In Autumn 2024, Estonian trans community and their allies created something truly unique – a colorful tapestry, showcasing their creative and communal spirit. Today, we share with you an interactive version of the quilt and a downloadable book about the project. Today you can explore the interactive version of the quilt and download the book on the project.
Trans Remembrance Quilt now online Read More »
Once upon a time, our then-intern (and now-volunteer) Alistair suggested a workshop on writing Behemoth fanfiction. Stories were told, pictures were drawn, and that’s how The Official Behemoth Anthology came to life. Today, we’ve uploaded the digital version of the book to our website for you to enjoy. And if you prefer a paper copy, you can borrow one from our library!
Behemoth’s fanfiction: now online Read More »
Behemoth’s E-Shop is open! Read More »
Mark your calendars for 18 April at 5 PM, as Praxis Think Tank is pleased to invite community members to the presentation of the pocket guide “My Health, My Rights,” created for LGBTQI+ individuals. ✊💊
Designed with the intention of empowering LGBTQI+ people, the guide aims to increase their awareness regarding health care for themselves and their close ones, navigating discrimination within healthcare settings and advocating for their rights when necessary. 🌈
The guide will be introduced and its creation discussed by Eke Allikvere, who is a junior analyst at Praxis and a peer counselor at the Estonian LGBT Association. ✨ In addition to the pocket guide, Eke will also briefly introduce the newly completed trans healthcare guide, which was created as part of the same project. 💘
The creation of the pocket guide was co-funded by the European Union and the Ministry of Social Affairs.
Pocket guide presentation “My Heath, My Rights” Read More »
Help us organize mental health support groups for LGBTQ+ people by donating on Hooandja! 🎉
LGBTQ+ people, especially younger ones, are often extremely vulnerable, and subjected to mental or physical abuse, social stigmatization and neglect by their families. Behemoth’s center has been hosting mental health support groups for almost a year, but now we are running out of funds. 🫂 ❤️🔥
To continue providing professional support for the members of our community, we desperately need your help. We are raising funds on Hooandja to cover the costs of organizing the support meetings for the whole year.
Please consider supporting our campaign on Hooandja, share this post, and see you at Behemoth’s center! 🐾
Help us organize LGBTQ+ support groups! Read More »
Sven Mikser’s novel, “Vareda,” unfolds against the backdrop of the Estonian countryside during the summer of 1991, focusing on the experiences of 16-year-old art-enthusiast Johannes. The events of the book take place in the year 1991, in a small, quiet place in the Estonian countryside. Namely, the young man gets himself a job for the summer as a guard at Vareda village’s manor of the same name, where he meets and befriends a boy of the same age as he, Andreas.
The novel mainly explores themes of grief and identity, as well as reflecting the societal values of 1990s Estonia. Although, unfortunately, homophobic thinking and language has not been completely omitted from the book, it is still clear that the author does not condemn the innocent love between the main characters, but the prejudices of other people and society as a whole. Compared to many other books, “Vareda” contains notably little homophobia.
It can be noted that the plot of the book is not exactly very substantial, and in terms of the events, essentially nothing much happens there. Although this may make the book boring for some readers, it can also be viewed from another angle. The fact that by the end of the book so many questions remain unanswered, provides food for thought even after finishing the read.
Sadly, the end of the novel was in some ways disappointing even, because the culmination of events felt a little too calm. At the same time, that can also be interpreted as a parallel with “end-of-the-summer-sadness” (Mikser 2023: 296), that all of us have also probably experienced. The book manages to skillfully create a nostalgic atmosphere, despite Mikser’s descriptions of the environment not being the most detailed.
In conclusion, while “Vareda” is certainly not perfect, it is noteworthy that the book represents queer relationships from a kind point of view, steering clear of self-hate narratives. It is a novel that normalizes gay love and closeness, and we are so happy to see that such a book has been written about Estonia and Estonian characters. Although it might not end up being everyone’s favorite book, we found it to be very enjoyable. We recommend that anyone interested take a look at it if possible.
Book review of Sven Mikser’s “Vareda” Read More »
Hey! Yes, you are not mistaken – this is the newsletter we’ve been meaning to send out for almost a year. 🎉 😂
🏆 Better late than never, so let’s look back at all the great things we’ve done in the year 2023 and think about what we will do next! 😈
Read it here, and don’t forget to subscribe. 🤸♀️
Behemoth’s first newsletter Read More »
Time for another blog post about our latest, and this year’s last, book club meeting!
