Banner from the location facing the street 🙂

As people have been having trouble finding the location, here’s a map 🙂

Today has been a successful day in opening and starting to create the space buuuut there’s still a bunch of things that we need. If people have any of the following and could potentially lend them to us for the time of the gathering, that would amazing! We can also pick things up if you can’t bring them yourself.

• electricity extension chords + multi plugs
• a projector (if you bring one tonight, we can have a film screening!)
• electricity plates for cooking
• lamps
• pots and pans

Also, bring your own cups, plates and cutlery if you can! 🙂

Soo.. we occupied a building last night to have Thistle in! The address is 37 St Georges Rd, near College Green. Today will mostly be a set-up day so come along and join us creating the space! There’s sleeping space for everyone that wants to stay over the weekend, just bring a sleeping bag and camping matress 🙂

We are currently looking for people to take responsibility for cooking during the gathering which includes organizing kitchen equipment and food. Please contact us if you’re interested! Also contact us if you can lend us kitchen equipment and/or organize food donations and we can link you up with people wanting to cook.

Thistle was first advertised as a transfeminist gathering which we just changed to queerfeminist. We are planning to have a gathering that is open to and aims to be empowering for all oppressed genders and – by calling it transfeminist – tried to center the experiences of trans people as well as express a clear opposition to TERFs and other forms of cissexism and transmisogyny within the feminist movement. By this, we used the term transfeminist as we saw it being used before and were completely unaware of the history and the actual meaning of the term as a movement led by trans women and other people experiencing transmisogyny. We deeply apologize for this mistake and also for how long it took us to react after someone brought it up to us and we hope that “queerfeminist” expresses what we’re planning to do in a more accurate way.

Part of our program is out now! Check it out here. There’s still plenty of space for folks who want to add program points 🙂

Thistle will be a transfeminist gathering held in Bristol from Sep 27-30, 2018. It will be an open space for anyone except for cis-men* to get together, share skills, do networking and have an awesome time!

Thistle aims to be a safer space for people affected by any type of oppression, such as ableism, racism, cissexism, transmisogyny, misogyny, heteronormativity and many more, as well as for survivors of any kind.

In an effort towards that, there will be a zero tolerance policy towards TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) and SWERFs (sex worker exclusionary radical feminists) trying to attend the gathering. We believe that TERFs and SWERFs actively enforce oppression and should have no space within our movements.

Furthermore, Thistle will be a dry space. This means we ask participants not to bring any alcohol and/or other drugs with them as well as not to attend the gathering while being intoxicated. By asking this, we try to make the space more accessible for people that have trauma related to alcohol/drug use as well as people struggling with past substance dependencies. We feel a dire need for having social spaces that are dry within a culture that is heavily based on intoxication.

Thistle will be a DIY/DIT (do it yourself, do it together) event in which we want to organize in a non-hierarchical way. We want to emphasize that it requires the collective effort of the participants of the gathering to turn it into an awesome experience for everyone. We encourage folks to reach out if something bothers them and we encourage everyone to take responsibility to support one another and speak up. If you get called out for your behavior, listen. We are very aware that there is a long way to go on the path of learning how to interact with each other in a non-oppressive way and this space will be for us to do our very best to listen to each other and be accountable.

If you want to facilitate a workshop, do a performance, play a gig, cook, translate workshops or contribute to the gathering in any other way, you can contact thistle-bris@riseup.net (pgp key available) or you can just show up (there will be an open schedule at the gathering!).

Hopefully, there will be space for folks from abroad to stay at the location of the gathering but please do get in touch if you plan to come and need a place.

* We won’t question anyone’s presence based on other people’s perception of their gender.