”Mi lascia in pace, per favore”: la città di Roma

Uno dei posti dove mi è toccata vivere è Roma. Quella città vecchia e bellisima. A molti piace, a me invece... Di solito la chiamo una città per turisti e politici, e dico che per il resto della gente la cosa è più complicata.

I Studied This for Five Years. You Have an Opinion

One of my 'favourite' pastimes (as in, not) is when I find myself discussing something I know a lot about with a person who knows … less much about it. Being an anthropologist, 'something I know a lot about' will usually be along the lines of social and cultural determination, how do we define power, what are human rights really. That sort of thing. Gender is one of my favourite topics (for real), and so I spend a lot of time reading about it, thinking about it, researching, how do we understand female sexuality, how do we socially define women? I may not be the most expert in the whole wide world, but I dare say I do know my stuff.

Så slap dog af, det var jo bare for sjov!

Jeg er tilbage på bloggen! Juhu! Og starter hårdt ud efter pausen (som skyldtes en arbejdsplads hvor ”vi har ytringsfrihed, men...”) med en historie, jeg hørte sidste år i toget. Der er en pointe med den, så stick with me.

En gruppe unge damer skulle på Skanderborg-festival, og sludrede løs på vejen dertil, så hele togvognen kunne overhøre, hvordan de gav hinanden tips og advarsler. Særligt det sidste: det nye fede blandt ungdommen nu til dags er åbenbart, at når man er stærkt beruset på en festival, og de unge mænd spiller øl-bowling, og der går en kvinde forbi, de synes ser pæn ud, må en af dem råbe ”tiger-mis!”, og derefter løbe efter hende, og vælte hende omkuld lige der midt i det hele, hvad enten hun synes det er sjovt eller ej. Så bare lige så I ved det, piger, hvis I ser nogen, der spiller øl-bowling, så gå langt udenom!

Civiltà all'italiana

Quando per la prima volta sono venuta a Bologna, anni fa, ed iniziavo a farmi capire in italiano, le domande erano le tipiche che si pongono sicuramente ad ogni studente erasmus: Come ti chiami? Cosa studi? Di dove sei? Rispondendo a quest'ultima, quasi invariabilmente il dire ”Danimarca” veniva seguito da un'altra domanda ancora: lì al nord sono più civili, non è così?

Da buon'antropologa non capivo proprio la domanda, perchè sentivo la parola 'civile' nel suo senso scientifico; esseri umani si organizzano insieme, vivono insieme in gruppi più grandi di un certo minimo, c'è un certo livello di organizzazione, magari uno stato, ma forse anche no. Nei nostri tempi difficilmente si trovano umani che non vivono in civilizzazioni in una forma o altra, perciò siamo tutti civili. O no?

Troy: The National Order of Things 3000 Years Ago

For reasons not to be elaborated upon here (full disclosure: they involved Eric Bana) I recently chose to use 3 hours of my precious holidays watching Troy again, after spending approx. 7 years on forgetting why I didn't like it. It's (very loosely!) ”inspired” by the Iliad, but I have no intentions of going into all the reasons why I think that was not a successful venture – let it suffice to say that when I studied “knowledge of ancient times” (aka “old-øvl”) in high school, when asked to let us watch Troy in class as “relevant to the subject” (we had been reading and analysing excerpts of the Iliad), our teacher actually preferred to let us watch Disney's “Herkules”, as that was deemed closer to its original source material. Yeah.* But before I digress even further, to what I want to treat you today is a lecture on nationalism and the National Order of Things, inspired by how it was allowed to seep into a film that is supposed to take place more than 3000 years ago, where the very concept of nation would not make any sense whatsoever. Spoiler warning: I am not impressed.

The Day Someone Assumed I Was a Lesbian

One day I was having tea with a friend, as you do, and told him one of my super-funny stories (about telling a guy who was bothering me in a bar to get lost), at which point my friend stopped me with an incredulous look, exclaiming, ”wait, are you...?” He then proceeded to tell me in great detail how and where to find the only bar in Aarhus specifically catering to lesbians. Slightly confused, I nodded along and put in the occasional ”ok”, not really picking up why he was telling me this. Only later that day did it click that he was talking out of an assumption about my sexuality.

Being Foreign in a Country That Doesn't Know How to Deal With Foreigners

The Danish relationship with Everything Not Danish can at times be strained, to say the least. We all blame the weirdo right-wingers for saying absurd and maybe even racist things, but somehow seem to miss that it's not just the weirdo politicians. It's all of us, and a lot (too much) of the time. The latest thing around Aarhus appears to be that Eastern Europeans aren't let into nightclubs, solely on the basis of being Lithuanian, Bulgarian or whatever. Some of the people affected are furious, while others pull the ”it's private property so who cares and I'll just go somewhere else” argument, (even though there are some convincing arguments that it might be illegal. I don't know the giurispudence, but I'm fairly sure this particular way of discriminating guests won't hold in court.) But this is just the latest example of often tiny things that make people feel not welcome. How does it feel to be foreign in a country that does not know how to deal with foreigners and would rather have them go away so as not to think about them?

Hvad ønsker vi for vores børn?

Konfirmationssæsonen er sat ind, og traditionen tro mødte vi alle sammen op for at fejre den unge konfirmand (i dette tilfælde af hankøn). Der var mad, og der var sang, og der var taler, og alt var fryd og gammen. Men så var der en af talerne. Et ældre familiemedlem holdt en tale, som afsluttedes med at ønske det unge menneske et langt og lykkeligt liv, og andre gode og rare ting, og så nogle ting mere: ”et godt og lukrativt arbejde og en sød og dejlig partnerske”. Med andre ord: du skal helst blive lige som alle os andre.

Leaving your comfort zone(s)

You know how it's the first time you're at a party at Lucy's and you don't really know anyone? Or your first day at a new school? And somehow it's all just slightly uncomfortable and you feel out of place and it's such a relief to go home and close the door and listen to your normal music or talk to your regular friends. After a while you get to know Lucy and her friends better and enjoy the parties more, and you get to know your classmates, you find out where the restrooms are and you finally pick up on the paper-hand-in-system. All is well. You have made these new places somewhere you belong, they have become part of your comfort zone, places where you feel at ease.

Gender equality. Right here, right now?

I originally wanted to post this on the 8th of March, being International Women's Day, but something known as 'real life' got in way. Anyway, I would like to grab the occasion to take a look at how all that feminism* and gender equality is working out. Right here, right now. I have talked about it before, in Spain, and I gave an overview of the situation on the streets of Denmark. But really, where are we?

”But my hairdresser's gay!”

When I was young and innocent and went to school, maybe around 10-12 years old, a 'riddle' that came up from time to time was the one of ”should a gay man go to the men's or ladies' room to pee?” Barely knowing what that meant we'd all ponder this so seemingly difficult question and never reach a satisfactory conclusion.* Youthful ignorance, excuse it as, you may. I grew up and learned the ways of the world (and common sense); this was not so for all. Some still say weird, vile or simply ignorant stuff to anybody not fitting into a heteronormative conception of how people are supposed to be.

Language as exclusionary practice

The language you speak defines who will understand you. So you speak the language you think serves better to make yourself understood in any given context. Seems like a no-brainer, right? But sometimes you probably also choose a language in order to not be understood, by whoever is the excluded one in the group. It's the dynamics of this that I would like to dig into today.