To broach the historical requires some recognition of movement in relation to place and specifically in relation to the “topos” in “utopia.” Utopia and dystopia take their names from “topos,” or place, which also supplies the root for “topography.” At a certain point in history, the mapping of bodies becomes the proper activity of science; the mapping of continents, the proper activity of merchant trade and conquest; the mapping of futures, the proper activity of a politics.
Kath WestonFootnote 1Only a few years ago rights of sexual minorities in Poland caused not only national controversies over what democracy means, but also gained international attention, visible in demonstrations in front of embassies in Berlin and London, wide media coverage, and protest letters to the Polish prime minister by the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights as well as Amnesty International and the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA). Several Polish politicians were repeatedly cautioned for their extreme conservative stance on homosexual issues and homophobic remarks as well as criticized for the prohibitions of the so-called Marsz Równości (Equality March), the Polish version of the Christopher Street Day (usually known as Gay Pride Parade) as being against the standards of democracy and human rights.Footnote 2 Finally, and in particular as a reaction to the various remarks of Polish politicians, a resolution against homophobia was submitted to the European Parliament in January 2006 and passed in June 2006.Footnote 3 Despite the resolution, the then Polish minister of education, Roman Giertych (League of Polish Families, or LPR), caused another great stir at the European Union (EU) conference of ministers of education in Heidelberg, Germany, on March 1, 2007, when he stated that brochures on sexuality education published by the Council of Europe that contained information on homosexuality and homosexual relations were to be prohibited in Polish schools. In the same speech, he rebuked societies that allowed abortion on social grounds and called abortion a “legal crime” and a “new form of barbarism.”
The parliamentary debates on a new constitutional antiabortion law was to have its final vote after Easter 2007 and almost met to date with the European Human Rights Courts’ verdict on the case of Alicja Tysiąc, one of a media series on Polish gender and sexuality policies in March 2007. After having been denied an abortion on medical grounds even though two medical doctors had stated that she would go blind if the pregnancy continued, Alicia Tysiąc went blind. With the support of women NGOs, Tysiąc unsuccessfully sued the doctors who had denied her abortion and finally appealed to the European Human Rights Court. In March 2007 the European Human Rights Court sentenced the Polish state to pay 30,000 Euros to Tysiąc as compensation for refusing to execute the right she had. This verdict fell just before the final vote on the Polish constitution which was to include a paragraph stating that life in Poland would be protected from conception to natural death. Even though these two events are not particularly linked and the verdict did not directly interfere with the vote, it generated wide media coverage throughout Europe on the restrictive Polish antiabortion law.
These two examples, the homophobic remarks on the one hand and abortion and the restrictive antiabortion law in general on the other hand, are linked by the central controversy over what democracy means in the context of the so-called transformation and Europeanization processes. But—as I will argue in this article—not only the concept of liberal democracy is contested but also visions of Poland's future. It is these contestations I will consider.
In this article, I attempt to shed light on the process of “democratization” in Poland, where democracy has been widely perceived as “normalcy.” This view has prompted me to become interested in the ways “normalcy” is defined. What constitutes normalcy? What kinds of concepts underlie normalcy? What renders a state (Staat), nation, and citizen “normal”? Hence, what are the characteristics that render these different constituencies “normal” and link them together simultaneously?
To address these questions I discuss the impact of the historical context of Poland and of the processes of “democratization” and “Europeanization” on debates about gender equality and the new visibility of homosexuality in the public sphere. I inquire into the imaginations, expectations, and divisions that shape the current state of affairs and reconsider the historical discourses and hidden codes that operate within political arguments on gender equality and sexuality, in which notions of a homogeneous Polish national identity and imaginations of Europe play an important role. These imaginations informed by historical discourses on the one hand and notions of “normalcy” on the other hand shape the reconstitution of the Polish nation-state.
I suggest that after the restoration of democracy in 1989, gender and sexuality policies have become one means for the constitution of “normalcy.” They have become (among others) crucial to political, social, and cultural negotiations and have been effectively deployed by political parties and governments to construct specific visions of Poland's present and future as well as claim hegemonic interpretations of its past. Gender and sexuality policies have always been used by governments worldwide for articulating specific, often utopian, visions of society and for regulating social relations. This becomes particularly evident in socialist (and authoritarian) regimes as, for example, the attempts to erase gender differences in the pursuit of the socialist utopia exemplify.Footnote 4 It needs to be noted, however, that notions of gender and gender roles are not only crucial to political discourses and negotiations but are also greatly affected by political, social, and institutional changes as the labor market, national and local political organizations, and the legal system within which men and women understand and act out their social roles have been almost completely reorganized and restructured. This is not only mirrored in the “masculinization of the new democracy” or the “feminization of poverty” as is frequently mentioned, but can also be observed in how women and men understand and (re-)position themselves and are (re-)positioned within society. Related to this, both women's as well as men's social roles and understanding of themselves have not only changed dramatically but their rights, duties, and responsibilities as citizens have also been redefined.
Furthermore, gender and sexuality policies are essential tools for the creation of national identities as many feminist scholars have long demonstrated.Footnote 5 It is my aim to show how ideas about gender and sexuality were linked to the past and to nature in order to formulate specific visions of the Polish nation-state and its citizens during Poland's transformation from socialism to democracy.Footnote 6 Rather than being a utopian vision of an ideal social system, this vision of the future emerges from the past, but at the same time, the past is absorbed and transfigured according to specific needs.Footnote 7 Interpretations of and references to the past, different ones for different constituencies as Gal and Kligman point out, then become a pervasive aspect of making the postsocialist future.Footnote 8
This becomes particularly evident in the Polish debates on the draft of a new antiabortion law and its implementation in 1993 as well as in the debates on the Equal Opportunity Act in the mid to late 1990s. Both showcase how government and political parties deploy laws as well as a specific core narrative of the nation simultaneously to constitute a specific vision of the nation and its citizens. Social anthropologist Reetta Toivanen rightly points out that “behind the legislation there is authoritative ‘knowledge’ that brings about society's dominant view on what values and traditions, history and future, culture and social life are about in the given society.”Footnote 9 Moreover, law and policies inform about how men and women are viewed as citizens and circumscribe their, albeit often different, rights, duties, and responsibilities as citizens. National legislation and laws are never uncontested, however. Instead, they are challenged and sometimes even reformed by local actors such as NGOs, minority groups, and social movements, as well as by international cooperation and supranational norms and standards.
