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?

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.

”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.

The romantic, nomadic Gypsies. In real life they're called Roma, and their life is not all that romantic

One of Shakira's latest hits is called ”Gypsy”.* It's one of her usual ”not saying much substantial” songs that she began writing after becoming widely popular. Regular story, something about getting hurt and getting over it. Some assumptions are made that Gypsies tend to get emotionally hurt by love more often than the rest of the population, and that their presumed continued nomadism can be compared to something as romantic as flying. However, what particularly caught my attention in the lyrics was the following piece:

”'Cause I'm a Gypsy
Are you coming with me?
I might steal your clothes
And wear them if they fit me
I don't make agreements

just like a Gypsy”

To summarise: Gypsies steal, and never agree to anything.

In this blog post I would like to investigate this assumption and some of the possible consequences it can have.

First of all, who are the Gypsies?