The title of this recording is "Renato Sabbadini - Proud 2016". It is described as: Audio from the opening address of ILGA Executive Director Renato Sabbadini at the 2nd ILGA Oceania Rainbow Human Rights and Health Conference, held in Wellington 9-12 March 2016. It was recorded in University of Otago Wellington School of Medicine, Mein Street, Wellington on the 11th March 2016. Renato Sabbadini is presenting.  Their name is spelt correctly but may appear incorrectly spelt later in the document. The duration of the recording is 15 minutes, but this may not reflect the actual length of the proceedings. A list of correctly spelt content keywords and tags can be found at the end of this document. A brief description of the recording is: Audio from the opening address of ILGA Executive Director Renato Sabbadini at the 2nd ILGA Oceania Rainbow Human Rights and Health Conference, held in Wellington 9-12 March 2016. Please note Renato's speech was re-recorded without an audience a couple of days after the opening event. The content in the recording covers the decades 1970s through to the 2010s. A brief summary of the recording is: This summary covers the opening address given by the ILGA Executive Director, Renato Sabbadini, at the 2nd ILGA Oceania Rainbow Human Rights and Health Conference in Wellington. The recording encompasses themes from the 1970s to the 2010s and is a re-recorded version without an audience. During the address, Sabbadini draws a compelling parallel between the unique evolution of bird species in a mammal-free New Zealand and the burgeoning LGBTI movement in Oceania. They emphasize how seemingly small regions, like Oceania, are capable of tremendous influence, using the Italian aphorism that "the best wine is to be found in the smallest casks." They commend local leadership for their work in addressing the region's challenges, such as homophobia, transphobia, and intersex phobia, amidst milestones like marriage equality and passport gender options. Sabbadini reflects on the history and growth of LGBTI organizations since 1978, noting the global movement's role in sharing experiences and shaping the direction of equality and freedom. They stress the importance of the movement to articulate its desires and rights autonomously without external interpretation, invoking the statement by Helen Kennedy, “If you’re not at the dinner table, you are on the menu,” to highlight the need for direct engagement and self-advocacy in social movements. Moreover, Sabbadini tackles the questions of unity within the diverse LGBTI community, addressing skepticism about the effectiveness of collective action. They argue that the diverse experiences and identities within the community, rather than being an impediment, are sources of power and enrichment. The presentation brings into focus the shared experience of disturbing the binary gender certainties, presenting the community’s ability to disorient and challenge societal norms as a powerful form of social questioning and opportunity for growth. Sabbadini also points out the inherent risk in the community’s success, where individuals or groups, in seeking mainstream acceptance, might distance themselves from others within the community. They draw attention to the need for self-awareness and vigilance against creating new exclusions and highlight the importance of intersectionality in understanding and addressing diverse identities and struggles. In closing, Sabbadini uses the analogy of a great voyage, comparing their flight to New Zealand to the Māori's epic sea journeys. They posit that the collective goal of a discriminatory-free society may be distant and its realization possibly beyond the current generation, but stress the value in the journey itself shared by the overarching community. The speech is a candid reflection on the state of LGBTI rights, the strength found in diversity, and the importance of a united global community to confront discrimination. The full transcription of the recording follows.  It includes timestamps every thirty seconds in the format [HH:MM:SS].  The transcription begins:  Many thanks, man. And I'm proud and honoured to speak in front of you here [00:00:30] today, the last land of earth to be reached by human beings but before being reached by human beings, this land was the land of birds birds which had reached these shores untouched by mammals, apart from to bat species And in this mammals free environment, birds were able to evolve and flourish for a million of years, filling all the niches of their ecosystem. [00:01:00] I think that this land of birds is a very fitting place for the second Hania Conference. Because it means that Goiania is really ready to take off and that the sky is the limit is the smallest of the Iga regions. But do not let this fact fool you for a single moment. As we say in Italian, the best wine is to be found in the smallest fats. [00:01:30] Thanks to a board of hardworking people led by Iman Brown and Cori has really began to flourish and to address its unique challenges, a huge expense punctuated by small to medium sized groups in a mix of promising advances and pockets of enduring homophobia, transphobia and intersex phobia between marriage, equality [00:02:00] and criminalization of same sex sexual acts between consenting adults. Between recognition of more than two gender options on the passport and fight against enduring gender based prejudice between the recovery of ancient wisdom and mana and fight against the bitter legacy of colonialism, you are laying the foundations of a new world where social justice for all and personal freedom for everyone live side [00:02:30] by side. An epic effort and one that in