LGBT Pride politics in Croatia
During the past decade of public activism Croatian LGBT activists employed various political strategies in their effort to acquire legal rights and visibility; rights to be same but also rights to be different. The public activism I will discuss here is the one of Pride events, as they are the ultimate symbol of LGBT visibility and as such play the crucial role in LGBT politics.
It was 2002 Zagreb Pride that “outed” homosexuality in Croatia, embedded it into Croatian reality and served as the foundation for creation of public discourses on homosexuality in Croatia. Since then, in a surprisingly short period, Croatian activists simultaneously made use of the major political tactics commonly associated with the struggle of the oppressed groups: politics of identity, politics of difference but also queer politics. It is particularly interesting to see how these strategies overlap, work together but also against each other in an ex-Communist, EU-oriented Catholic country, creating an idiosyncratic discourse on homosexuality.
Politics of Identity: Then and Now
According to Sanja Sagasta’s research on lesbians in Croatia published in The European Journal of Women’s Studies, the 1990s saw the beginning of consistent, organized activist efforts at creating a lesbian community in Croatia and promoting lesbian visibility. However, the country was going through a war that would leave the heritage of economic insecurity and fierce nationalism, marking the beginning of Croatian neo-patriarchy under the rule of the right-wing Croatian Democratic Party. It was not until the 1999 parliamentary elections that substantial change in public opinion started to take place, when the coalition of Social Democrats and Liberals ushered in a new era of politics. 2002 saw the founding of the first Croatian LGBT organization called Iskorak, while the lesbian group Kontra, active since 1997, became registered as a lesbian organization. The two groups made a momentous step towards lesbian and gay visibility when that same year they decided to organize the first Croatian Gay Pride Parade, a manifestation that will successfully take root in the country.
Unlike most of the Prides in the Western countries that have taken the road of depolitization by turning into grand carnevalesque celebrations of differences, the first Croatian Pride was all about sameness – coming out of the closets was to demonstrate there were no monsters in them. Indeed, walking in the parade silenced by the shouting of the skinhead football fans and the aggression pouring out of the side streets, I could hear a saleswoman (who has come out of the shop to watch the freak show) say to her colleague: “Wow, they look totally normal!” This kind of a reaction may indicate that Croatian citizens really did need to learn the ABCs of LGBT. Whereas certain Western countries had a long history of struggle for the rights of sexual “minorities” and could in 2002 afford being different, extravagant, loud and brash, the Croatian LGBT group Iskorak spokesman Dorino Manzin had to proclaim LGBT community’s “wish to show that Croatian society is mature and democratic and also show the positive side of sexual minorities (my italics)”. This “positive” side of sexual minorities he summed up as follows: “We didn't want to dance naked or flash our bare bottoms or anything like that, we just wanted to be heard and accepted.” The price of the “positive” identity Dorino Manzin tried to establish for the LGBT population was to be paid by the T constituent of the LGBT abbreviation. This regrettable quote thus served not only to exclude those who were perceived different by the community (transvestites, transsexuals, s/m practitioners, exhibitionists etc), but to reaffirm the hierarchy of positive/negative (normal/abnormal) shaken by the intrusion of gays and lesbians (until then in the abnormal category) into the public sphere. The example of the first Zagreb Pride shows that the exclusionary forces about this event were just as strong inside the closet as they were outside of it, and that some of the monsters were, unexpectedly, the very activists.
The 2003 Pride was organized in support of the legal initiatives and much public space was devoted to the debate on gay marriages, or, rather, partnerships. However, the arrival of the third Croatian Pride marked an important shift in the LGBT political strategies. Following the first Pride, Dorino Manzin received a lot of criticism for his hasty transphobic remark, and this third Pride was to make amends to those left out of the first event and be a celebration of diversity and difference. The pressure for this sudden change in politics came mostly from Kontra, which took up the organization of 2004 Pride. Most members were longtime feminists, intensely aware of all forms of discrimination present in Croatian society, but also within the activist circles. Sensitive to the dangers brought on by identity categories and their tendency to be instruments of regulatory regimes, Kontra girls decided to employ another tactic. One of the aims of this Pride was to open up the question of transgender and “point at the discrimination and marginalization of the transgendered persons and open up public space for different forms of gender expression”, under the strong motto “Vive la différence”. The other one was to stand up to the pressure of the Catholic Church, which shapes the public and political opinions in Croatian society, by lobbying for taking away the acquired LGBT population’s rights and preventing them from acquiring those rights they do not have as yet.
