lørdag den 17. maj 2014

(Til kamp mod) Det Tertiære Kønssystem

(I made a new blog with a cooler title - check it out here)

Det skulle ikke undre nogen, der kender mig, at jeg er voldsomt modstander af det binære kønssystem, altså opfattelsen at der kun findes to køn: Kvinde og mand. Da jeg selv har en kønsidentitet der falder uden for de to kasser, er jeg hele mit liv blevet voldsomt undertrykt af dette system og bliver det fortsat til den dag i dag. Mit CPR-nummer og dermed alle mine lovlige dokumenter afspejler ikke min identitet, jeg må ofte benytte omklædningsrum eller offentlige toiletter der ikke er beregnet til mig og i 99 % tilfælde vil fremmede, der møder mig, antage at jeg er noget jeg ikke er, hvilket kan føre til forskelsbehandling. Hvis jeg vælger at se lidt længere end min egen næsetip (det skal man jo også en gang imellem), kan jeg se at dette system også skader resten af samfundet, selv dem, der faktisk har en binær kønsidentitet. Det binære kønssystem siger ikke blot at der kun findes mænd og kvinder, men også at der er bestemte måder at være det ene eller det andet på, og at folk af det ene køn er gode til visse ting og folk af det andet køn gode til andre ting. Har I for eksempel lagt mærke til at der sjældent er skifteborde til små børn på herretoiletter? Eller at kvinder får lavere løn end mænd, der udfører det samme arbejde af samme kvalitet? Så jeg stemmer for at vi udrydder det binære kønssystem, og helst så hurtigt som muligt – tak. Som sagt kan det ikke undre nogen.

Til gengæld overraskede jeg mig selv ved pludselig at indse at jeg stod ansigt til ansigt med en anden fjende. En fjende, som jeg selv har været med til at skabe og endda promovere og rose. Dette er en fjende, som jeg så opfindsomt har valgt at kalde det tertiære kønssystem.

Som navnet antyder, er det tertiære kønssystem idéen om, at der er tre køn: Mand, kvinde og andet. I et samfund der opererer under dette system, vil ens CPR-nummer fx ende med et ulige tal hvis man er mand, et lige tal hvis man er kvinde, og 0, X eller lignende hvis man falder under den sidste kategori. Folk ville forhåbentligt have en bedre og mere åben forståelse for, at man altså godt kan ”opføre sig som en kvinde” og være en mand alligevel, og alle skulle naturligvis have den samme løn for det samme arbejde. Det lyder jo rigtig godt – det er sådan en verden jeg kan finde på at gå rundt og fantasere om at jeg lever i. Så hvorfor kalder jeg pludselig dette system en fjende?

Jo, for som navnet ’tertiært kønssystem’ også antyder, minder dette system faktisk rigtig meget om det binære kønssystem, og jeg vil vove at påstå, at de udspringer af én og samme rod.

Bemærk for det første navnene på de tre kønskategorier; mand, kvinde og ”andet”. Vi har altså stadig de to, primære køn, og alt, der ikke passer ind, bliver most sammen under en fælles rest-betegnelse. Vi bliver gjort til ’alle de andre’, til undtagelsen. Problematikken er heller ikke én, jeg sidder og finder på i min egen, selvopfundne verdensorden, for den viser sig ude i virkeligheden. Vores samfund er nemlig – heldigvis – i gang med at arbejde på nogle af dets kønsbinære problemer: For eksempel har man i Australien og Tyskland (m.m.) anerkendt en tredje mulighed. Men her ser vi problemet i sprogbruget, hvor journalisterne bruger vendinger som ”’indetermnate’ gender” og ”non-specific”. Hvis man ikke er mand eller kvinde, er man noget ubestemmeligt tredje.

