Istanbul Trans+ Pride Week is 11 years old this year and hoping for your support!
We will hold the 11th Trans Pride Week on June 16-22 and will be culminating with a march on Sunday. This year, we come together with the theme that symbolizes resistance and the search for freedom: REBELLION.
Until now, Trans+ Pride Week has been held with the themes of “Perpetrator State”, “We will not turn back/We are Trans”, “Resistance and Peace”, “Bread, Justice, Freedom”, ‘Migration’, “In Spite of Hate, Long Live Life” and "We Need a Law! ". Now, once again, we are rebelling against the “Year of Family” announced by the fascist government, we are rebelling against the cisheterosexist, misogynist state that mobilizes its resources and institutions to establish control over our bodies, against the increasing repression, detentions, torture and attempts of erasure that we are facing as LGBTAI+ individuals in Turkey.
Yet we will continue our celebration and come together to touch each other, to create safer spaces to talk about our experiences, bodies and emotions, and parties where we celebrate our existence by unapologetically taking up space, moving our bodies and each other with our light. The Trans+ Pride Week shall strengthen our rebellion and say we are here. We will continue to disperse all over the city, to show that we are still here, that we are still resisting, that we REBEL.
We have planned diverse forums, talks, and workshops and such throughout the week on issues such as gender affirming care, queer culture, expression, shared grief, life and transitioning under increasing anti-LGBTQAI+ laws and our role in the struggle for peace and liberation as well as the importance of organizing and creating alternative networks of solidarity.
!! for more juicy details about what's happening at Istanbul’s Trans Pride Week, scroll further down after the main facts !!
As we are an independent group, Pre-Pride parties have been the main income source of Istanbul Trans Pride Week but the current situation doesn’t allow us to fully cover our expenses this way.
Now, We ask for everyone's support for our expenses during Istanbul Trans+ Pride Week, which is organized in collective solidarity. Especially this year, due to the increasingly difficult economic conditions and state repressions, our budget is very limited and we struggle to provide this important week with all its workshops and events to our community.
We want to reach out to the international queer community and its allies and ask you for your solidarity with our movement in these challenging times, concerning the threatening political situation for queers and especially trans* people in Turkey.
SUPPORT OUR REBELLION!
Istanbul Trans+ Pride Week is about to start very soon & we need your support NOW, love!
The costs we have to cover include the following:
Transportation and accommodation expenses of LGBTAI+ local organizations from all over Turkey
Transportation and accommodation expenses of panel participants
Communication/Press expenses (Social media)
Event expenses (Security, various venue providers)
Venue rent for parties
Venue rent for meetings
Flag expenses
Website expenses
Banner and sticker printing expenses
Solidarity with Trans People expenses (hormones)
Safety of those organized under Trans+ Pride (Expenses for Safe Transportation)
Expenses for artist participating in the week (DJs and drag performers)
Additional information: Every year the amount left after expenses is transferred to the next year's committee.
Thank you very much for your support and sharing the link to our gofundme with your community, friends, chosen families, lovers and comrades.
In solidarity,
11th Istanbul Trans+ Pride Week Committee
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More juicy details about what’s happening at Trans Pride Week:
We want to celebrate our transness, our queerness and our aliveness by partying and centering our joy and gender euphoria.
The Pride Week is for embracing and preserving our knowledge of our culture by brushing up our Lubunca (slang used by sex workers and queers here) and proudly bending the binary by creating and expressing ourselves in drag.
We want to meet and learn new ways to communicate, express ourselves and celebrate, be it through learning some sign language, getting creative in a writing workshop and dancing halay.
We want to create a week to learn from each other's experiences. In a political environment where they try to ignore and disallow us, we want to give each other the visibility we need and deserve. We want to listen to sex working trans people and trans people living with HIV.
We are looking forward to creating a space to express and share our grief and losses as well. Remembering those who have been taken from us. Our friends, lovers, our comrades, whom we still carry with us and who remain immortal parts of us and our shared fight for freedom and justice.
The state actively attempts to criminalize our existence and create barriers to restrict us to its cisheterosexist gender regime. The restriction of hormone accessibility since November 2024 has been followed by new law drafts further complicating our lives, access to healthcare, relationships and actively villainizing us.
The criminalization of queer people and their advocacy is noticeable through repressions against LGBTAI+ activists and organizations such as ours. The prevalent disregard and general suspicion in politics against trans individuals, ’same sex‘ relationships and gender-nonconformity makes our lives and struggle harder.
We want this week to be where we prepare for the Pride march and embrace each other. Our Pride week shall be for imaging and building alternative networks of solidarity and strategies of surviving under increasing state and police oppression.
We are not silent, we are not afraid, we rebel!
We don’t obey, we rebel!
We are rebelling against the family, the state, the trustees, the perpetrator of violence, the lover, the boss, male violence, whorephobia, transphobia, racism, hiv-phobia, hostility towards refugees and lgbti+phobia!
Nerdesin aşkım?
Be with us in solidarity and show your support by donating and sharing our gofundme!