 country finds itself confronted with but three choices to keep their heads down, to leave the country, or to fight back. The 15th episode of School of Resistance, created in the context of the Polish Malta Festival 2021 in Poznań, will bring together several people who center their work around queer liberation. Together with the philosopher Helene Hester and author of the book Zinofeminism, the Polish drag performer and political activist Maciej Gaszew-Gosniowski will talk about LGBTQI rights and the artistic potential of transforming desire and gender. And my name is Kasia Wojcik and I'm very happy to introduce you to our guests today. I will briefly read the biographies of the guests to you and then we will enter into the conversation. Thank you first of all for being here, very happy about that. Helen Hester is a professor of gender technology and cultural politics at the University of West London. Her research interests include techno feminism, social reproduction and theories of work and she's the author of Zinofeminism and beyond explicit pornography and the displacement of sex. Thank you Helen for being here. Thank you so much for having me, it's such a pleasure looking forward to it. And then I introduce to you Maciej Gaszew-Gosniowski, who is a graduate of the National Theatre School in Kraków. He directed the show Borderline Queen, Kerstas at the National Theatre in Vilnius and Patriarch Queen in cooperation with the Komuna Warszawa Theatre. His work is inspired by the art of trashu and breaks the stereotypical perception of gender, especially masculinity. He describes himself with the phrase masculine enough to be queer. First of all, we have another guest today and this is Himera and maybe Himera, you can just briefly introduce yourself to the audience, who you are and then we can enter the conversation. Absolutely, so thank you very much for having me. I'm Haimira and drag queen originally coming from Ukraine, but now living in Poland, where I've met Konczu and we had a pleasure to do a few of the activist engagements together as well as create a lively and colorful drag scene here in Warsaw, Poland. Perfect. Okay, before we start this conversation, I quickly want to remind the audience of the possibility to engage in the conversation by asking questions. And for everyone who's watching this live, you are welcome to send us your questions by emailing to schoolofresistanceatantygens.be or by commenting on the live stream on the Facebook pages of Antigant or IAPM. Okay, first of all, I would like to start off the conversation with a very actual situation that is happening right now. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán's nationalist government, which is also allied with Poland's governing law and justice, the peace party, has introduced a new law banning the display and promotion of homosexuality among under 18s. And this came into a very prominent situation right now because the city of Munich wanted to light up its sports stadium and rainbow colors on Wednesday as Germany's national team took on Hungary and the European Soccer Championship. It would be a show of support for LGBTQI people, but the UEFA rejected the request by the Munich City Council. And Gashu and Himera, first of all, how did you experience the situation? How was that for you? And also, how is the law that is now being introduced in Hungary is affecting also maybe the situation in Poland? Of course, it affects a lot because we are worried that the same rule will happen here. So, yes, we are scared. And a few actions actually happened in front of the embassy. So, yes, what I can say more, we are really worried that the same rule will happen here in Poland, but we are still fighting, so let's see. The thing is that being a neighbor to a country who shares a lot of similar ideas than Polish culture and Polish government entertains as well is just as alarming as being in Poland and not technically affected by Hungarian law, but definitely feeling the pressure of that neighbor that tends to have some support here in Poland as well, at least from the third eye perspective, is definitely worrying. And the goal is to make sure that this thing doesn't happen. I actually recently spoke to a friend who gave me a bit more information about what actually happened in Hungary and I was like, well, that would never happen in Poland. He was like, really? Yes, exactly. Are you sure? Why not? I'm like, well, really, why not? Let me like, I try to translate, there is one sentence, I will like speak in Polish English because sometimes I need to just ask a question. Proverb. There is one like proverb, proverb. Let's try to translate it. Polish, Hungarian, one brothers? Well, I think it's two brothers. You know what I mean? Polish, Hungarian, two brothers. So, and like, you can feel it that our government is kind of like proud that it's happened there. And I'm really worried that they'll try to copy it here. And it's already been happening on some levels when sex education was being introduced to Polish schools. A lot of people and the government itself was very much against it and at the end prohibited it. Am I right? Yes. So when you think that Polish being a part of EU and from my perspective being Ukrainian, going to a better place that is Poland trying to have a better life here and seeing the such things happening does not give much hope because you feel like the whole Western world is following best practices of sex education and the importance of it amongst youngsters while Polish government completely abandons it. So one may just question what direction this may go further being that Hungary did take it a few steps further. Thank you for also sharing your worry. And first, we are in Pride Month now. So I want to go maybe also into the more hopeful question of how are you celebrating Pride right now in Poland? And what are your actions right now? And how are visible are you? And what is your support maybe also from others? There is like, I will say that there is many, many reasons to celebrate the Pride. Every single person walking in the march is a reason to celebrate the Pride. You know what I mean? Every single queer person is a reason to celebrate the Pride. So yes, we are celebrating as much as we can. We are celebrating. Of course, we had the like big equality parade here in Warsaw. In actual, it was really big. I didn't expect that it will be that big, but it was huge. Specifically during the pandemic. Specifically during the pandemic. And now like in a few days, they will be in Poznań than in Łódź. I think I'm not sure because I don't know the calendar, but in a few places in Poland, there will be like some marches. This is the word, yes, marches, equality