Virkeligheden ser anderledes ud. Jeg kender mange der identificerer som hverken mænd eller kvinder, og meget få af dem identificerer alligevel som det samme køn. Nogle er kønsløse, nogle føler de ligger mellem mand og kvinde, andre et helt andet sted, nogle har lidt af hvert, andre beskriver det som værende én ting udenpå/i visse situationer/om søndagen og en anden ting indeni/andre gange/om tirsdagen. Personligt kan jeg bedst beskrive min kønsidentitet som at hvis ’pige’ er rødt og ’dreng’ er blåt, så er mit køn orange.
De foregående sætninger har været de sværeste i hele dette essay for mig at skrive, for vores sprog giver mig slet ikke de ord jeg skal bruge for at beskrive denne kønsmangfoldighed. Jeg har kun ordene ”mand” og ”kvinde” og deres afarter til at benævne køn, inklusive dem, der er noget andet. Selv ordene ”androgyn”, ”nonbinær” og ”genderqueer”, som jeg ellers bruger til at beskrive min identitet, har alle en eller anden forbindelse til de to binære køn. De er, henholdsvis, defineret som en blanding, noget andet end de to, og noget ”anderledes”. Og det er et problem, for så er det jo umuligt ikke at gøre os til ”de andre”.

Hvad skal man gøre i stedet? Måske lave et quartiært, quintiært, octonært, n-ært kønssystem? Næppe – det formentligt umuligt at skabe et fuldendt system, der helt omfatter alle mulige kønsidentiteter.

Måske er vores måde at opfatte køn på grundlæggende defekt – altså endnu mere end vi allerede har etableret. Køn er ikke kategorier eller kasser man kan putte folk i, men snarere noget helt unikt for den enkelte person. Måske findes der ikke to ens køn – selv ikke hos dem, der identificerer sig som et af de binære. Jeg nægter nemlig at tro på, at alle kvinder opfatter deres køn ens – som den samme nuance af rød.
Dette ville ikke være ensbetydende med, at man ikke må bruge kategorierne. Det skal ikke være sådan, at én person har eneret på en bestemt kønsidentitet, og jeg skal nok lade være med at blive fornærmet hvis nogen kommer hen til mig og siger ”hey, mit køn er også orange”. Men det ville være fordelagtigt at gøre kategorierne mindre vigtige. Drop det der med, at man skal kunne aflæse folks køn ud fra deres CPR-nummer. Hold op med at have de figursyede skorter af tyndt, gennemsigtigt stof hængende i den ene side af tøjforretningen, og de kedelige, kasseformede T-shirts i den anden. Lad nu bare folk klæde om og tisse hvor de har lyst, uden at være bange for at nogen ser en krop der er anderledes fra deres egen (alle folk med penisser ser altså heller ikke ens ud). Lad folk selv definere deres køn, og tro på det resultat de når frem til – og lad være med at døm dem på baggrund af det.


Kort sagt: Lad os afsystematisere køn. 

mandag den 26. august 2013

Homelessness

I have discovered something new about myself. Once I get further away from my home than walking distance, I start feeling unsafe.

I'm currently in Beijing, which forces me to redefine my concept of 'home' slightly. Right now, I suppose it refers to the apartment at the university where I'm staying with my father. But in a certain sense of the word, I feel homeless. I will be moving out of my parents' home once I return from Beijing in October - a home that my parents are currently selling. I am, of course, not truly homeless. My best friend is waiting with an apartment for us to share, and even if by some freak accident it should burn to the ground or be destroyed by Godzilla or our moving plans otherwise thwarted, my parents' new house will have a guestroom for me. I'll always have a bed to sleep in. But a home - I feel less certain on that point.
My aforementioned friend seems to have little qualms about moving. "Home is just where I keep my stuff," she's told me, paraphrasing a well-known saying. I, however, am much more distressed. All Summer, I have been caressing the walls of the apartment I grew up in, taking deep breaths to preserve the smell (it saddens me to say that I cannot now recall what it smells like - it's too much of a 'default' smell, a smell of 'me', but I suppose it soon won't be anymore). The process of tidying up and throwing out and doing practical, moving-preparing things has been an endless cause of stress and discontent for me. The moving boxes that cluttered my room the last week before I left completely drained me of energy. It's time and I'm ready to move out; I've reached that level of maturity and gotten to that stage of my life. I'm excited about it, too, and confident that I'll be fine on my own. And yet it feels like a part of me is dying.

