Dear heterosexual friend, You who wonder why we still fly rainbow flags in 2024. Why should children really be exposed to this? Isn’t that basically enough now? There is something important here that you do not understand: I live on your grace. You heterosexuals are the vast majority. It means that you have the majority power, which has been used to make it difficult to be anything other than heterosexual. You can of course also live incredibly difficult lives, but in the end it is never because you are heterosexual. Let me illustrate with some examples of things that have absolutely never happened: There has never been a society where heterophilia has been debated, controversial, illegal or stigmatized. The societal debate has never raged over whether heterosexuals should be able to become parents or get married, or are really just sick and recruiting children into heterosexuality. There has never been a grandmother telling her straight grandson that “I pray to God you will change your mind and go straight again”, and cis women have never had to tell strange doctors how they masturbate to live as who they are is. Never has a child been bullied for their heterosexual orientation. No scientific community has ever tried to destroy someone’s heterophilia with prayer, chemicals or electroshock. No one has ever claimed that a deadly pandemic is divine punishment for heterosexual cohabitation. It was not heterosexual prisoners who were locked up again after “liberation” from the concentration camps. I am therefore sometimes shaken by how historyless you allow yourself to be. Of course, it’s most comfortable to ignore these parts of the story, but what you’re also forgetting is that we queers weren’t born yesterday—literally. You forget that we remember. We was there. We were the ones who made things change for the better – you and yours rarely budged an inch without us having to work for it first. Every millimeter of progress had to be discussed, every detail of our queerness inspected. And no, my friend – this was not long ago. We queers remember each and every one of these debates that took place, in the thousands of homes as well as in Parliament, in the media and under the altar table. We remember that we gradually convinced and persuaded enough of the heterosexual public to achieve vital victories. Although most of us today can live carefree lives, this is a collective history we carry with us deep down in our spinal cord. We know very well that the victories did not come as a matter of course. That is exactly the most important thing you forget. Because if you overlook all the struggles, progress can look inevitable. As if marriage laws, anti-discrimination laws, decent health care, parenting and inclusion would just fall on our heads eventually anyway, completely without social friction, as guaranteed as gravity. But such laws of nature do not exist. These victories did not come by themselves. We were completely dependent on persuading the majority – and therefore society might as well turn to the opposite again. You heterosexuals can change your mind. We have already seen that both here and abroad. So all that remains is to say: Thank you. I mean it, really: Thank you very much. Thanks to you, heterosexual person, for allowing me to be openly queer with a lot of freedom and little stigma. I could not have done that if you and the other heterosexuals had not allowed it. Thank you that you and your predecessors, with your majority power, have decided that my queerness should be a gift and not a death sentence in my life. Know that I never take it for granted. Every June I feel this gratitude, especially every time I see a rainbow flag that is allowed to fly freely and in peace. I’m moved to tears when you let them hang, or take your children to see the pride train, and thus signal that I’m all right and approved, that I’m part of a joint Norwegian extended family. Unlike you, I am painfully aware of how little of course it is. Therefore, I also understand that every pride is an opportunity to celebrate Norway’s progress. But exactly your lack of history, it actually worries me. You forget so easily. You would like to believe that our progress is written in stone. Your insistence on “hither, but no further; now that must be enough; keep it away from our children”, it’s really scary for us. We know. We remember. I live on your grace, and that grace is not a given. This is part of the queer existence that you, as a heterosexual, have never, ever felt, and will never, ever feel. And that is exactly what you should be grateful for. Published 19.06.2024, at 12.59
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Dear heterosexuals – I live at your mercy – Speech
