Interviews & Texts

As a trans* activist, educational speaker and DJ, Mine subverts the Cistem. Mine studied scenic arts, is part of female:pressure, the federal trans association and gives lectures and workshops on anti-discrimination and power critique. The conversation was held with Julia and Kim from the New Health Movement.

Women in Exile (WiE) have been developing and publishing demands on the health system, and reporting on the discriminatory experiences that refugee women have in Germany for a long time. For example, WiE published the health magazine Healthcare for all, without discrimination!. For the twentieth anniversary of Women in Exile, the book Breaking Borders to Build Bridges – 20 Years of Women in Exile, was recently published. On a winter morning, Nam and Inga from the New Health Movement met Mado and Jana at the premises of Women in Exile in Neukölln, Berlin.

<Platz da!> Consultancy for inclusive and accessible cultural education is made up of a team of people with and without disabilities and chronic illnesses. They offer advice for cultural institutions on removing barriers in the areas of seeing, hearing, moving and learning. <Platz da!> has developed many thematic and multi-perspective workshops since its foundation in 2017. In relation to the health system, <Platz da!> reminds us of the importance of making our questions more accessible too. How are we formulating our questions? And who is being asked to make wishes and demands? How do we explain the health system to each other? The hybrid conversation with Stefanie Wiens and Katrin Dinges from <Platz da!> was conducted by Julia and Inga from the New Health Movement.

We got to know the Bundesfachnetz Gesundheit und Rassismus (Federal Network Health and Racism) at the 2022 conference on gender medicine at Kampnagel and were very much looking forward to learning more about their work. Again and again, we notice that people and initiatives working on the missing parts of the German health system are confronted with an incredibly high demand. When people work on a voluntary basis or with little funding to address these shortcomings, it becomes clear how urgently adequate and structural funding for research and advisory structures is needed. Kim and Inga from the New Health Movement met Yasmina Metwally and Sina Rahel Holzmair from Bundesfachnetz Gesundheit und Rassismus. The interview questions and demands had been discussed internally by the Bundesfachnetz amongst Kadijata Bah, Mariela Georg, Diminga Lorenz, Sumona Dhakal, Sina Rahel Holzmair and Yasmina Metwally.

Instead of waiting for changes in the health system, in 2020 Casa Kuà began creating a place that is much-needed by transgender, intersex and queer People of Colour, Black and Indigenous people in Berlin. Casa Kuà demonstrates how fundamentally different self-organised spaces for health and community can be run outside of the limitations and the dictates of the health system. The interview with Tzoa from Casa Kuà was conducted by Nam, Kim and Julia from the New Health Movement.

In preparation to this collaboration Inga spoke with Svetlana Kostić and Isidora Randelović in the rooms of the RomaniPhen e.V. Archive. We talked about the extent to which it makes sense to make demands on the health system if we cannot enforce them. Isidora stated that it is important to make only those demands that we will pursue. They both said that of course, in any given situation in the German health system, many discriminatory experiences can be traced that Rom:nja and Sinti:zze experience. But discrimination against Rom:nja and Sinti:zze is by no means limited to the healthcare system. It would make more sense to approach the question of demands on the health system through the concept of Reproductive Justice. By Reproductive Justice we mean not only the right to sexual self-determination, such as the right to abortion. It is also the right to have children and to have one‘s children grow up in good conditions. RomaniPhen e.V. organised a focus group on this issue and shared …