Logically, there should be no problem. My home used to be the apartment shared with my parents; right now it's in Beijing, and soon it will be in a very lovely three-room apartment with my friend. But moving, in several senses of the word, has caused me to reflect on the concept of homes. What is it about them that makes me feel like I have none? I've come to the conclusion that it's about comfort.
Comfort is something that's achieved with difficulty for me. For example, I dislike sleeping with people in the same room, and the task is made near impossible if they happen to be people I'm not close to - and it takes me quite a while to get close to them. Likewise with places: I've always spent most of my time at home, recharging, because being anywhere else is simply draining my energy. Even places I've gone to daily for several years. I don't need a whole hand to count the number of places I feel comfortable enough in to spend an entire day without negative effects. One of those places is my parents' apartment - which is being sold and which I have effectively moved out of now, leaving it behind. Time is the issue here: I will eventually feel at home in my new apartment, but I'm worried about how long it might take. I certainly don't feel quite at home here in Beijing after two weeks, although knowing that my stay is temporary might affect that. And so, I have the nagging feeling of homelessness.

Which brings my back to my opening sentence. Why is homelessness such a scary sensation, despite the fact that I know it's temporary and unlike actually being homeless has no consequences that could plausibly kill me? Why can't I feel comfortable anywhere else? Perhaps the answer is as simple as my being overly sensitive to things like noise and changes in routine, but a quote I stumbled upon opens up the question a bit:

[P]laces like homes can trigger self-reflection, thoughts about who someone is or used to be or who they might become.

Maybe it's the need for this - knowing who I am and being able to reflect on that. As implied before, I'm moving in several senses of the word, not just geographically. Soon I'll be entering (or trying to at least) the workforce, and then I will start university. I'll be on equal standing with the only other person in my household, with a lot more responsibilities than so far. I'm becoming a real adult. This is confusing. So I desire some kind of steady ground to plant my feet on while figuring out what all this means.

Perhaps I will manage to hold on until I feel at home again - or perhaps I will find this steady ground in something else. Time will tell. More on that once I discover it.

onsdag den 3. juli 2013

An even briefer follow-up on being queer

Thinking about my essay from yesterday, it occurred to me that it might sound like I'm rejecting the idea of queer being an identity. That isn't the case. Of course, being queer is also a question of identity. It’s a catch-all term for anyone who isn’t straight and cis, and some would argue that even nonheteronormative cishets can claim the term. It's also a very useful term to use for anyone who doesn't feel that other, more specific terms are applicable to them, or that those terms aren't applicable all the time. The reason that I consider (my) queer a political term, however, is that I don’t need any more words to define my identity. I have enough. I’m an androgyne(/nonbinary), I’m asexual, I’m panromantic – and then I have the catch-all term “person”.

I’ve mentioned before that I have always been wary of identifying with groups, and this is even more true when it’s groups of people who ARE something and not groups of people who BELIEVE IN something. I have no control of my gender and sexuality, but I do have some degree of control of what I believe in. It’s a more active part of me, where my gender and my sexuality, much like my hair colour and the shape of my nose, are passive parts. Just like I’ve met many people with the same hair colour as myself with whom I had nothing in common, I’ve met queer (as in non-cishet) people who weren’t really in the same ‘group’ as I. A lot of them were perfectly nice and pleasant people who just happened to view the world in a different way, and some of them were jerks.

Needless to say, I don’t agree with everything anyone whose beliefs are queer, so to speak – but there’s more of an accord between our beliefs than there probably would be with any random person. So while I’m queer both in terms of identity and beliefs, the latter seems more relevant to emphasize.

tirsdag den 2. juli 2013

Briefly on being queer

I have been hesitant – and I believe I’ve mentioned this before – about using the label ’queer’. This was somewhat ironic, seeing how I throughout my childhood had no qualms about proudly calling myself ‘weird’. I was weird. I am. The label ‘queer’ is really mine to use; the people who have claimed it are people much like me. But even though I wasn’t sure why, it seemed scary, somehow. I saw people calling it a word to be reclaimed, much like the N-word and the T-word, a practice that I held – and still hold – some objections to. But mostly I think my hesitation and fear stemmed from ignorance – like hesitation and fear often do. I didn’t know exactly what the word meant, exactly how it was supposed to be used. I can’t say I know that now – and really, that’s the whole point of the word. But I do believe I’ve figured out what kind of word it is.

My revelation was triggered by my attending an event by the activist group Queer Jihad, and the subsequent reading of their book “Se! Den heteroseksuelle verdensorden går i stykker” (Look! The heterosexual world order is breaking). In the book is written a lot of things and especially a lot of things about queerness and being queer. I won’t repeat it all here, although I recommend buying the book if you can read Danish. I do want to highlight the main point I learned from Queer Jihad, or that Queer Jihad perhaps made me teach myself:

Queer is a political term.