This article examines how interpretations of democracy/normalcy are constituted in moral discourses and partly manifested in law after 1989 but also how these interpretations are contested through rights discourses, especially the language of rights used by social actors such as women's NGOs and gay-rights organizations. I ask how visions of Poland's future are linked to interpretations of its past and the restoration of morality, resulting in the attempt to constitute a so-called public morality (publiczna moralność); second, how these interpretations and attempts affect the meanings of democracy/normalcy, the role of the state, and the constitution of the “normal,” good Polish citizen; and third, how these visions are being contested through the deployment of a language of rights and the impact of these contentions for the understandings of the public sphere.Footnote 10
I will first provide background information about the setting within which different interpretations of democracy/normalcy have unfolded and explore the ways in which debates regarding gender have structured public politics. The discussion of the antiabortion debate serves to explain the idea of “normalcy” and how “law” is not only used for a specific politics of identity, namely, the reconstruction of Poland's national identity, but also implies and transmits visions of the proper Polish citizen. The parliamentary debates on the antiabortion law as well as the Equal Opportunity Act illustrate how political parties used moral arguments to formulate not only a specific vision of Poland's future but also framed the new state as morally just. Moreover, the antiabortion law and the Equal Opportunity Act showcase how laws and policies inform about how men and women are differently imagined as citizens.Footnote 11 I argue that “the language of morality” and “the language of rights” have become structuring discourses in postsocialist Poland. By combining interviews with women's rights activists with insights into parliamentary debates and newspaper articles, I attempt to offer insights into the arguments presented by the different political and social actors and the various aspirations, expectations, and narratives that inform contemporary debates. I suggest that the combination of aspirations, expectations, and historical narratives particularly shapes politics in postsocialist societies where the collapse of communism led to severe economic, social, and political ruptures and caused dramatic social insecurities.
Democracy's Gender
“In 1989 we had what we had—everybody knows—and one of the first things that happened to women with the kind of new democracy was that they lost. The women in Poland lost their right to—not free, but rather unconditional—abortion. So this was the first political action we took part in. It started like that.” This is how Jagoda, the director of one of the first women's NGOs in Warsaw, started telling me the story of her engagement in what in Poland is called women's issues.Footnote 12
Similarly, Wanda Nowicka, director of the Federation of Women and Family Planning, recalled how she became engaged in women's issues after 1989 as follows: “I actively supported the democratic change in our country, but it soon became evident that it had rather negative consequences for women, which motivated me to this activity [involvement in a women's NGO]. It has become obvious that there aren't many places for women in public life. Moreover, trends have developed that are decisively anti-women. A totally paradoxical situation has developed: instead of democracy enabling real gender equality, it has brought new restrictions of women's rights, rights women had enjoyed before, as a side effect.”Footnote 13
Similar emotions and thoughts are reflected in many self-representations of women who engaged in gender equality and women's issues after 1989. Anno Mirabilis (1989) is usually referred to as the decisive year. “I felt that my basic rights were restricted,” Małgorzata Gebert remembers in the booklet Same o sobie (In Our Own Words).Footnote 14 From that time on, it was her aim to fight for the right for abortion and for information about and access to contraceptives and family planning.
These statements indicate that the negotiations of women's issues and gender equality in Poland were intimately tied to interpretations of democracy. Framing the “new democracy” as a loss of freedom, something reflected by many women who engaged in gender equality activism after 1989, sheds light on different interpretations of democracy. Although the dominant discourse on the transition to democracy presents it as a “velvet revolution” and a process toward “normalcy,” the “transition” from socialism to democracy often appears in activist women's accounts as a narrative of loss. If it is women's rights that have been restricted and were politically deployed in the course of the transformation process, then we need to consider what democracy/“normalcy” means for different constituencies and the historical narratives and globally circulating discourses that inform these different interpretations.
