フェミニスト・アンド・クィア・ユニットとは？ フェミニスト・アンド・クィア・ユニット (FQU)、はじめます
■Ｇ８サミットってなに？
Ｇ８サミットは、「経済・社会問題を中心に国際社会が直面する様々な課題について、首脳は一つのテーブルを囲みながら、非公式かつ自由闊達な意見交換を通じてコンセンサスを形成し、トップダウンで物事を決定します。」というのが日本政府外務省の説明です。1970年代の経済危機をきっかけに始まったこの首脳会議は「先進国」が集まって、「どのようにお互いの利益を守るか」、「先進国がその地位をいかにしてたもつか」、ということについて話されています。
■Ｇ８サミットとわたしたち、関係あるの？
しかしその「やり方」はいつも変わらないものでした。お金持ちだけをもうけさせる仕組みの中で労働と貧困を強いられ、お金や権力をもつ人々に都合のいい社会の仕組みの中で生活している人の苦しさを加速していくものです。「トップダウンで物事を決定します」とは、よくもぬけぬけといったものです。
Ｇ８に限らず、ＷＴＯやＩＭＦをはじめとした数々の世界会合では自分で自分を「世界のリーダー」と自負する少数の人間たちが、この十数年だけをみても弱い生産者に不利な〈自由〉貿易をすすめ、水などの生活必需品を私有化して金儲けの道具とするとともにひとびとの生活のてだてをますますうばってきました。
■わたしたちは、抗います
多くの人々の生活を支配することで、利益と権力を持ちつづけ、拡大しようとする動きの前に、わたしたちは抵抗します。わたしたちは少数の「リーダー」による経済や社会のとりきめが、女性やクィアにも苦しみを与えるだけでなく、女性やクィアの生き延びてきた経験やたたかってきた記憶をも、消し去ってしまうことを知っています。
■わたしたちぬきに、わたしたちのことを決めないで
わたしたちは、自称リーダーたちが力を奪われている人々にするように、他の誰かの価値を勝手に決めたり、誰かがそうされるのを見てみぬふりをしたくありません。
友人は、スカートをはかなかったことで仕事を奪われ、別の友人はスカートをはいた事で仕事を奪われました。誰にも相談できずトイレで出産を迎えた見知らぬ友人は殺人罪で起訴され、インドでは司法も警察にも守られない女性たちが地域でレイプを繰りかえしていた男を殺して逮捕されました。ボリビアでは女性債務者たちが銀行を占拠し、ブラジルでは夫が仕事を探しに家を出たきり戻らない農家の女性が不正に奪われた土地を占拠しました。日本では友人が「男か女かはっきりしろ」という雇用者相手に裁判を起こしました。
■「もうひとつの世界」はいま、ここに
まず、わたしたちは世界中でおこっている、政治や経済から私たちの性別、ジェンダー、セクシュアリティにいたるまで「勝手にきめられた」「決めつけられた」ことの前に屈さず、抗った数々の経験に耳を傾けることからはじめたいと思います。それは「もうひとつの世界」への招待状だと思います。
そして「少数のリーダー」「力のある人たち」による、わたしたちへの「決めつけ」そのものに抗していきたいと思います。それは、政治や経済だけでなく運動や文化、言葉や毎日の生活にひそむものについても、しかりです。
今回、さまざまな場所から多くのアクティヴィストがあつまるはずのG8サミットを機に、運動の中で、女性や、クィアが集える空間、情報交換のためのガイドブックなどをつくりたいと思います。
昨年のドイツの反G8の運動では、フェミニストやクィアが積極的な位置をしめていました。日本の運動ではそれができません。なぜでしょうか？まずはぜひ、みなさんとこの「扉」をあけていきたいとおもいます。
こんなことをかんがえてます。なかまをつのります
★Feminist＆Queerが一緒にできることを考えるワークショップ
★Feminist、Queerが集える空間作り、カフェ
★Feminist＆Queerの困ったときのガイドブック作りや海外情報の翻訳
★多様性を前提にした合意形成のありかたをあみだす
★差別をうけたときのなかまへの相談やそのしくみ作り
★運動トラウマへのサポートをあみだす
連絡先 : nog8saferspace@gmail.com
English Version :
This is English homepage of Feminist Queer Unit
The Feminist And Queer Unit has been formed!
・So, what is this G8 Summit?