My being androgynous/nonbinary/genderqueer, asexual, and panromantic are aspects of my personal identity; being queer is an aspect of my political identity. ‘Queer’ is a term that describes what I believe in, and not just who I am.

So what is queer? Who am I and what do I believe in? I could paraphrase something from the aforementioned book, but instead I’ll present to you my personal interpretation.

Being queer is being who you are and letting everyone else be who they are. Not just letting them; being queer is thinking that it’s wonderful and amazing that people are who they are. Being queer is about having no expectations or assumptions about people; it’s about having no default. We live in a world where most people think that being white, cisgender, and heterosexual is the default, with everything else being the exception. Being queer is rejecting that idea. Queer might be mostly associated with gender and sexuality, but it’s about diversity and acceptance in every other aspect of life as well.

Having figured out what ‘queer’ means feels much like it did when I first discovered that it was okay to identify outside the gender binary. The word has gone from something far off and threatening to a warm embrace. It’s purple and soft. It’s me. I’m queer.

søndag den 9. juni 2013

Om Ord og Køn

Following this brief introduction is a Danish essay I wrote for school earlier this year. I'm posting it despite the stated purpose of this blog being to explore essay writing outside school, since the essay is 1) one of those that get a little personal and brush against the limit of professionalism in teacher-student interaction and  2) one I actually like and is relevant to an issue I find important. Since it deals with language and some specific Danish words, I've decided not to translate it into English - for now at least. I hope you enjoy it.

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“Er du en dreng eller en pige?” var dét spørgsmål, der dominerede min barndom. Jeg kunne aldrig svare. I mit hoved var svaret et åbenlyst “nej”, men det var ikke en svarmulighed. I løbet af årene blev jeg bedre til at håndtere spørgsmålet, men ikke fordi jeg er begyndt at hælde mere til den ene side end den anden. Dét med, at spørgsmålet skal formuleres som et ultimatum med kun to valgmuligheder, er ikke min idé. Men mennesker kan godt lide at putte ting i kasser, og lige for tiden er vores samfund indrettet således at der kun er to kasser i dette tilfælde: Mand og Kvinde. Og de fleste bryder sig ikke om at sætte ting uden for kategori: De, der var for høflige eller for generte til at stille spørgsmålet, valgte hurtigt at sige enten ‘han’ eller ‘hun’ om mig alligevel. På et tidspunkt begyndte jeg at spørge mig selv: Hvordan og hvorfor vælger folk mellem de to muligheder? Og er det egentlig ikke lidt problematisk at de absolut skal?

Det er ikke tilfældigt hvad man synes skal være henholdsvis maskulint eller feminint, hvad end det handler om personer, objekter - eller ord. Ifølge Dansk Sprognævns artikel ”Kvinder og mænd – i sproget” er der blevet bedre balance mellem ’mande-’ og ’kvindeord’. De skriver: ”Retskrivningsordbogen indeholder 16 ord der ender på kvinde og 200 på mand. […] I Sprognævnets nyere ordsamling som er indsamlet siden 2001, er der registreret 322 kvindeord og 377 mandeord[.]” Det lyder jo positivt nok. Dog kun indtil man ser på, præcist hvad de ord betegner. For de trehundrede nye kvindeord er ikke bare feminine ækvivalenter af teknisk set kønsneutrale stillingsbetegnelser som brandmand og fagmand. Næh, de kvindeord der eksisterer i danskernes ordforråd er af en ganske anden karakter. Sprognævnet nævner dem selv: Øjeguf. Seniorsild. Speltkusse. Og de lidt mere traditionelle, som kælling, luder, diva og rappenskralde. Ordene er enten seksuelt ladede eller direkte skældsord. Slår man op i Politikkens Synonymordbog under ’kvinde’, får man ord som ’det svage køn’, ’dulle’ og ’fisselette’. Slår man op under mand, får man ’herre’, ’karl’ og ’handyr’. Ordene ’mandfolk’ og ’kvindfolk’ er næsten identiske, men hvor det første er billedet på en stærk og modig helt, er det andet en lidt irriterende gruppe hvinende sladretasker. Det virker som om at femininitet opfattes som noget negativt og svagt, mens maskulinitet er ønskeligt og stærkt. Hvis en pige er sportslig og selvhævdende, bliver hun kaldt en drengepige eller det engelske tomboy, der slet ikke har en kvindelig kønsbetegnelse i sig – og smiler ofte stolt når hun får det at vide. Samtidig virker det ofte som om at det værste, man kan sige til en mand, er at han er kvindagtig. Måske ville dette ikke være helt så slemt hvis femininitet, sammen med maskulinitet, blev opfattet som et positivt karaktertræk, i hvert fald for pigerne. Men det er ikke tilfældet. Tænk på ordet ’tøsedreng’. Da jeg var barn, brugte vi også en hunkønsversion af det ord, men det var ikke ’tøsepige’, som man kunne forvente. Det var ’tøsetøs’. For en pige var allerede en tøs per default. Og det eneste der kunne være mere svagt end at være en pige, var at være det to gange.