As early as 1993, Peggy Watson framed the transformation processes in central and eastern European countries after 1989 as a process of masculinization.Footnote 15 This diagnosis was followed by many feminist scholars describing the “transition” from socialism to democracy and free market economy as a “transition to male democracies.”Footnote 16 This phrase was meant to elucidate that men who had been active in the democratic opposition during the socialist era now entered politics and gained power, while active women in the opposition movement were rendered invisible and frequently entered (only) the so-called “third sector” and were increasingly excluded from institutional politics.Footnote 17 Moreover, this development indicates that liberation and liberty are not—as is frequently assumed—situated on the same level. This then leads to the question of how liberation and liberty are connected with or become disconnected from democracy and whether they need to be analytically separated in order to reconsider aptly the democratization or normalization processes. These questions go far beyond the scope of this article, however. Nevertheless, the question remains how liberty, freedom, and equality are differently experienced and interpreted and become contested concepts in the course of the so-called transformation and democratization processes. Buchowski emphasized the significance of independence and liberty that are not only relevant for notions of democracy, but, in Poland's case, also for the reconstitution of the Polish nation. Here, independence and freedom primarily mean independence and liberty of the nation and liberation from foreign rule. If the nation is liberated, the individual is also liberated. Liberation from foreign rule describes an essential part of the national narrative and is part of the Polish martyrologia (suffering and victimization) that equally symbolizes its suffering, motivation, and the aim of the nation and the self-understanding of the nation.Footnote 18
The Road to Normalcy
The collapse of communism and the move toward a free market economy demanded a broad restructuring of society, a reconsideration of historical narratives, and the redefinition of the positions of groups and individuals. A variety of issues entered public debate, including ideas on individual freedom, civil society, and the role of the state. The key issue, one could claim, was the moral, social, and cultural basis of society, also reflected in the debates taking place in Poland about joining or not joining the European Union. One side of the argument emphasized that Poland should “join” Europe and become liberal and market-oriented. The other side argued that Poland had always been in Europe and emphasized a particular brand of Europeanness based on a history of Catholicism and family-values orientation.Footnote 19
The discussion of a restrictive antiabortion draft law (frequently referred to as Poland's first cultural battle in the new democracy), its introduction in 1993, and the debates and protests that ensued not only prompted public discussions on women's status, gender relations, and equal employment opportunities, but also exemplified the urgency of defining new terms of democratic governance.Footnote 20 In response, numerous women's organizations were founded to address women's rights and criticize the recreation of traditional gender roles visible not only in the annulments of rights women had enjoyed during socialism but also in the fierce promotion of traditional pro-family policies. But the relationship between gender equality and politics that these women addressed was problematic for two intertwined reasons. First, the combination of gender equality and women's politics was perceived as socialist-era policies and thus dismissed as communist legacy. Second, during socialism, the state's control over public life and the media had channelled nationalist emotions into the realm of religion, linking Catholicism increasingly to national identity.
The Catholic Church had provided space for cultural and political activities and protection of the democratic opposition from “foreign” rule, namely, the socialist state.Footnote 21 Thus, during the socialist era, national traditions and rhetoric, frequently linked to conservative ideas of gender difference, figured as effective tools of resistance against socialism as a political system. After the breakdown of socialism, this national resistance turned into a powerful symbolic technique of the political regime.Footnote 22 It is important to note that the differentiation between us (the nation) and them (state and/or foreign rule) has its roots in the time of Poland's partitions and was revitalized during the socialist era, fueling an “antistate attitude.”Footnote 23 This attitude played an important role for the self-understanding and activities of the democratic opposition to socialism. Moreover, a turn to “natural” gender roles and an emphasis on being a man or a woman, not just a citizen, could function as a form of resistance. I argue that this historicity of nationalism as a form of resistance informs contemporary conservative arguments against ideas perceived as “foreign,” including gender equality stemming from a “foreign”—Soviet—system or later the European Union. Similarly, the nature-discourse on gender roles can be seen as a liberation from socialist-era equality policies. Moreover, Poland's historical narrative of suffering and victimization informs dominant political discourses in Poland and shapes what could be called the “moral majority.”Footnote 24 In this light, democratization after 1989 was seen as a process of “normalization,” meaning the return to Christian morality and a particular reading of socialism that emphasized its oppressive and immoral nature as well as a return to nature. In this logic, the return to normalcy was articulated both in the language of “democracy” and in the language of “morality.”
In her text Maddening States Begona Aretxaga reminds us that the state has been difficult to think of outside the hyphenated dyad “nation-state.”Footnote 25 Poland, however, serves as one example where there was no politically independent nation-state for almost a century. Nevertheless, the Polish nation had survived three partitions, forming a specific national ideology based on a collective narrative of suffering, opposition, and resistance that engendered a specific national identity that was constituted in opposition to foreign rule and later the supposedly “foreign” socialist state.Footnote 26 After 1989, Polish governments were confronted with the task of reconnecting the nation (us) and the state (them) to create one “we,” a task that implied the recreation of the “hyphen” between the nation and the state. This was not an easy task in a country where a traditional antistate attitude was deeply rooted. One possibility—albeit not always a successful one—was the attempt to regain trust and legitimacy through a politics based on morality, hence, the constitution of the state through morally coded debates and by dissociating from the communist legacy that was (and still is) frequently presented as immoral.
