to the ultimate goal of my project, hostels don't allow for the same kind of experience as an apartment and so I will try to spend most of my time in a more permanent living situation.

At first, I didn't pay much attention to gender or number when booking rooms.  I looked more at price and general reviews.  While price is still a concern, I have developed definite preferences with regard to other features.  More than 8 beds is generally a recipe for very little sleep.  That many separate schedules means that you are either the person being woken or waking someone else up when you come back to the room. I stayed in an 18 bed dorm in Berlin and it was definitely a lesson learned.  Later, when 12 again proved to be too much, I downsized again.  Smaller rooms are more expensive but truly, being able to sleep is well worth 2-5 more dollars a night.  I also prefer female dorms when possible.  This is less important, especially in smaller rooms, but I'm more comfortable in a women's dorm.

Here are some of the weirder hostel stories from my own experience and some stolen from others in my hostel or from other travelers.

I spent my first week in Warsaw in the Oki Doki Hostel, which I can't praise enough, but no matter how great the hostel, there will always be creepers.  A few nights into my stay, an older man checked into my room.  It was a six bed dorm, and it was a full room, with the only bed left being the one directly across from me.  He proceeded to strip down to what appeared to be a blue speedo that was somehow both too big and too small for him.  It's not uncommon for guys to sleep in their underwear.  It's really, really hot and there is no air conditioning and it's normally no big deal.  This was different for a number of reasons.  First of all, the fit was terrible an he was basically naked. If he had just gone to bed, it would have been fine.  Everybody has a day where they need to do laundry and maybe he was just having a rough one.  Whatever.  He didn't just go to bed, though.  Once an hour for every hour past 3am, he would shoot up in bed, say "Wally," really loudly, and stand up to move to the window, which was right next to my bed.  This put his crotch exactly at my eye level, and more than once, I was unfortunate enough to wake up just as he was trying to fix his speedo situation.  He also made some very uncomfortable noises.  The nice guy in the bed in front of mine made eye contact with me and we both tried not to laugh, although I'm sure the mild horror I saw in his eyes was present in mine as well. Fortunately, speedo man was only a roommate for one night.

In Berlin, there was a middle-aged man who was drunk the entire time we were there, day and night.  That alone was not terribly unusual, but he had a habit of roaming the room and examining other people's stuff. Once, I was in the room and he began to speak to a British guy about one of the other women staying in the room.  I'm not sure if he thought that because he was speaking Spanish, he would not be understood, but it was gross and he briefly picked up an item of her clothing, although he didn't do anything to it.  I wish now that I had told someone or said something but it was early in the trip and I was much more timid about things like that than I am now.

One guy used someone's bed for his toilet; he had no recollection the next day but was obviously horrified.

Liz, whom I met in Prague, told the story of a guy who stayed up through the night staring at her friend and singing.  He then got in Liz's face and said, "Meow." The hostel owner kicked him out.

Two girls in my hostel in Prague had all of their luggage stolen.  One guy checked into four separate hostels and robbed people in each place.

I have stayed in hostels seven times and these creepers and experiences are in the minority.  For the most part, these are awesome places; it's just that sometimes things happen, and for anyone who might be traveling alone now or in the future, just know that for the most part, they eventually become funny stories and I've had many "weirdest hostel experience" conversations with other travelers.  That being said, if you feel uncomfortable, leave.  I have not had to do that yet, but I will without hesitation if speedo guy ever becomes overly familiar speedo guy or "meow" guy, for that matter.  Finding a comfortable place to stay is essential to being able to enjoy a place, especially when you're alone.

On that note...

Personal Safety:

For the most part, I have felt safe traveling and exploring the various cities of Eastern/Central Europe where I've been.  I have a couple of things going for me there.  First of all, I don't immediately get labeled as a tourist.  Unless I'm carrying around my massive pack or have my nose buried in a map, I blend fairly well.  People often speak to me in Polish or ask me for directions, especially when I'm not in the touristy parts of the city.  I have also had people to go out with.  I try not to go out by myself and to be smart about when and where I spend my time, just like in Memphis.

Still, I am traveling by myself, and sometimes that is scary and uncomfortable.

In Prague, a stranger approached me, hit on me, and when I said no thanks (with more force than that, don't worry), followed me until I lost him in the crowd. 

One guy in a bar went in to shake my hand, put his arm around me, and forced me into his body.  He tried to kiss me and I pulled away.  A friend saw and called to me, and he backed off.

A guy came into a coffee shop where I was reading, sat down next to me, put his arm around my chair, and blocked me from getting away.  He smelled like alcohol and scooted closer to me until a waitress saw him and made him leave.  I should have made him leave myself but I was nervous and afraid.  I have to get over that.  I'm working on it.

Personal Safety as a Butch Woman:

This is a particular concern of mine, especially as I wander around places where attitudes about homosexuality are less than friendly.  I feel nervous sometimes.

In Warsaw, when it was time to get my hair cut, I had this moment where I thought, "Couldn´t you just let it grow out? Does it matter that much?"  At home, I have friends and family to walk around with me or give me the confidence to dress the way I want to dress and cut my hair however I want.  Abroad, I am alone when people give me confused glances or call me "sir," generally without any ill will but sometimes with a clear negativity or wariness.

Once a man tried to stop me from entering the women's restroom.  We were the only people in the hallway, and it made me nervous.  He was very insistent, putting his hand on the door to stop me from entering.  Eventually, something clicked and he walked away, but it was a really uncomfortable moment and there was nobody for me to tell when I got back to my table.  It was just me.

Another time two guys on a subway in Budapest did some taunting.

Normally it's fine but being alone has made me much more aware of how much my own community gives to me and how much I rely on them for support and confidence.

Thanks to everyone back home for that.  It means so much to be able to walk with confidence because someone has my back.

Traveling Alone, Generally:

For the most part, traveling alone is liberating.  There is a freedom that comes with being responsible for and answering only to yourself, and it's a great feeling, if scary and unfamiliar at times.  Of course, I am accountable to the Watson and I keep in touch with my friends and family.  It's not that I'm disconnected; it's that I'm responsible for myself and my daily life in a way that I never have been in the past.  It's also a fact that while I can keep in touch with those I love at home, I am the one who determines how and where I'll spend my days, when I'll come home and where home will be for that month, with whom I'll spend time.

Because I am always pursuing my project, there are a series of goals that drive everyday life.  The structure of that life, however, depends on my thoughts and experiences.  If I feel that something might be beneficial, I can pursue it.  I can act and react freely.  This is, I imagine, why the Watson discourages formal internships with organizations and traveling in groups.  The ability to move and change with time and experience provides an incredible amount of opportunity.  Nothing is closed off.

At first, I was panicky.  I had a very set definition of what it was to be successful and how busy I needed to be in order to be productive.  As I've come to find out, this project requires a clean slate when it comes to those words.  Productivity can be redefined.  Having a lengthy conversation with someone about their experience as an LGBT person is productive.  Finding a safe space in the city and becoming familiar with it is productive.  On some days, especially in a new place, finding a place to buy groceries and learning to navigate and feel comfortable is productive.  At this point, I think success is asking new questions and seeking answers.  It's getting to know a place, to find the spaces that make me comfortable and make others comfortable as well, to reach out and talk to people, to build relationships and familiarity.

This is, of course, easier to write in reflection than it is to tell myself sometimes.  I can't shed years of habit and expectation in a few months; it would be weird if I could.  But! I'm learning, and I can feel the change in the way that I think and approach my surroundings and other people. 

On All the Feels:

For the most part, days are unbelievably good.  Truly, it's ridiculous how amazing this year is.  It's ridiculous how good and generous people are, how much I have an opportunity to learn, about myself and about others, and how I get to spend my days pursuing a project and a goal that has been a major part of my life since I was old enough to realize it could be. 