Så var det dét, folk bedømte mit køn ud fra? Blev jeg kaldt en pige når jeg opførte mig svagt, og en dreng når jeg ikke gjorde? Ikke ligefrem. Det ville alligevel være at generalisere for meget. Tilfældet var snarere, at folk antog jeg var en pige når jeg var sammen med piger, og en dreng når jeg hang ud med drenge. Igen viser menneskets hang til opdeling sig; selv i gymnasiet foregår alle quizzer ved at klassen deles op i drengene-mod-pigerne. Hvorfor ikke? Tja. Dette citat fra en amerikansk blog beskriver det bedre end jeg kunne: ”A teacher greeting her class with, ”Hello boys and girls” seems innocent enough, but how would you react if she had said, ”Hello white children and black children” instead?” Faste vendinger som ’drenge og piger’, ’damer og herrer’ bruger folk uden at tænke over dem, men vi risikerer at gøre verden til et smertefuldt sted for ikke blot folk som mig, der ikke føler de passer ind i hverken den ene eller anden kategori, men også de rigtige drenge og piger. De to køn bliver nærmest sat op i et antagonistisk forhold, hvor de bliver den afgørende forskel mellem mennesker. Vi er alle personer, men det kommer til at virke underordnet – det vigtigste er om man er en han eller en hun. På den måde ender vi med ord som ’forkvinde’ og den tidligere nævnte ’forretningskvinde’, der skaber afstand mellem kønnene på områder hvor det slet ikke virker relevant. Har éns køn virkelig betydning for hvorvidt man kan lede en bestyrelse eller en forretning? Er det virkelig nødvendigt at gøre omgivelserne opmærksom på det gennem sin stillingsbetegnelse alene? Og når man kobler dette med den negativitet der i forvejen gennemsyrer vores samfunds opfattelse af femininitet, bliver det en giftig blanding. Kvinder risikerer at fremstille sig selv som noget negativt blot ved de ord de bruger om sig selv. Det lyder måske ekstremt, men det er nemmere at komme til end man skulle tro. Lad os se på ordet ’tøs’ fra tidligere. I ordene ’tøsedreng’ og ’tøsetøs’ antyder det noget kujonagtigt og svagt. Alligevel anses det for normalt og kærligt for kvinder at kalde sig selv og deres veninder for ”tøser”.

Så hvorfor glemmer vi ikke bare alt om forkvinder og formænd og siger ’forperson’ i stedet? På den måde er vi alle på lige fod og kan ignorere kønsstereotyper, antagonistiske forhold og uforsætlig ignorering af folk der ikke identificerer sig som hverken mænd eller kvinder. Eller vi kan bare holde os til ”formand”, der jo, trods alt, teknisk set er kønsneutralt. Dansk Sprognævn skriver selv i besvarelsen af et læserbrev at pronomenet ’han’ ”helt fra gammel tid har kunnet udstrækkes til at dække over både mænd og kvinder.” Men måske er det netop dér, problemet ligger. At hankønnet betragtes som udgangspunktet, som defaulten. Kvindelighed er ikke blot negativt, det er usædvanligt. Undtagelsen. Måske er det derfor, det er så vigtigt at gøre opmærksom på sit køn. Ord som ”forretningskvinde” betyder måske, at en kvinde kan få lov at styre sin forretning uden at føle at hun behøver at være som en mand for at være succesfuld. Det giver hende mulighed for at skabe nye konnotationer for sit køn og fjerne noget af den negativitet der er forbundet med femininitet. Vores verden er præget af kønsstereotyper, men det kunne tænkes at total kønsneutralitet ikke er løsningen på det problem – snarere ville en anden indstilling være det. Det vi har brug for, er måske en accept af, at der måske er forskelle på mand og kvinde, men at det ene ikke er bedre end det andet.