marches. So yes, we are celebrating it and we are trying to talk about it. And very helpful, I will say that very helpful is the internet because we can celebrate the Pride via internet, via internet online on social media. There's many, many, many actions going on around the Poland, which can like invite all queer people from around the Poland. And my question is also how safe are you feeling when you celebrate Pride and what measures do you have to take? Because of course, I'm Polish from my background and I also notice, of course, the extreme right-wing demonstrations that are happening and how are these situations when you celebrate Pride? How is this safety-wise and how do you feel? I will tell you that maybe I'm not as brave as Jaime Rice. For example, to go to the Pride, I'm taking a taxi. Me too. I'm not sure that I will be brave enough to take a bus, for example. Public transportation. Or any public transportation, yes. You know what I mean? And this simple example can show that we are not feeling very comfortable with this situation. You know what I mean? I mean, from a perspective of different countries like Germany or Austria, what I've been to a few parades, everybody's colorful there. Everybody's working on streets. And it seems like they are way more confident than us here in Poland because while there is a Pride month, we have Pride, we have parades. People are out there. They are out there in groups. It's even being recommended to being groups, to avoid being alone because there simply are a lot of chances of being attacked. Worse so, I feel like it's a bubble within the bubble, a country within the country because here it's a bit different here. People are more open. It's like an island. Yes, it's like an island that has its own rules and it lives by its own life. And that what makes it better because, for example, Gonshu mentioned earlier that I might be a bit braver than him, which I disagree, but my bravery very often comes in line with stupidity as well. And naive thinking that, you know, I mean, I can walk on streets in whatever way I want to and whatever I look like and not worry about anything. But it's also not the thinking that probably everybody share here in Poland, because a lot of people would not go out dressed up in heels or wearing lipstick or whatever. But I always say one thing. I may look like a drag queen and I may even look like a woman. But at the end of the day, I'm a man with a heel that can be a very powerful weapon. So I always cheer myself up with that thinking. Nonetheless, it's probably a bit irresponsible to be walking outside by yourself in some queer costumes and some queer looks. And so we spoke about what is happening in Hungary. We spoke about pride. But what is the current situation for the LGBTQI community in Poland right now? Could you explain to our audience what is it about the LGBTQI free zones? What is this concept? Where is this going? And could you like maybe give us an introduction to what's the situation? Because of Bartek Staszewski's actions that he showed this LGBTQI free zones. This is how it's called. He showed it. He created a sign. It's like wonderful action seriously. It's wonderful action. You can find it on the internet. And now he's one of the most famous activists I think in Europe actually. Because of his action, Europe seen that such a thing happened. And these small governments, I have to say that there's someone on there. Yeah, city governments, city councils. Like city government governments start to cancel it. You know what I mean? They start to say that we didn't happen. We haven't done such a thing. You know what I mean? So where does that idea and law of LGBTQI free zones come from? Where does it come from? Where it starts? I have no idea how it started. I cannot tell you the beginning of this action. What I believe is that the overall government. I will start it from the church actually. Like seriously. Sorry. I'm not sure. But what I believe is that the government introduced the idea of maintaining family values and making sure that the family values are maintained throughout the history and throughout the overall process of life. And what was a part of that idea of maintaining family values was that family consists of a man and a woman and a child that they can conceive, which two men cannot do. Where those LGBT free zones come from is one thing, but it's also a threat. It seems like a Polish government trying to very much divide the society into two opposite spectrums. And the common enemy is supposed to be the LGBT community because the rhetoric is that it's a Western influence that is trying to take over Poland and change the historic values and the Christianity and all of it. So it's a threat. And now having one common threat for different groups of society is a very good strategy for politics. It's a very bad strategy for society, which seems to be what is happening here. And so when the LGBT free zones were introduced, a lot of those small city councils and city governments took over that idea of supporting it in the spirit of supporting family values. And so it wasn't a technical law. It wasn't a technical law. It was the idea, the kind of symbol, kind of symbol that government chooses to support. Now Bartek was able to visualize how would it look like if it was, in fact, a law? What would it look like? By printing out or actually making a metal template of LGBT free zones under the names of cities and villages that accepted that idea. And so he made a huge action of taking pictures of the names of these cities and villages with that LGBT free zone next to it just to visualize what it would look like if it became, in fact, a reality. And so the backfire was that the European nations noticed the law, not the law, but the idea and the way that it's going and the direction it's following and got a very much alarm, which resulted in withdrawal of some European funds from some city councils and capitals, which was very funny to me to observe that the minute the European funds were withdrawn from these cities and governments, these cities, like Gonstiou said, governments reacted saying that, oh no, we're all in for the LGBT, we support, we love, we love LGBT, get us some LGBT here. So the reason is that the minute you lose money, you become a supporter of whatever brings the money back, which did not happen. To my knowledge, the European government, European nations did not continue to invest into these small cities. What did happen, though, is that the Polish government started to support the cities which used this symbol, which used this LGBT free zone. They compensated for the withdrawal of funds of the UN in EU nations by bringing funds from the country's