Still, there are rough days.  They don't come often but every once in a while they pop up.  There are times when fear and loneliness creep up and make the thought of going to one more new place, of feeling out of place, of being lost again, of talking to another stranger or of being unable to communicate with another person, totally overwhelming.  Sometimes I can feel it coming on, and other times it's a little thing that brings it on.  Once a woman was extremely rude on the bus and it just threw me off totally.  Normally that wouldn't cause me more than a few seconds of annoyance but it brought on this whole emotional deal.

At those times, I have found that it's okay to write an email to friends at home or to reread the ones I've received, to send my Mom or girlfriend a message or ask to Skype, even if I don't mention exactly why (or sometimes not. Recently I told my girlfriend that I couldn't Skype because it was one of those moments when someone being nice to me would have broken the emotional dam.  We sent messages instead.).  It's okay to take a minute and reflect on what is actually going on to make me upset or afraid.  This part is important because not only does it force me to pay attention and reflect but also, more importantly, I inevitably remember exactly what it is that I'm doing and how lucky I am, how much I love this project and how much I have learned from the people I have met along the way, how much but also how little time I have to explore in this way. 

Building Relationships:

People are wonderful.

As of yesterday, I am finished with my Poland leg.  I was happy to be able to spend my last week in Warsaw, although sad that I was not able to spend more time with the people that I met traveling over the past few weeks.  The fabulous folks in the hostels and the wonderful people who agreed to speak with me about LGBT life in their cities and countries each left a mark on me and I'm extremely grateful to have met them.

Building relationships while traveling is a unique and wonderful experience, but it also requires a sometimes difficult mental and emotional process.  I've had this conversation with multiple people on the way.  None of us really knows how to define the kinds of relationships that are built in travel.  The same principles apply to the wonderful people I've met at the KPH and out and about in Warsaw.  They have discussed their lives and experiences with me and have allowed me to get to know them, despite the fact that I'm a temporary presence.  I'm beyond grateful that they opened themselves up to me and I have tried to reciprocate. 

There are people that I have met on this trip so far that have made a massive impact on the way that I think.  Some have given me a sense of familiarity and comfort, a feeling of home and an easiness of conversation, that has been like a weight lifted.  Others have challenged me and forced me to come out of my comfort zone, to change the way that I normally talk, whether because I am being forced to think in a new way or because I know that if I don't assert myself in a way that makes my inner Southern woman cringe, I won't be heard at all.   It's not as if I didn't frequently channel my angry lesbian at Rhodes, but in a situation with
people that I don't know very well in a place that I hardly know at all, it's different. 

Friendships while traveling get put on the fast track.  Everyone is aware that there isn't really time to go slowly, so it hasn't been uncommon to discuss family issues, political beliefs, personal fears, and other experiences within a few hours, or occasionally, minutes of meeting someone.  There is an openness that comes with the shared experience of traveling, especially, I have found, between people who are traveling alone.  The rewards that come from being open to conversation are numerous.  It makes going to dinner with people you've known for five hours seem like going to dinner with people who have known you much longer.  It banishes some of the feelings of isolation. 

It also, however, requires a strange agreement between those involved.  Everyone agrees to make themselves open, to talk about personal experiences and opinions, to make the social and emotional effort that comes with that, and then to say goodbye to these new friends.  It's a weird feeling.  It's obvious that there is a great benefit to getting to know people quickly and finding friends that you would love to be able to see regularly, that you want to transport home so that it's possible to have a beer and chat on a normal Friday.  It's not possible, however, and instead, it's likely that Facebook, if you even think to find each other on Facebook, becomes the primary method of conversation and the best hope is that you'll cross paths in travel or make dedicated trips to see one another. 

The benefits of these relationships far outweigh the unfortunate reality of their limited time spans. I am a different and better person as a result of the relationships I've made here in Warsaw and on the road, and I have no doubt that I will stay in touch with many of these amazing new friends.  Still it takes an emotional toll to make yourself vulnerable and open, repeatedly, and leave a part of yourself and your history with someone you only get to spend a few months, days, or maybe just several hours, getting to know. 

One friend, Zina, suggested that maybe we think about friendships and relationships the wrong way.  We expect long-term exchanges, years or decades of communication in order to qualify something as a friendship when really, we should learn to love even the fleeting relationships for what they are and to have different expectations for different situations.  I'm trying to do that.  It's a big lesson of the Watson. 

As I got ready to leave Warsaw, it was on my mind a lot, as the above ramble probably indicates.  I've spent the past few months getting to know this place and these people, getting comfortable and building relationships, trying to be open and available.  As a result, I love this city.  I had no idea how much it would teach me or mean to me. 

I'm excited to be in Argentina.  I'm thrilled at the idea of getting to know and love Buenos Aires the way I love Warsaw.  Still, I'm fighting to remind myself to stay open.  The fear and sadness that accompany leaving this new home and the people associated with it strengthen an instinct to shield myself and to remember that I will have to leave once again.  In reading the blogs of past Watsons, I was happy to find that this struggle is common and that many people have to fight to keep themselves open as they move through their year. 

In conclusion, thanks to everyone who broke the ice in a hostel common room, offered a personal story while out for dinner or a beer, had a conversation with me at a gay bar in Warsaw, and spoke to me frankly about their personal experiences as LGBT people or allies.

Okay, so there's a long rant on traveling alone and a few stories that didn't seem to fit anywhere else.  I'm not sure what will be similar or different traveling through Argentina, but I can't wait to find out.

Week Eleven: The Last Week in Warsaw and my Favorite Things

I was happy and sad to get back to Warsaw, because I knew it was my last week there and I was not ready to leave.  I know this is a good sign and says a lot about the place and how much I grew to love it.  I also know that it's a part of the Watson experience to say goodbye, many times, to new people and new places.  While it's difficult to leave, it is obviously worth the exchange.  I have learned and benefitted so much from my experiences in Warsaw and I couldn't be more grateful to the people and for the places that made my time there what it was.  

I spent the last week revisiting my favorite places and saying goodbye to the people who introduced me to the city and helped me find my way, making sure that I didn't get lost and sharing conversation with me.  I also finally went to visit the Wilanow castle, something I had been meaning to do for some time, and went to both the massive Jewish and Christian cemeteries in the city, which had also been on my "to see" list.  It was a great way to end my time in Poland, and I left remembering all of the awesome things about Warsaw and reflecting on how I've changed as a result of my time there.  As I get ready to write my first quarterly report, I'm especially aware of these personal changes and the new questions I have for the rest of my year of travel.   

Here are some pictures of my last week: 

Cafe Kafka, which I read was LGBT-friendly, was a favorite place to grab coffee and lunch.  There's a great outdoor area and I saw more than one LGBT couple there, which was nice. 

Coffee and a snack, which I definitely couldn't finish, but which was delicious.   

Beer and a book at my favorite outdoor pub. 

Making spinach pierogi with mushrooms, onions, and kielbasa.  Went to my favorite little grocery to get the ingredients. 

Zuzanna, a friend of Claire's from Memphis, told me that I had to try a donut from Blikle, a bakery on Nowy Swiat.  It was delicious.  

Last Chopin conert in Lazienki Park.  

At the entrance of the Oki Doki.  The mermaid is a guardian of Warsaw.  

Outside the kitchen. 

At the Wilanow castle. 

Karma, a coffee shop in Plac Zbawiciela, was another favorite place.  The square is full of gay-friendly bars and restaurants.  

The rainbow in the middle of the square.  It's down to about a third of its normal size from the last attempt at a burning.  I spent a lot of time exploring the bars and cafes in the area. 

