A tombstone with the words “Gender roles” on it, phrases such as “No means no” and “My favourite season is the fall of patriarchy” - these are just some of the designs that participants in a tattoo marathon chose as part of a recent “Week of Women’s Solidarity” in Kharkiv, Ukraine. This is an annual civic project devoted to gender inequality in the country, and is run by the city’s lesbian feminist organisation Sphere.
I sat down with Anna Sharyhina, Sphere’s project coordinator, to talk about tolerance towards violence and the fight for equal rights.
Members of ultra-right groupings often try to disrupt you holding feminist and LGBT events in Kharkiv. But this year young women - most likely from one of the city’s nationalist organisations - turned up at the women’s solidarity march with anti-feminist slogans. Did this affect your subject of discussion, “A woman’s place is in a civic movement”?