The debates on the antiabortion law illustrate the idea of “normalcy,” the ties between gender and politics, and the attempt to recreate the morality of the state in postsocialist Poland particularly well as the law was presented as a political means toward “normalization.” According to sociologist Jacek Kurczewski, the liberalization of abortion in 1956 had served as an attack by the communist government against the Catholic Church to restrict its power; the re-criminalization of abortion in 1993—when the law was passed—served the new government by dissociating it from and opposing communist ideology.Footnote 27 Such legislation elucidates that rights are historically and often culturally grounded and linked to diverse ideologies. It also sheds light on how laws (as well as political programs) are meant to change the ways people behave, act, and understand themselves and society.Footnote 28
The introduction of the antiabortion law and the various attempts to liberalize it showcase how laws and the “core narrative of the nation” have been used by competing governments and political parties to constitute a specific vision of the nation.Footnote 29 Statements of the members of parliament (MPs) reflect the attempt to define what is good, what is bad, and who is a good, moral, hence legitimate, citizen through the use of actualized historical narratives. By these means, a specific view on Polish culture, national heritage, and morality are linked for the creation of a vision of its future. During the parliamentary debates, representatives of the so-called conservative parties stressed that the abortion issue called for a debate on the collective vision of a human being and which values society should be based on.Footnote 30 One member of parliament stated that individual rights ought to align with the nation's moral values. Another saw the antiabortion law as a question of identity: “Everybody needs to ask the question: who are we and what is most important to us?” He criticized supporters of a liberal abortion law as betraying the source of Polish culture by emphasizing progress, modernity, and “Europeanness,” rather than love and Christianity. He argued that those who had fought for Polish independence were now confronted with a law that would ridicule Polish culture, just as the crucified Jesus Christ had been ridiculed. Moreover, conservatives recalled that the fight for independence during the partition periods as well as the underground movements against socialist rule had been based on Christian values. They also argued against the liberalization of abortion by drawing parallels between the “barbarian law from Stalinist times that had allowed women to kill a child.” Conversely, liberal parties argued that the conservative parties were closely linked to the Catholic Church, whose opinion on gender and family planning was too conservative and in general “undemocratic.” Although the statements presented here seem rather one dimensional, they elucidate how the present was linked to the past to articulate values and norms that should form the basis for the new Polish nation-state and related visions of the Polish citizen. In this process, two pasts were simultaneously “reconstructed,” framing certain groups and individuals as “good” or “bad.” The “good” past linked Poland's prewar independence fighters, the underground movement against Nazi occupation, democratic opponents to communism, and opponents to abortion. The “bad past,” or Poland's socialist period, was framed as anti-Polish, and those seeking to retain that period's liberal abortion law were derogatively labeled “postcommunist” and “immoral.” Thus, in the 1990s, conservative parties with origins in the former opposition to the communist state drew upon prewar traditions in their promotion of traditional female and male social roles to emphasize their anticommunist character. The family was idealized and reinvented as natural, while communist ideals were reversed to prove them harmful to the “natural law.” Democracy understood as “normalcy” was achieved by dissimulation from and demolition of the socialist order, above all its “immoral” values and ideals, including a gender equality conceived as forced and against the natural law. In this process, the promotion of traditional gender roles served a renaturalization understood as normalization of gender roles. But, as Herman notes—albeit in a different context—normalization is only one side of the rights equation and the norm may become troubled or destabilized through the articulation of rights and through new and “other” (hegemonic) discourses that are part of the “Europeanization” process.Footnote 31
Negotiating Equality
The arguments presented above showcase how a particular group attempts to impose a certain vision of the past through gendered debates as well as new laws and social policies to create “normalcy” for Poland's present and future. In the 1990s subsidies for contraceptives were cut, and the introduction of sexuality education in high schools was delayed. Simultaneously, with the revitalization of Christian values in public discourse and an increasing Holy Mary cult, the Catholic Church's influence on social life in Poland has grown. The abortion issue was one means of creating a postsocialist moral communitization (moralische Vergemeinschaftung) by linking the present to the past. Similarly, the debates on the Equal Opportunity Act illustrate how the past was translated into the present. Such argumentation and visions were not uncontested but could be challenged by reference to Poland's then “political future,” namely, its EU-accession.
By the end of the nineties, in light of the impending European Union enlargement, a specific idea of “Europe” emphasizing its democratic standards served as means and political strategy for various claims. In my interviews with employees and directors of various women's NGOs and members of informal networks such as Porozumienie Kobiet (Women's Alliance) and Porozumienie Lesbijek (Lesbian Alliance), two main themes connected with women's issues and gender equality emerged: first, they expressed their disappointment about the kind of new democracy that had brought restrictions on women's “basic rights.” Second, they saw the European Union as a means through which certain rights and democratic norms could be regained and implemented. The EU was imagined as a higher authority and a powerful source and resource for the implementation of gender-sensitive directives and equal-opportunity regulations.
In my opinion, the EU work is more effective than the UN. The EU legislation of gender issues is really quite good, and the member states have to incorporate it. That is really a very good tool to fight for women's rights. The question is how the legal framework is being implemented. I think membership in the EU will force Poland to somehow follow this higher gender equality standard.Footnote 32
Women's rights were used to promote the European Union, which in turn was used as a vehicle to educate and inform about concepts of equality, alternative gender roles, and quota systems to increase the number of women in politics.Footnote 33
The draft of an Equal Opportunity Act illustrates the hopes and expectations of women engaged in women's issues and gender-equality rights.Footnote 34 While the act was meant to prevent direct and indirect discrimination against both men and women and demanded that a governmental body be established to guard compliance with the act's regulations, conservative politicians and parties strongly resented it.Footnote 35 They drew on discourses of the naturalized family and argued that “only men can be fathers and only women can be mothers” and stressed that it was impossible to draw an equation between the sexes.Footnote 36 They emphasized women's place in the home and family and highlighted identification with one's own sex as the most important element of any persons’ gender identity.Footnote 37 Moreover, they argued that such an act could lead to discrimination against men by means of affirmative action for women and that such a law would devalue women's natural role and enforce an artificial equation between men and women.Footnote 38 Finally, so-called “natural criteria” were favored against so-called “achievements” or “any other kind of qualification.”Footnote 39
Such arguments are by no means particularly Polish, but have been used in various countries during similar debates. The Polish debates, though, provide insights not only into how gender roles and equal opportunities are debated but also Poland's history and national identity and how both serve to define “normalcy.” Any law/policy that addressed gender equality seemed to replicate socialist gender ideals. Conservative parties viewed such “laws” as a return or parallel to the socialist-imposed gender ideology with its “lack of morality” and “unnatural” gender roles.Footnote 40 One of my interviewees explained:
When I started working at the NGO in 1997, no one would listen to discrimination against women. People thought it was just some kind of imported issue, that we do not have this in Poland. Of course, it was also due to the fact that before 1989 the gender policy was a kind of official state policy and after the state gained independence, feminism and women's issues had a very bad connotation for many, many people because they associated it only with the communist agenda.
