L: Can you tell me more about that, how you queerify stuff around you?
Well, sometimes we joke with my friends, with other queer friends, that especially when it comes to books, and films or TV shows, we always ask the one question before we actually consume the product: ‘Is it gay?’ And by ‘gay’ we mean queer in any shape or form, because we’re just so uninterested in things that are just about straight people for straight people.
“I’ve had to care for so many years only about straight stuff.”
I’m sorry if that sounds “heterophobic” or whatever – that concept blows my brain. But I’m just, I don’t care, really. It’s because I’ve had to care for so many years only about straight stuff. I have the feeling that if you’re in a bit more of a diverse context, you know, you have influences from a little bit of everything, then you don’t get tired of always hearing the same things. But you know, if for decades you’re in a context where everything is super heterosexual, then suddenly, when you have your own life, you’re like ‘byyyye!’. So, I really don’t care about your straight love story, I really don’t. Like, go love yourself. I’m sure the remaining 80 % of the world is very interested in what you’re doing, but I am not.
So yeah, I realize that I live a very queer life, and it’s not because… for example, it’s not like I go around interviewing people: ‘Are you queer? You can be my friend! Are you not? You can’t!’ My friend group is very varied, as the world is, but I choose the kinds of content that I consume, and with those things I like to make it a point to go for queer things, or to go for things made by women or other marginalized groups…
I’m not super good with ethnical diversity, that’s definitely something I try to work on and get better at, because my world is so white. And not by choice, but because that’s what I’m surrounded by, so I’m trying to get better at that. But definitely for the things that I kind of know how to deal with them, I like to make an actual choice of looking for and consuming things made by fellow queers or fellow women or nonbinary people, you know? If I can, that’s definitely my choice. If that makes me heterophobic, cool [rolls eyes hard]. I shall be.
“In the way the world works, heterophobia simply does not exist.”
I mean, here is the thing: heterophobia is not an outrageous concept in theory. Because in theory, a type of discriminatory behaviour, no matter towards whom it is directed, can happen. So, yes, you could be heterophobic, because if you are actively discriminating against heterosexual people, as in preventing them from getting jobs, excluding them from social spaces, things like that, then you are being heterophobic. So, it’s not that it’s a thing that is impossible, it’s just that we have to look at the context, how the world works. And in the way the world works, it simply does not exist.
There does not exist a place on earth, right now ˗ and by place I mean like a country, not a group of five people ˗ where there is a systematic, implemented system where a heterosexual person is at a disadvantage, whether socially, professionally, medically… so, it’s an outrageous concept because it does not have any evidence in reality, it just does not exist.
It doesn’t mean that it couldn’t exist, potentially or in theory; that’s why I disagree sometimes, because there are people that say it’s outrageous because it just doesn’t make any sense – it could make sense, if the world worked a different way. But since the world works in this way, in this world, functioning the way that it does, there is simply not systematic discrimination against heterosexual people for being heterosexual. The worst they can have is maybe get a snotty comment from a non-heterosexual person. And then, yeah, you can be like ‘That b*tch!’, fine, it still doesn’t mean that there is systematic heterophobia in the world, so that’s why this word makes me roll my eyes.
