MINT is an acronym that was created during the Decampfinement camp last year as a translation of the acronym FLINTA (Female Lesbian Intersex Non-binary Trans Agender) that exists in Germany. MINT and FLINTA  are acronyms that allows us to refer to ourselves directly, not by negation like when we talk about chosen mixity without cis guys. On the camp, to make it easier for interpretation we will use MINT as the main acronym in every languages.

Little tips that apply to everyone

• Gender
  Don’t presume the gender of the person in front of you, ask for the pronouns they prefer.
  Try to express yourself in a gender neutral way. For example, there is no need to address a group as “hi guys” or “hi guys and gals”. “Hi” is fine, and does not reinforce binary gender structures.

• The agreements
  Pronouns do not necessarily allow you to know which agreements to use, if you are in doubt it is possible to ask how the person wants to be agreed.

• Consent
  Do not touch a person without asking for consent first

• Taking space
  Allow time and opportunity for others to express their ideas and listen carefully. This is especially true if you generally occupy a dominant position in society (cisgender, male, white, middle class, heterosexual, …). Remember that the more privileged you are in society, the easier it is for you to speak up first. So we invite you to make an effort and be careful not to always speak first, if this concerns you.

What if I screw up (even unintentionally?)

• If some people tell you that they are hurt or affected by something you did or said, acknowledge their experience! What they feel is valid, even if you don’t understand or agree with it. Even if you didn’t mean to hurt them, your intentions are less important than how they feel. Apologize, it’s not hard.

Source http://climatejusticecamp.be/en/agreements/

Lexicon

• Assigned at birth : is said when talking about the gender that was imposed on you by the authorities at birth. According to a binary distribution: people born with a vulva and a uterus are assigned girl and people born with a penis are assigned boy. Newly born intersex people are often mutilated or undergo hormone treatments to “fit” one of these two categories. The majority of people are raised and socialized into the gender roles that correspond to the one they were assigned at birth.

• Binarity : systemic oppression that defines the existence of only two genders. It is nowadays very criticized, because there is a variety of genders. Gender is a spectrum, on which one positions oneself (or not) as one feels it, and on which one can evolve..

• Cisgender (cis) : The word cisgender defines people who are in agreement with the gender they were assigned at birth.

• Gender : gender is a social construction that divides humanity into different gender categories and attributes, especially through use (habits, customs, traditions), roles, tasks, differentiated characteristics and attributes for each category, without any explanatory biological basis, which varyies across time and cultures. In particular, the number of categories may vary from one society to another.

• Intersex : social situation of people born with variations of sexual characteristics that do not correspond to what society attributes to male or female. These innate, natural variations can be multiple: internal and/or external genitalia, hormonal and/or chromosomal structures may not correspond to medical and social expectations, as well as other sexual characteristics such as muscle mass, hair distribution or stature, to name but a few. In French, there are two terms:
  – Intersex persons : refers to all persons who deviate from the normative developmental figures “male” and “female” created by medicine, and who very often undergo mutilations and medical violence aiming at making them correspond to the normative binarism.
  – Intersex people : refers to intersex people who are aware that they are part of a group of people who have undergone the same medical invalidation, who take a positive, non-pathologizing view of their bodies and who assert a political identity.

• Non-binary (also abbreviated NB, enby) : a person who identifies neither exclusively as male nor exclusively as female. This includes defining oneself as part male, part female, both, in between, neither, etc. Any non-binary person can legitimately identify with the term trans(gender) if they wish, because transidentity is the fact of not identifying exclusively with the gender we were assigned at birth.

• Pronouns Most people know the pronouns he and she, but there are others such as they (as a singular form), ze, co, xe, hy

• Transgender (trans) :a person who does not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Some trans people may wish to transition medically, while others do not feel the need to do so.

• Transitioning : the act of a trans person adapting the way they present themselves socially (e.g. pronoun(s), gender expression, gender role), their body (e.g. hormones, surgery(s)), civil status… to match their gender identity. Not all trans people are willing or able to make a medical transition, or change their civil status, for example, but their trans-identity is no less legitimate.

Minutes of the CoCons in PDF (in french)

What is it to be queer?

There are probably as many definitions as there are queer people. If there was one thing that came out of the sharing at this CoCons of what it is to be queer, it was that it was not conforming to the cis-hetero patriarchal system.

The word “queer” was originally a homophobic slur aimed at racialised and insecure people in the United States, referring to them as twisted and weird. Some of these people decided to reclaim the term to refer to themselves as a way of empowering themselves.

