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Martha Tadesse

@marthinolly.bsky.social
525 followers 102 following 120 posts

Humanitarian photographer | Feminism ጃስ | 🏳️‍🌈 Current project 📸: Queer African stories

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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Happy to share the latest edition of a research project I worked on together with a colleague, focusing on digital violence in Ethiopia. (highlights the patterns of harassment, surveillance, outing, and stigma against queer individuals.) genderit.org/feminist-tal...
genderit.org
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Discounted registration is not compensation. If an organization truly value art as advocacy, healing, and change, they need to value the artists behind it with fair pay. Isn’t compensation equity in practice? How do you ask for art projects and treat artists as customers?
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
I've been engaged in a research project for over a year with an incredible research partner I'm deeply grateful for. Our work focuses on online violence against queer individuals in Ethiopia. Our reflection has finally been published: genderit.org/index.php/fe...
genderit.org
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Picked my favorites 💐 ✨ Tulips ✨ Dalton Farms, NJ
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Thanks to my friend Harriet for pointing out that the women went to Christ's tomb and saw he was not there, the angels showed up to describe what happened, & the women then told the apostles, who dismissed them. A Biblical account of women not being believed.
The Women going to the Sepulchre, 1912, Robert Anning Bell
Painting of women in blue garments walking leftward, one woman, and then five behind her, on a flat plain, hazy sky ....
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
First half marathon ✅
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
I can’t believe I am actually running my first marathon this Sunday 🎧🏃🏾‍♀️✨
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Why queer archive? Because queer stories shall start with queerness not queerphobia.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Key dates on the evolution of anti homosexuality advocacy and online violence against LGBTQIA+ communities in Ethiopia: 1/
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Mona Eltahawy @monaeltahawy.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Fuck this fucking fascist fuckery.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
In the face of relentless disinformation and the shattering weight of systemic denial, queer Africans continue to create safe spaces for themselves. Every quiet search for connection and every hidden gathering is an act of defiance — a refusal to be erased.
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Zecharias Zelalem @zekuzelalem.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
"Now or never" - @thecontinent.org. Thread: While Europe was getting scolded at its own Munich Security Conference, African leaders were in Ethiopia for the annual African Union summit. As @simonallison.bsky.social explained, it was a critical summit, with Africa facing a new Trump led world order.
The African Union’s
moment of truth
At this weekend’s summit in Addis Ababa, our
presidents must decide: Does the continental body
serve them, or us?
NEWS ANALYSIS
Simon Allison
In March 1990, the Tanzanian
statesman Salim Ahmed Salim visited
Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli. At the
time, Salim was just six months into his
long tenure as secretary-general of the
Organisation of African Unity. According
to Salim’s notes, the Libyan dictator made
him wait before eventually granting him
an audience in the ruins of a former
presidential compound that had been
bombed by US warplanes several years
earlier. Gaddafi had turned the compound
into a museum.
On two chairs set up outside a tent,
the pair discussed the major issues of
the day – civil war in Ethiopia; clashesCover of this weekend's edition of The Continent's digi newspaper...

Skyrise buildings in Addis Ababa, including the HQ building of the African Union is seen...as well as a busy road with vehicles driving by a billboard that reads "now or never for the African Union."

