Being queer is not the same safe bubble for everyone
Queerness as ‘activist responsibility’: Emmy Krooshof (she/her), a lecturer in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSBS), and Julia Thieme (she/her), a fourth-year law student at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance (LEG), regularly have to come out of the closet (again). And that can sometimes be uncomfortable or annoying. But it ultimately contributes to more acceptance, visibility and space for others to be themselves too.
An essential part of identity
For Julia and Emmy, the university has been a warm bath of acceptance of their queerness from the first time they crossed the university threshold.
Emmy is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. A faculty which, according to her, is “quite queer”. Colleagues there are easy-going when it comes to openly talking about dating and sexuality, something which was less of a given at her previous employer. She tells about a time when Purple Friday was celebrated at work, which led to a very uncomfortable situation. On the one hand because she had mostly straight colleagues and she felt like ‘the only one’, and on the other hand because they did not openly talk about sexual identity at work. Because of this, she felt she did not dare to openly celebrate Purple Friday at that time. “It was quite uncomfortable. Especially when a colleague joked that I should just come out of the closet then, too.”
The visibility of queer persons can even vary from faculty to faculty. Julia studies in two faculties: LEG and Humanities. She has noticed differences between the two. “LEG is a very big faculty, where there are fewer visibly queer people walking around. And there are still sometimes unnecessary gender-normative examples in the class materials. At Humanities, I have noticed that there is already more diversity built into the curriculum. For instance, more diversity in authors was covered and lecturers asked about pronouns more often.”
Carrying an activist burden
Emmy now works at FSBS. And the situation there is quite different compared to her previous employer. Where she first felt like she was the only queer person, her work situation is so different that she almost sees her colleagues as a group of friends because she feels so comfortable and at ease. Because they understand each other and talk about things she would not talk about with colleagues before: like dating. But for Emmy, being open about sexual orientation can also be compared to carrying an activist’s burden: “You're always busy coming out of the closet and educating people in a way, especially if people assume you're straight when you say you're a woman who dates men. These kinds of questions often come with negative feelings. That's why I'm quicker to say I date women, so I won't get that straight label right away and I can avoid those corrective conversations.”
For Julia, who feels very free to discuss topics such as sexuality and gender with fellow students, this is also something she is constantly dealing with: correcting people and coming out of the closet. Although she is selective about who she comes out to: if someone makes a wrong assumption about her sexual identity, she is more likely to correct someone if she is likely to run into that person more often. But because addressing and correcting contributes to greater acceptance and visibility, she does think it is important to do so as often as possible. Even if these conversations are annoying sometimes.
Small gestures with a big impact
While Julia can talk about dating and sexuality with her fellow students without any problems, Emmy finds it much more difficult to have conversations about this with students. While dating life among colleagues serves as a handy bridge to talk about her bisexuality, this is not the way to do that with students, because that is quickly seen as unprofessional. So she tries, sometimes in subtle ways, to create visibility and openness. That starts with asking for pronouns. And she has a bisexual-pride flag pin on her backpack. “It doesn't have a meaning for everyone, but if you know, you know.”
Acceptance and visibility
And that visibility is what it's all about. Julia: “I'm attracted to women, but I don't look stereotypically gay to many people, and that sometimes creates a strange sense of safety, because I look ‘straight’ to many people. Sometimes if I come out of the closet to someone, I hear people don't expect it because I don't look typically lesbian.” But she thinks it is important that people see her as she is: lesbian and not heterosexual. “The more people talk about it, the faster people dare to express themselves and feel seen and heard faster.”
Julia currently volunteers at weblijvenonszelf.nl. This is a reporting platform for unequal treatment and discrimination by the province of Utrecht. There, she provides (legal) support to people who have experiences with unequal treatment. From these – sometimes intense – experiences, she learns that queerness is not the same safe bubble to everyone.
Julia: “In my bubble, I assume the acceptance of queer persons in the Netherlands is doing all right. But through my volunteering, I discovered there are still many (violent) incidents against queer persons. Even in Utrecht.”
According to Julia, there are still steps to be taken regarding broader acceptance and visibility of queer persons. “I generally feel safe in my sexual orientation, but that turns out to not be the case to everyone.” According to her, it would be good if the law-degree programme would pay more attention to the anti-discrimination principle. Because that encompasses much more than Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution. “It's important that everyone can be themselves without getting negative reactions to it. That starts with education.”
At UU, too, there is much more to gain in terms of more visibility of women and people of colour, among others. Even if it is just in the naming of buildings in Utrecht Science Park and their interiors. According to Emmy, there is much to gain there easily: “There is now one room with women, and all the other rooms have almost exclusively portraits of men hanging there. This looks to me as if we as women are allowed to be there, but only separate from the men and definitely not equal to the men. And we're not even speaking of non-binary people or people of colour.”
Clear the way for others by being yourself
How positive change comes about, is something they both agree on: be comfortable with yourself and embrace being yourself as a queer person. And express it. Because sharing experiences and visibility of queer persons clears the way for acceptance of others to also be themselves in a world in which this is not always a given.