Subsequently there has been a phenomenon of cultural appropriation of the word by white bourgeois activists calling themselves queer, forgetting the social and racial background of the people who first used the word. This is a point that was made to us during the CoCons process, as we were a majority of white queers using the term.

We chose to keep this word with its multiple meanings, but above all the idea of not conforming to the cis-hetero patriarchal system, of being weird, fluid and/or non-conforming to labels.

We are aware that this is a matter for debate and discussion, and we hope that this will be the case on the camp to perhaps find a more suitable solution.

Little tips that apply to everyone

• Gender
  Don’t presume the gender of the person in front of you, ask for the pronouns they prefer.
  Try to express yourself in a gender neutral way. For example, there is no need to address a group as “hi guys” or “hi guys and gals”. “Hi” is fine, and does not reinforce binary gender structures.

• The agreements
  Pronouns do not necessarily allow you to know which agreements to use, if you are in doubt it is possible to ask how the person wants to be agreed.

• Consent
  Do not touch a person without asking for consent first

• Taking space
  Allow time and opportunity for others to express their ideas and listen carefully. This is especially true if you generally occupy a dominant position in society (cisgender, male, white, middle class, heterosexual, …). Remember that the more privileged you are in society, the easier it is for you to speak up first. So we invite you to make an effort and be careful not to always speak first, if this concerns you.

What if I screw up (even unintentionally?)

• If some people tell you that they are hurt or affected by something you did or said, acknowledge their experience! What they feel is valid, even if you don’t understand or agree with it. Even if you didn’t mean to hurt them, your intentions are less important than how they feel. Apologize, it’s not hard.

Source http://climatejusticecamp.be/en/agreements/

Lexicon

• Agenre : a person who does not identify with any gender, or who identifies as genderless.

• Androgynous : commonly used to refer to a person whose gender expression/appearance does not allow for easy determination of their gender. This does not mean that androgynous people are necessarily on the non-binary spectrum; conversely, not all non-binary people have or are required to have an androgynous gender expression.
• Aromantic : a person who does not feel romantic feelings or romantic attraction to others.
• Asexual : a person who does not feel sexual attraction to others. Unlike abstinence, which is a choice, asexuality is a sexual orientation.
• Bisexual (bi·e) : A person who is attracted to people of two or more genders.
• Biphobia: Biphobia, or monosexism, refers to the belief that monosexuality – sexual and romantic attraction to only one gender – is superior.
  Like homophobia, it is an institutionalized systemic oppression. The word refers to all manifestations of contempt, rejection and hatred experienced by bi-identified people. One of the specific forms that it can take is the invisibilization of bisexuality, which would not exist as a sexual orientation but would be either a “temporary state” before homosexuality, or “disguised” heterosexuality.
• Intersex : social situation of people born with variations of sexual characteristics that do not correspond to what society attributes to male or female. These innate, natural variations can be multiple: internal and/or external genitalia, hormonal and/or chromosomal structures may not correspond to medical and social expectations, as well as other sexual characteristics such as muscle mass, hair distribution or stature, to name but a few. In French, there are two terms:– Intersex persons : refers to all persons who deviate from the normative developmental figures “male” and “female” created by medicine, and who very often undergo mutilations and medical violence aiming at making them correspond to the normative binarism.– Intersex people : refers to intersex people who are aware that they are part of a group of people who have undergone the same medical invalidation, who take a positive, non-pathologizing view of their bodies and who assert a political identity.
• LGBTQIA+ : acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Agender, Assexual, Aromantic. The + refers to its non-exhaustiveness and includes other non-cisgender-straight identities and orientations
• Misgendering : using, intentionally or unintentionally, the wrong pronoun to address a trans person, and/or their “deadname,” i.e., the name they were assigned at birth and no longer use.
• Non-binary (also abbreviated NB, enby)a person who identifies neither exclusively as male nor exclusively as female. This includes defining oneself as part male, part female, both, in between, neither, etc. Any non-binary person is entitled to identify with the term trans(gender) if they wish, because transidentity is the fact of not identifying exclusively with the gender we were assigned at birth.
• Pinkwashing : reappropriation of LGBTQIA+ codes and claims for commercial and/or political purposes (e.g. to sell products, or for electoral purposes)
• Queer : the English term “queer” means strange, twisted, weird. It is an insult designating homosexual and trans people, with the connotation of “twisted”, queer is opposed to “straight” which designates heterosexual people. This term, with a strong antisexist and anti-racist dimension, whose use has been reappropriated by the people concerned, now includes people who refuse to be categorized according to the binary vision of gender and sexuality and actively reject the norms imposed by society.
• TPG :acronym for TransPedeGouine (TransFagDyke). This umbrella term refers to non-cis-hetero people who do not identify with the idea of an “LGBT+ community” (pinkwashing, “apolitical” ideology, assimilation strategy, invisibilization of racialized people…). “Fag” and “dyke” are insults that have been reappropriated by some of the people concerned in a perspective of empowerment.
• Transgender (trans) :A person who does not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Some trans people may wish to transition medically, while others do not feel the need to do so.