capital and actually doubling it in some cases. So it was very sad to see that people have some of their values, even though they are wrong, they just are about as easy to change their values as they are able to change their money source. Because I just said that it's happened because of the Church. I mean, I will say that in Poland, we have our own Catholic Church, then in Vatican, you know what I mean? We're totally different. Even if the Polish Catholic Church belongs to Vatican, they are really in a totally different way of thinking. And for example, in church they are saying, and it happened two years ago, actually the whole action happened two years ago. And two years ago, Art Bishops said, in one of the biggest churches in Poland, he said that we are facing the rainbow disease. He called it the rainbow disease. And that Polish society had to fight against the rainbow disease. It happened two years ago. And from that point, I think from that point, more or less, this LGBT zone started to happen. I will not say that it happened because of that, but it was like in the same time. You know what I mean? So the Polish Catholic Church really influenced and supports such an action as LGBT free zones. It's interesting to see the way that values have been mobilised. Sorry, can you say it a bit louder? I'm not sure. Can you hear me? Yes. I think it's really interesting the way that the whole idea of values and ideology has been mobilised in these discussions. I mean, because I guess there's been this effort to frame it not as targeting specific LGBT people, but trying to combat the rainbow plague, trying to combat LGBTQ ideology. And it's really interesting mirrors there with the way things like critical race theory are being treated in the US, where the idea is what you're mobilising against is a threatening ideology. The people are fine. It's the ideas which are somehow the cancer, the plague that we have to counter. And also the way that all of this, and you guys have picked this up really clearly, is rooted through the figure of the child. The child who has to be protected at all costs from adult queerness. And that framing so neglects the fact that queer children exist. You know, they are absolutely erased as a possibility. And what you have is this sort of metaphysically inflated phantom of the child with a capital C who represents the future defined not in the sense of something that's emergent or to come or potentially different or mutational in some way, but a future that represents the exact replication of the same across time. So more of the same. The child is the figure of the more of the same. And you know, when you deal with children in the abstract with a capital C, ignore the fact that queer children exist, ignore the fact that children are actually a very differentiated mass of individuals and start seeing them as this kind of sort of wholly figure that cannot be contested. And every appeal that's made in the name of the child can't be resisted. You know, this idea that you cannot say, like, well, we're doing this for the children, and therefore you get that it's impossible to argue against that kind of logic. I think I just think it's really interesting that it is the way that ideas of values and ideas of ideologies become these kind of progen horses to smuggle in actually the ongoing stigmatization of people. Thank you. And it's very sad as well. Yes. Yes. So thank you first of all for giving us like a little introduction into the situation. And so what what the School of Resistance always tries is to say, okay, what could be actually potentials or future or possibilities. And that's why I really we invited Helen, because Helen comes from a background where she created with a group of others proposal for some sort of futurity or potentiality. And Helen, I have some quotes from your work. And I will just state them for the audience. And then you could maybe just really explain to us your concept. And you can try. Xeno feminism is gender abolitionist letter hundred sexes bloom. So Helen, what is Xeno feminism about? So what's the word actually? What's what's coming? Where is it coming from? How did you develop maybe also this theory? And how can we situate this theory into the context of queer liberation also into the historic struggles maybe that have been happening in the last decades? So to sort of address the name. So the Xeno comes from this idea of the the outsider or the stranger, as opposed to kind of the the familiar or the figure of the compatriot. So it's kind of I guess it kind of relates to, you know, the discussion that we were just engaging in that it's about it's about a feminism that engages with the alien to some extent. So the idea of a, for example, a future that's not based on the unthinking repetition of the same, but creates a space for the emergence of genuine alternatives, alternatives that we may not yet be able to foresee. And then so the so the way I define Xeno feminism is I use a sort of tripartite kind of structure to talk about it. And so first of all, I think about it as a techno materialist form of feminism. So Xeno feminism is really interested in technologies as activist tools. It thinks about, you know, I mean, we had this conversation about what the internet enables us to do that perhaps would have been impossible before. So we kind of start from this idea of well, what can technologies do? But we're very keen that we don't kind of snip technologies out of their contexts. So if we're talking about technologies, we don't want to treat them as if they're sort of like this ethereal disembodied cloud that just sort of exists without without anything surrounding them. We think very much about their brute materiality. So that's in terms of the infrastructures that grounds them, but also in terms of the bodies of the people who use technologies and who produce technologies. So trying to get this very grounded sense of how technologies work in context and think about it that way. So that's the first thing that techno material aspect. The second term I use to describe it is anti naturalist. So now that's this is an idea that sort of triggers some resistance because people think when I'm talking about anti naturalism, I'm talking about being against nature in some way. And that's not really what we're kind of getting at. Xeno feminism is an anti naturalist endeavor in the sense that it frames nature and the natural as a space for contestation. So we don't think that that nature is some sort of untouchable realm. But actually, we understand that it's always developed in conversation with culture, including technology. And also that it is within the purview of politics. Nature is always already political. So