The idea for the Barbed Flower (Bodeča Neža) award ceremony arose from circles of feminist initiatives, groups and individuals. At a moment during the International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns, they connected one with another in the desire for common action, and, among other ideas, the Barbed Flower was born. Its intention is to point out both covert and up-front sexist statements of public persons, which usually are neither reflected upon nor criticized after being published or declared. The first Barbed Flower award ceremony was on March 8th, 2013 at a Red Dawns festival event. The first ‘price’ was earned by Vlado Žabot, for sexist words which he uttered to a female translator:

‘I just can’t understand how you, instead of shouting “Vlado, fuck me, fuck me in the ass”, just go to every festival alone like some kind of a pear.’

The fact that Slovene public persons can afford to say anything without punishment felt ‘žabotno’ or sad indeed to everyone involved. ‘Žabotno’ is a neologism, created out of the surname of the writer who was ‘given credit’ for the most sexist statement of the decade, and which found its place in the free dictionary of spoken Slovene language, Unleashed Tongue (Razvezani jezik). Hopefully, both the Barbed Flower Award and Unleashed Tongue are a big enough threat to the Žabot-likes to bite their tongues before saying something of the kind again.

Up until now, we have been collecting nominated statements with your help on the blog of the festival Red Dawns, on the so-called Wall of Shame (Sramotilni steber). The Wall of Shame is a pillar which does not shame, but warns about all of those who do, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by mistake. The former scare and ridicule, the latter do not question, they just follow. Common to all the statements is that they are misogynistic, sexist, homophobic, machist, chauvinistic and patronizing towards women, LGBTI community, as well as men themselves. At the Wall of Shame, we are, from the very beginning, collecting and exposing the statements with a double intention: we show to the bullies that their aggression does not lead to silence, but rather to a loud warning about the sadness (‘žabotnost’) of their statements, whereas, to the followers, we show that there are other ways of thinking and living.

Barbed Flower is an ‘award’ which is given to the person who thinks that he/she can degrade and offend without suffering any consequences for it, and for which he/she would deserve a penalty charge; the prize winner therefore gets the title of being the author of the most sexist statement of the year. The nominees also do not stay ‘empty handed’, a thorn that serves as a warning that inappropriate statements can hurt does gets caught in their skins. We hope that, after the ceremony, they are ashamed of themselves for at least a short period of time.

This year, in collaboration with the web portal Spol.si, Barbed Flower expanded its thorns. From this year on, you will be able to publish discovered sexisms at the Wall of Shame of the web portal Spol.si. After a date – which is yet to be announced – the teams of the Red Dawns and Spol.si will nominate a few statements, and you will be able to vote which of them are most appropriate for the selection of the Barbed Five. The winning statement will be, as so far, elected at the Red Dawns festival by the attendants.

Since the Red Dawns festival is right at our doorstep, we have, at the web portal Spol.si, only activated an online voting system for the Barbed Five selection for this year’s Barbed Flower ceremony. Vote on Spol.si and attend the Barbed Flower award ceremony; in this way, you will have the chance to express your opinion in both of the two selection phases!

For your participation in, and contribution to, our striving for a better and more equal society we thank you in advance.

In the Slovene language.
Co-organisation: Spol.si, Menza pri koritu

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