First DYKE march in Tirana

The colors of pride landed down in Tirana once again after the last Pride Parade in May 2019. Yesterday the first lesbian march, otherwise known as Dyke March, was organized in Tirana.

Cheering all the way long for equal rights, acceptance and solidarity, lesbians from the country and the region, joined by other activists, marched from Scanderbeg Square to the streets of Tirana.

Proud, revolutionary lesbian!

This was the motto of Tirana Dyke March 2019, where the main focus was on lesbian women, transgender women and all other sexual minorities and those who still are being discriminated in Albania just because of love.

In this parade, there were participants from Kosovo, Serbia, Northern Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Turkey.

This march was contextually part of the annual conference agenda of activists from the region and Turkey, organized for the first time in Tirana by ERA – Equal Rights Association, and partner organizations in Tirana.

A short history of Dyke March

The Dyke March is a protest that was firstly organized in 1993 in Washington by a group of political activists “Lesbians Avengers” and has become an annual tradition in various cities around the world.

Anne-Christine d’Adesky, the founder of the first Dyke March, said that the main purpose of this mobilization was to increase the attention to lesbian girls and women. The word “dyke” has a discriminatory connotation which is widely used to intimidate girls and women because of their sexual orientation. That is why the community of lesbian women and girls decided to adopt this word by using it as an empowerment tool representing strength, independence, sexual freedom, and pride in themselves

The DYKE march in Tirana was organized by Aleanca LGBT, LGBTI Equal Rights Association for Western Balkans and Turkey (ERA) and European Lesbian Conference (ELC).