Men ender vi i det lange løb alligevel med det samme resultat? To lejre, to kasser, ”Er du en dreng eller en pige?”  For nylig fik jeg stillet spørgsmålet igen. Da jeg svarede lidt afværgende, påpegede spørgeren at ”der altså ikke er noget galt med at være en pige”, som om det var derfor jeg nægtede at identificere mig selv som hunkøn. Det var det naturligvis ikke – det er blot fordi at hverken pige- eller drengekassen passer til lige præcis mig. Men det andet er nemt at antage, når man tager den måde vi taler om køn i betragtning. For mig er kønsneutralitet målet, det skal jeg ærligt indrømme. Jeg vil gerne have lov til at fravælge begge kasser. Men før det kan ske, er det nok vigtigt at jeg ikke har nogen speciel grund til at ville fravælge hverken den ene eller den anden.

fredag den 7. juni 2013

On Pride and Visibility

I recently went to my very first Pride festival. Spending a relatively quiet, calm afternoon on a small square in my small-on-international-level city with my close friend amidst rainbows and pink was a big step for me mostly in a symbolic way. Partially because I’m not the kind of person who really enjoys themselves in parties and crowds and so it took some personal strength to seek that sort of thing out willingly, but mostly because it served as an unofficial initiation of me as a queer person.
     I didn’t start calling myself queer until earlier this year, and even then it was a gradual decision. I’ve known I wasn’t heterosexual and cisgender for a very long time, but it wasn’t until about two and a half years ago that I started meeting people who felt a similar way and I began feeling like part of a group and not just like myself. But I’m still cautious. When discussing nonbinary people, or asexual people, or queer people in general, I avoid pronouns like “we” and “us”. My reasoning is that I don’t want to fall into the dreaded ‘Us-versus-them’ dichotomy, but perhaps it’s also due to my being wary of identifying as part of a group – any group. I’ve never been much for that, and I’m still not quite sure how to feel about it. But getting more involved with the local queer community might help me figure it out.

That said, not everyone agrees on whether these Pride festivals are even necessary, especially not outside the queer community. This recent festival was only the second annual one in the city I live in, and I suppose all new things are bound to be met with reservation. Even ones that are already well-established elsewhere, like Pride festivals. Around here however, a common argument against the Prides, and the general concept of queer pride, is holding it to be needless exhibitionism. We are all people. And usually we aren’t so interested in the sex lives of strangers that we need entire festivals to show them off. These statements are simultaneously true and missing the point. So I want to cover two things in this essay. One; my interpretation of what it means to be out and proud. And two; why it’s necessary.

In all honesty, I don’t like using the word ‘proud’. I suppose once again it’s related to my general aversion to identifying with groups, but concepts like ‘proud to be gay’, ‘proud to be American’, ‘proud to be a 90’s kid’ have too many unfortunate implications for me. In my extremely subjective opinion, ‘proud’ is a word better used in relation to personal achievements. And inborn traits hardly count as achievements.
    But as anyone will tell you, accepting and being happy about those inborn traits is the key to a healthy amount of self-esteem and a feeling of general fulfilment. Likewise, no one can deny that throughout history, queer people have not been encouraged to accept and be happy about their ‘alternative’ sexualities and gender identities. While things have improved, this is still the case today. Here’s a few statistics for kicks:

  •  42% of queer youth say the community in which they live is not accepting of LGBT people.
  • Queer youth are twice as likely as their peers to say they have been physically assaulted, kicked or shoved at school.
  • 15%-43% of queer workers have experienced some form of discrimination on the job.

And so on. So in order to really understand what it means to be ‘out and proud’, it might help to tweak the wording a bit. Instead of wondering why it’s necessary to be proud of being queer, think of it this way: Being out as queer means accepting and acknowledging who you are and knowing nothing is wrong with that, despite constantly being told otherwise. This requires strength and effort – which is certainly something to be proud of.