it's not outside of that framework. And Xeno feminism kind of assumes that any political project that's based upon nature, some kind of pseudo theological limits or some kind of cartography of the untouchable is going to lend huge conceptual resources to the conservative punishment of radical difference. So when it says, oh, well, it's just things are just this way because they're natural. It's naturally that way, you know, but particularly ideas around around gender and sexuality to suggest that things are unnatural or natural as a way of kind of closing down a conversation. Xeno feminism seeks to resist that. So to just use I've got a little quote from the manifesto here, which I think is relevant. We write that nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent or given, neither material conditions nor social forms. Anyone who's been deemed unnatural in the face of reigning biological norms, anyone who's experienced injustices wrought in the name of natural order will realize that the glorification of nature has nothing to offer us. The queer and trans among us, the disabled, as well as those who have suffered discrimination due to pregnancy or duties connected to childhood. So we sort of start from this idea that it doesn't help intellectually or morally or politically to appeal to the natural, you know. And so that that is sort of this idea of, for example, saying that we are we are born this way. We think that that has a very particular set of strategic affordances. But also that it needs to be complimented with a kind of a different approach that doesn't try to kind of start to inevitableize gender or sexuality, but actually sees it as a space of transformation. So I think so just to kind of clarify, when we say that we're anti naturalist, we're not trying to say that there is no that we're against nature. We're not trying to say that the biological doesn't have any capacity to kind of structure our world or shape the possibility space of what we can do as political subjects. And so we're not trying to deny that there is some kind of biological strata to embodied reality, or to suggest that different bodies don't have different susceptibilities or capacities. Of course, they do. What we are trying to challenge is the idea that the biological is immutable or fixed simply because it is biological, you know, so that's on the one hand that involves acknowledging that social ideas are the sort of shape how we understand embodiments, you know, we have to acknowledge that many of our ideas about gender and sex and sexuality are ideological ideas. But the sort of the more radical kernel involves framing the terrain of biology as rightfully subject to change. So we sort of suggest that, you know, biology is not destiny, because biology itself can be made subject to change, it can be technologically transformed, and it should be technologically transformed in the pursuit of reproductive justice and the progressive transformation of gender. That's kind of the anti-naturalizing. And then that brings us on to the quote that you started with, which was about gender abolitionism. So that's the third component that I use when I'm trying to offer a definition of xenopheminism. It's basically to stress the idea that xenopheminism would like to kind of agitate for the deconstruction of a binary gender system. And this is really connected to this idea of anti-naturalism, I think. So if we understand that nature is folded into the domain of politics, then that which we currently think of as gender is one domain of potential emancipatory transformation. And then so I guess one thing that I would really stress when we're talking about this idea of gender abolitionism is that it's not about the stripping away of gender markers, it's not about the imposition of some kind of uniform, everybody looks the same, everybody is the same, there is no gender, there is no difference, there is no diversity. It's sort of, it's more about understanding the body's position as a reworkable platform. And kind of, I guess instead of arguing for some kind of gender austerity, arguing instead for something like a gender post scarcity. So the idea that gender might proliferate to the extent that it overruns a binary gender system would kind of be what we're getting at really. So yeah, so yeah, this idea that rather than there being, so we understand the fundamental paucity of the model that says you have masculine male, feminine female, and all gender gets funneled into that paradigm. And it's sort of, we argue for this sort of proliferation of gender outside of that. So we want the restrictions upon gendered identity to be scrapped, and this kind of tenacious, binary thinking to be disregarded. And instead, we're really interested in the idea of a multiply gendered world. So if xenopheminism is gender abolitionist, it's in the sense that it rejects the validity of any social order that's anchored in identities as a basis of oppression, and in the sense that we embrace sexual diversity beyond any binary. So this is where the idea of let 100 sexes bloom comes from. And I think one thing that I would add to that is this idea of proliferation. It's not just, that's not an end point. So this idea that we could maybe have numerous categorising options, hundreds and hundreds of drop-down menu items that we could choose as we get into these more and more specific kind of gender categories for ourselves. I think there is a certain kind of pleasure associated with that. There are manifold pleasures of gender as well as pains and sufferings that are attached to it. But the recognition of the possibility of innumerable genders should only be a first step in the refusal to accept any gender as a basis of stable signification. So we think that at the moment under current systems of binary gender, gender is seen as having this massive explanatory power for why people are the way that they are. That if you designate somebody a particular gender, that somehow gives you an insight into their attitudes, their capacities, their interests, their life course, their consumer behaviours. Gender becomes a shorthand for a massive different kind of bodily processes, identity traits, all of this stuff gets scooped up in big categories of gender. And we just think that that doesn't work, that we should be looking for more nimble and inclusive vectors of solidarity and that we should be thinking not in terms of these big identities as explaining who we are. We shouldn't think about gender as bearing the weight of signifying something beyond itself, but should instead just see gender as just gender. Gender is just, you know, that they don't have this power to explain anything about who we are. That the categories