A Tree of Identities: We Want to be Equals, not Normal!
How we decided, after the debate on gay marriage in France, to use our “imposed” identity of “sons of gay mums” to talk about equality and freedom of choice, then to make our own webdcumentary exposing the intimacy of our family as a starting point to think deeper about identities, racism, gender and norms.
Brune and Pablo Seban, France
We have two mums, and suddenly during the debate on « gay marriage » in France, that meant being « child of gay». It was difficult to simply deny or ignore this imposed identity because of the amount of insult, despise and ignorance that was omnipresent in the mass media – we had never lived such a high level of homophobia. So we decided to accept this strange-new-brand, to make it ours, but we refused to only use it to say « hey look we’re happy» or, worse, to accept to try to prove we were just «normal ». We wanted to say that the problem is on the very concept of « norm », not in the fact that our families were it or were not : if we accept that someone is normal, someone will eventually be excluded of that norm. And it was not only about homophobia : women, migrants, muslin, trans, disable or victim of any kind of discrimination, based on who you are or where you come from… the question is equality and freedom of choice. So we took our multiple identities and went to the media, parliaments, school to speak about identities, gender, families, equality. And when we got tired that others chose the questions, we made our webdocumentary Alberomio, mon arbre : we talked about us, exposing the intimacy of our family, just as a starting point to think about all this subjects. Hope it works !