An interesting thing happened here, a Croatian-style bittersweet contribution to the politics of identity vs. politics of difference debate. This was the first Pride to actually go against the mainstream values and dare pick a fight with the probably most powerful Croatian institution, the Catholic Church. The consequence of this strategy was that the transgender issue was completely pushed aside and received the least attention from the media, always hungry for scandals. Of numerous speeches which were delivered at the Pride event, those that received the most TV time were the bombastic anti-Catholic Church paroles, which, taken out of the context, only served to turn the public, 87.98% declared Catholic, against the LGBT population.
As for other kinds of difference presented at the manifestation, one worth mentioning was the act of Salome, an M2F transsexual performer who did her Kylie Minogue impersonation routine and bared her breast to the reporters. As one can imagine, gay and lesbian population was rather ambivalent and more often than not quite aggressive in their judgment of Salome’s exposure. Many of them believed these kinds of people are the ones who give honest gays a bad name. A fervent discussion developed on Croatian gay and lesbian Internet forums. Mostly attacking the transgender part of the event using the same arguments (“We don’t want people like that to represent us”), Croatian lesbian and gay non-activists showed that politics of identity would be their first choice of political struggle.
The 2005 Zagreb Pride was to be organized by Iskorak but the organizers pulled out at the last moment, as their reason citing the fact that the Pride march irritates the citizens of Zagreb! An informal feminist initiative called Epikriza saved the (Pride) day and organized the march, pointing at the growing breach in the LGBT activist circles and discrepancies in their political (non)practices.
So far perhaps the most interesting, complex, and politically ambitious Pride was the 2006 Internacionala Pride; it was the first Pride organized by a separate organizational body, a Pride Committee, which no longer directly associated with any of the existing LGBT organizations. This particular Pride was envisaged as the first East-European, ie regional Pride, whose aim was to provide space for all the LGBTIQ persons in the region who couldn’t hold Pride in their own countries. This Pride was also specific in the broad range of issues it took up as its political platform - apart from LGBT rights, it called for workers’ rights, animal rights, feminist, peace and animal rights movement. This solidarity, however, didn’t go that well (again!) with the virtual community - the Cyrillic letters (reminding us of the Serb, the enemy!) on the Pride poster and the red color for many of them evoked ‘the dark Communist age’ and they couldn’t understand what all these other groups’ rights had to do with “us”. The sense of solidarity with other oppressed groups or minorities was replaced with some more antagonism and ethnic/class intolerance. This Pride was so far perhaps the most inclusive, the queerest, if you will - but its greatest ‘accomplishment’ was not in what it achieved, but rather what it didn’t - and how its failures pointed to the general lack of solidarity among the disadvantaged social groups, which is the main cause for social inertia in general.
The last three Prides have been somewhat ‘uneventful’ (with more police protection, less violence, less scandals) - but they are particularly interesting for the employment of pro-EU rhetoric in activists’ struggle for rights and recognition. At the 2008 Pride, the organizers stated that “every attack on a LGBTIQ person is an attack on a civilized and European, democratic and free Croatian society.” Also, on several occasions activists have also called on international organizations to write to Croatian government officials in order to apply pressure, and it seems that many activists have found the EU accession process and the lobbying efforts of international organizations to be powerful and useful in their struggles. The other side of the coin, however, is the doubt about the potential of these strategies to produce long term change as it is not unlikely that after entering the EU Croatia might become another Poland. It is possible that after becoming a member, there will no longer be pressure on the Croatian government or the political will to enforce its already existing legislation or to create other sexual rights that have not already been granted in Croatia or even in the European Union.
This year Croatian Pride will be celebrating its 10th anniversary, and will be looking back at the past decade of activism for LGBTIQ rights and visibility. What has exactly changed and to what extent is a question that cannot be answered easily. Though accomplishments made indicate a growing recognition of LGBT persons in Croatian society, from all of the above it is obvious that changes and decisions concerning gays and lesbians have come about with great speed, with not much substantial background to lean on. Indeed, they encountered much outraged resistance on the way, whether from the football fans, the political right or the ranks of the Catholic Church - and some from the very LGBT community. Also, it is important to mention that the Croatian public (/pop/cultural, political, academic etc.) sphere is still almost absolutely heterosexualized; there is but a handful of public persons who are ‘out’ and willing to help raise awareness about the LGBT issues.
In order to be seen, heard and truly recognized it’s hardly enough to irritate fellow citizens only once a year - but it sure is a good place to start.