The first version of the Equal Opportunity Act, modeled after a Norwegian law, was criticized for being “too European” in its language.Footnote 41 Conservative parties either questioned the existence of such a law in other European countries or argued that “Poles value different traditions and customs, and therefore some resolutions of the European Council are unacceptable in Poland.”Footnote 42 The EU supported and even encouraged such views with its emphasis on “cultural diversity,” especially in the fields of gender and sexuality. Kofman put it this way: “The Community has refrained from intervening in what are seen as controversial matters of sexuality and gender relations, often associated with national identity and specificity,” and Polish feminist scholar Agnieszka Graff stated that the French have their cheese, the Brits their Queen, and Poland its discrimination against women.Footnote 43
The reactions of conservative politicians/parties to this draft and Europe's attitudes to controversial matters (as well as its program of “Unity in Diversity”) reflect a particular view of “culture” where national cultures are seen as fundamentally different. Such a concept views culture “as an entity, not as a process; as a noun, not a verb,” as Wilson aptly framed it.Footnote 44 Such a conceptualization of “culture” raises questions of cultural relativism between countries as opposed to recognizing diversity and difference within a given country. Hence, it points to the European Union's difficult relation to relativism and universalism. On the one hand, European regulations strive for “harmonization” based on common directives and regulations whereby the economy is the driving motor. On the other hand, “culture” is “offered” as an instrument to respect/protect a “state's sovereignty.” Here, a rigid concept of culture serves to deny that culture today is as much a product of modernity and transnational exchange as the economy is.
The parliamentary debates formed a platform where not only norms and values were negotiated, but Poland's “national culture” and “history” were also reconstructed and reproduced to formulate visions of Poland's future. The responses of conservative politicians and parties to this particular act linked gender-equality claims to socialist gender ideals. In this discourse, gender equality was presented as a socialist relic while difference was celebrated as a return to the “natural” order and emphasized a “natural” essentialized understanding of gender identities and social roles. The various opinions implied historical and cultural references as well as notions of the good Polish citizen. Interestingly, the emphasis on traditional gender roles in conservative parties’ accounts of women's identity did not stand in stark contrast to the characteristics of the “socialist woman.” Both discourses situated the woman in the collectivity of either the socialist state or the nation and described her primarily through her social context; her aspirations and self-development were subordinated to the interests of the state, society, and/or her family.Footnote 45 Such discourses or images, however, were disrupted by new images of the independent, self-determined, and self-investing woman that was mediated by free market ideology, the development of consumer capitalism, images of western consumer standards and lifestyles, and last but not least, feminism. Here, individual rights and individual success were emphasized, while collective duties and responsibilities were downplayed. Similarly, liberal parties and women NGOs argued with international law and pointed to “European” standards to contest these visions and reshape normative orders. By referring to Europe and/or international standards and rights, they defined themselves as modern and progressive, in part to escape accusations that they were postcommunists because of their activities for equal opportunities and women's rights.Footnote 46 This reference also implicated a vision of “normalcy,” one that was defined by “international” standards.
The debates over the Equal Opportunity Act illustrate how Polish history and different outlooks on EU-Europe were used to articulate what democracy/normalcy meant. While women NGOs and liberal parties expected that membership in the European Union would secure gender equality laws and regulations, conservative parties and groups perceived Europe and its directives as a new form of foreign rule that forced its regulations and directions top down and would undermine not only Poland's state sovereignty, but also its values and traditions.Footnote 47
Although the Equal Opportunity Act has never been approved by the Polish parliament, in light of the negotiation processes over Poland's EU-accession in 2001, a group of women NGOs pressed the newly elected government formed by the Left Democrats (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratyczniej) to establish a so-called Government Plenipotentiary for the Equal Status of Women and Men (Biuro Pełnomocnika Rządu ds. Równego Statusu Kobiet i Mężczyzn, 2001–2005). Embedded in “European law,” the establishment of such an office was seen as a positive signal toward the European Union, hence politically legitimized. Nevertheless, the position of the Government Plenipotentiary for the Equal Status of Women and Men remained fragile within the political landscape and never gained the status of a ministry.Footnote 48 Thus, after the governmental elections in 2005, it was easy to eliminate. The elimination confirmed the worries of many women working with gender and equality issues.Footnote 49 Namely, that a conservative government would once again have rather negative effects on women and gender issues, reproductive rights, and the rights of sexual minorities.
The Morality of the State
The elimination of the Government Plenipotentiary for the Equal Status of Women and Men and the creation of a new area for women and family within the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy marks not only another ideological shift in Poland's gender and sexuality politics, but it can also equally be interpreted as strengthening the “hyphen” between nation and state, coding it morally superior to its predecessors. While the various governments since 1989 have used different means for the restoration of morality, the government coalition built by Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), a conservative party; the Catholic nationalist and extreme right party Liga Polskich Rodzin (LPR, League of Polish Families); and the populist party Samoobrona (Self-Defense) particularly addressed this issue in such a way that the phrase “language of morality” as opposed to a language of rights seems to describe their rhetorics aptly.Footnote 50
In contrast to conservative governments during the 1990s, which are usually called moderate, the government between 2005 and 2007 is most often termed “right-wing.” Political scientist and publicist Aleksander Smolar has pointed out several factors that distinguish them from former governments to explain the further ideological shifts to the right. Among other factors he names the demand for a radical break with the pre-1989 past, a rejection of the transformation between 1989 and 2005, a critique directed at the elite that emerged from the democratic opposition and that significantly contributed to the transformation process of the 1990s, an antimodern and antiliberal orientation expressed in cultural traditionalism, a general suspicion toward the European Union, and an emphasis on the Catholic nation. An extensive pro-family politics also signaled this ideological shift. The plan to create an Institute of Education in the Ministry of Education to combine national and Catholic education and the plan to ground the antiabortion law in the Polish constitution and hence put the abortion decision under the total control of the state serve as prime examples of the pro-family politics.