that we adopt aren't a sort of shorthand for identity as a whole, but just refer simply to gender in and of itself. I hope that makes some kind of sense. I hope it did to some extent. It does Helen and I think you triggered really a lot of interesting factors from all of these different things. Obviously we were a bit behind with English so all the hard words was hard to comprehend, but the overall idea is definitely understandable and it's funny what you were finishing with when it comes to the idea of gender needing to be binary in order for it to open up. Because that's something that I've had discussion with with my another trackmate friend, Toya Stara, who I've asked to explain to myself how do non-binary people identify as and obviously there's a huge spectrum there, right? And in drag there's always this play and game on bending gender and for order for that game and that fun and that joke to happen you need a construct of gender. You need to have it to be binary in order to then be able to bend it. So I feel like it very nicely overlaps with what you were explaining about this concept in general, but I also do have a follow-up question here when it comes to that unnaturalism or anti-naturalism that you were talking about because in the context of for example gay people the idea and the belief is that it's natural to us. We were born gay, thus it's natural, thus it's our biology. How does xenofeminism react to that? Yeah I mean I think the first important point to make is that there is obviously no one way of being queer. There is a huge a huge different range and there's actually a really rich interesting kind of body of queer texts around ideas of gender abolitionism as well. So whilst I think that it is this idea of it being something natural is something that's very much mobilised within a lot of contemporary LGBT activism there's also a whole other activist tradition and a whole other philosophical tradition that takes a slightly different approach as well. So I think so where xenofeminism has an issue is when nature isn't seen as a platform, it's not seen as something changeable or something to do something with, but is seen as being both a stable origin and an incontestable end point. So that's where there's kind of this slight schism between some frameworks of queer activism and a more xenofeminist framework of queer activism. So when we talk about positions which are founded on a claim of being born this way which is obviously you know quite a popular slogan, what we have is these sort of supposedly inbuilt characteristics that become sort of set up or framed as being a transcendental guarantee. You know it's the idea of there's a quote in the xenofeminist manifesto about how we're told to seek solace in unfreedom as if offering an excuse with nature's blessing. Now certainly some politics of for example trans liberation have staked their claims on a kind of redemptive understanding of identity. You know and I think this idea that there is some internal truth to gender, some internal truth to sexuality that can be sought out or divined in some way. It's a really understandable approach given the perpetually embattled condition of queer and trans communities because what it does and I think I've kind of gested to this already is that it what it does is it inevitableizes one own existence. It's like well yeah of course I'm gay of course I'm queer of course I'm trans I can't change it it's just the way that it is and that makes it it makes it seem inevitable and when you're sort of working for your basic survival strategically that makes a massive amount of sense. So I think you have to kind of recognize the way that these strategies are born this way engage with sort of ideas on the ground but I think they there's also I think those strategies have to be complemented not necessarily replaced not ousted because they do have massive utility but actually complemented with approaches that actually deal with some of those really radical and emancipatory tendencies of trans feminism which relate to its capacity to act as a sort of assertion of freedom in the face of an order that seemed immutable like saying that okay well there's this whole realm of identity a whole realm of being human that's been set up culturally and historically as an untouchable you know if something is natural you cannot touch it that's the end of the conversation and a huge amount of what I find to be the most energizing and inspiring trans feminist practice and thinking has gone has been about refusing that actually claiming freedom from a space but we're not supposed to be able to enter into that's not supposed to be a space of human intervention and I find that sort of massively exciting trait and I think what I would say as well is that I don't in any way want to suggest the trans subjects for example are at fault for reinforcing a gender binary or to deny lived experiences of many of our trans siblings but rather I want to sort of acknowledge that these experiences of gender are already determined through the terms of power and I think so xenofeminism is kind of it's curious because it has this gender abolitionist anti-naturalist stance that goes alongside what I hope is a rather more pragmatic focus on sort of agitating for the broadening of access to legal and medical and social technologies of transition for everybody who wants them so you know that there's this real focus on you know making life livable for queer people on the ground but that is then combined with this sort of I guess sort of longer term thinking about the overthrowal of these existing systems and I guess what so it's more about having this queer anti-naturalist gender abolitionism sit alongside certain species of strategic naturalism and having instead this sort of ecology of activism like a multi-pronged attempt where all of these different perspectives and time scales and agendas kind of interact and so trying to find a way where we can maximize the pletius of gender whilst minimizing the pains and the harms to some extent. Thank you Helen. So you already jumped into it was very interesting for me to hear Gashu and Himera and responding to Helen's approach of xenofeminism saying that there's some like affinity also in the way drag culture performs and so I would really like to enter into the because we are an artistic format into the question of art and art also as a political tool so I first have a little quote also from Helen which says that despite its name gender abolitionism that we talked about now briefly is not a destructive project but a creative one it's a call for a world in which there are lots of different ways of doing gender and now I'm wondering Mache and Gashu and