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From
our New Home
Editor:
Emilia Stere
We thank all of our precious volunteers! The
opinions published in this newsletter do not necessarily represent the
point of view of ACCEPT.
ACCEPT
is a non-governmental, non-profit human rights organisation, registered
in Bucharest. ACCEPT’s members are individuals of different sexes, nationalities
and sexual orientations.
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Florin Buhuceanu,
ACCEPT President
The opening of the new ACCEPT
centre was a good opportunity to meet friends
from other NGOs, embassies and institutions which financially supported us. It was for the first time that Romanian gay men and women had a space of their own. The party following the opening also restarted the social meetings with the ACCEPT members and beneficiaries, but also with newcomers, whom we hope to see again in the future. The organisational evaluation of ACCEPT, accomplished by FDSC (the Foundation for the Civil Society’s Development), regarded the activity carried on between October 1998 and September 1999 and was also finalised. The final report is available in our library, and has some important recommendations, as well as conclusions: “The evaluation showed that, since its beginnings, the association developed very fast and with remarkable results, from an informal group, towards an organisation which is representative for the Romanian gay community and has gained a place of its own among the other human rights organisations. ACCEPT managed to become strong despite the fact that both the legal context and the social environment are hostile – the best proof is that most of the association’s activities are opened not only to its members or beneficiaries, but also to the interested general public. Recommendations: - In order to elaborate working yearly activity plans, the organisation will have to create a general strategic plan. - The finalisation of fund-raising plans will assure the proper functioning of current activities, as well as the creation of new ones. - The procedures for granting membership should be modified, because a more careful selection will allow both a better integration for the association and the extension of the lobby activities. - ACCEPT should also encourage the consolidation and extension of the lesbian group, which has to gain a clear identity within the organisation. According to the FDSC evaluation, the identity
of this group, which was created in April 1999, cannot be reduced to the
sexual orientation of its members, as this “is not enough to create a team,
which presupposes, besides the motivation of spending time together, the
motivation of accomplishing something together.” The group has to become
mature, in order to be able to integrate in the organisation’s programmes
and to develop some projects, regarding their specific interests and needs.
ACCEPT forwarded again its
own bill, mainly aimed at eliminating Article 200 – this time during a
meeting with members of the Romanian Senate. We also printed a brochure,
which coherently and briefly explains the reasons for which this discriminatory
article should be eliminated from the Criminal Law. The brochure will be
freely distributed to all Romanian MPs, before the planned parliamentary
debate on the Criminal Law’s revision.
Following the report that evaluated the staff’s activities, we decided
to re-shape their job descriptions. We welcome our new staff members: Elena
Mititelu (Social Activities and Services Co-ordinator), Florin Ghitã
(Office Manager) and Florin Radu (Administrative Assistant). We wish them
a fast adaptation in our team!
Emilia Stere
On November 19, at 7 o’clock,
the new ACCEPT office was officially inaugurated.
Many guests joined us for the event – among them, people who offered us financial support, members of other NGOs, old friends. I will list below some of their thoughts, as recorded on tape or written in an improvised Guest Book: Luminita Petrescu (State Councillor): Michael Holscher (Population Services International): Manuela Stefanescu (APADOR – Helsinki Committee): Robert Petri (Dutch Embassy to Bucharest): Raluca Nica (Romanian League for Mental Health): Iulia Hasdeu (ANA Society): Good luck...and transparence! Serban Negoita and Raluca Ionescu (UNAIDS): I have the pleasure and the honour to welcome you to the official opening of our new office. Luminita
Ratiu
25th of November 1999. ACCEPT,
represented by a team of volunteers, composed by two girls and five boys,
joined “Sãnãtatea 2000 – dacã ºtii, poþi
preveni” (“Health 2000 – Knowing is Preventing”), a social activity organised
by the Institute for Health Services Management (Institutul de Management
al Serviciilor de Sãnãtate – IMSS) and the National Centre
for Health Promotion and Programmes of the Ministry of Health.