The Japanese Foreign Ministry explains, “[the G8 Summit is] where world leaders come together to freely and privately exchange ideas around one table in order to reach consensus-based decisions on global issues – particularly those with regard to economic and social conditions – and effect change in a top-down manner.”
The G8’s origins lie in the oil crisis and global recession of the 1970s. It was formed by leaders of prominent developed nations as a forum where, amidst their insecurity, they could privately brainstorm on how to best protect their global interests and standing.
・How does the G8 Summit relate to me?
The G8 has been operating in the same secretive manner since its start. “Leading” nations have established a system for matching strengths and guaranteeing their maximum profit and advantage, while the rest of us - the non-represented – are busy working and doing what we can to stave off poverty. Leaders at the summit are not making decisions based in our realities - and the decisions they make effectively increase the hardships we face.
They weren’t kidding when they said ‘top-down’.
And yet, looking back over the last few decades, impromptu non-democratically formed organizations like the G8, the IMF, and the WTO have actually put themselves at the head of global developments. Their primary concern is to promote policies like free trade, and the privatization of water and other resources necessary for human survival. These policies often ignore the rights of local producers, workers, and consumers – i.e. people – to security in health, home and livelihood. In this way, they deeply affect our daily lives. In fact, the right to survival itself is more deeply affected the further ‘down the chain’ you go.
・We won’t stand for this!
We are ready to stand together before this same force that insists on maintaining and expanding its own power and authority at the expense of others. As we see it, not only do these high-level deals injure the lives of countless women and queer persons, but they would readily erase our struggles and existence from the annals of history as well.
・How can they decide our lives without us…
Unlike these self-professed “leaders of the free world”, we do not wish to take part in impassively making judgments of the value of other people’s lives. We won’t just stand by and watch as others are judged in this way and “put in their place” either.
Some friends have lost jobs because they refused to wear skirts to work – while others have lost jobs because they did indeed wear skirts to work. Friends who never knew where to turn when pregnant, face charges for murder after making misinformed choices alone in public restrooms. In India, women that police had refused to protect from a serial rapist were later arrested for his murder. In Bolivia, women in debt are seizing the banks, while in Brazil farming women are reclaiming the land taken from them after their husbands left for work and never returned. In Japan, a friend is suing a former employer for constant harassment, “Man or woman! Which is it? Which are you?!”
・Open the door – and find another world.
In each of the countries and towns we were born and raised in, there were different expectations of us – generally shaped by the political, economic, and cultural environment of the time. These expectations have affected our conscious and unconscious lives. And we have struggled with them at times. We have long resisted being boxed in - by sex, gender, sexuality, and so much more.
The Feminist and Queer Unit does believe that all our individual realities are linked upon a common stage. We believe that by listening to each other and seeing how our experiences intersect, we can carry each other past this current world’s wrongs. We can open a door to another world.
There is no better way to fight injustice in our social orders than to confront what is expected of us – in behaviors and values, in our actions, cultures, words, and even daily routines. By recognizing the workings of injustice embedded in our minds, we are empowered to overcome them. We can defy them, along with the political and economic imbalances they serve to maintain.
Try opening a door that leads you beyond your understanding of what’s obvious in reality.
This summer, with the G8 Summit in Hokkaido and activists gathering from around the world, the Feminist and Queer Unit has come together to prepare a guidebook for assuring women and queer persons will have safe spaces and open exchanges of information during the event.
Last year, the feminist and queer presence at the anti-G8 summit in Germany was extremely strong. Yet Japan cannot achieve the same. Why is this?
That’s one step that leads towards a door we believe needs to be opened.
The Feminist and Queer Unit will be getting involved in the following:
・Holding workshops to allow people to plan new collaborative events & actions together.
・Creating spaces, and possibly a café, for feminists, queer people, and their friends.
・Creating a feminist and queer issues awareness guidebook for other activists, and getting involved in information exchanges across lingual barriers.
・Holding workshops for minority groups whose voices are not being heard within civil society organizations.
・Discovering new ways of creating consensus systems that operate under the assumption on inherent human diversity.
・Create a system facilitating the ability of people to turn to each other for advice in times of trouble or need.
・Work to resolve the different traumas people experience when working in the activist field.
Contact us at noG8saferspace@gmail.com
フェミニスト・アンド・クィア・ユニット (FQU) : http://femqueerunit.wordpress.com/about/