its regional scale reflects and mirrors the same efforts taking place at a global scale needs your energy and your experience while welcoming you in a global community of like minded spirits, comrades and friends. Since 1978 LGBTI organisations have been gathering in increasing [00:03:00] numbers and with increasing diversity at first only in the global north, then spreading gradually in the global south to find in el a platform where to share experiences, practises and knowledge and above all to decide altogether as to the direction the global LGBT movement should take in order to advance equality and freedom for all human beings, regardless of their sexual orientation, [00:03:30] gender identity and gender expression, bodily diversity and sex characteristics. This is, in essence, what is all about having the movement speak to the world by itself and for itself. No think tank talk, no mediation by experts. We assert our right to stake our claims on our own. Anything else, anything less [00:04:00] will not do. No liberation movement in history has ever contented itself with others representing its points of view and claims by experience. We know that change only starts when we take the floor. As our co secretary general, Helen Kennedy, loves to say, If you're not at the dinner table, you are on the menu and we don't want to be talked about, do we? We want to be [00:04:30] talked to and to talk back the liberation movement of lesbians. Trans gay, bisexual, intersex. Queer people can only be true to its mission if it speaks by itself for itself and on its own terms. By coming together by joining forces by having everyone stating their needs and dreams for a better world, we gain the strength and courage to remind everyone else [00:05:00] that the state of the world is unacceptable as long as the discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, bodily diversity and sex characteristics continues is what it says. It is the only democratically organised World Federation of LGBTI organisation that has the legitimacy to represent the voices it represents. [00:05:30] Our diversity is not a hindrance, but our strength. Our multitude is not an impediment but the source of our legitimacy. As the global movement grows stronger every day and the plurality of our voices is more and more enriched by our diversity, some of us might question the need of working altogether in a world organisation. Shouldn't each of us focus [00:06:00] on our own specific battles instead? At the end of the day, what could the German lesbian and the Indian possibly have in common? What has intersex got to do with sexual orientation? Are we all together for a reason, or is it just an accident of history? Don't we risk confusing the public about our own individual identities if we march altogether at the Pride Parade? [00:06:30] Quite often, this kind of objections comes also from the general population, when the same people who adore the well of gay couple living next door are disturbed by the presence of a person whose appearance does not correspond to the gender image. Ex expectation of their culture. The first answer to this kind of objections is very banal. United. We are much stronger [00:07:00] than if we were to proceed, separated from one another. But I believe that you know that there is a much better and more convincing answer, one that goes at the heart of what we all truly share. Let's go back to the discomfort of the sis person facing a trans person. We all at one moment or another of our life or throughout the whole of our lives, have had this wanted [00:07:30] or unwanted power to put a normal interlocutor in a position of discomfort in their world. Built on apparently stronger, strongly certainties based on the binary dichotomy male, female man, woman in their world, we have the power to bring a moment of chaos through the very existence of our bodies and what we do with them. We have the power to challenge at its [00:08:00] foundation the narrative that prescribes what it means to be a real man and a real woman. I think this is wonderful. This is our magic. This is our gift from the gods. We have the power to force people to question themselves. And this power is good because it is only by questioning ourselves and by having others question themselves, that we can grow as individuals [00:08:30] and as society, whether we know it or not, whether we realise it or not. We are social engineers, social alchemists who teach people that nature. Human nature is far richer and more complex than one was brought up to think. Yes, we take away certainties, but we offer new possibilities. It is a gift. It is our gift. [00:09:00] But it's very often also occurs. Most people, especially in extenuating circumstances, especially when material welfare becomes very uncertain, don't like to be challenged on the one thing they've always known to be true. That you are born either male or female, and that a nice script is ready for you to play, depending on what gender you were assigned at birth. The [00:09:30] world is too uncertain for them as it is for them to question themselves, and I insist on their questioning themselves bit because don't let anyone fool you. It is never a matter of accepting someone else's diversity. It is always a matter of what the diversity of the other says about myself. so our gift is very often unwelcome. And that's one more reason [00:10:00] for us to stay together, not only to comfort each other, to heal the pain our diverse diversity brings to us, but also to vaccine ourselves against the possibility of discriminating against each other. Because some of us are so desperate for recognition by society that as soon as we