During the election campaign in 2005, the party PiS introduced a language of morality which the term “Fourth Republic” indicates.Footnote 51 This rhetoric included the propagation of social and economic justice linked to the restoration of morality in the Polish nation through elimination of its socialist legacy and a dissociation from the Third Republic. According to the PiS party, “The issues of highest importance are the fundamental change of Polish socio-economic policy and restoration of its moral dimension. A new social contract must be established between the most important social groups. It is necessary to purify and strengthen the state, as well as dispose of the legacy of the People's Republic.”Footnote 52
The party Law and Justice's aim was to build a strong, paternalistic state for good national citizens and to manifest its position in the European Union and the world. “The Law and Justice party seeks a strong, honest, and effective state apparatus … The new social contract must create a basis for change in social policy—a pro-family state policy. The party strives to restructure Polish life, as expressed in the party's draft constitution that highlights Poland's passage from the Third to the Fourth Republic.”Footnote 53
This term “Fourth Republic” served as the declaration of a programmatic caesura and as a kind of historical anticipation of a new era in Poland's history. This should not happen through the work of historians but by disposing of Poland's socialist legacies and emphasizing law and justice. Law and justice should primarily be achieved through a moral communitization, an ideological purification, and condemnation of certain subjects and issues. For example, corruption should be uncovered and prevented in the future; former state security informants should be found and sentenced; the death penalty should be introduced; abortion should be unconstitutional; and homosexual teachers should be dismissed from their positions. Through these actions, the party attributed not only moral significance to their political goals but also instituted a new language of morality. Law and justice should also be guaranteed for the Polish state. The primary aim of foreign policy was to secure national interests, as the program of Law and Justice party indicates (“maintaining strategic links with our allies, particularly the United States; supporting further enlargement of the EU eastward; and procuring a strong position for Poland in an enlarged European Union”) and postulates (“we shall strengthen Poland's security. We want to build a Fourth Commonwealth that possesses a place in the international arena it deserves”).Footnote 54
These aims indicate a vision of a new symbiosis of the nation with a strong state. A specific morality was meant to create the “hyphen” between subject/citizen, nation, and state, and aimed to change the relation between citizen and state in a positive way. This state rhetoric only functioned by supposedly disposing of the socialist past and rejecting the achievements of the “Third Republic” whose legacy in PiS's account caused a conglomeration of mistrust against the state and (false) expectations of the state. This conglomeration, however, skillfully presented the new state as strong, morally just, and future-oriented. It also dissociated the new state from the socialist past and the first sixteen years of the transformation. At the same time, the “bad past” was needed to construct the new state as good. Moreover, by emphasizing the restoration of public morality, the party PiS not only attempted to present itself (“the state”) as good but also created an image of the proper Polish citizen. The state was constructed and made visible by drawing symbolic borders between good and bad, past and future, “us” and “them,” and public and private (as will be shown later). Poland's future and position within Europe and the world as well as the emphasis on its cultural (versus political) legacy and the disposal of its past were the means by which these borders were drawn. These borders had a primarily moral and ideological character that suggested that the “new state to find oneself in” (in both senses of the word) was morally, socially, and politically just.
“Nationalist ideologies and movements reject the constitutive ‘otherness’ at the source of all culture; more often than not, they seek to ‘purge’ the culture of its impure or foreign elements and thus render it whole again,” was how Seyla Benhabib described the attempt to produce a cultural unity and homogeneity.Footnote 55 Specific subjects were not only marked antinational, but democracy became increasingly coded in moral discourses that contained the notion of a homogeneous Polish nation as well as specific visions of the good heterosexual (and reproductive) citizen. This moral language in the “Fourth Republic” was increasingly accompanied by a “rhetorics of exclusion” that marked those who did not meet the visions of the good, legitimate citizen.Footnote 56 Niedermüllers’ diagnosis that “at this point the usual interpretation of nationalism is broadened, and appears as a kind of worldview, which continuously reduces the diversity of the cultural context by establishing symbolic borders, outlining symbolic areas, integrating ‘the identical’ and excluding ‘the others,’” aptly described this situation.Footnote 57 In these processes a specific governance of sexuality was not only used to secure the reproduction of the Polish nation, as the antiabortion debates and the debates on the Equal Opportunity Act showcase, but also served the constitution of a citizenship-regime based on a culturally shaped national belonging. The attempt to constitute such a cultural citizenship regime linked to a morally coded definition of democracy and a specific understanding of the public sphere have become especially evident in the debates following the police interventions of the Poznań Equality March in November 2005 and the protests and discussions that resulted.
Negotiating Democracy
In November 2005, shortly after the governmental elections, a peaceful demonstration in Poznań organized by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community in Poland as part of the UNESCO-Tolerance days was banned. When the event still took place, the police stopped it violently.Footnote 58 This incident not only led to massive protests throughout Europe and heated debates in Poland over what democracy meant, but it also fueled debates over what was legitimate in the public sphere, hence on different understandings of public and private that were increasingly linked to different notions of democracy and tolerance.