Complete glossary in PDF (in french)

Minutes of the CoCons in PDF (in french)

Neurodiversity
« Neurodiversity may be as crucial to the human race as biodiversity is to life in general. Who can say what kind of neural wiring will work best in the future? Computers and computer literacy, for example, may favor the autistic » (Blume, 1998)

Little tips that apply to everyone

What if I screw up (even unintentionally?)

If people tell you that they are hurt or affected by something you did or said, acknowledge their experience! What they feel is valid, even if you don’t understand or agree with it. Even if you didn’t mean to hurt them, your intentions are less important than how they feel. Apologize, it’s not hard.

Source http://climatejusticecamp.be/en/agreements/

• Alter/Headmate Refers to multiple person identities. All alters can theoretically take control of the body, but not all do. It depends, among other things, on the possibilities and the personality of the alters..

• Antipsychiatry A theoretical and practical contestation movement that radically criticizes the traditional models of mental illness, the classical hospital institution, and the ideologies supported by the caregivers of official psychiatry.
• Autism is a situation of disability in today’s society that is poorly adapted to its particularities. However, autistic people are above all human individuals with their own personality, their own character, their own experience and their own vision of the world. They may also have other associated conditions that may or may not be more disabling (attention deficits, language and coordination disorders, learning difficulties, psychiatric disorders, etc.)
• Neurotypical (NT abbreviated), used as an adjective or noun, refers to people who do not have an autistic type of brain..
• Neurodivergent The concept of neurodivergent was coined by Kassiane Asasumasu, a pluri-neurodivergent activist. Nick Walker would define it as follows: Neurodivergent, sometimes abbreviated to ND, means having a brain that functions very differently from social norms.”
• Neurotype As mentioned earlier, the neurodiversity movement emphasizes the idea that there are many variations of human wiring in the brain. It is in this diversity of neurologies that the term “neurodiversity” originates. A neurotype is the name given to an individual form of wiring. The so-called “normal” neurotype is called neurotypical (NT) and is what is thought of by society as increasingly common or “typical”, hence the name. Society in general, and health professionals in particular, often view NT as the most desirable and perhaps the only healthy brain type. The neurodiversity movement seeks to change this assumption. According to this paradigm, it is proposed that there are many different neurotypes, perhaps so many that the so-called NTs are actually a minority. Furthermore, each neurotype is a healthy brain type, with advantages and disadvantages in terms of capacity, function, etc. Society is designed for NT (Wikiversity, 2018).The historical origin of this concept has not been found.
• Neurotypicality System of structural oppression (material and symbolic) that legitimizes and produces violence (physical, medical, psychological, educational, economic, social…) against people with a divergent neurological condition, based on the imposition of a neurotype defined according to the dominant medical and colonial paradigm.
• Neuronorm dominant norms imposed by neurocapacitism and neurotypicism.
• Neurocapacitism System of structural oppression (material and symbolic) that legitimizes and produces violence (physical, medical, psychological, educational, economic, social…) against people with a divergent neurological condition, based on the imposition of a neurotype defined according to the dominant medical and colonial paradigm.
• Psychophobia : It is a systemic oppression of the neurotypicality whose victims are the persons considered as crazy, deviant or divergent compared to behavioral, psychic or cognitive neuronorms imposed by the society. It is a subgroup of validism and neurocapacitism for divergent mental and psychic conditions. People with autism are still psychiatrized for some of their behaviors and may be considered dangerous or violent. Psychophobia believes that crazy people are dangerous or irresponsible even though statistical studies show no difference from the general population. Psychophobia reinforces stigma in access to care and in the use of mental health services for neurodivergent people (internment, non-consensual care, overmedication).
• System : All the alters of a multiple person. A subsystem is an alter that has alters of its own.

Sources (in french):

https://cle-autistes.fr/politique/ressources-politiques/vocabulaire/

https://cle-autistes.fr/politique/autisme/

https://icarus.poivron.org/projet-icarus/

Complete lexicon in PDF (in french)

Minutes of the CoCons in PDF (in french)

Texts of lived sharing (in french)
https://cle-autistes.fr/category/paroles-dautistes/

While racism is an ideology that holds that there are races within the human species and that certain categories of people are inherently superior to others, the concept of systemic racism, because it is more insidious, can be more difficult to perceive.