ACCEPT and Carol Davila College teams were supposed to collaborate, according to a verbal agreement with the organisers. This collab-oration, which had been decided upon a week earlier, would have meant common reach-out activities (posters hanging, info-papers offering), as well as distributing condoms and awareness ribbons in some discos. It was Ms Simionescu (the Carol Davila College representative) who had the idea that the two teams would join. Her argument was that Carol Davila’s team was composed mainly by girls, while ACCEPT team was composed mainly by boys. Thus, Ms Simionescu was handed the access recommendations, granting free entrance in discos, and about 1000 condoms. These condoms were supposed to be equally split between the two teams. On the 25th of November, the ACCEPT team met the Carol Davila one, according to the agreement. Surprisingly enough, Ms Simionescu refused to hand the access recommendations to the ACCEPT representative. The latter claimed at least one sample, in order to multiply it, on the expense of ACCEPT. During the debate between the two teams, Ms Simionescu added: “Something is wrong here, the whole thing stinks; as a matter of fact, I took part in a training session [at IMSS], and I don’t remember to have seen you there.” Insinuating that IMSS wasn’t willing to allow ACCEPT to take part in the action, Ms Simionescu denied that the recommendations she had been received were meant for both teams. She claimed that ACCEPT’s repre-sentative should also have been handed some recommendations, separately. She asserted that the situation was the result of a discriminatory attitude of IMSS toward ACCEPT. During the argument, Carol Davila team members repeatedly expressed their homophobic opinions towards the ACCEPT team members. Thus, the ACCEPT team returned to the IMSS office, where the organisers stated that nothing was wrong with ACCEPT taking part in this action. They also disapproved Ms Simionescu’s behaviour and finally handed the recommen-dations and the list of the bars and discos where the ACCEPT team was planned to go. Therefore, the ACCEPT team
has began the reach-out action separately from the Carol Davila team.
ACCEPT disapproves the fact that such misunderstandings can occur at the level of educational institutions and NGOs, which are supposed to encourage non-discrimination, the right to opinion and mutual respect. The association also considers the possibility of informing the representatives of the in-charge institutions about the moral damage caused to itself and to its members.  Alexandru
Dudu
However, I can help, I can change
things, I can sensitise people…
I can make you aware, if you are not already so… Or at least I believe I can. And I want to do it now, as the 1st of December is not only the National Day of Romania, but also the International Day against HIV – and for some of us, this is an even bigger event. According to statistics, AIDS appeared in Romania in 1985. Until now, approximately 10,000 people were reported to be HIV positive or suffering from AIDS. However, it is estimated that the real number of HIV infected people is probably 10 times bigger. Statistics also say that every 3 days, a new case of infection occurs. “So why shouldn’t we take care of our lives?” These are the words with which Jeremy Irons addressed the audience of Tony Awards in 1991, when he appeared on stage wearing a red ribbon on his jacket. Later on, he said that he had felt the necessity of wearing this symbol, as a sign of solidarity with HIV infected people and with those who have AIDS. Shortly after its first public appearance, the ribbon became a symbol worn by millions of people. It became a symbol for those who were trying to show their compassion and support towards HIV infected and AIDS suffering persons. People become aware of this symbol. And each time somebody sees this red ribbon, he/she is surely thinking, at least for a second, that HIV and AIDS EXIST and that they can be avoided. Let’s wear a red ribbon… People have to understand that we all have the same rights, whether we are HIV infected or not. The narrow-minded ones have to realise that people with HIV or AIDS are just like them – PEOPLE. Our lives have radically changed since AIDS appeared: we became suspicious, we began losing faith in our partners, and we began loving less. All these have to change! We have to be ourselves again. And we can do that. All we need to do is to protect ourselves. And we will thus regain our peace… 
Luminita
Ratiu
The Awareness Ribbon, first
worn by Jeremy Irons, was conceived in 1991 by Visual AIDS, a New York-based
charity group of art professionals that aims to recognise and honour friends
and colleagues who have died or are dying of AIDS. Visual AIDS encourages
arts organisations, museums, commercial galleries, and AIDS support groups
to commemorate those lost to AIDS, to create greater awareness of AIDS/HIV
transmission, to publicise the needs of Persons With AIDS, and to call
for greater funding of services and research.
