https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9969-7172
![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
This article analyzes the various activities, problem frameworks, and identity strategies around which feminist, lesbian, and trans-solidarity in the Polish-German collective Girlz Get United (GGU) were built. Focusing on oral history interviews with Suzi Andreis, a member and co-organizer of the GGU meetings, this study examined the transnational and intersectional collectivity of the group as a form of lesbian solidarity. Following Emma Goldman and bell hooks, it attempted to consider how the collective, active in the early 2000s, constructed solidarity by being together during integration meetings, various workshops, and sports encounters. The article also examines the content appearing in the bilingual “ggu!” bulletins issued by the group during its active period. It exposes the rupture and contradictions between different ways of building lesbian solidarity: on the one hand, as a positive experience of sociability and friendship evoked through oral history interviews and, on the other hand, as an archival political manifesto told through a zine story of trauma and violence.
Disclosure of interest statement
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
Notes
1 This paper focuses on the feminist, lesbian and trans experience. My decision is based on the insight that these sexual and gender narratives are accented by the “ggu!” zines and Suzi within the oral history. Therefore, in the article, I do not pay enough attention to the queer experience or the LGBT movement in Poland, primarily due to the nature of the GGU group. It does not mean that in post-1989 Poland, there were no queer collectives publishing zines or those identifying with the Polish LGBT movement, which I will return to later in this text.
2 In my research, I ask my interlocutors whether the original zines or copies thereof can be handed over to initiatives focused on archiving feminist and queer zines, such as L*AW Lesbian Virtually Archive, Lambda Warszawa’s Archive, or the anarchist library in the ADA Puławska Active Alternative House.
3 This interview was conducted on May 16, 2022, at the Nancy Lee Cafe on Grochowska Street in Warsaw.
4 Apart from being a member and co-organizer of GGU meetings, Suzi is a feminist sports activist, a co-founder of the intersectional women’s football team and Sports Club Chrząszczyki [Beetles], and an activist in many informal lesbian and feminist collectives.
5 The MONAliesA Leipzig feminist library is still active. See https://monaliesa.de/.
6 This refers to the currently inactive Women’s Information Center OŚKa, which at the turn of the 21st century functioned as an independent foundation for women’s rights in Poland and supported women’s organizations and initiatives.
7 The YOUTH Programme established by the European Parliament and the European Council on June 28, 1999, financed both GGU integration meetings and the publication of zines. For more information, see: European Commission Youth in Action Programme Guide, Education and Culture DG of European Commission, https://www.youthpass.eu/downloads/13-62-8/programme_guide_09_en.pdf.
8 This refers to the international organization the Polish-German Youth Cooperation (see: https://pnwm.org/pnwm/). I write more about the GGU’s cooperation with the public sector and NGOs in an article on queering sexual and gender citizenship in post-socialist Poland (see Dynda Citation2022). In that manuscript, I referred to one of the quotes from an interview with Suzi and the excerpt from the “ggu!” zine (“ggu!,” 2004a, p.16), both of which appear here. This allowed me to compare the various zine and activist strategies of the period studied. In the hereby article, I deepen earlier analyses by focusing exclusively on the GGU collective and the solidarity it built.
9 For sharing knowledge regarding the socio-political situation in Germany at the time, I thank Merlin Sophie Bootsmann.
10 It is difficult to distinguish specific, rigid dates for the GGU functioning because the collective existed informally. The members of the group also overlapped with other feminist projects—they knew each other before, still in the 1990s, and also maintained contact after the collapse of the GGU. Thus, the year 2000, when the first Polish-German integration match took place, and 2005, the date of the last integration meeting of the GGU in Ukraine, can be considered as contractual dates of the collective’s activity.
11 Since November 2020, in the framework of grant project no. 2020/37/N/HS2/00979, I have conducted inquiries in grassroots libraries and archives at feminist and queer non-governmental organizations in Poland, incl. the Women’s Foundation eFKa in Krakow, L*AW Lesbian Virtually Archive, Lambda Warszawa’s Archive, ADA Puławska Active Alternative House in Warsaw, Rozbrat Anarchist Library in Poznań, and Autonomous Space for Initiatives in Warsaw; and in private collections of people involved in feminist and queer movements in Poland after 1989. Moreover, I have conducted interviews in the field of oral history with anarcha-feminist groups from the period of the Polish political transformation (Kobiety przeciwko Dyskryminacji i Przemocy [Women against Discrimination and Violence], Emancypunx, Sister to Sister, Wiedźma [Witch], Strzyga [Strigoi]); with individual artists (Sylwia Chutnik, Asia Bordowa, Nansze); and with contemporary feminist zine collectives (Podżegaczki [Instigators], Wydawnictwo Bomba [Bomba Publishing House], Girls to the Front).
12 The anarcha-lesbian “Łechtaczka” [“Clitoris”] zine in particular wrote about homophobia in the Polish feminist, anarcha-feminist, and anarchist movements. See, e.g., “AT THE FRONT OF THE BARRICADE AGAINST ALL FORMS OF EXPLOITATION AND RAPE / RADICAL FEMINISTS” (“Łechtaczka,” 2003a, p. 5).
13 This was emphasized, in particular, by an interview with a member of the Sister to Sister group (the interview was conducted on November 24, 2021, via the Zoom platform), and the “Łechtaczka” zine.
14 Sister to Sister was a Polish anarcha-lesbian group formed from the ecofeminist group Eko-Femina around the late 1990s and early 2000s. The collective published the “Łechtaczka” zine in the years 2003‒2005.
15 The “Emancypunx” zine was distributed between 1995 and 2002 by the Polish anarcha-feminist group Emancypunx.
16 The “Vacula” zine was created in the late 1990s in Poland by a member of the Emancypunx group.
17 Noc Walpurgii [Walpurgis Night] is a feminist-queer festival organized since 1996, incl. by the Emancypunx group. It expresses opposition to sexual and gender inequalities in the counterculture, and promotes the presence of women and queers in the alternative scenes.
18 During the interview, I also asked Suzi if there were trans men in the collective. She replied that there were butches but they did not identify themselves as trans. She emphasized that “This topic appeared earlier in Germany [in the years of GGU’s activity], and in Poland it became present only a few years later [in the second decade of the 21st century].”
19 This is a report edited by M. Stein-Hilbers, M. Holzbecher, B. Klodwig, U. Kroder, S. Soine, A. Goldammer, and I. Noack, whose original title is Gewalt gegen lesbische Frauen: Studie über Diskriminierungs-und Gewalterfahrungen. The report was issued by the Ministry of Women, Youth, Family and Health in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1999 in Düsseldorf.
20 For more information, see Atlas Nienawiści (Atlas of Hatred): https://atlasnienawisci.pl/, accessed November 9, 2022.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Barbara Dynda
Barbara Dynda is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw, a member of the Section for Contemporary Culture. She holds an inter-area MA in humanities and social sciences. Her current work explores anarcha-feminist movements in Poland as part of an individual research project funded by the National Science Center in Poland.