Small tips that apply to everyone

• Don’t ask people where they are from because they are not white.
• Racism is primarily a white person problem. Don’t hesitate to call out someone who makes racist comments.
• Don’t fetishize racialized people. Saying things like “mane, lioness”, “I love PoCs”, “it’s in your blood” is racist.
• Touching someone’s hair because “it’s frizzy it’s funny”, is intrusive and racist.

What if I screw up (even unintentionally?)

• If some people tell you that they are hurt or affected by something you did or said, acknowledge their experience! What they feel is valid, even if you don’t understand or agree with it. Even if you didn’t mean to hurt them, your intentions are less important than how they feel. Apologize, it’s not hard.

Source http://climatejusticecamp.be/en/agreements/

Lexicon

• Cultural appropriation (not “cultural reappropriation” which has the opposite meaning) When a dominant culture appropriates elements of other cultures that have been (or still are) dominated. It is not a question of cultural “exchange” or “sharing” because the terms are not at all even, it is a power relationship that is clearly advantageous for some and disadvantageous for others. In reality it is less an exchange than a plundering (ex: museums).
• Systemic racism Simply put, it is the set of institutions that produce and reproduce racism towards certain minorities. The word systemic refers to institutions, political, economic, business, police, schools, justice system, etc. It should be remembered that all environments are conducive to systemic racism.
• Ordinary racism Is characterized by a lot of microaggressions that are very common, very frequent and that people experience every day. It can be reflections on names, origins, the way one dresses, the way one does one’s hair. All these remarks that place the targeted person outside the community.
• Islamo-leftism is categorized as “Islamo-leftist” any person showing even moderate resistance to the radicalization of Islamophobia. A pejorative and even infamous label, its purpose is to stigmatize, discredit, intimidate and bring to heel those who do not adhere to the republican dogma, even to present them as collaborators – conscious or naive – of terrorism. This scarecrow word, whose definition is vague, is often used in the mainstream media to delegitimize fields of research such as postcolonial studies, intersectional studies or work on the term “race”.
• Decolonial ecology fields of research such as postcolonial studies, intersectional studies or work on the term “race”.
  Decolonial ecology thinks of ecology through the lens of systemic oppressions, particularly those related to colonialism, and not from a white bourgeois perspective. The people who are already suffering from global warming are the people with the most precarious living conditions, especially those living in colonized countries.

Complete lexicon in PDF (in french)

Minutes of the CoCons in PDF. (in french) F.

Not translated yet.

Ableism is everywhere in our society, which starts from a so-called “valid” body norm and demands that other bodies adapt. When a door to enter an establishment is too narrow or there are steps at each entrance, it is indeed society that puts people in a handicap situation.

Small tips that apply to everyone

• Stop thinking that you are doing a nice gesture

Welcoming people with disabilities is too often considered a generous and magnanimous act. In short: paternalistic. However, if accessibility is a legal constraint, it is above all a strict necessity of equality and social justice.

• Remain discreet, non-invasive

<p align="justify"Offer us concrete help, but if we don't want it, don't insist. Don't look at us with fondness. Don't stare at us, don't ask us personal questions, don't feel allowed to touch us, take our picture. (It seems to go without saying? Believe us: no.))

We dream of an inalienable right to blend into the background. Don’t yell out “Watch out, watch out, get out of the way a disabled person wants to pass, they have priority!”

• Banish infantilizing behavior

ven if the person is accompanied, speak to him or her about everything that concerns him or her, not to the able-bodied person beside him or her. Even if it seems awkward, more complicated, slower in case of speech problems. And if the person makes a choice, respect it without discussion.

• Offer these accommodations to everyone

“People with disabilities” are not a homogeneous and hermetic category. A person with a mild disability may not need your help, but elderly, pregnant or fat people will often be relieved not to encounter the usual barriers. Remember, many disabilities are invisible.

Source : http://lesdevalideuses.org/ (in french)

Lexicon

Anti-ableism

Disability is a polymorphous whole, at the crossroads of an internal individual experience and an unsuitable environment.
Though it has long been considered under the sole prism of the medical model, current struggles are more interested in unraveling the social phenomenon that hinders us at least as much as our personal conditions: ableism.

Ableism : System of oppression suffered by people with disabilities because of their non correspondence to medical standards establishing validity. Ableist ideology posits that non-matching bodies, deemed disabled, have less value. They are naturally considered inferior, and therefore discriminatable.