Inspired by the yellow ribbons honouring American soldiers of the Persian Gulf War, the colour red was chosen for its “connection to blood and the idea of passion — not only anger, but love, like a valentine,” as stated by Frank Moore of Visual AIDS. However, the Ribbon Project
remains a powerful force in spreading awareness of AIDS and stressing the
need for further action and research of the disease. The sincerest hope
for the Ribbon Project is that it will one day no longer be needed.
Alexandru
Dudu
The pilot-project initiated
by ACCEPT, aiming to prevent HIV infection, has reached its middle stage.
In mid-October, ACCEPT organised an open competition, in order to find a co-ordinator for this project. Around 15 persons were interested and sent their CVs. Among them, four candidates were selected, who were called in for an interview. In the end, the commission decided upon one of them – and I was the lucky one. The first important activity which took place in terms of this project was a volunteers’ training, which was organised in the ACCEPT office and was attended by 12 people. The training’s aim was to provide participants with skills and information, which would enable them to act as a peer group. Technically speaking, a peer group represents a group whose members have certain features in common, such as age, sexual orientation or religion. Peer Education is a method of transferring information or role modelling by which a certain idea is promoted. Peer educators must have a certain similarity with their target group – either age, gender, sexual orientation and so on. The main topics, which were debated during the training, were: - Offering information and correcting false information. Risks of the HIV infection and other STDs; ways of preventing them among gay males; - Legal and ethical aspects of the same-sex relations in Romania; -
Counselling:
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Communication and communication troubles
The topics above were presented by Alex Dudu (Project Co-ordinator), Adrian Coman (Manager) and Gabi (physician), from ACCEPT, and Raluca Ionescu-Ittu and Serban Negoita, from UNAIDS. Following the training, volunteers will become involved in yet other activities of the project, such as organising and co-ordinating social activities in ACCEPT, reach out activities, collecting reference materials on HIV/AIDS and translating foreign articles for the ACCEPT newsletter, creating a volunteers’ guide and offering information on the HIV transmission and prevention. In mid-December, we intend to issue the first Romanian brochure about the HIV/AIDS prevention among gay men; the brochure will be distributed for free in places known to be attended by gay people. However, ACCEPT is always
looking for new volunteers. Please contact
us if you want to help!
Maria Irod
It is a strange thing - it is
almost impossible to understand
why homosexual love is denied, hypocritical mistaken for an “acceptable” friendship or looked down at with a hostile, opaque amazement - although it is perhaps merely the effect of the compulsory heterosexuality, deeply deeply rooted in the collective mind. Is it really so difficult, for those who have never experienced such feelings, to identify with those for whom they are a reality? In order to understand other people, we seem to need to strain our imagination - and not everybody is willing to do it all the time. Thus, I once heard a girl (who had just witnessed a gay parade) saying: “homosexuality is just a whim - who can really fall in love with somebody of his/her own sex?”. It is so hard to answer such a question. In order to do that, one should be able to open one’s soul and to let the others see it, to let the others understand things that could never be explained. It is well-known that Eros eludes Logos and undermines it, and that coherent talking is an honourable bourgeois institution - while the lover’s discourse is so subjective that it borders the non-intelligible, and literary discourses on love are a skilful re-creation, by the agency of words, of the erotic illusion, and not a unmediated translation of the feeling. However, a very long and rich tradition, as well as some habits of thinking, help people to understand immediately - almost to infer - when a man and a woman are in love, the heterosexual love being the only kind of love which is legitimated by the tradition above. How comes? you will ask. Homosexuality has its own tradition - and a very long one indeed, as it comes from the Ancient Greece, and so on. Of course; but this tradition is only available to a few initiated people, while the others misunderstand or misinterpret it. Some subtle hints suffice to make everybody understand when two heterosexual partners are getting involved - while a relation between two men, is considered to be either friendship or vice, and between two women, rather nothing at all. Deprived of any traditional support, homosexuality is intercepted through the filters of the categories imposed by a heterosexual majority. People often talk about exemplary friendships, ignoring or deliberately hiding the erotic element, or blurring the distinction between comradeship (which is based on mutual liking and intellectual commonalties, and in which partners enjoy together the exterior world) and erotic friendship (in which partners enjoy one another, and their intellectual commonalties melt in an indestructible whole, insofar that the two become one). Besides competent literary
critics, who would dare to say that, for instance, between some of Thomas
Mann’s characters (Hanno Buddenbrook and Count Kai Mölln, or Adrian
Leverkühn and Rudi Schwerdtfeger) something more than a simple friendship
is developing - that kind of friendship a heterosexist logic is able to
discover? On the other hand, when the sexual relation is too obvious, terms
such as “vice” or “perversion” are mentioned - as sex was anything else
than the natural expression of psychologically falling in love! And unfortunately,
there are so many examples of homophobia here: from André Breton,
who considered that Verlaine’s relationship with Rimbaud was unspeakable,
to the recent and devastating story of two boys (Ciprian Cucu and Marian
Mutascu) who were insulted as mad and pervert creatures, for the same reason.