Outside the KPH, where I spent time meeting LGBT people and learning about LGBT activism in Poland.  I can't properly express how thankful I am to everyone there for letting me lurk around the office and for being so open and wonderful.  

With Magda!  

With Slava! 

In the KPH offices. 

So, in conclusion, thank you everyone at the KPH.  Thanks to all of those people who spoke with me at bars and clubs, to the people at the Oki Doki, to every person who helped me and shared with me.  

Thank you, Warsaw, for giving me so much and for making the first few months of my Watson amazing and unforgettable.  

The KPH Interviews

During my last few weeks at the KPH, I was able to sit down and talk with several of the wonderful people who work there in a formal way.  Although I have gotten to speak to lots of people at the KPH and in Warsaw informally, being able to sit down with people individually to ask questions about queer life was a different experience.  The interviews were all fairly lengthy, so I won't transcribe everything, but there were key themes in each of them that I want to highlight.  The people who spoke with me varied in terms of their position in the office, their age, their gender and orientation, and their own personal background.  It's interesting to see the differences and similarities when it comes to opinions about Warsaw and political and social life here.

Slava gave me a study from 2010-2011 on LGBT life in Poland (although because the sample of trans individuals was extremely small, it was impossibe to make real conclusions), and combined with interviews and discussions around Warsaw, I was able to learn a lot about how people saw themselves, the community, and the country as a whole.

I also wanted to write a quick blurb on violence against the LGBT community.  The issue of violence against LGBT people in Warsaw and Poland is very real, and at the moment, it is not possible to report anti-gay violence as a hate crime.  In fact, only about 10% of those who experience violence report it to the police.  Unfortunately, most people with whom I spoke had at least one story of verbal or physical violence.  At one point, a woman telling me about being physically harassed laughed, because, she said, "What can you do?"  Reading in the park one day, I saw two men being harassed in a park by a group of drunken twenty-somethings.  They chanted and taunted and made what seemed to be the universal signs for "sissy." It was a bizarre and scary experience.  I tried to talk to the men being harrassed and apologize, but language barriers and the general atmosphere made it difficult.  This is not to say that I spent my time in Warsaw being scared, but to note a factor that I don't think I fully understood before entering the city.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to speak to me and let me listen.  Here we go.

On Growing Up Gay:

I was born in Warsaw but now I'm living in a town 15km away, but I have to take a bus for an hour and a half.  But I take the bus every day.  Well, during holiday, and it's holiday now.  I live in this town, but now that I'm in Warsaw everyday, it's much better because there's lots of, not clubs, but of course there's lots of clubs, but a lot of places that are LGBT friendly.  It's much more open than my town.

I do have friends, but I don't have any community, for sure not LGBT community.  In my school, I'm the only one a bit open about my sexuality, so there is no talking about it.  There was a lot of bad talking [when I was outed], so I don't want to talk about, I don't want to live through it even.  I want to go to Warsaw, live in Warsaw, stay in Warsaw. I don't feel gay in Warsaw.  I feel gay at home.

Of course I'm not the only one, but I feel like I'm the only one.  And here, it's like, you know, "Hi, I'm ____, and I'm gay." It's not something big or new.


I am from a smaller city that has a population of around 70k, so it's quite a difference.  In the city where I grew up, there was no community, no organizations, no clubs.  Well, there used to be one club when I was much younger, but it was burned down twice in the 90s and never reopened.  You get the point.

When I was in school, Poland was ruled by the extreme right, far right party, and we had a minister of education who tried to introduce the anti-gay propaganda bill and said that if any teacher talked about homosexuality, they would be fired.  My school took it really seriously.  He also wanted to change the textbooks so they would be more patriotic, etc, etc. It was all the negativity you could feel from everywhere, from schools, from teachers, from people in the streets.  It was overwhelming.  It took a couple of years before I stopped noticing it and then I moved to Warsaw and it was quite a change because the first week I came to Warsaw it was the first week I started working at KPH so I already fell into this group of people who were working to achieve change. Having people you can openly talk to, and exchange experience, was a big breakthrough for me.

I am from the Ukraine orginally, and I started University here. I came to Warsaw to study.  Ukranian society is more conservative, more radicalized, and more homophobic than it is in Warsaw.  Ukraine, despite being this secular country, has still lots and lots of influence from the Eastern Orthodox Church.  As they say that Poland is also Catholic, but in Poland, you have two different poles of people, being pro-church and anti-cleric.  Poland is part of the European Union and they compare to the Western countries where in Ukraine,
they still compare to Russia.

I come from a place close to Ukraine.  It's far away.  Homophobia there is tremendous; it's really big, but people don't talk about it that much.  I am not a lesbian so I don't really suffer that much but I know other people, well that's the problem, I don't know many people there because they don't come out at all.  Only like 4 or 5 years after high school they go and they say something, but they have to move out first, obviously.  It's just that people really want to move out from there because you can't really say anything.  Even my friends, when I go back, they're really sometimes very negative about my work.  I have to explain things; they don't get it.  Very often they are persuaded after some time but the initial attitude is very negative.

I'm from Warsaw.  It's not easy.  It was not easy.  You cannot generalize because in some places in Warsaw, it's really very conservative, and when I was a teenager, my family's quite conservative, and my school was very nationalistic and conservative.  I had no information about LGBT or anything like this during my school education.  There was some homophobia from my teachers but I wasn't out.  Well, obviously I wasn't out.  I didn't know anyone who was gay.  I think I was the only gay in school; that's what I was thinking.  When I started my university studies, it was the first time I met other gay people, LGBT people.

When you are grown up, when you are not a teenager and not dependent on your parents or school, it's much easier, and I think that comparing to other Polish cities for students, for other LGBT grown ups, it's quite cool.  It's quite okay, comparing to other Polish cities.  Of course there is still this fear of violence.  People don't hold hands on the street.  But there is this a big LGBT community.  We have a lot of clubs and we have several organizations that have their own offices.  That was my experience, that it's easier to be free when you are a grownup.  I have only this Warsaw experience but what I see right now, is that for young people it's much easier than it was for me.  In the last ten years, something major changed.  Young people are out and okay and they talk about it an they discuss with their teachers, with their parents.  They have peer support, they can meet other LGBT people, so it's changing.

The Church:

I never had to ask a specific question about religion; the influence of the Church was a topic of conversation in every discussion, and even outside of the formal interviews at the KPH, many people in Warsaw talked to me about the issue of religion in politics.


Poland is very religious.  The Church has tons of power, and that's why we have a problem with LGBT equality, definitely because of the Church.  There was now in the media some priest who was thinking not like other priests and now he's kicked out of the Church, so it's going to be tough to fight them.

Some of them think that homosexuality is evil and it's a sin and it's unnatural. Some of them are saying that it's okay that you're gay but you can't have sex.  They think that you have to be in a heterosexual family, be married, have kids.  They think that it can be cured.  There was a lot of organizations that were curing us.  It was a Church organization, but now they're closing it.

People in my school, because they are religious, or their parents are, they are saying that I'm evil, and it's all about the Church.

The obvious thing is the Catholic Church because simply, most of our Members of Parliament are from small cities and towns where the local priest holds all the power and if the local priest says, "Vote on this person," then they vote on this person.  So it's difficult to push for any change when most of the Members of Parliament are scared of their priests.

The EU is making their campaigns everywhere, and the Catholic media and communities are really negative about the EU and every international organization that is trying to help with rights, but I don't think people will listen.  We get money from the EU and we are better off with the EU.