Himera how do you feel about this question of like the creativity of destruction of gender and how is this part of your work as a political activist but also as an artist so could you yeah help us get into the theory of drag culture also? I think it would be the best person to answer that. Because Mache I'm also maybe to say this in your biography you end with the statement masculine enough to be queer so what is this about and maybe you could like show us. Okay so maybe our example what I'm focused on when I'm doing drag so actually I'm focused on what does it mean to be a masculine because actually I have no idea and I'm so happy that I have no idea what does it mean to be masculine but there is some kind of like stereotypical pictures which we each male part of the society are focused on but actually they are so different and there's no one thing which you can call this is like masculinity and this is what I'm playing with that in my drag I'm still trying to be like I'm playing with this being masculine for example like now I'm wearing shirt but as well I'm wearing makeup you know what I mean this is like this is what I'm doing in drag but like in the whole situation I will say that the drag culture is the perfect example of what Helen was saying because like of course we are working with what Haimera said already that we somehow we are working with this binary idea but we are just using it as a tool you know what I mean we are using it as a tool to say that such a thing actually does not exist there's just pictures you can you can be inspired by this idea by these ideas but actually it does not exist and this is what drag is about from my perspective I definitely agree with you Kiel like I mentioned before drag kind of falls in between those two binary states and it's very beautiful to see how each one of those artists and drag performers interpret it on their own way that's why drag really made me do it because there's such a variety there there's such a diversity there that you see someone being extra feminine someone being extra masculine someone being nothing in between something be someone being from the the space and the moon and an alien and it's beautiful to see how all of that opens up on the basis of only these two ideas of masculine and feminine and the interpretation of all of this from different perspective is really what inspires me to do drag exactly because like even more I will say that not only that that not masculine and feminine are the limits they are even more you know what I mean something something something behind the masculinity and behind the femininity the femininity yes this is the word okay sorry like my English uh you know what I mean like drag is less horizontal I don't know circle yes I mean I think you know this really taps into some of what's behind a sort of the the the idea of abolishing a binary gender system through the proliferation of genders right because Gashi the kind of point that you make is that there are so many different images of for example masculinity and many of them are not compatible you know so actually there is there is no pure poll of masculinity that could be accessible because there are so many different forms of masculinity that that you can't you cannot be perfectly masculine because it is already too multiple to ever embody that position and I think it's also really important to acknowledge that the experiences of gender are always shaped by intersectional factors so actually the possibility of embodying ideas of masculine and feminine of masculinity and femininity are already shaped by things like race you know you see that there have been certain ideas of for example white femininity as fragility delicacy the need to be protected from work that very much have not applied to women of color who have been seen to not embody that kind of femininity who have you know there have been some sort of postcolonial decolonial scholars who've sort of talked about the fact that it's it's impossible to be both black and a woman because the category of woman has already been shaped by this idea of whiteness it's fundamentally a white category so there's already this mass proliferation of gender in ways that are you know occupiable or non-occupiable by different people in different times and places and situations so gender is already multiple it's already overrunning its categories and you know I think a part of part of the sort of the gender abolitionist element is understanding how that might be leveraged in a more emancipatory way to facilitate gendered freedom and maximize our ability to exercise both individual and collective autonomy within the space of gender so Helen oh yeah please go on no I'll just like there's like just as an inspiration for example like for me bodybuilders show you know the bodybuilders right like come on they behave exactly like drag queens the amount of makeup the poses everything they behave like drag queens come on they're perfect in that yeah they would fall into that stereotypical idea of masculinity right up to up to a point but again it's there there are these contrasting there are these contrasting norms where the very fact of bodily display would seem to destabilize this idea that they are hypermasculine so certainly the musculature is is hypermasculine but there's a sense in which that attentiveness to self crafting actually already problematizes this idea of being able to occupy a masculine norm and you know use and then when you bring in the fact that there are that there are cis female bodybuilders you know they are also in this very they are in to some extent engaging a hyper feminine display because of the presentation of the body partially clothed heavily made up as you identify on a stage you know it's very much enmeshed within a certain set of feminine or feminized gender norms but then the the nature of the bodily display what they are being kind of critically assessed on in this process of sort of um the the judging and the categorizing of the body is so completely completely different from what we associate with feminine norms so is there's already all of this there's there's already like mass gender confusion and what xenofeminism would like is to just continue the gendered chaos like build on it build on it build on it make it so that actually gender overruns its categories to the point where we can no longer rely on it as a framework of signification you know we can no longer assume that we know anything about anybody on the basis of the gender that we assign them like because it's all it is it's just itself it has no explanatory or significatory power beyond just being a gender and I feel like people choose to ignore that simply because they