Aswat - Palestinian Feminist Center for Gender and Sexual Freedoms, also known as Aswat , is a

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

organization that advocates for

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

s and other LGBT women in the Palestinian community. The group was founded in 2003, making it the first Palestinian organization for lesbians. It was initially membership-based, but has since transitioned to a

movement Movement may refer to: Common uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Motion, commonly referred to as movement Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...

-based structure. It is based in

Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...

. The organization was cofounded by activist

Rauda Morcos Rauda Morcos is a Palestinian poet and LGBTIQ activist living in Haifa in Israel. In 2003, she was outed as a lesbian by a national newspaper, leading to dismissal from her job, physical assaults and attacks on her car. She then set up Aswat, the f ...

, who received the Felipe de Souza Award from OutRight Action International for her work with the group. Today, Aswat engages in advocacy work and education while also hosting monthly support group meetings that address

sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...

gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the i ...

, and

nationality Nationality is a legal identification of a person in international law, establishing the person as a subject, a ''national'', of a sovereign state. It affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the ...

. , its co-director was

Ghadir Shafie Ghadir Shafie (also Ghadir Al Shafie, Arabic غدير الشافعي) is a Palestinian activist and feminist. She is the co-director of Aswat, an organization of queer Palestinian women, which she joined in 2008. Views Shafie is a critic of ...

History

In October 2004,

spoke at the

Palestine Solidarity Movement The Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) is a student organization in the United States which was established in 2000 after the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in Israel. The organization aims to use "divestment as a tactic to non-violently influence ...

conference at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

in her capacity (at the time) as the coordinator of Aswat. On March 28, 2007, Aswat held its first public conference in a theater in

. The event, titled "Home and Exile in Queer Experience," featured poetry readings and music. At least 250 people attended the conference; organizers estimated that about 10 to 20 of them were Arab lesbians. The Islamic Movement described the group as a "fatal cancer that should be forbidden from spreading out within the Arab society and from eliminating the Arab culture", and about 20 protesters demonstrated outside the event venue. In 2011, Aswat and

Al Qaws Al Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society (Arabic: القوس للتعددية الجنسية والجندرية في المجتمع الفلسطيني), often referred to as "alQaws" ("The ainow") , is a Palestinian civil so ...

worked with activist Sarah Schulman to organize a delegation of sixteen

LGBT people The LGBT community (also known as the LGBTQ+ community, GLBT community, gay community, or queer community) is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other queer individuals united by a common culture and social ...

from the United States to Palestine. Following their visit to

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

and the

Palestinian territories The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The I ...

in early 2012, the delegation published a document titled "An Open Letter to LGBTQ Communities on the Israeli Occupation of Palestine."

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Lesbian feminism LGBT organizations LGBT in Palestine Lesbian organizations LGBT rights organizations LGBT culture in the Arab world Human rights organizations based in the State of Palestine Queer feminism Organizations established in 2003 Organizations based in Haifa

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links