I'm Catholic also. I do believe in God, but I think the Polish Catholic is terrible.  It's not even about the Catholic Church.  It's the Polish Church.  You just have to go abroad and go to mass and see it's full of the teachings of Jesus. In the Polish Church, it's all about politics.  If the Polish CHurch, wants to excommunicate the politicians who want to get abortion legalized or even just closer to legalized, then they will be excommunicated.  How can you even do that?  It's just ridiculous.  And I think it's the same with LGBT rights.  They're gonna say, "No you're going to get excommunicated."  And people don't want to do that.  It's very personal.  The Church has everyone in their system, and I really hate that, because I think the Church is not supposed to be so much political.  It's supposed to be about love and peace and everything, to bring people together and make them better, not making people terrified of the Church, but that's what they're doing.  I know a lot of people, a lot of gay friends, who really do believe in God but they just stopped going to church because every time they hear invectives about themselves, how they're pedophiles.  I don't even want to talk about it, terrible terrible things.

The Church has very big power right now, but people really get pissed about that.  And not just LGBT activists, but just people in the streets.  They're making their own little movements to banish the Church, even old people.  It's great.

The KPH/Activism:

It's funny.  I didn't know anything about KPH before I got here.  I Googled "LGBT Warsaw, Poland" and I emailed them.  I wanted to learn something of myself, my LGBT personality, and now it's just for the cause, causes, and for my future, and for the people, because I love them.

I didn't have any, I mean LGBT community, in my hometown.  Now I just feel that I found it, here.  I'm not thinking about it as LGBT community, just community that supports me, that does the work that will help me and other people in the future.

A lot of people that work here now, they started like me, coming here for a year or two, and they stayed, and it's not for the money.  They just love it.  They're here for eight hours a day, and they don't get paid.  It has to be because they love it, because of the community.

I'm doing everything, from scanning files and printing and now I'm working on some projects, so maybe one rung up the ladder.  Like an intern, but not for school, for myself.

I don't do much, nothing important, but I'm trying to put something of myself into the project.

I'm catching every opportunity to participate.

About the KPH, I think it's the most awesome organization in Poland.

KPH is very diverse.  People who work in KPH are more like people than people associated with a certain sexual orientation. I know that sounds weird.  We're basically the only organization that has the full package, everyone, and our aims are, on one hand, very complex, but on the other hand, we always try to focus on all the issues.

There were two things [that brought me to the KPH].  One was that my friend convinced me to come to a youth group meeting.  This was a guy I met when I was studying gender studies, and he brought me here.  The second thing was, I was discriminated against because of my sexual orientation in the organization that I worked for at that time and I think I was looking for a place where I could be socially active and be gay and be okay with that.

It wasn't the thing that I was looking for, but it was here.  I met people who are not only LGBT but people who are engaged, who care and who all have this activist soul. They understand the need for change.  And when you go to clubs or date some, LGBT people can be still quite homophobic and don't understand the homophobia and discrimination and stereotypes.

It has been almost two years now.  The idea was that I needed to do some internship for my university, and I was looking around, and since Slava is my friend and I know he works here, he would invite me around once in a while to come say hi to everyone.  Then I met some more people and I found out that a psychologist here is doing a study, and I thought that would be perfect to do my internship, so I started out with that and here I am now.  I stayed because it turned out to be a great opportunity.  Not many people actually have a chance to participate in a real study so that was a cool thing.

I coordinate projects, mainly in education sector because I started off with that study that was about education, like homophobia in schools.  I continue now with many things.  I'm translating the UNESCO booklet right now.  It's about homophobia and bullying in school surroundings.  I'm going to organize a meeting for educational authorities so that they can talk about the recommendations.

Besides that I have another project that is completely different from education stuff.  It's a partnership in a couple of different countries.  The aim is to exchange methods of work and see what the legal status is and then we're going to combine a website for everything relevant so that we can exchange things.

Political Difficulties/Opposition:

All the offices, all the ministries are here.  Also, until March this year, the city council was quite friendly toward us.  We had good relations.  They had a plenipotentiary for equal treatment who was really, really helping us out.  Right now, something changed.  It probably changed due to the scandal caused by the information we made for teachers.  We created this manual for teachers based on research we had previously done.  Basically everything was okay.  It had the patronage of the government, the Minister for Equal Treatment, the Teachers' Union.  Two or three months after we published it, one of the right wing newspapers found out about it.  I mean, it was open.  It was on the website, on the Facebook, it was everywhere, but they just, I guess, didn't have enough stuff to write about so they picked out one sentence, twisted it around and said that KPH says that proms are discriminatory and shouldn't be held.  And this huge media scandal was caused that said we were trying to rip schools of their traditions, indoctrinate teachers, indoctrinate children, everything.  They aren't so eager to cooperate with us anymore but maybe that will change when time passes.

Right now, in the ruling party, we have this polarization.  The party has the majority.  In theory it's center-right, but it's cut into two. There's this strong, far-right wing anti-women, anti-gay, anti-everything part and a lot of people who are undecided or don't care and just a few people who are in favor.  So the Prime Minister can't really do anything because his party will break in two and he will lose the majority.

I think a part of the answer [as to why there is a resurgence of neo-Nazi activity] is that when the people who are currently in the groups, aged around 20-21, those were the people who were brought up when we had the far-right changes in our education. ANd when you go to school, the core values are really traditional.  God, honor, and country and tradition.  I guess when you spend twelve years in an environment like that and you grow up and you can't afford to study or you can't find a job or you don't see anything good in the country around you, you find a scapegoat, and the obvious scapegoat is the minorities.

There's this initiative about domestic violence, fighting against violence against women, and the government and parliament are opposing to it because in one little passage, it mentions identity and gender identity. Because of that, well, we can't introduce changes that would eventually for women who face to domestic violence to report it to the police and get the perpetrators somehow penalized.

I think society is changing their mind in a way.  They're getting educated, but that's only because we have these media campaigns, we have Robert Biedron in the parliament and Anna Grodska, and just because of that, they get interested. They check on their own.  They're getting to know what's really happening.

I also can sense that the society is sort of getting radical.  So people that were okay, they didn't care, they start to care, but not always in a good way.  People say that we want to sexualize everything, talk about pedophilia, things like that, but I think as education grows, things are going to change for better I hope.

I know that, because of the economic crisis, people get radical in their opinions.  They don't feel safe; they turn to an ideology.  From both sides, I don't find it a good solution, but that's that sociological thing that's happening.

It's always been terrible in Poland with politics, but right now I have this feeling that we won't have anyone to vote for.  The ruling party went from being okay to being really bad; it seems like all they want to do is have money and power.  The opposition is terrible.  It's so Catholic and strict.  They're too much conservative.  And then we have Palikot, who disappointed everyone, so now we have noone to vote for. I hate that because I think everyone should vote, but we have this system where you don't really vote for a person you vote for a party, for a list of people, it doesn't make sense.  I'm all depressed about that.

What is it like to be gay in Warsaw?

I feel completely safe here.  I mean, I know that there is a lot of bullying in Warsaw.  My friend is now in court because he was beaten, but he didn't do anything, he was just holding someone's hand.  But, I feel safe.

Now, lots of people came out, and it's improving, so that means that they might be feeling safer.  They know that there's a lot of people like them.

Warsaw is much better than other cities in Poland, but in Warsaw, it's like most of the LGBT come to the bigger cities because it's more open than their hometowns which are smaller and more homophobic.  They feel safer.  I feel safer here despite the fact that of course there are some attacks on gays and lesbians in Warsaw, but all in all, it's better when you compare it to other places in Poland and especially Ukraine.

As I started to work in the KPH, I got to know some part of the communtiy.  Naturally, going out on the weekends, that's how you learn about the queer community of Warsaw, so that's how I got more and more friends.  There are a variety of places you can go to and feel safe.  From year to year, gradually I see the number of LGBT friendly places to visit and hang out with friends increasing.