In an interview with the Polish weekly Przekroj following this event, former Solidarity leader and first president of Poland's Third Republic Lech Wałęsa criticized the demonstrators as being a minority that had tried to force their thoughts upon the majority. Moreover, he defined democracy as rule of the majority.Footnote 59 Wałęsa's definition of democracy was spelled out in the logic of local historical experiences, an experience that enabled Solidarity to form and eventually led to the fall of communism in Poland. In this case, the majority of the people defeated the one-party state, but Wałęsa's rather simple definition of democracy fueled further debates. The police intervention in Poznań and Wałęsa's statement motivated the informal women's networks Porozumienie Kobiet and Porozumienie Lesbijek and the gay-rights organization Lambda Warsaw to organize civil protest marches in nine cities in Poland to highlight democracy, expressed in such slogans as “Reanimacja democracji” (“Reanimation of democracy”) and “Nie oddamy demokracji, nie oddamy demonstracji” (“We don't give up democracy, we don't give up demonstrating”).Footnote 60 The organizers’ aim was publicly to remind that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly were major elements of democratic states. One of the speakers at the Warsaw march reminded that “in Poland human rights as well as democratic principles are being broken.” She stressed that “one of the basic principles of democracy is the allowance of peaceful demonstrations” and continued that “Marsz Równości could have been a confirmation and support of democratic principles.”Footnote 61
In addition to stressing “basic democratic principles” and human rights, she also emphasized citizens’ active participation, which was demonstrated in such civil protests. Citizens’ agency and political participation, two notions that are not yet commonly used in contemporary Poland, are usually highlighted as one important component of democracy, expressing citizens’ political and civil rights.Footnote 62 In this sense the speaker referred to the notion of an active civil society that knows its political and civil rights and makes use of them because of democracy.
Wałęsa's interpretation though revealed a different notion: in his logic, the government and its representatives were elected by democratic votes and represented a majority. Because of this entitled power they were allowed to speak for the majority and were responsible for the protection of the so-called public morality. Public morality and the good Polish citizen were not only protected, but rather also produced in this process. This definition of democracy as “rule of the majority” was accompanied by an invention of a national culture and specific citizenship-regime that constituted and shaped collective subjectivities. In this case the national narrative entailed an imagination of a homogeneous catholic, heterosexual national community.
It does not seem fruitful, however, to present the various arguments and debates regarding gender equality and sexuality simply as backward or homophobic for various reasons.Footnote 63 First, such an argumentation—as frequently presented by the media as well as western activists—draws a sexual division between “eastern” and “western” countries, framing the latter as modern and liberal, while stressing the premodern and antiliberal character of “the rest of the world,” in this case, Poland. Such images disregard homophobic statements and inequality in many “western” countries and serve as a kind of continuation of a west-east division along the lines of being modern, democratic, and liberal versus premodern, not yet fully democratized (hence “civilized”), and traditional (conservative). Besides, such an argumentation renders only certain liberal attitudes toward homosexuality and only certain gays/lesbians as legitimate, leaving out many other forms of living and being. Second, as these arguments indicate, the debates in Poland were merely about homophobia. Rather, the demonstration in Poznań was used to protest against the newly elected government. The protests, however, only partially addressed the new government's vision of a heterosexual, moral, and Catholic Polish nation-state and citizen. Rather, the participants protested against a state whose power plays they perceived as authoritarian. In a sense the protestors used the familiar “antistate attitude” and used—as the conservative parties did—the historical discourse of totalitarianism. Simultaneously though, they formulated a different concept of the nation-state, democracy, and citizenship. In this conceptualization, citizenship and belonging were not based on national history and certain norms such as Catholicism and heterosexuality, but on individual rights.
The new government, on the contrary, attempted to create a morally pure nation-state by emphasizing public morality, an invention of a single truth, and the dissociation from past governments and their immoral legacies. Last but not least, it created or marked new others against which the nation-state was constructed.Footnote 64
Interestingly, Wałęsa's statement on the rule of the majority is also insightful regarding a rather different direction. His sentence contests the idea of a “homosexual majority.” This “idea” was frequently used by the League of Polish families following the narrative of the “foreign rule.” In this logic, the good Catholic and heterosexual Polish citizen was threatened by the majority of homosexuals, a majority that was constituted and based on European Union support as well as “western politicians” who were not brave enough to stand up against this world-encompassing gay conspiracy.Footnote 65
These controversies, however, indicate that democracy was a contested concept that included national self-understandings as well as the thoughts and beliefs of subcultural groups.Footnote 66 The different notions were not only linked to different interpretations of freedom and tolerance, two values that lay at the heart of contemporary definitions of democracy, but to different visions of the Polish citizen and different understandings of the public sphere. The contrasting interpretations of democracy following this event shed light not only on diverse conceptualizations of democracy, but also on diverse notions of citizenship-politics, the dominant ideology thereby defining what is moral and what is immoral, thus, what is proper conduct for a Polish citizen. Moreover, such debates elucidated how certain values associated with democracy created tensions between national and supranational norms, such as minority rights and the right to be different.
The examples mentioned so far—the antiabortion law, the debates on the Equal Opportunity Act, and the police intervention in Poznań and the debates that followed it—exemplify that rights, democracy, and citizenship-politics were shaped and reshaped by local histories and concerns as much as by globally circulating (western) discourses. I claim that a nuanced analysis of the different lines of argumentation and meanings attached to democracy offers insights into how different interpretations of freedom, equality, and tolerance are used to constitute normalcy, already defined as non-cultural, hence universal.