This time so many people turned up that we could barely fit everyone to sit in the same room! The best turnout we’ve had thus far. Thank you so much to everyone who came! We had such a great time munching away on some delicious pizza and discussing this meeting’s themes with you. Truly ending the year with a bang 😊
The theme this time was “Queers vs State”. A pretty broad topic, but that just gave us a lot of possible sub-topics to talk about. This meeting pretty much just turned into a venting session. We got to express our many frustrations with our native countries’ governments, the lack of protection for queer people by the state, and trans people’s dire situation with gender-affirming healthcare. In addition, we also learned about the situation of queer people in Poland and China and the sadly low rate of acceptance for queer folks in Estonian middle schools.
We also shared our Interesting™ (mostly negative) experiences with how queer people are talked about in education, or whether our existence is mentioned at all. It was lovely to hear that some people have still had some more positive experiences at school, but so disheartening to hear that the overall situation has in some senses gotten even worse. We also touched on seemingly unrelated topics, such as the fact that public transport is so expensive in Tartu. We agreed that it would be lovely if university students and young people in their twenties got more discounts in general :’)
Besides everything we talked about, it was also super heartening to see people, who usually seem more quiet and reserved, gradually get more comfortable and chime in more and more. All of our book club visitors are incredibly dear to us and we love that we can create a safe space for people to come together and feel like they belong somewhere.
Although it is called a “book club”, we have noticed that most people who join us don’t actually read that many books. Which is also perfectly okay, no shame in that whatsoever! We usually end up talking more about movies and TV shows, and most prevalent are people’s own personal experiences. This is why we have been discussing that starting from 2024 we should maybe transform our book club into something more of a discussion corner/talking hour/etc. Maybe then we would not be as limited in our discussion topics and hopefully more people would want to join us on a regular basis.
Currently the plan is to keep the format of the meetings the same as it has been these past few months. So that we have a general theme, some possible discussion questions prepared to get the visitors talking, and some snacks to keep us all satiated while we enjoy each other’s wonderful company. But starting from the new year, it would just be without any added pressure to be a reader to join.
If you would still like to have a book club as well, let us know! We would love to have a place to discuss any and all queer literary finds. Even during this meeting quite a few people expressed their interest in queer fiction, which was incredibly lovely to hear!
All in all, we were so happy to see so many of you join this time and we hope to see you again in whatever format we decide on, come new year.
Thank you for a wonderful year of book clubbing and see you again in 2024!
Last book club meeting of 2023 Read More »
Being queer has never been easy, and, at least in a half of the world, is still highly dangerous. The next book club meeting on December 8th, 5 PM, will be dedicated to the complicated relationship of LGBTQ+ and state.
What is it like to be a queer under a threat of imprisonment or death penalty? How did LGBTQ+ people survive in totalitarian states? What kind of challenges do we face by being queers in contemporary Estonia?
Also, December is HIV/AIDS Awareness Month, which is a perfect time to remember the most brutal struggle for LGBTQ+ lives, which resulted in major changes in legislation worldwide.
Check out our book and film recommendations and share your own advice in the comments!
P.S. We have pizza! 😉 🍕
Books:
Films and TV shows:
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Our last meeting was on the topic of “Gender and identity”. This time we could eat delicious pizza during our discussion 😋
As expected, since gender and identity are such personal topics, very quickly our discussion veered to talking about our own experiences instead. Many of our bookclub members expressed frustration with how the world perceives us specifically because of our gender. Fortunately, the meeting also helped to think about some moments of gender-euphoria and share the happiness with others.
Other topics that also popped up included sexuality, family-relations and friendships, and how tolerant or intolerant teachers/lecturers have been in our experiences.
Since so much of our meeting this time was about our personal lives, we could not collect as many recommendations as last time. However, the most notable discovery was Estonian politician-turned-author Sven Mikser’s latest book, “Vareda,” which reportedly features positive representation of gay characters. Given the scarcity of Estonian books with queer characters, anticipate an upcoming book review!📚
All in all, we had yet another very pleasant and fun meeting with some incredible members of our community 🥰 We look forward to meeting you next time for our last bookclub meeting of the year!
Gender and Identity: our experience Read More »