It is next to a drawing of the Lion of Judah, a symbol seen in many places across the Ethiopian capital.
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Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Publishing this during black history month is DIABOLICAL. LMAOOOOOOOOO!!!! The NYT is so wild.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
🤩 Ethiopian and Eritrean queer stories to the streets. To be seen. To be heard. A song of resistance ✨ Billboard from Exposure Photography Festival. (📸 Mitra Samavaki) Calgary, Alberta
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
My photography project Wonderfully Made, which highlights the Ethiopian and Eritrean queer community in the US, is featured in this year’s Exposure Photography Festival and opened last night ✨ If you are in Calgary don’t miss it - at Contemporary Calgary.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
“I grew up in a very religious household where my parents often expressed that they didn’t believe the LGBTQ+ community deserved equal rights. Yet one of God’s commandments is “love your neighbor as yourself.” Why would you deny your neighbor the same rights you have? 1/
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
“I can still see you if I close my eyes and focus, but that’s the only place you exist now. You’re a dream I had to let go of, even though I didn’t want to. Because more than anything, I wanted you to be safe and happy—and I can’t promise you that.” open.substack.com/pub/soniawit...
open.substack.com
A letter to the daughter I’ll never have
My love,
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Even decolonization would need to borrow decolonization just to decolonize academic spaces smh
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
Okay I really like The Later Daters.
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Al Jazeera English @aljazeera.com · 25/12/2024
"I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace." A Christian Palestinian girl in Gaza wishes for peace on Christmas Day amid Israel's war, at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
✨ All of this!!
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
“It should drive us all beyond rage that revolutionary imaginations almost always stop outside the home. … unless we topple that tyrant in our minds, our bedrooms, and on our street corners – our revolution has not even begun.” ✨ @monaeltahawy.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
What comes next for Syria’s women? A revolution that doesn’t free them is no revolution at all | Mona Eltahawy
The women celebrating the destruction of jails and dungeons will now be wondering why their own oppression cannot also be dismantled, says author Mona Eltahawy
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Kemigisa @kemigisa.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
😂😂😂😂 they are only homophobic if you are poor 😂😂😂
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
One of my participants became homeless after coming out to her family. Eventually, she managed to relocate to another state. Later, her family reached out, asking if they could stay with her while visiting her city. She told them ‘My house is gay.’ Audacity
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Qusay Noor @qusaynoor.net · 08/12/2024
People in #Syria are still opening prisons
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
AMEN!
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 08/12/2024
"About 1.4 million people have left online dating in the past year as experts say users see it as a chore rather than social activity" "a contributing factor in the decline of online dating could be a sense of detachment from reality and fatigue at the process." www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
theguardian.com
‘It feels like admin’: why are people falling out of love with dating apps?
About 1.4 million people have left online dating in the past year as experts say users see it as a chore rather than social activity
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
In 2019, an LGBTQ+ tour operator (Toto Tours) based in the U.S. announced a 16-day tour to Ethiopia, which included a visit to the Lalibela Church. The tour was eventually canceled due to threats and a widespread hate campaign on Facebook.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
The disinformation targeting LGBTQ+ Ethiopians on YouTube is relentless. From religious leaders to random YouTubers, government officials, anti-LGBTQ+ group founders, health professionals, and celebrities. No accountability. No justice. Just endless digital violence.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 08/12/2024
Read about the incredible work of @nighatdad.bsky.social "In 2012, Dad established the Digital Rights Foundation, an NGO that aims to address the digital divide and fight online abuse of women and other gender minorities in Pakistan." www.wired.com/story/nighat...
wired.com
She Escaped an Abusive Marriage—Now She Helps Women Battle Cyber Harassment
Inspired by her own experience of abuse, Nighat Dad fights for women’s social and digital rights in Pakistan and beyond.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
2024/almost 2025 even!! these yt digital creators still on poverty porn
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𓃰 ℬ𝓁ℴ𝒸𝓀 𝒬𝓊ℯℯ𝓃👩🏽‍💻 @sinflowerblues.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
When Kendrick said “Bitch, I cut my granny off if she don't see it how I see it.” I felt that.😂
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Tyla and Kehlani’s fashion is the real - don’t let them know your next move - 😭 what is it 😩
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Excerpt from a conversation with a queer Ethiopian American woman: “My entire family knows I’m queer.The most challenging relationship is with my mom, who is homophobic, likely influenced by her culture & religion. I’ve been searching for ways to help her understand because my mom is my beacon. 1/
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
That article was great until it got to ‘teaching people is vital’ 😭 Why is it always on marginalized groups to teach? Let the majority read and do the work please.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Going through interviews with Ethiopian and Eritrean queer individuals stirs a whirlwind of emotions—sadness, anger, joy, frustration, hope, and helplessness. I make space to laugh, but also to cry. Healing to all queer individuals who have faced betrayal from their families and friends.
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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
A lot of people think everything will work out if we just play by the rules but don’t seem to recognize that rules only matter when everyone agrees to follow them and, well, that isn’t our present reality.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
She said “an organized event in Nairobi is a dream like Ruto must go.. it is a dreaaam” 😅 I hope she sees Uncle Waffles in SA 🇿🇦 Being tear-gassed out of an event is wild.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
Everyday I am grateful that I don’t have a child because phew 😭 (don’t come at me. You can be grateful you have one/many 👏🏾🙏🏾)
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
Reminded me of “…& when we contend that the primary concern for sex workers is the sex involved in sex work and not the criminalized & stigmatized nature of their work, not the material conditions of their labor, we fail to acknowledge & address the actual abuses many sex worker communities face.”
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
#Belgium sex workers get maternity leave… “In what other job would you need a panic button? It’s not the oldest profession in the world, it’s the oldest exploitation in the world.” www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Belgium's sex workers get maternity leave and pensions under world-first law
They will be entitled to official employment contracts, health insurance and sick days.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
A few weeks ago, an Ethiopian man, presumed to be gay, was forced in a video to repeat degrading phrases like “I came here looking for a dick,” while crowds online cheered and asked the tiktoker to finish him. 1/
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
Revenge porn industry via telegram channels #Ethiopia Misogyny, patriarchy and a culture that prioritizes silencing & pushing marginalized groups. And no accountability. Horrifying. shega.co/news/hidden-...
shega.co
Hidden Horror: How Ethiopia’s Digital Underground Revenge Porn Industry Preys on Young Women
A six-month-long investigation by Shega has uncovered over a dozen Telegram channels profiting from leaked images and videos of Ethiopian women.
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Meron Estefanos @meron.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Eritrean refugees describe police crackdown in #Ethiopia #Eritrea #Refugees www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Eritrean refugees describe police crackdown in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa - BBC News
Hundreds have reportedly detained in recent weeks as relations between the two countries worsen.
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Mona Eltahawy @monaeltahawy.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Every morning at 8am my time, I send out a Daily Dose of feminist fire. Here’s today’s
On a blue background and in white letters, text reading: Words like feminism and resistance are being drained of their meaning when we offer them up as band-aids that offer temporary relief to women and girls against the vagaries of patriarchy. Enough of giving women and girls just ways to survive rather than tools to fight. We need fewer roadmaps towards a peace treaty with patriarchy and more manifestos to destroying it.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Featured Khalid Albaih, Sudanese political cartoonist, civil rights activist, and freelance journalist ✨ africasacountry.com/2024/11/draw...
africasacountry.com
Drawing the line
How Sudanese political satirist Khalid Albaih uses his art and writing to confront injustice, challenge authority, and highlight the struggles of marginalized communities worldwide.
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Martha Tadesse @marthinolly.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
6th cataract of the Nile. Sabaloga area /North of Khartoum, Sudan April, 2017
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Josiah D. Reed @josiah-d-reed.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) #birds #nature #wildlife #photography #bluejay
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