For me, I feel safer in the LGBT-friendly spaces.  But for my [straight friends] it's also more fun.  They say that in the straight bars it's like the guys hunt for girls.  All the same they say that in the gay bars the guys hunt for guys but in general, it's more open, more accepting.  It's just more fun, as they see it themselves.  Straight allies are a big support to me personally and to my LGBT friends.

I had an experience of being beaten on the streets in Warsaw because I was holding hands with my partner, and that happens quite often still.  That's the thing that people should be aware of, anyway, even in the open, relatively open, Warsaw.

Apart from the fact that from time to time I get called a faggot, it's not all that different in the social atmosphere.  I'm not sure if I had any personal difficulties, apart from, let's say, from time to time, getting negative comments on the streets.  Once I had a neighbor who was a total nutcase who did everything to make the owner of my flat throw me out.  Warsaw is genereally a safe place to live.  Maybe except for the last three years when the neo-Nazi groups are getting really mobilized and they're attacking the office or people on the streets or trying to demolish our doorbell or things like that. These things happen.

I think Warsaw is a great city. I think it's very multicultural, in a way, not in that we have a lot of different people because we're pretty white and pretty Catholic, but there are a lot of subcultures, and people can find themselves here.  The gay community is great, and I know a lot of people who come here just for that.  They think that to be themselves and not to be hididing, they have to come to a big city, and Warsaw is the best.  Krakow is conservative.  Warsaw seems to be the goal.

I think that a lot of people in Poland look to Warsaw as a place that is most LGBT-friendly and that is most accepting. Warsaw is like an island, a place on the map of Poland in which you can be yourself.  In Warsaw there are a lot of LGBT who came here as students or decided to move because they wanted to be in the LGBT community, because they wanted to be anonymous, because they have more opportunities as a gay person.  I'm not sure; it's my hypothesis, that sometimes people in Warsaw, LGBT people, don't care so much because it's Warsaw.  It's better than this little town I came from.  Because they can have a safe space here. There are friends, clubs.  They don't have their family here, for example.  So they accept the status quo, this reality and they don't see a need for change.  Of course there is a need for change.  I don't have to give you the reasons.  But because in Warsaw there is this illusion that it is better and they adjust to this reality and they are not so active in a political way.

For example, when you go after the Equality Parade, in the evening, when you go to clubs, you can see a lot of people, like most of the people who go gay clubbing don't attend the parade.  People in the parade, like 40-50% of them, are allies.  So there is just a really big community, who really take advantage of the privileges they have living in Warsaw but they see no need to go out and to demand something more.

How is Warsaw different from other cities?

I was in London, and when I saw some guys holding hands, I didn't see anything like that in Warsaw, in Poland.  Now of course I see that, but it's just only when nobody's watching.  Of course, there are some people who do it in public places, but most of them are afraid and try not to do it, to show no emotions.

People say that in Germany, it's easier to be a part of the queer community.  You have less violence, both physical and verbal, directed towards them.  You compare Germany to Ukraine, it's completely different.  Where in Ukraine you have the Orthodox church that pressures the LGBT community and the openly homophobic government that wants to ban any information regarding LGBT topics.  In Germany, it's already an accepted thing.  In Poland, it's still in a period of discussion.

In Warsaw it is a little bit different.  Actually it's a lot different.  It's not perfect, but I get a feeling that people are open to talk about stuff, and you don't really have to explain yourself, "Why do you work here? Why do you do this?"


I think we're somewhere in the middle.  I'm not comparing us to Belarus or anything, but in Lithuania, the homophobia is similar but they're completely shut down in the media.  They have lots of problems.  I keep getting newsletters, and they have so much trouble organizing anything.  I think with media here, politicians are not eager to kick us or treat us badly because they know immediately it would be in the media too.  Hungary is different because as far as I know, the universities are very willing to do studies with the LGBT community.  Not so much in Poland.  Their society is very closed but their university level is pretty awesome. That's why I want to do also this exchange program, just to put together how the situation looks in different countries and exchange methods of working and experience and things like that.




What are the most important issues, for you and for the community?

Definitely marriage equality, definitely adoption.  I mean, the same rights for marriage.  It's definitely important for me.  Of course, I want to have the same rights for my partner, to have rights for my child, for our child.

The most important thing is the tolerance, to write on this constitution.  They're saying now that it's against the constitution and the law of Poland to have gay rights.  There is no hate crime legislation. When someone is shouting "faggot" and it is, like, everyday, no one is really hearing it.  They mean it like a bad thing, but the teachers do not do anything, nothing.  Even when someone's beating someone, shouting it, there is nothing.

I'm more focused on education because I think this is a really important thing.  We can do a lot of lobbying and campaigns but the real problem is in schools because these are the kids are suffering the most and a lot of studies show that is true around the globe.  Trying to find out the situation in Poland with psychological methods is combining my two fields and I like it a lot.

I think that civil partnerships would be the best things to happen right now.  Because I've been to the conferences about education and transphobia and homophobia, and we were discussing that in each country that has civil partnerships or marriages, the education level also is getting better.  You learn about LGBT community, so one step in legislation and then from that moves the education also.  Especially because I know at least two couples who would love to get married.  I wish it could happen. Maybe in five years time.



Definitely one day I would want to have a registered partnership, despite the fact that I'm sure that it's not even a discussion yet in Poland.  I want to have kids one day.  I'm not going to question whether that will happen, because it will.  The biggest issue right now is to feel safe on the streets while being on dates with a partner. 

Right now one of the main goals of our organization is to amend the penal code to include sexual orientation and gender identity on the list of the basis of the hate crimes and hate speech.  That will allow the police and the government to get their information on how many hate crimes there are.  Right now, it's impossible to get the data, because that factor is not included in the report.  That is one of the most important issues, and also civil partnerships. In the preview session of the Parliament, they didn't accept the bill.  The ruling party, which has, well, everything, they divided in terms of ideology, and the biggest part didn't want to accept the bill so it didn't go through.

The most important part of the mission for me is working for LGBT youth, basically safety in schools, bullying and things connected to it.  How do teachers tackle the problem of homophobia and transphobia in schools?  How do textbooks and curricula tackle the problem, if they do?  From what we know, they don't. I like to see my work as working on different levels.  So, working with youth to get firsthand information, to get their experiences, then forward it to teachers to raise their competence but also lobby the Ministry of Education and other governmental agencies to try to change it from the top down.

I can tell you about data.  The negative thing is that our education and our school system is very heteronormative and quite homophobic.  So young people, when they grow up, from their teachers and peers in school, from the media, meaning tv, have very little or no knowledge about what does it mean to be gay, bi, transgender and so on.  They have only stereotypes and prejudice.  That's what is present in these messages.  So there is a big problem for young people who very often suffer violence, homophobic violence, and they have no support system in families, in schools.  People who should know how to support them, how to react, how to empower, have no knowledge.  For example, in schools or in intervention centers for victims of violence, they have no knowledge and no competence to deal with a young person who wants to come out, or he or she has some internalized homophobia about him/herself, or suffers violence or has a depressive thought.  This is a very big problem.  LGBT youth have suicidal thoughts five times more often than the general population, as our research says.  They feel three or four times more lonely.  

Then they move to Warsaw, they start the gay life, if they have the capacities and the resources, but we have no recognition, no civil partnerships, so people can love each other for years and it means nothing to the law.  It's like they're strangers to each other.  It makes a lot of problems when someone dies, has a child, or is in the hospital.

Positives? It's not Russia.  No, I think that things are changing.  There is a lot of good information on the internet.  There are organizations that are developing. We in the KPH, this year and last year, we had two or three social campaigns so this issue is visible in the media, in society.

