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.