like to rely on what they know right and what they know is that there is a female in the male and that's it and then when there comes a lot of the unknown that's the primarily fear of everybody's out there you are afraid of what you don't know and when you don't know such things or you choose to ignore them you choose to stick to what you know and it's really funny how you mentioned that that it's already happening but people choose not to see that yeah but I mean there are very good reasons why we rely on stereotypes socially you know because actually we engage with people in all kinds of anonymized situations where it's actually really helpful to be able to just think okay I can just refer to a sort of mental cheat sheet for what kind of individual I'm engaging with and I guess it's just the fact that I'm very invested in sort of gendered anarchy and the proliferation of trouble but like I would rather make it impossible to rely on any kind of shorthand and actually have us I don't know there's something really there's something hopelessly romantic and I'm sure very philosophically problematic about the idea that we could confront each other as individuals in the world but there's something there that I find kind of quite appealing as an idea so what I'm taking out of this conversation is really create more trouble more gender chaos proliferate it all and so I have just some last questions which I find what would give me like a also me personally as an artist like Helen this whole idea it's it's as you say it's highly creative and it's doing an undoing gender it's an artistic practice and for you where do you see the potential of art as we're also being part of an art festival right now in queer and feminist liberation and the same question then goes to Gashu and Himera so your the way you use your art as a drag performer how can this be is this a political tool if yes and how and I would really like to to to hear your your opinion about that as our last questions of this very beautiful conversation yeah I mean I think I think I am very interested in a sort of exploded or expanded understanding of art as you know precisely at this level of sort of the autonomous process of shaping environments and identities you know kind of thinking beyond the creation of of specific works although I think the creation of specific works is you know is is part of this and actually art has a really interesting role in role in sort of giving us a sort of facilitating ways of thinking otherwise you know because when I when I try and articulate these ideas I'm very constrained by what is my medium for communicating them which is a language that starts and flows and then ends so there's this very temporal dimension to what I do and I try my best to develop concepts to apply concepts and so I'm working in a very particular register and it's a register where ambiguity is actually something that's discouraged but what you're striving for all the time is clarity and so there's not quite so much space to maybe sit with something without coming down in a particular position on it you know I am as a as a philosopher or as a theorist or as an activist I'm expected to be thinking about well what's what is the positive content here what do I what do I believe what is my argument you know what is my cause and what are my tactics so there's very sort of concrete space of thinking through these things where there's actually less space for discomfort and less space for not knowing and if you want to sit in a space of ambiguity you really have to actively claim it against disciplinary traditions you know you have to claim it against a set of norms that's steering you to act or talk in a very particular way so I mean I think art has greater capacity to to think about things in a way that is less prescriptive potentially because there is I mean every text no matter what its intention is polysemic it will always be picked up and read and reread and reinterpreted and meanings that you had intended will be missed and meanings that you never intended will be added or created that's just the nature of communication happens everywhere but I think I think in art there is this space to be more overtly polysemic to let multiple meanings sort of jostle against each other and not have to attempt to introduce a framework of resolution where you're like I'm building a case here is the conclusion actually things can sit together and just sort of you know jostle up against each other in comfortable and uncomfortable ways and that can be a real tool for stimulating thinking and I think for one of the things that we say in the Xenopheminist manifesto is that we want Xenopheminism to be a platform not a blueprint so it's not about trying to prescribe a way of doing things but trying to create something that could be a tool for different people to think with I think that's something that we really aspire to and I think that you have this very interesting recursive relationship between art and philosophy where you know where you can attempt to be a tool for somebody to think with and they can produce a work which actually then shakes the way you then return to it and what we use as raw materials for our thinking you know we're constantly engaged in this process of exchange which I think can be quite exhilarating and rewarding so I mean we've been really really fortunate that actually a lot of artists who I massively respect and I just really actually just enjoy their work have taken up Xenopheminism as as part of their sort of conceptual toolkit for thinking and doing things and you know I think I will be a very happy person if I manage to continue to produce stuff that people can think alongside and weird and that's not just about accepting something or saying like oh yeah I'm going to take this idea and use it in a literal way very often it's about how people refuse your ideas how people reject them how people argue against them because actually what you're doing is you're engaging in this sort of dialogue this sort of dialectical process of transformation you know there's really no greater compliment than somebody taking your work as something to argue against or to push against in the course of developing their own their own thinking because it really in that process of refusal and critique they put you at the center of what they're doing so you've really made a contribution and I think that's something that's quite uh quite exciting to witness. Thank you Helen and Gashu and Himera so for you the artistic maybe also the artistic political potential also of the work you're doing. Like are we mute or not okay because we are muting ourselves to when Helen is talking that's why I was checking it and so