We should talk more often
about the “unnamed”, in order to show the whole world that “the love that
dares not to speak its name” is in no way a monstruous thing (that is,
opposed to de-monstratio, impossible to be described in words), but a visible
and appropriate affective reality. Only things people are talking about
can really exist in the consciousness of the world.
The Psychological Counselling project is going on. As psychologist, I have met so far 9 of the association’s beneficiaries. Shyness, the lack of information or the novelty of this service have determined the reluctance of some beneficiaries, towards consulting a psychologist. That is why I want to remind all those interested that I am available on Tuesday, between 17 and 19 o’clock, and Thursday, between 17 and 20 o’clock. As this month’s topic is Love, I will take the opportunity to discuss some of the problems love implies for homosexual and bisexual people. Most of those who benefited from the ACCEPT psychological counselling had sentimental problems. I have often heard phrases like “I wish I loved somebody and somebody loved me in return, I wish I could offer my love and somebody would welcome it…”. What it the reason of this desperate need to love and to offer? Everybody knows that it is very difficult for a gay man or a lesbian woman to find a partner in today’s Romania. But I tend to think that there are other difficulties, as well. Somebody who feels attracted towards a person of his/her own sex and begins to acknowledge this, experiences some not very pleasant feelings. He/she usually has feelings of guilt, shame, tendencies to depression and withdrawal from social life. Eventually, the person in question comes to accept his/her own sexual orientation – with or without others’ help. There are two alternatives here: on the one hand, the coming-out; on the other, keeping the secret. Coming-out can bring understanding and support precisely from those in whom the person in question has invested affection: parents, brothers or sisters, friends. The moment of truth is, nevertheless, accompanied by frustrations and emotional tensions. On the other hand, keeping the secret about one’s sexual orientation can mean an increased frustration, as a social being, everybody needs the understanding and support of the others. Therefore, in both circumstances, a homosexual or bisexual person will accumulate frustrations; he/she will expect to find a partner which will not only satisfy his/her erotic expectancies, but will also offer the understanding and support that the others were not capable of. The person in question will invest all erotic and non-erotic feelings in his/her partner. He/she will “grimp”, will suffocate the other with his/her love and need to be loved – a situation which can eventually lead to the desmembrance of the couple. What is the solution? What can we do, in order to insure a better communication and a better understanding? Let’s consider together this problem; let’s think together at the words of Don Clark Ph. D. (in The New Loving Someone Gay):
Luminita
Ratiu
General features
The standard questionnaire for the evaluation of the ACCEPT Newsletter was distributed by mail to all the readers, and included some multiple choice questions, as well as questions with open answers. From the approximately 200 people who received the questionnaire, only 46 completed it and sent it back to ACCEPT: 4 of them were foreigners, and 42 Romanians. The latters included: 11 members of ACCEPT, 18 followers, 14 people who stated that they intended to become members, and 3 who did not declare their identity. Six different areas were submitted to the readers’ judgement: - readers’ expectancies; - the actual number of readers; - readers’ degree of satisfaction with the newsletter; - evaluation and expectancies regarding the target group of the newsletter; - reasons for subscribing and/or for wishing to keep the subscription; - reasons for writing/not writing articles for the newsletter. After gathering and analyzing the answers, we came to the following conclusions: Readers’ expectations
The actual number of readers
Satisfaction towards the
newsletter’s content and layout
Reasons for writing/not
writing articles for the newsletter
Which is the target group
of the newsletter?