Of course, we have a gay MP and a transgender MP.  They are people that we created.  

On the media and role models: 

[There is] Biedroń.  There is also the transgender, Anna Grodska. She is fighting for our rights. Everyone is talking about them, even when they hate them.  If they are talking about them, if it's something popular, they will stay.  It keeps attention.

There aren't really gay roles on tv, small ones and very stereotypical, but I think it's going the right way.  A few years ago, there would be none, not any of them, so now it's better. 

No, I don't think [there is an LGBT presence in the media].  It's definitely a bigger topic than a few years ago, but the big part of the Polish television comes from the United States, so thanks to the television from the West, it's getting more and more into media, but it's not an initiative of Polish television.

There is Robert Biedron, the Member of Parliament.  Then there's Anna Grodska, the transgender representative.  Lately, there are more. There is more discussion. Around 15 years ago, I remember the first gay character on tv.  He left his wife and went to the States to earn some money and he earned the money by playing in gay porn movies and he was dying of AIDS. Right now, my mother tells me, there are gay characters.  Lately one of the most well-known boxers in Poland said that he's totally fine with same-sex adoption.  Quite a lot of tv journalists and journalists are in favor.  On the other hand, there are also lots of celebrities who are anti-gay.

I think there are pop stars who came out, but from Poland, we don't have many.  We don't have, I don't know, any lesbian role models alive; there was one that died last year.  Some writers, no one in the tv industry.  In theater, yes.  In films, one person.  Mostly writers, but they are not for young people.  And Robert Biedron.

I think it's stereotypical in mass media, but we appear there quite a lot, so I think the representation is quite good if I have to compare with other countries that are simiar.  We did a couple of good campaigns this and I was really happy with them.  One of them was with parents.  There was this very famous Polish actor, and there were posters all over the city like "This is my son. He's gay and I'm very proud of him." There was a short documentary with another actor.  There were others. "My daughter taught me to be brave.  She's a lesbian."  And I think that was very powerful and important because people saw LGBT people as not departed from their families, like normal people.  There was a media outburst about that campaign, so that was great.

We have a lot of LGBT media, but it's not very well-known.  It's just people who are interested can read and find the websites.


Issues within the Queer Community:

Well, I think the biggest issue is that part of the queer community in Poland does not want to be one.  Like, they don't want to be identified with the Equality Parades. They don't want to be identified with the KPH, with the people who talk about sexual orientation all the time.  A big number of the LGBT people in Poland think that the fact that they're homosexual is their own business and they would rather conceal it from everyone and live behind closed doors than work toward social acceptance.  So, I know quite a few people who think that KPH and Equality Parades hurt more than they help.  It's both fear and reluctance.

I think that the queer community isn't a whole, itself.  It consists of several groups that kind of hate each other. Like, trans people are discriminated against by LGB, bi people are discriminated against by LG.  Queer people are on the verge of not existing.  Lesbians are invisible totally.

There is also one big tension I observe in the trans community and the gay community, mostly, but some in the lesbian community too.  It's about expression.  The difference between manly gay guys and feminine gay guys, manly lesbians, feminine lesbians, trans people who pass and trans people who show, things like that.

I can tell you, once I got really, really pissed because I went to a homophobia/transphobia conference, and I said something about the trans situation in Poland.  I gave a statistic about trans people and surgery, and one girl stood up and she was so offended, but I had no idea why.  I feel like there are tensions because there are problems with wording between the countries. We are all here to learn and we have to take our time.


But when it comes to the community, here in Warsaw, there are misunderstandings within the community, I think.  For example, with me, they don't understand. "There's no bisexuals; they're just undecided," and this is pretty scary because you're part of this community and you have to understand certain things but you don't.

I see that it's divided in a way.  Different organizations are trying to compete, so that's something that I don't like and I find it pecualiar and it's not helpful. Some people hang out but don't do anything.  They say, "Oh, why do you have to struggle so much?  Everything has its own time.  It's gonna happen.  I'm good and I'm fine."  And then we have to explain people that they have it lucky and they don't get bullied or discriminated against but there are big problems.


In our organization, we're very open to each other.  We're friends, so if someone says something offensive, we can just say something, and I think that's very good.  It solves a lot of problems.  We base our work on cooperation.  With the ideological problems here, we can always talk about it, but when it comes to other conferences with other countries and organizations, it's difficult.  I don't know how to approach people sometimes.

In the community, in the activism field, I see no tensions.  There is no movement that is really radical, that is really queer, in Poland.  There are some radical and queer events and actions but they come not from the community but from this very narrow, very small group of artists, and it's okay that they do it, and it's not contrary to what we do.  We know each other and sometimes we do things together, sometimes not.  They can be radical because they are artists; they are not attached to their sponsors or whatever.

But in organizations, what we do is, sadly, we have this identity policy.  We are not really queer at all.  We don't go there.  For example, three months ago, we published a manual for teachers on how to talk about LGBT in school, a toolkit for teachers.  I'm an author of this toolkit, so I can criticize it.  It's very essentialist.  We give the definitions, very clear definitions. What does it mean to be gay, to be bisexual, to be transgender, what is sexual orientation.  I don't really believe in it but I know that this is needed and this is effective.  When they read it, knowing nothing, they will feel safe that they have some scientific knowledge and they will feel competent that they can talk about it and support LGBT people. That's why the policy because that's how we defend this situation; this is the only thing that works for this Polish context.

But we also have queer people who define themselves as queer, who write about queer politics and demand queer politics in the academia in universities but unfortuntely they don't do anything but write about it and lecture others. I'm quite judgmental but I do it consciously.  We have critics from people who have the professor title who translated these works, mostly of course from the US, but they have no attachment to the LGBT community or LGBT movement, so that's a conflict that we have.

I see all those problems that come with identity politics but well, to deconstruct the concept and say that the concept is actually is very fluid and it's only a cultural idea, we have to create this concept.  That's how I see it.  People have no idea what is sexual orientation.  We have to give them a theory, we have to say scientific studies say this and this and this and they have to accept it. Then we have to say, scientific studies are crap because science  doesn't tell you about reality.

I believe that there is more place for queer politics in the US because it developed over there.  In Poland it wasn't a natural process of development, but someone translated Judith Butler to Polish and they came up that queer politics are needed in Poland.  

For the community, the most important thing is to be a community, to grow and to see the same objectives.  That doesn't hapen now.  We have communities.

And then, to make a revolution.

On Pride:

This Equality Parade always has some political meaning; it's a march for rights.  It's very different in Warsaw than in other cities, because in other cities, quite often, it gets really violent and it's more of a protest.  In Warsaw, there is music, there are drag queens, and so on, but it has a lot of political meaning to take this space.


Actually I know a lot of people who hate Pride parades here and I'm not surprised.  Mainly what you see, through media, it's not families.  It's men in women's clothes and flamboyant and people on the outside who don't know what's going on, they see these colorful crazy people, they don't know what to think about that.  I have these two lesbian friends who say they would never ever go to Pride and that we should ban transvestites because they are not doing anything good for us, that they're not doing anything good for us as the LGBT community, they're just making us the weirdos.  I sort of agree with that in a way.  I see other people who say it's just freaks out in the streets and what's the point of doing it once a year.

On the other hand, every time I'm at the parade I feel the sense of communtiy and like I'm fighting for something bigger, and once a year may not mean a lot maybe, but for some people it can.  I wouldn't really cry if we were not doing parades but also I would be glad to do a couple of them.  A lot of people would say, you're an activist, you have to be for Pride, but I'm not so sure anymore.

