* This post was originally published on Anne Holt’s Facebook page. Republished with permission.
The other day I made a familiar contact with me and claimed – a little wondering – that it had become more legitimate to talk down, “to these”, Pride in 2022 than it has been for a long time. The same thing had struck me. After a few hours of screen time with fairly precise searches, I think there is coverage for the claim. In any case, the criticism, the small kicks and the direct provocation have become more visible. This can have many causes. Only research will be able to show whether the statement is correct, and what causes the phenomenon has in that case.
In the meantime, one can only speculate, more or less qualified. First, it can be a gufs of the reactionary. We see that the belief in the old, the traditional, the religious, the illiberal, is also gaining momentum far beyond Russia. We see that more and more, and to some extent leading, Norwegian public debaters express horror and pessimism when it comes to the liberalization of the view of both sex, family constructions and other related topics. I leave this perspective in this text, which in no way means that it is uninteresting. On the contrary.
PRIDE: There was a commotion ahead of this year’s pride celebration in Lesja, with Jan Thomas among others. This he says himself about the noise. Reporter: Sofie Losen. Video: Edward Stenlund / Dagbladet TV sea view
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But to the obvious. The fact that social media is being used by more and more people, of all ages, can be a reason for increased noise. That the fight for queer rights in this country has now come so far that it is more straightforward to criticize it, another. The latter then explains what may be of factual criticism, but not how hard someone beats. How scornful so strangely many grin. How legitimate it has become to expose the “worst pictures” one can find, and in a dog-flute way invite the turbidity to the surface. And let’s be honest: the “worst” people can obviously imagine are minimally dressed gays at the intersection of S / M and (minimally with) leather. Especially if one of our “kids” is watching. Embarrassing, really. Not for the lightly dressed in cowhide, but for people who react.
To react aggressively to leather gay (for many) somewhat odd attire in the Pride parade (they actually do not have sex where they go, it’s about outfits), is so 1982 in narrow-mindedness and sexual anxiety that it is strange people dare to express it. This is something as old-fashioned as pure prejudice. And when it comes to the kids? Keep them away Pride about your minor kid knows so strikingly much about sexuality that they put an immediate equation between half-naked gay stumps owned by singing, cheerful and flag-waving men, that the toddler instantly thinks sex. If your child is older, then know that they know so much more about sex life than you imagine in your worst nightmares. This is not new to the pod. For all of us who relax a little more: The kids settle down with a very simple, true explanation: “Those guys like to wear just that.”
An even simpler solution: Keep both you and your family far away from the parade. It is still voluntary to go to the city center on that very day. I myself cannot stand May 17, for many reasons. Keeps me away. But hey, I think then people should be able to enjoy themselves on National Day, and go in big trains if they want (and those trains are really huge!). Just like May 17, Pride in this country has become a celebration of the great, superior. In May we celebrate freedom and independence and democracy, in June we celebrate the right to “love whoever we want”.
But of course there is a huge elephant in the room called Pride, as it usually does in the rooms where contempt thrives. The elephant in this room has many names. One of them is gender theory. Pride is owned by the organization FRI and the county of Viken. There are many opinions about the latter, but it is difficult to see that anyone is significantly provoked by anything else at Viken other than that it might not be a county. FREE, on the other hand, is a different story. FREE pursues politics. Having a basic belief that all people should be free and able to love whoever they want is not politics. Having opinions about how public funds should be used, for example when it comes to helping people who think they were born in the wrong body, is politics. Having opinions about how old children should be before they can undergo irreversible, bodily changes is, for example, both politics and ideology and medicine. The organization FRI is the bearer of an ideology that is allowed to be agreed or disagreed with. For everyone.
The exchange of words regarding transgender people and gender theory has nevertheless become far too harsh. There are no longer trenches on either side, it has become a battlefield of oaths and curses and machine-gun salvos. I myself have experienced trying to say something about this, very well-meaning, but was immediately declared to be a “homophobic, transphobic racist” by a transactivist. It was a bit much, I think, so I clapped again. When I do not do it here and now, it is in a (probably futile) attempt to point out what is obvious to me: If we stop being willing to try to communicate in a somewhat civilized way, it will hurt all parties. But most of all, it affects the people who need our understanding, our support and not least our protection, those among us who have a perception of their own gender and sexuality that falls outside what we are gradually used to: The heterosexuals and the homosexuals cis -ene.
The closer a debate comes to our very identity, our self, the worse it is that the discussion stops. When many, both trans activists and others, claim that queers pull the ladder up after themselves in the absence of support for visible groups, they are in fact right. The least we who have the majority of the struggle behind us can do is expand our own solidarity. But of course not uncritically.
Pride in Norway is first and foremost a celebration of diversity and of course human rights. It is a salute to what our country has achieved. Because people like me can live safe, good lives in the family constellations we need and want. But it is also a sign that we are a long way from the goal, and that there really is a difference between people. Differences I’m afraid are only going to get bigger, as long as the exchange of words keeps getting busier.
This simply does not work anymore. We all need to calm down. It cannot be the case that, for example, skepticism towards gender-correcting treatment of very young people will be the subject of reflexive hateful rhetoric interspersed with spiders and bile from otherwise well-meaning people. It must be fully legitimate to think that the idea of a floating gender identity is wrong. But it can also not be the case that gender identity and sexuality that we do not fully understand should be freely subject to ridicule, aggression and spit. It should never be allowed to put one’s own norms over the heads of people who deny the same. In this sense, Pride can be so much more than a party and celebration of what lies behind us, it could be a civilized arena for fruitful discussion about what lies in the future: what we as a community can do to get as many as possible the same the chances of good lives like the rest of us.
As a fifteen-year-old, young and insecure about my own sexual orientation, I once sat in front of the TV with my beloved grandmother. Kim Friele was interviewed, and we sat in silence. When the feature was over, Grandma (born in 1905!) Said: “I really do not understand this homosexuality. But at least I did not go down without explaining myself first. “
Exactly that sentence made my life so infinitely better. So if there is a lot about gender theory I can not comprehend, and certainly something I will not agree with no matter how much I learn, and if I, for example, am never so skeptical of letting young people go through irreversible body changes, have I believe that Pride can also be this: An arena for cognition and understanding.
It is allowed to hope. Unfortunately, faith is far worse.
