Activism for Equality, Nukri Tabidze

“I teach at University and periodically visit various cities. Lately I’ve been actively trying to build my work around doing that. I speak about what interests me the most and my education in relation to feminism and sexuality and connecting those to history, I think, is important.

I try to speak from that angle to others as well. While growing up, there was lack of every kind of information and in a way we were left to our own desires in the 90s, because of all the hardship. My family, too, had to face other problems and I didn’t know a lot things.

I remember I was 14 when I asked my mom for the first time if it was possible for a woman to love another woman. When you are young, you struggle with being close to others and usually you don’t like a lot of things about yourself.

Society, especially when you are defined as a woman, it puts you under high pressure, let’s say regarding appearances. Another problem with accepting yourself and having positive self image is that you’re a part of society and you can never say you are free and you don’t care what others think.

I care what others think but I shouldn’t be the only one to adjust to others’ ideas. I should also participate in forming those ideas and I should demand others to adjust, too. Mere survival isn’t enough for me, be it an economical survival, or individual survival. It isn’t just about being able to breath and having enough money for food.

During the 17th of May event with all the beating and terror, I was really frightened. I wasn’t in Tbilisi and I was afraid what it could cause aggression from my co-workers and those people who know about me or at least make assumptions and generally that is what happened.

Theoretically, I want activists to go and strongly demand equality, not just simply freedom. speaking out about experience-based demands will definitely connect a gay guy who was kicked out of the house to Azeris, or to a muslim Georgian who demands to have a mosque. I believe that seeing every kind of experience that every group have in common and talking to others about them is the solution.