obtain a shadow of respectability, we don't think twice about dumping those comrades we feel might embarrass [00:10:30] us, especially if we associate it with them. We were born and raised in societies which lean on the binary, and the temptation to yield to new binaries we've created for ourselves is tempting. This does not go only in relation to differences among us with regard to our bodies, our identities in terms of sexual orientation or gender. This goes also for us truly understand understanding [00:11:00] the concept of intersectionality for us to be able to question our own assumptions in relation to ethnicity. Faith class culture belonging to a minority does not unfortunately automatically endow someone with the ability to empathise with other minorities. We have all suffered from this at one moment or the other in our lives, as we were [00:11:30] rejected by someone who we assumed would have accepted us because of their history of suffering, most probably at one moment or the other of our lives. We have also been on the other end of the bargain as we felt lack of empathy with someone who belonged to a minority, almost deserving the discrimination they were subjected to again. We are born and raised in a society which is awash [00:12:00] with all sorts of prejudices. To identify the prejudices that we have absorbed unconsciously is perhaps the most difficult job. That's why joining LGA and meeting such an extraordinarily rich diversity of people represents a great opportunity to explore, question and fight our own prejudices. At times, people outside of the LGBTI movement find our endless debates [00:12:30] and soul searching about identity identities tiring and abstract and practical and difficult to communicate to the outside world. I, for one, find this aspect of our being together one of the most enriching experiences of my life. We are perhaps slow in our decision making, but that's what real democracy is all about because we want to make sure that everyone has had the chance to speak their mind. [00:13:00] At the same time, we are forging the future of the societies where we want to live. The level of reflection in our debates is light years ahead of other civil society organisation, not to mention public bodies. We must be proud of that. I would like to finish with an analogy. As I was flying here the 18,000 kilometres from Geneva to Wellington, the longest trip [00:13:30] of my life, I was shocked at the size of our planet. In today's world of Internet, we may easily feel that distances are shrinking and collapsing. What a sobering and healthy experience it is to see and feel that we are truly small compared to the earth. As I was flying, I was also reflecting on the fact that this travel is nothing compared [00:14:00] to the travel by sea. The Maori undertook to come here 1200 years ago. They must have travelled distances that today we could only compare with interplanetary travel. If it's not a bold I'd like to think of as a of people joining forces to reach a new land, A better world that one than the one that we left behind us. Will [00:14:30] we reach our new a land where we finally find the peace and harmony of a society that knows no hatred, no discrimination, difficult to say and difficult to know if any of us here today will do, the trip might be very long. Perhaps only the Children of our Children will eventually land on those shores. At the same time, I'm grateful to be in this giant flotilla with all of you [00:15:00] who knows the answer may lie in the travel rather than the destination. Thank you all very much. The full transcription of the recording ends. A list of keywords/tags describing the recording follow. These tags contain the correct spellings of names and places which may have been incorrectly spelt earlier in the document. The tags are seperated by a semi-colon: 1970s ; 2010s ; Africa ; Aotearoa New Zealand ; Geneva ; German ; Helen Kennedy ; International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) ; Job ; Korea ; LGBT ; Marriage Equality ; Māori ; Oceania ; People ; Pride ; Pride parade ; Proud 2016 (Wellington) ; Renato Sabbadini ; University of Otago Wellington School of Medicine ; Wellington ; accident ; activism ; agenda ; assumptions ; belonging ; binary ; bisexual ; board ; body diversity ; capital ; change ; children ; cis ; civil society ; class ; colonialism ; community ; conference ; courage ; culture ; democracy ; discrimination ; diversity ; empathy ; energy ; engineering ; environment ; equality ; ethnicity ; expression ; faith ; flying ; freedom ; friends ; future ; gay ; gender ; gender expression ; gender identity ; gods ; history ; homophobia ; identity ; individual ; internet ; intersectionality ; intersex ; intersex phobia ; justice ; knowledge ; legacy ; lesbian ; liberation ; mana ; march ; marriage ; minority ; narrative ; nature ; normal ; opportunity ; other ; pain ; parade ; passport ; peace ; power ; prejudice ; pride ; queer ; questioning ; recognition ; recovery ; reflection ; regions ; sex ; sexual identity ; sexual orientation ; social ; social justice ; soul ; strength ; suffering ; takatāpui ; talk back ; time ; transgender ; transphobia ; travel ; trick ; understanding ; wine ; wisdom ; yoga. The original recording can be heard at this website https://www.pridenz.com/renato_sabbadini_proud_2016.html. The master recording is also archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand.  For more details visit their website https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.1089707. Please note that this document may contain errors or omissions - you should always refer back to the original recording to confirm content.