ILIS Herstory cover art

ILIS Herstory

ILIS Herstory

By: Virginie Jortay
Listen for free

Summary

Discover our lesbian and feminist herstory - to shape the future !


Lesbians have always been involved in the activism for women's rights, LGBTQI rights, social justice, access to healthcare and medicines, sexual and reproductive rights, environmentalism, peace, decolonial struggles and anti-racist vigilance. Strangely enough they are way too often erased, forgotten, and overlooked. This is what is known as the “lesbian invisibility”. And this is precisely why Evien Tjabbes, a long-standing member of ILIS and now actively involved in the current international lesbian network, called EL*C, which we will discuss shortly, convinced Virginie Jortay and Malin Björk to gather the traces and write our ILIS HERSTORY.


ILIS was an incredible lesbian network founded in 1980 that organised international conferences and disseminated information worldwide. ILIS undeniably contributed to lesbian visibility and laid the foundations for struggles that are still relevant today.


In this five-episode podcast, we invite you to discover the remarkable herstory of ILIS, the first international lesbian network, which too few of us know about - and which continues to echo in today´s lesbian movements and organisations.


Timeline and documentation

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Virginie Jortay
Art Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • From the present to the past
    May 11 2026

    We start in 2017 at the annual ILGA-Europe conference in Cyprus. Eighty lesbians come together and decide to form an independent group. And so EL*C is born. Propelled by their enthusiasm, the new network announces that it will organise the first ever international lesbian conference. The first? No it is actually not, as a Dutch activist points out - and introduces them to the existence of ILIS, a lesbian network active many years ago. ILIS? But who knows about ILIS? Apart from those who were part of it, subsequent generations of lesbians have never heard of this exceptional activist network, which has almost been erased from history. But memories and people remain. That is why we set out to meet those who, for 18 years, worked tirelessly to raise the profile of lesbians and defend their rights.


    Featuring, in order of appearance : Evien Tjabbes ; Dragana Todorovicz ; Joëlle Sambi ; Silvia Yuri Casalino ; Haidy Möller ; Sylvia Borren ; Lepa Mlađenović.

    Extracts and borrows : EL*C conference Vienna 2017 : History of Lesbian Movement in Europe with Maria von Känel ; Propellerheads ; Meredith Monk ; Adrienne Rich - Planetarium

    To go further : Some pictures from the Amsterdam Conference in 1980

    The narrative voice : Roberta Miss with Peggy Pierrot for additional voice

    Written, made and edited : Virginie Jortay with the complicity of Malin Björk and Evien Tjabbes

    Music and audio post production : Teresa Ferraro

    Illustration : © Marieke van Ballegooijen and the eye of An/Ash Smolar

    Produced by Groupe Kuru and Stichting Vesta, with the support of Mamacash and EL*C. Big up to Carine Demange from Radio Campus

    diffusion.ilis@groupe-kuru.art

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Show More Show Less
    37 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
No reviews yet