After all the political stuff for hours and hours even a workaholic green deserves some rest. Therefore everybody was happy when the happening was moved to a kind of theatre or bar where a buffet was offered that had at least some tomatoes for hungry vegans and which was a quite nice location. Satisfied and finally less political the atmosphere even improved when a rock’n roll singer in best Elvis tradition rocked the house. A really nice evening – so far! Suddenly the Elvis disappeared and the curtains opened for some young ladies – well, that would have been ok, but they have been almost naked. As far as I remember the greens have always been part of the feminist movement and one of the reasons why I joined the greens was their gender perspective. In my thoughts I already left the greens and went back to my NGO roots but when I looked in the faces next to me I saw some shocked faces as well. But still, this wasn’t all! When the refrain came even more ladies appeared – even more naked and pink feathers on their heads – you know this Brazilian carnival style. This was really the climax. Most people of FYEG decided to leave and had an emergency meeting in front of the bar. We were in the mood to turn the whole conference into a sexism debate but finally we decided not to damage the greens foundation but still we would raise the issue. At the same evening we had some more meetings, raised plan A, B and D.
Next day at the conference the naked ladies were THE hot issue at the conference and finally we could solve the whole thing: an official excuse by the Italian greens showed that it wasn’t the fault of the greens: the bar had organised the program of the evening and apparently had some “surprise” for their green guests. As they said: “I know you like flowers – we brought some roses for you” (!). This sexist happening really spoilt the evening but a good thing: the discussion raised the topic of sexism and the gender workshop next day was full! Still, open sexism is not the biggest problem for greens – still the heads of the parties are mostly male and the famous greens are also male – still a long long way to go; even for us greens!