You might still argue that having entire festivals centred around pride is a bit over the top. While most people agree that being at peace with who you are is a good thing, many still prefer if you kept that pride to yourself. As a heterosexual cisgender person, it’s easy to feel intimidated by the Pride festivals. After all, queer people have entirely different experiences about sexuality and gender than others do, and unknown things are always confusing and somewhat frightening at first – and here’s an entire festival devoted to making these strange experiences seem entirely normal and understandable. It’s like a big inside joke that you’re excluded from. Apparently it’s so common that the Pride I went to had to note on their website that heterosexual people were more than welcome to come celebrate along with everyone else. “Besides”, many people argue, “Why do they need to shove it in our faces? We’re not interested in what turns them on – keep that in the bedroom.”

Congratulations, friend. You have caught a glimpse of what it feels like to be non-heteronormative in a very heteronormative society.

There was nothing lewd going on at that festival. Even counting the woman in the rope harness, you’d see more nude skin by going to the beach – considering I live in a country were topless sunbathing is a completely normal occurrence, frankly I’m surprised that I didn’t see any exposed breasts at that festival. There were info stands for various communities and the like – like there should be at any topical festival – but, believe it or not, no orgies, no aggression, no exclusion or ‘heterophobia’, no frenzied shouts of ‘Go gay or go away’*. There was only a bunch of people enjoying themselves and celebrating diversity.
    “But why,” I hear you argue, “Why do queer people feel the need to celebrate their sexualities and/or gender identities? Heterosexual cisgender people aren’t making a big deal out of theirs.” That’s true, and heterosexual cisgender people have no need to. Every single day is Straight Pride day. Please think back to the last movie or TV-show not specifically marketed to a queer audience that you saw. If there was a romantic (sub)plot, I’m willing to bet that it was about a man and a woman falling in love. Heck, even if there wasn’t, the main character was probably straight and cis anyway. It’s not just in media. Children are told that a day will come when they start noticing the opposite sex in an entirely different way. They are told that, depending on what parts they have between their legs, they will grow up to be either women or men. Any homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender, or genderqueer child is considered an exception, their identities hidden away and erased from the universal narrative. Heteronormative people show off their sexualities and gender identities all the time. The only reason it seems exhibitionistic when other people do it is because our identities are not as integrated in the cultural consciousness.

I guess that might also be why I’ve been so hesitant to get involved in the queer community, and to identify as queer in the first place. Sometimes it feels like calling attention to myself. People ask why we need labels – can’t we all just be humans instead, humans who love humans? Sure. That would be great. Thing is, without the labels, people tend to assume that everyone is one specific kind of human who only loves another specific kind of human. And until they don’t – until we normalize queer identities to such an extent that gay action heroes and transgender main characters in sitcoms and children growing up to notice people of their own gender in a new and special way and children growing up to be a gender that isn’t normally associated with the anatomy they have become a completely regular and insignificant part of life – we need those Pride festivals. If nothing else, then to remind everyone that we exist.

(I guess I got the 'we' thing down after all, huh?)


Statistics from hrc.org and catalyst.org

* Ironic slogan courtesy of my extremely funny friend

torsdag den 30. maj 2013

On Writing Essays

I don’t exactly consider myself an essayist. A writer; yes. An author; certainly. My heart lies with fiction, as it always has. So the fact that I am now posting my very first entry on a blog meant for hosting my essays is somewhat surprising to me. I’ve had blogs before, of varying degrees of sombreness, but the amount of effort put into the entries there has been limited. I certainly didn’t pay too close attention to the structure and flow of most of them, which I feel are requirements for really having ‘worked’ on a piece of writing. I’ve always made more of an effort when writing fiction, but when a friend of mine started referring to certain longer text posts on tumblr as ‘essays’, it made me think. I’ve written plenty of essays in school, but I never really considered the possibility of writing them for myself. Would there be something for me to gain, personally? Perhaps other people would find them interesting to read, but I’m honestly not too concerned about that possibility. There are countless of essays out there on the internet, hiding mine away from the public would be no big loss. But perhaps writing – and posting – essays of my own could benefit me as a person.