Florin Radu
No 5 by Chanel (instead
of Chanel no 5) is the perfume which comes closest to the absolute idea
of perfume, in public’s mind. Despite the fact that it was created in 1921,
its genesis is less known than its scent. In the first decades of the century,
when Coco Chanel was already enjoying her celebrity in the world of fashion
design – because of her revolutionary creations – she decided to have her
own perfume created. It was an unusual idea at the time. Chanel asked the
most daring of the French perfume creators, Ernest Beaux, to make a perfume
which would free once and for all women from the tyrany of antebellic floral
scents. “A woman should smell like a woman, not like a rose”, she claimed.
Ernest Beaux presented her two sets of original scents: the first one included
perfumes numbered from 1 to 5, and the second one, perfumes from 20 to
24. Chanel chose no 5. She intended to introduce her collection in the
5th day of the 5th month of the year, so she said: “let’s call it No 5,
I think it will bring me luck”. And it did, far beyond her dreams… Some
of the credit for the tremendous success of the perfume should be given
to its package: the famous square-shaped bottle. Coco also decided that
the bottle was to have a diamond-like clarity. It was a good idea, too,
as the bottle was included in the collection of the Modern Art Museum in
New York in 1959, as a late recognition of the artistic value of this commercial
object.
Deprived of ornaments, with straight lines – the phial is a symbol of simplicity. Both the package and the black and white label emphasize the idea of plainness and sobriety. Chanel no 5 seems a pharmaceutical product; it was said that it contained no less than 250 ingredients. It predicted, without any doubt, the severe, clinic aesthetic of today’s cosmetic products. Indeed, many of the most apreciated cosmetic products of today seem to have been created in pharmacies, instead of perfume factories. The huge reputation of the Chanel Company is largely based on the No 5’s success. Coco Chanel enjoyed a life of luxure, because of her perfume. Sellings brought her 15 million dollars, during her life… (After Andrea
Hurton – Erotic des Parfums, 1999)
(After John
Oakes – The Book of Perfumes, 1996)
Legal Protection
Conference
Healthier, in 2000
Emilia Stere
Again, about Article 13
On 25 November 1999, the European Commission has adopted a Communication and three proposals to combat discrimination in the European Union. Based on Article 13 of the Amsterdam Treaty, which gives the EU new powers in this field, the Commission’s act is a response to the invitation from the European Parliament and Member States. The package, which seeks to support > Transfer interrupted!visions and to fill the gaps identified during the long consultation process prior to adoption, consists of: (i) a Directive prohibiting discrimination in employement. This proposal outlaws discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation; (ii) a Directive prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin in a wider range of areas - employment, education, the provision of goods and services, social protection; (iii) an action programme designed to support and complement implementation of the Directives through the exchange of information and experience and the dissemination of best practices in both legislative and non-legislative areas.Matter of Gender
Science for All
Resignation in our Neighbourhood
You are invited to contact
the lesbians from ACCEPT on the ACCEPT address.
Attention!
On the 1st December 1999,
the FEMINET web has been started. FEMINET represents a project of the Women’s
Association of Romania, dedicated to the long-distance information and
education. Its goal is to initiate an interactive dialogue with all those
interested in a change for the better of women’s status in Romania, at
the and of the millenium and in 2000.
(From Voluntar, no 111/20.11.99, newsletter edited by FDSC - the Foundation for the Civil Society’s Development) The Foundation for the Development of the Civil Society (F.D.S.C.), through its training and development programme, provides NGOs with courses on management, fund-raising, public relations, etc. ACCEPT can send the right person to the right course! For details and applications, please call Adrian Coman at ACCEPT. The articles published in
this newsletter may be copied by other publications, provided that the
source is mentioned and the message is not altered.
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