Ableism permeates the whole of society on legal, medical, cultural, ethical, economic levels… It can manifest itself by a frank rejection (insults, mistreatment, silencing, stigmatization, refusal of inclusion…) but is also often hidden under the guise of “benevolent validism” (infantilization, pity, unsolicited help…).
Psychophobia, audism, fatphobia, or infantilization of the elderly are particular forms of validism.

http://lesdevalideuses.org/les-devalideuses/notre-manifeste/ (in french)

• Psychophobia : It is a systemic oppression whose victims are the persons considered as crazy, deviant or divergent compared to the behavioral, psychic or cognitive neuro-norms imposed by society. It is a subgroup of validism and neuro-capacitism for divergent mental and psychic conditions. People with autism are still psychiatrized for some of their behaviors and may be considered dangerous or violent. Psychophobia believes that crazy people are dangerous or irresponsible when statistical studies show no difference from the general population. Psychophobia nonetheless reinforces stigma in access to care and in the use of mental health services for neurodivergent people (internment, care without consent, overmedication).
• Audism : Discrimination and hostility towards deaf people.
• Fatphobia : The set of hostile attitudes and behaviors that stigmatize and discriminate fat people.

Shared texts :

Intelligence in service of disability

At all times, because of my motor difficulties, when I need cash, I go into the bank to ask the cashier for help. In front of the cash dispenser, I give my credit card, my code, my wallet to put the bills away. Everything happens in a few minutes. If I had to do it myself, I would have to monopolize the cash dispenser for a whole morning to accomplish such a task. Half an hour to grab my wallet and take out my card, a quarter of an hour to insert it into its slot, ten minutes to type in my code, three quarters of an hour to grab the bundle of bills and put them away without dropping them everywhere. Finally, two hours to get my card and put it away. Just touching it is enough for it to go into the machine (you’ll get me? You won’t get me!).

Today, if I had to do it myself, it would be impossible because of the protections installed around the keyboard. To use the one on my computer, I use my nose. To type my code without the protections is possible, with these protections, it is impossible, I don’t have Pinocchio’s long nose. But this is not where the problem lies.

For safety reasons, I stopped driving a few years ago. I traded in my car for an electric scooter, a sort of longer electric chair that allows me to maintain a certain autonomy. I can go into stores and do my shopping. Going into the bank was not a problem for me until now. The door was wide enough for me to enter without catching on the doorposts. The situation suddenly became more complicated. The entrance to the bank had just been redone. The tiled slope, which is very slippery in the rain, has changed its appearance. The paint was redone. Everything is new. I wait a few minutes in front of the door. A customer opens it for me. I enter, I get stuck in the doorframe. I ask the kind person holding the door for me to open it a little more, she can’t. I’m miss a few dozen centimeters to enter without a problem. I execute a clever maneuver and I force. In a sinister howl of pain, my scooter shouts its anger: “who is the fool who implanted a doorstop forty centimeters from the wall?” The banker who came to welcome me is startled. She doesn’t understand. “There has never been such a problem” she says. Seeing the doorstop in the middle of the hall, I explain the situation. “I will report the problem!” she retorts. In the same way, I had the same problem to get out.

After experiencing this situation over a month ago, nothing has been done. How do I make management understand the stupidity of a doorstop in the middle of a hall? Should I stay stuck in the doorway to hold the customers hostage or should I go to the police station and complain about discrimination? That is the question.

The tram

Having to program an outing forty-eight hours in advance with a competent organization when you are a person with reduced mobility requires flawless organization and leaves no room for the unexpected. Being able to take the tram at any time of the day is even better. But …. Be careful…. You have to show your credentials…..

After having traveled about ten kilometers on my electric scooter, a kind of electric wheelchair used in particular by old people experiencing difficulties moving around, I finally arrived at the tram station. The tram being accessible to people with reduced mobility, I decided to take it to go to the center of Nancy. I approach the box that delivers the tickets. I look for a kind soul to help me take my ticket. No one is there. The driver gets out of the tram and comes towards me. I think he is coming to help me, I hold out my wallet.

• “You can’t get on! You have a steering column, you have an engine…. Management forbids us from letting motorized vehicles on”.

I am stunned, I am speechless. There is a pictogram on the door-opening controler symbolizing the accessibility for people with reduced mobility.

• “I’m going to Nancy, what should I do?

Realizing human stupidity, this good man grabs a coin from my wallet, inserts it in the ticket dispenser and gets me into his vehicle.

If one day I had to stay at the station, I think I would be obliged to follow the tram’s route, creating a nice procession.

Manvusa Gérard