Reconstruction Women’s Fund, Belgrade Women’s Studies Center and Cultural Center REX invite you to public discussion
FEMINIST RIGHTS AND LESBIAN FREEDOMS
Joan Nestle and Dianne Otto: On lesbian movement’s history, lesbian solidarity among diversities, feminist desire for freedom
Cultural Center REX, Belgrade, Jevrejska 16, April 25, 2011 at 6 p.m.
Moderators: Adriana Zaharijević and Lepa Mlađenović
Translators: Nina Đurđević Filipović and Danijela Živković
Joan Nestle, legendary lesbian, femme writer is the founder of the first Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York that began as a lesbian support group in 1974 in the apartment that Joan Nestle shared with her then partner Deborah Edel. She is the author of a number of books about lesbian desire, love, butch and femme relationship and other political lesbian topics. Her more recent writing focuses on the issues related to older lesbians and lesbians who survived cancer. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her partner Dianne Otto, where she is an activist of the organization Women in Black actively opposing Israeli and US regimes and the occupation of Palestine.
Dianne Otto is a long time feminist professor of law at the University of Melbourne. She first joined the feminist activist movement at a Centre for Women Victims of Rape, on an SOS Hotline in Australia and later in a Socialist Feminist Collective. Dianne has been active in a number of human rights NGOs including Women’s Rights Action Network Australia (WRANA), Women’s Economic Equality Project (WEEP) Canada, International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP) Malaysia, and International Women’s Tribune Centre (IWTC) New York. She currently teaches feminist intervention in international law.
www.joannestle.com/diotto/dilounge.html
- Belgrade Women’s Studies Center (www.zenskestudie.edu.rs) for 20 years has been organizing alternative educational program, developing feminist theory and encouraging feminist praxes in Serbia.
- Reconstruction Women’s Fund (www.rwfund.org ) is the first local women’s foundation in Serbia. Through her programs, she supports activities focused on full realization of women’s human rights, academic exchange, pacifist/antimilitaristic engagement, cooperation and solidarity.
- Cultural centre REX ( www.rex.b92.net) is a place for contemporary, socially engaged art and analytical cultural practice. The mutual aim of projects is to educate and empower individuals and groups to articulate and put into the practice their ideas, to develop an understanding of social relations and use their knowledge and skills in a creative way.