I’m both new and experienced at writing essays. New in the sense that the very one you’re reading now is among the first to be posted publicly. Experienced because I’ve already written quite a few essays over the course of my education. Those essays haven’t been limited to just one genre, either; there have been analytical ones, personal ones, even a few political ones. I’ve gotten good grades for them, too. I have no intention of fooling myself, though. I know that the thirty-five essays (yes, I just went back and counted them. I just graduated and I’m not done celebrating) that I’ve written during my three years in secondary school mean squat in real life. They’re unlikely to be taken seriously by any reader except my teachers when they were grading them, and they’re probably not very indicative of me as a writer – or a person. They have been good practice, and I am without doubt a much better writer today than I was at the age of sixteen, in more ways than one. But by the end of the day, they have been written with a set of arbitrary goals in mind: A (typically unreasonably small) word count, requirements for theme or analysis that weren’t always particularly interesting, and, of course, the goal of getting a good grade. Was I ever given the choice between experimenting and playing it safe in my essays, I usually chose the latter. Either because I didn’t want to risk my 12, or because the subject wasn’t sufficiently interesting, or sometimes out of laziness – I had other homework to do, after all. It’s not that I never wrote anything interesting in school. I did get to write a twenty-page paper on the influence of Old Norse on Old English, which was what really piqued my interest in linguistics, the field of study I hope to pursue in the future. But my lack of experimentation in the writing I did for school can sometimes seem like bit of a waste. Looking at all thirty-five essays, plus the odd pieces of fiction I got to hand in, it’s a small percentage of them that I can look back on with any particular emotion.

Interestingly enough, the assignments I did in primary school might be a better candidate. They allowed for more experimenting, both because the grades didn’t have much of an influence on anything, and besides, you’d get full points just for being a decent speller. And experiment I did. I’ve been looking through my old writing the past few weeks; I always seem to do whenever the school year is about to end. Most of the texts I wrote back in primary school are … not good. That’s not exactly surprising considering I wrote them in my early teens, but once I get past the painfully purple prose and awkward punctuation and naïve attempts at words of wisdom, I see that they’re not that bad, either. I even feel that there’s a sort of intensity, a rapidness to them that my writing lacks today and I want to rediscover, maybe sans the extensive use of adjectives. And I definitely look back on these with fond eyes and a slight ache in my chest. I poured my heart and soul into these things. They were the heart and soul of an immature and somewhat pretentious child, and every other sentence I want to cringe, shake my head and go, “Oh, you were so wrong” (I’ll likely to the same in five years while reading what I’m writing now). But despite it all, I see myself growing and developing in those texts. I see myself exploring. I still grow and I still explore, but the fact that I was handing my writing over to an adult to read seems to have added some significance. Paradoxically, it even seems to have added a little courage; I might have been slightly more honest in my old essays than I would have been otherwise. My teacher was too prudent to comment in-depth on what I wrote, but I can’t help but wonder what she must have been thinking. In the eighth grade, I confessed my first love to her in a letter addressed to a classmate. A year later, I came out as I-don’t-really-know-what-but-definitely-not-straight in an essay involving smells, sounds, and the bodies of myself, a crush, and my parents floating among one another on a metaphysical plane in total darkness. Occasionally I’d throw all rules and restraints to the wind and burden my poor teacher with much more than what she was probably getting paid for, such as when I handed in a twenty-one-page novella when she had asked us to write “at least one and a half page”. Or, for our ninth-grade project, a total of 64 pages, forty of which were another novella taking place in an allegorical combination of Germany and the Soviet Union. “Next step is to learn how to limit yourself,” she told me repeatedly, but I never really followed up on that advice. I think I wanted to make the most of the time I had, on some level already having predicted the choice between good grades and experimentation I would have to make in secondary school.

Which brings me here. Secondary school is over (almost – I’m actually writing this while taking a break from studying for my exams). I won’t enrol in university for another year, and until then, I have total creative control over my own writing. The obvious question is what I want to do with it. That is what I hope this blog will help me find out. This first entry has been more of a stream-of-consciousness than a proper essay, I feel, which might not be the best way to start it all off. On the other hand, that fact might help emphasize the theme of experimentation that somehow snuck into this piece. As well as highlight how much I still have to learn. And I have to start somewhere.


So I’ll start here.