Homophobia, sexism and transphobia all have their roots in a system of thought that is based upon hierarchically ordered attributions. Boy loves girl, woman desires man, you're the one, you want the other - one who doesn't want to be what he's supposed to, who doesn't want to want as she has to, is odd, nuts, queer. For three days, we'll try to show that nothing has to be the way it "is", that no security, no matter how sure, ever lives up to its promise.
The right-winged Austrian government pursues family policy and population policy - i.e. a repressive "moulding" of the citizens by the state - according to a nationalist-racist pattern. While migrants have to wait for years for a so-called "family reunion", female white majority Austrians are being pressed to bear children and become dependent on a male "breadwinner" with the help of child benefits and propaganda against abortion and for families. In a cosy community with the (Catholic) church, the government wants to save the patriarchal model of the state-sanctified mother-father-child-idyll (i.e. hell) from its certain demise. In return, experts mainstream gender politics and the loudest call from the gay-lesbian community is the one for the right to marry... Game over for radical approaches?
Political and personal approaches that declare war on the ruling norms of gender and sexuality will be presented and tried out during the Queer Days in a diverse program, consisting of workshops, lectures, direct action and films. We lay claim to public space, to room and visibility for all those who do not (want to) fit into the predetermined categories of "male" and "female". We insist on our right to experience sexuality beyond hetero/a and homo. The Queer Days are to provide an opportunity to reflect our relationship to the dominant right-conservative politics, but also to various (feminist, lesbigay) counterstrategies, to provoke and to absorb public space for us and for our actions.i
We're having fun anyway.