An Interview with Robert Biedroń, Member of Polish Parliament and Founder of the KPH

Robert Biedroń is a Polish Member of Parliament for Palikot's Movement, a Left party in Poland.  He was the first openly gay Member of Parliament. He was also a founding member of the Campaign Against Homophobia.  Mr. Biedroń was nice enough to sit down and talk to me about his life, the founding of the KPH, and LGBT Poland, both social and political.

With Mr. Biedroń outside the offices of Palikot's Movement

What was it like for you to grow up gay in Poland?

I'm from Southeastern Poland, which is very traditional, very conservative.  I grew up in a town which used to be the capital of the region.  It wasn't a big city, not even a city, it was a town.  It was very difficult to be different in all aspects because of the construction of our society, which is mono-religious, mono-ethnic. We are not used to staying together with other people, people with different skin colors, different than Catholic religion.  I am not even mentioning sexual orientation because in my age it would have been something out of this earth.  I was born in 1976 and when I was growing up the discussion about LGBT didn't exist at all, at all. It was a taboo.

So when I found out that I was gay, it was at the end of primary school, I think, I would only know that there were jokes about faggots, that it's a sin because during the religion lessons in school, the priest mentioned it was a sin.  I would know that my father, when he watched the tv and they would show Pride in Berlin or Paris, he would say faggot and so on.  When we were playing soccer, someone who was playing it bad would be called faggot.  So I would know that it was someone bad, someone who I should not be. I was growing up in this atmosphere of intolerance and hatred against gay people, toward homosexuals.
I thought I was the only one and when I discovered it, I felt, "Shit.  It's really difficult.  I need to change it." And so I tried to change it, and I thought, maybe if I find a girlfriend it will be easier.  Of course it wasn't easier.  Then I thought, maybe I should commit suicide since it's so difficult and I tried to commit suicide but it didn't help, and so I tried to, somehow, understand.  I went to the library and tried to search for it.  I found out it's called a disease, a perversion, a deviation, and I started to read more and more.  I started to search for magazines and books and so on and I started to read and I found out that in Warsaw and bigger cities, there are gay places, there are gay organizations.  I remember I was always dreaming that I would go to Warsaw and I would meet these active organizations.  Of course they were not active at the time but I thought they were.  And I would be not alone there, so I dreamed about that.  It happened one day that I went to Berlin and I met another guy, an LGBT activist, and it helped me a lot to understand my own identity.

But also, when I was passing exams through the university, I met a guy who fell in love with me and there were no mobile phones at this time, so he got my phone number, home phone number, and he called my mother and said that he was in love with me.  My mother didn't understand what it meant and she was in shock.  I think it helped me with coming out because I didn't have to do that because someone did it for me.  Of course it was a terrible situation for me but on another side, my mother and my parents, my brothers and sister, they knew already that I'm gay so it was easy for me.  I could at least feel comfortable with that, and they accepted it.  They used to live in America, in Trenton, New Jersey, and very shortly after that, they went to the US and my mother had a couple of lesbians as friends. She thought they were cool and so she thought, my son is cool too.  I actually never had a problem with my family with that which helped me a lot because without family, without friends, I would not manage.  It was very difficult, especially when I was a gay activist, when I started to get involved.  Without the support of my mother and my father, I would not do that.  It was too difficult.

What do you think has changed since then?  What still needs to be changed?

Everything has changed.  It's another world.

Of course, there is a lot of similarities with those days but in my time, I would not call even one person homosexual, would not have known anyone.Now, where ever I go, people know gay people, and they say, "Oh, we know this person, that person, famous people."  In Poland there are more and more openly gay people. Fortunately, also lesbians, finally.  There is more and more coming out, which helps people, especially if you live in a town like I used to live and you need to face that and you find out you're the only gay in the village.  Then you think, "Oh, there's Biedroń in the Parliament; he is a role model.  There is some famous actor who is gay or a journalist who is lesbian.  It helps people.

I receive a lot of letters from youngsters, almost every day a few.  They write, "I live in this small village and I found out that you're gay.  It helps so much that I feel not alone.  I told my parent.  I told my best friend.  She knows about my homosexuality and it's all because of you, because I know that you're there."  So I would never had had the opportunity to write to anyone.

The internet helps a lot. There are these social networks and portals.  You can find out who is around you.  All this equipment, that I never would have had.  All these people can find each other, even if they live in a small village.  Of course it's still the problem of fear, of intolerance.  How will I be perceived?  So on.  Still, I find out when I travel that many young people provoke the conversation about homosexuality in schools, even though schools do not have this agenda in their cirriculum.  Teachers don't want to talk about it, but students, they provoke, they say, "Hey, we have heard in every school there are gays and lesbians.  Let's discuss it.  We want to know.  Why this transgender Anna Grodzka is in the Parliament?  Who is a transgender?"  They provoke the issue.  It would be unimaginable in my time to have these kinds of things.  People come out, youngsters.  "Why should I hide it?"

Still, there are a lot of problems, but the atmosphere has changed.  The politicians talk differently.  The things they would say a few years ago they would never dare to say anymore.  The social atmosphere, political atmosphere, everything has created another media, another way of perceiving.  I think, in Poland, the attitude about homosexuality has changed so much, so fast.  I'm really proud of it.  When I look at the countries in the region, we are really making huge progress, especially in relation to other Slavic countries.  You go to Lithuania, you go to Ukraine, you go to Slovakia, you have completely different attitudes toward it and I'm very proud of that, that it has changed.  There is still lots to do.  You cannot compare Warsaw to Berlin, but I think we are on the way.

Could you elaborate on the differences between Poland and its neighbors?  What are some of the differences and why do you think these differences developed?

It is very different because of many factors.  We are very different than the Czechs or the Germans who are influenced by Protestants and the Protestant culture is much more open.  We are being regarded as very dominated by the Catholic Church, and I agree fully with that.  This domination is really a problem for the development of the society but the society is also becoming more and more secular so we have people who are becoming skeptical toward the influence of the Church.   This also differs Poland from countries like Russia or Ukraine.  Ukraine, I would say, where maybe now it's changing, but in general, the Church had no such tradition of influencing politics and social life.  In Poland it has a very huge influence.

We are very mono-cultural. This also differs Poland from other countries.  We don't even have different dialects; we all speak the same language.  I will not find out if person is from Gdansk, Krakow, Warsaw, by speaking or looking.  It's not helping us for understanding diversity.

History and tradition.  We were dependent on other countries for a very long time and we have this fear that we will lose this independence.  It's very common with other countries which are shortly independent, but we have this sense that one day someone will come destroy our family, our religion, and we need to preserve it.  The Catholic Church in its role in the tradition and history and remembrance of the past is very, very strong.  You can notice by the celebrations of the uprisings, the independence.  It's celebrated in a very serious way, not as a party.  It's a complex issue but this differs our city from other places.

Poland is also pro-Europe.  We understand that if we are to develop, we need to open.  Polish people travel a lot, so people find out.  In London, in Paris, Madrid, they see all these gays holding hands and they are okay and the family still exists there and they live life.
"Why should I be intolerant?"  People ask themselves.

What prompted you to found the KPH?  What were your goals for it originally?

I was an activist before I founded KPH.  I was engaged at the university where I studied and I found out that the gay milieu is very hidden.  They don't want to come out.  They're very scared of showing their faces, giving their names, going public.  I could not understand it.

My perception was, if we want to change people, we need to go out of the streets and change it.  Shortly after I moved to Warsaw I engaged with Lambda Warszawa.  I thought, this is it.  I want to be there and so on.  Very shortly, they said, "We want to focus on the internal, on psychological help, and we don't want to come out."  We had a lot of debate.  People did not understand at this time that LGBT issues are political issues, that it's not only about giving support to the victims of hate crimes or psychological support, but you need to change society not to have these kinds of problems.  This is a circle.  They come to Lambda because they are treated badly by society not because they are bad people.