drug is always political because because we already said it I think that the gender is the easiest tool to catch by the government and to control it you know what I mean for the for the government is the easiest way to control the society is to give the gender rules and actually when you are doing drug you are saying like fuck it you are not going to control me by my gender so drug is always political and it's it's it doesn't matter how you are presenting your drug how you are performing on drug if you are doing drug you are kind of like against the the system all queer culture actually is about that the Karol Radiszewski very very famous Polish artist said such such a thing that queer culture is always like rebel you know so yes because you are doing drug you are you are doing like political political political art and actually like our because very often me and Himera we are we are in the in some political actions we are doing it I will send them I don't want to attack even more because of that kind of like push even more it's not about that but maybe more in the activist yes theme fashion and then it goes beyond just the existence because like Goncius said just by doing drug by just being drug you are being political because you're challenging the norms you you're just regarding them and what we do sometimes is often more focused on those activists action to the culture to the community to the society and I feel like drug gives you a nice medium to make people question things and that's where the conversation begins even if it's silent simply by looking at you simply by judging you simply by criticizing you you becoming the center of their attention and some way or the other you made that conversation happen and that is political because the performer piece of it in performance piece of it always boils down to at least in my opinion to make people question things and be impressed by something be the positive or negative impression whatever they are left with it's something for them to riddle and to question and maybe answer maybe not I like with my drug performances to make a joke because I'm one of these drag queens who don't shape legs and so when you look at the construct of my face that has been painted to a hyper feminine style and overly glamorous woman and then you kind of continue moving down there and you see those manly hairy legs it kind of contradicts one another and you're like what why how and so this is very often if I were here like here the question why you didn't shave your your legs because I don't I don't have to and it's again challenging the norms challenging the ideas even those of women must musting having to shave legs so obviously I feel like drag is political drag gives you voice you in general become more loud when you put on all that makeup and wig like there's no way you can come on heels a day or like that you cannot avoid people looking at you you cannot avoid people coming to you and you cannot avoid using your voice and I feel like that's a very beautiful of drag that gives you the platform to be visible to be loud and to speak your truth that's why mostly we are doing lip sync because we are screaming all the time and then we are like lip syncing the song you know again thank you our time is now it's been a beautiful conversation I would still give the space to Helen and gashu and he met her to like say the last words or thoughts um if you have them to each other we can of course meet in the in the room after the life is over to say really properly goodbye but maybe something that the audience still would like to hear from you the audience to hear from us I will say please don't do drag I need a job no I'm just kidding of course try to do try to be drag I mean just try it and you will see that it's really funny I would say whatever you do whatever you believe in whatever you try to challenge whatever you feel not accepted about or whatever you disagree it with just try it keep pushing do it I think I would stress the absolute necessity of solidarity at the current moments where we face a resurgent right and I think there is a tendency particularly within anglophone feminine or some parts of anglophone feminist discourse at the moment particularly British discourse what to pit the struggles of cis women against those of trans people to pit the struggles of lesbian and gay people against those of bisexual people and transsexual people um I really think that we can see from our activist histories that whilst we need to have spaces for autonomous organizing and autonomous thinking and that there will be cases when our priorities are not always exactly the same actually there are many many more situations in which our struggles are one in which our struggle for bodily autonomy and the right to maximize the possibility of self-determination within current social and cultural positions are are shared you know that actually with this is this is a moment where you know we're seeing that in Poland for example it's not simply an attack on LGBT people it's also an attack on the protections from against domestic violence it's an attack on protections rights to access abortion even in the most heinous circumstances all of this is part of a united kind of effort populist effort to suppress the capacity for self-determination for for the kind of a a mass subject and I think you know we need to understand that our struggles are one and we need to be in absolute solidarity with each other and and moving together and I think in many ways the most sort of contemporary there's a lot of contemporary struggles that are really doing this I mean I think we've seen a lot of it in the sort of transversal organizing that's happening in Latin America and I think in many ways we've seen it in the Polish context too where there has been a a stitching together a a sewing together into a single garment of all of these struggles around bodily self-determination and I think we need to sustain that we need to deepen and strengthen our transnational networks of activism and move together to tell a resurgent right that they can frankly fuck off I think this was an awesome ending I would say thank you to the audience thank you to our guests this was after 15 episodes and the corona crisis and the lockdown the last online debate format of school of resistance after the summer we are developing new formats with hopefully open analog theaters here we will be we will be having invitation to go there yes so we will of course try to invite all our school of resistance guests somehow to stay in our network as Helen said to that the school of resistance becomes a tool against of course our enemies and I now wish the audience a very beautiful night and goodbye