European Desires and National Bedrooms
In contemporary Poland, conservative parties codify democracy in moral and historical discourses that entail specific visions of Poland's future as well as of the proper, Catholic, heterosexual citizen. The association of nationalism with Catholicism serves to define who belongs to the nation and who doesn't. Moreover, the definition of democracy as rule of the majority is framed as the protection of the majority from an “immoral” minority. The speech about the rule of the majority combined with the notion of a public morality (publiczna moralność) hereby serves to constitute a national unity through the creation of “the other” that threatens the national community. In the Poznań case, state representatives—the police (as well as the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Ludwik Dorn, who afterward held a speech confirming that the police's procedure had been correct)—justified their power and violent procedure by claiming to protect the nation and public morality. Thus, such a procedure marked the participants of the protest march as Poland's other or anti-Polish. Such arguments are neither particularly Polish nor particularly new, but have been used at various times in many countries, although who is framed as “other” differs according to local contexts. In Poland, the prohibitions of the Equality March in 2004 and 2005 in Warsaw were grounded on arguments claiming to protect the religious feelings of Warsaw's inhabitants. The Equality March, the then mayor of Warsaw Lech Kaczyński stressed, would force Warsaw's inhabitants to take part in an event with “sexual character” and hurt the feelings of those persons who would prefer not to see such things. Implicitly, Kaczyński defined the proper citizen based on Catholic notions of morality and heterosexuality.Footnote 67 At the same time he defined what was publicly legitimate and what was illegitimate. Similarly, Polish journalist Jarosław Knapp argued in the weekly Wprost that gay and lesbian organizations involved with the Cracow Equality March demanded tolerance but in fact were intolerant toward the religious feelings of Cracow's inhabitants by publicly exhibiting their sexual orientation.Footnote 68 Even though Knapp acknowledged that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation should be prohibited in any democratic society, he stressed that “it is a completely different thing to impose one's preferences and lifestyle on other people by public display.”Footnote 69 Knapp's argumentation linked tolerance and intolerance to a cultural value hierarchy that was based on a specific morality. His argumentation entailed a hierarchical order of the citizenry and assumed a linkage between religion and heterosexuality. This link attributed emotions to heterosexual and religious persons and additionally called for the protection of these emotions/persons from nonheterosexual (read nonreligious) persons. To put it differently, in this logic, nonheterosexual and supposedly nonreligious persons were excluded from the public sphere. This line of argumentation not only framed nonheterosexual persons as nonreligious but also deprived them of full equality and thus of full citizenship status. The heterosexual Catholic citizen, on the contrary, needed protection from rights such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech by “minorities” who were accused of abusing tolerance and democracy discourses.Footnote 70 It is worthy to note that various journalists, jurists, and scholars in Poland have discussed and written about the issue of in/tolerance, interrogating democracy's political implications (such as pluralism and protection of minorities), while emphasizing cultural values simultaneously.Footnote 71
The philosopher Michał Szułdrzyński argued in an article that democracy had nothing to do with cultural or sexual preferences. He further denied any association of democracy with tolerance and pluralism and called the debates following the protest march in November 2005 a culture-war between different opinions. Moreover, he stressed that freedom of speech was not a suitable argument for sexual minorities as sexual preference was not an opinion and the protection of a minority was only meant to protect political opinions.Footnote 72 Such arguments remind strikingly of the debates on multiculturalism in that they reveal in which way “culture” becomes politically instrumentalized and hierarchized while at the same time contrasted to politics. They also reveal the tension between rule of democracy and rule of law. The informal women's networks and several women's organizations and gay-rights organizations respond to these state effects by referring to extra- or supranational powers and discourses on human rights and democracy. In doing so, they not only provide different notions of democracy and citizenship and “transgress” what it means to be Polish, but also offer alternative visions of Polish society and challenge local normative orders.
In my view, however, the debates offer not only insights into how democracy and tolerance are codified in moral and cultural discourses but also how the Polish citizen and the public sphere are both constituted as primarily Catholic and heterosexual. This understanding challenges the “western European” idea of the public sphere that (again) in “western European” accounts is frequently presented as a supposedly secular and liberal democratic site of communication between free and equal citizens.
Conclusion: A Politics of Desire
The examples and debates presented here illustrate how historical discourses and calls upon Polish traditions, morality, and human-rights discourses have been used strategically to push through or contest specific visions of Poland's present and the direction of its future. They further elucidate that democracy is closely linked to citizenship-politics and expanded by human-rights discourses. Democracy, citizenship-politics, and human rights, however, always seem aspirational: “[t]hey encompass a politics of desire.”Footnote 73
While conservative parties followed an ideal of a homogeneous nation-state by claiming a specific cultural identity and heritage that should be recognized by the European Union and respected by “minorities,” women NGOs, gay-rights organizations, and informal women's networks contested these claims by referring to “universal standards” that supposedly embraced and emphasized diversity and difference and by using the language of democracy linked to human-rights discourses. When Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner stated that “as a political imaginary, discourses of citizenship constitute horizons of possibility, a telos to be realised, an ideal, a blueprint for democracy,” it became clear that such imaginaries varied according to aspirations and visions. States, governments, and subcultural groups could all use a language of rights and the language of morality and/or “culture” to realize their visions.
The above examples show a constant negotiation between cultural relativism and universalism as well as rule of democracy and rule of law on a small scale. The focus on Poland reveals how local and global discourses of democracy and rights interconnect and/or interfere with each other and create tensions between “national” and supranational standards. The debates taking place in Poland are not only a battle for hegemony over the interpretation of democracy and tolerance but over what it means to be Polish after 1989. Simultaneously, the debates lead to the question whether the EU or so-called universal standards enable Polish women and (sexual) minorities to redefine the Polish moral agenda or whether the European Union is imposing its own brand of cultural legitimacy and what it means to be modern and contemporary onto Poland and other new member states. Coming back to the beginning of this article, one might equally ask what the implications of the “European” indignation about the statements by Polish politicians are. While feminist concepts as well as concepts of equality and difference increasingly circulate the world and “tolerance” toward homosexuality appears as a new symbol of modernity, terms such as democracy, freedom, and equality are challenged in new ways. A question that cannot be pursued in this article is how “normalcy” is constituted in contemporary Germany or the European Union's policies. There is only one aspect to be sure of: democracy and human rights are “always already becoming, a historically contingent social formation, a particular negotiated compromise between forces of normalization and differentiation. It is therefore always inflected by power and by the common sense assumptions of hegemonic cultural and political elites.”Footnote 74