I decided that I would establish my own organization, Campaign Against Homophobia, which will be an organization for discussing LGBT issues.  We need to break down stereotypes, we need to show our faces, we need to go in the streets.  We need to talk to society, with the media, because media at this time, they were using terrible language like pedophile.  That's not true, so we need to change it.  I started to engage people and I found out there was plenty of people who think like me.  Of course there were plenty of people who did not think like me and they said, "It's not political.  It's an internal thing.  We should not talk about it."  We started a debate about registered partnerships.  They said, "We don't want any registered partnerships; we just want to be gay and to go to the club and nobody bothers us."  I think it was like the '70s in America.

There were also a lot of people around people who said, "Yes, we're waiting for that!  We want to change society."  So me and some other friends, we were very determines and very lucky that we had a lot of people supporting us.  Shortly after that, gay pride was organized in Warsaw, the registered partnership bill appeared, and so on.  The progress happened very fast.

Today, you can not imagine, all the journalists know that you should go to KPH for resources.  This is a success and it has become one of the most recognizable NGOs in Poland.

What moved you from the KPH into political office?

I was always engaged in politics; the KPH was after that.  I was a part of the Youth Social Democrats.  My parents are Left and so I was always engaged with the Social Democrats.  When I was 17, I joined the Social Democrat faction of the Democratic Left Alliance.  Politics was first in my life.  When I was a kid, I engaged in these kinds of activities.
I always knew that I would be active in politics, like I knew I was gay.  It was normal for me.

If you meet my friends from secondary school, they will tell you, "When we were playing football, Robert was reading all of these serious magazines and newspapers."

Looking at your specific political party, Palikot's Movement identifies as Anti-Clerical.  How do you think the Church influences society and how you think it should be limited?

Because of the tradition and the quantity of the people who are members of the Catholic Church, they have really huge power in the society.  They are very influential, and because of this tradition, they feel responsible for taking part in or even shaping the debate on the so-called moral issues.  One is LGBT issues, but also women's issues, like the right to abortion, and we're one of the most strict in the world on that.

The Church is very influential because many politicians find out that there is a huge influence from the Church on society and they use the Church for this.  In this Parliament, you will find members of the extreme right-wing radio station, which is completely anti-Semitic, homophobic, anti-women's rights.  The others who are more liberal, which doesn't mean they're liberal.  Less radical, maybe.  They will underline their connection to the Catholic Church. They will push their legislation giving more rights to the Church and attend Sunday mass, staying in the first row.

This shows that there is no separation of the Church and State.  We have this law that regulates the relationship between Poland and the Vatican and it's not being respected at all.  There are a lot of rights for the Catholic Church, like the Catholic religion in schools, which costs a lot.  All the priests have to be in the budget.  You have special funds which give money for properties which were taken over by the communists and the Catholic Church says they own them so there were a lot of these issues that they were taking [the land] for nothing or they were getting much more than they should receive and so on.

Members of the Catholic Church very often take their position on the political issues based on the Church.  They fear if they vote for the registered partnerships, they will be excommunicated.  And of course the symbol of that is the Catholic Church cross, which is in our assemblymen, which in a symbolic way, shows the dominance of the Church in our society.

You've spoken about the relationship between women's issues and LGBT issues.  What relationship is there between the women's movement and the LGBT movement?  How can they work together?

There would not be KPH without the women's movement.  The women's groups were very helpful in the beginning with logistical issues and one of the leaders, who is the Deputy Chair of the Polish Parliament now, she was one of the founders of KPH.  They were very supportive and I'm very happy that activists on both sides see that there is one goal and that our problems are similar.  They take part in Pride and we take part in the Warsaw Women's Rights march. There is huge sensitivity from the women's movement on this issue. I would say that it is a really wonderful coexistence.  They live in very difficult circumstances and we live in difficult circumstances so we join forces.

What do you think is most important political issue for the community?

On the legislative position, I would say homophobic and transphobic hate crimes.  Then registered partnerships, then gender reassignment law, and changes in education, school books, text books.  I would say these four are the most important.

More generally I would say sexual education, which does not exist in Poland, so maybe these five would be most important on the agenda for me.

In reading about your assault after the equality parade, I was reminded of the latest assault statistics from the report from the KPH and Lambda Warszawa.  They note that the vast majority, around 90%, of hate crimes go unreported. Why do you think this is and what can be done to change it?

People do not come out, so they are afraid.  Before I met with you, I had a meeting with a young guy who wants to be my assistant.  It appeared that he was several times beaten because he was gay.  Once, he tried to report it.  He said, "I went to the police and the police treated me like a perpetrator.  I had to wait four hours to report it and so I resigned at the end of the day...I would never do it again because I was victimized again; I was treated like a perpetrator.  I did not succeed.  After I was beaten again and again, I would never report it again."  His experience is very typical.  Also, he's openly gay, so he has no problem reporting it, but most people are simply afraid of being outed, so they would excuse the violence.

I remember the day recently when I was beaten and two others were beaten with me.  One guy he reported it, because we asked him to report it.  The other guy, a young guy, said, "What happened? He just beat me."  And I said, "But he beat you.  File a report."  He said, "No, he just beat me. It will happen."  People think this way I think very often.  His parents don't know he's gay.  He's a young kid, so he's afraid at school they'll find out he's gay.  He's afraid of being stigmatized.  This is why people don't do it.  They don't feel safe to do it.  They should, always, but they don't.

It's a big problem and it also doesn't help me as a lawmaker to persuade people that this is a problem because then they say, "Look, we don't have statistics.  People don't do that.  You're cheating us."

Also, a lot of straight people don't understand that people are being beaten because they're gay.  A week ago, I talked to a journalist about what happened to me, and he said, "Come on, he didn't beat you because you're gay.  People are just being beaten because."  This guy beat me because I was gay.  He was extremely homophobic.  I report it every time.  It was not the first time.  People say, "Why does it always happen to you?  We don't hear it from other people."  Well, you don't hear it because they don't report it.

Why do you think Pride is important?

It's very important.  In Poland, we would not have this progress without gay Pride.  What they did is first of all, provoked society to talk about the issue.  We would have a lot of press conferences and activities to talk about the issues and they were very reluctant to talk about it, but when we have gay Pride, all the media is interested in that.  It's in all the news.
A few years ago, the discusion would be a month before and a month after gay Pride.  Not today, because Poland has changed fortunately, for the better, but we would have these discussions on banning Pride and it would be on the cover of a magazine.  This was a very important tool for getting a mainstream debate.

The second point is, it helps people to find out that they are.  They are.  It gives courage.  It gives pride.  It gives the sense of being together, stronger.  The people who are beaten, who are feeling worse, who are feeling like they cannot do a lot of things, they come out on the streets and for a few hours, they feel like straight people feel every day.  I see how it builds them, how it gives them the power to act and it was, it still is, a very important tool.

When I talk to people who say, "I was so afraid to go to Pride, but I went and it helped me at school.  I talked to my parents.  The next time I will bring my parents."  And they do so.

What are you most proud of in your work as an activist and politician?

The change that has been made.  We could go the way other countries go, with the criminalization of gay material and the hatred of people at Pride parades.  We don't have that in Poland.  We made real change in society.  A few years ago, I would not be elected as an openly gay person, and I was elected.  We have an openly transgender Member of Parliament.  Where else in the region would you have this?  It's change.

Thanks so much to Mr. Biedroń for taking the time to meet and talk with me.  I really appreciate his generosity and friendliness, and it was a privilege to be able to speak with him.