Human beings start putting each other into boxes the second that they see each other -- Is that person dangerous? Are they attractive? Are they a potential mate? Are they a potential networking opportunity? We do this little interrogation when we meet people to make a mental resume for them. What's your name? Where are you from? How old are you? What do you do? Then we get more personal with it. Have you ever had any diseases? Have you ever been divorced? Does your breath smell bad while you're answering my interrogation right now? What are you into? Who are you into? What gender do you like to sleep with?
Ljudska bića počnu da stavljaju jedni druge u kutije istog trenutka kada se vide - Da li je ta osoba opasna? Da li su privlačni? Da li su potecijalni partneri? Da li su možda budući kontakti? Uradimo mali upitnik kada upoznamo ljude da bismo u glavi napravili njihov rezime. Kako se zoveš? Odakle si? Koliko imaš godina? Čime se baviš? Onda postanemo ličniji. Da li si ikada imao neku bolest? Da li si se ikada razvodio? Da li imaš loš zadah dok mi sada odgovaraš na pitanja? Šta te interesuje? Ko te interesuje? Sa kojim polom voliš da spavaš?
I get it. We are neurologically hardwired to seek out people like ourselves. We start forming cliques as soon as we're old enough to know what acceptance feels like. We bond together based on anything that we can -- music preference, race, gender, the block that we grew up on. We seek out environments that reinforce our personal choices. Sometimes, though, just the question "what do you do?" can feel like somebody's opening a tiny little box and asking you to squeeze yourself inside of it. Because the categories, I've found, are too limiting. The boxes are too narrow. And this can get really dangerous.
Shvatam. Neurološki smo programirani da tražimo ljude poput nas samih. Počnemo da pravimo grupe čim odrastemo dovoljno da znamo šta znači prihvatanje. Spajamo se na osnovu bilo čega - muzičkog ukusa, rase, pola, kraja u kome smo odrasli. Žudimo za sredinama koje pospešuju naše lične izbore. Mada ponekad samo pitanje: "Čime se baviš?" može da te navede da se osetiš kao da neko otvara malenu kutiju i traži ti da se uguraš unutra. Smatram da su kategorije previše ograničavajuće. Kutije su preuske. Ovo može da postane zaista opasno.
So here's a disclaimer about me, though, before we get too deep into this. I grew up in a very sheltered environment. I was raised in downtown Manhattan in the early 1980s, two blocks from the epicenter of punk music. I was shielded from the pains of bigotry and the social restrictions of a religiously-based upbringing. Where I come from, if you weren't a drag queen or a radical thinker or a performance artist of some kind, you were the weirdo. (Laughter) It was an unorthodox upbringing, but as a kid on the streets of New York, you learn how to trust your own instincts, you learn how to go with your own ideas.
Evo jednog upozorenja u vezi sa mnom pre nego što zađemo preduboko u temu. Odrasla sam u vrlo zaštićenoj sredini. Odgajana sam u centru Menhentna početkom 1980-ih, dve ulice od epicentra pank muzike. Bila sam zaštićena od netrpeljivosti i društvenih ograničenja pri vaspitavanju zasnovanom na religiji. Odakle dolazim, ako niste bili transvestit ili ako ne razmišljate radikalno ili ako niste nekakav izvođač performansa, vi ste bili čudak. (Smeh) Bilo je to netipično uzgajanje, ali kao dete na ulicama Njujorka, naučite kako da verujete sopstvenim instinktima, naučite kako da se vodite sopstvenim idejama.
So when I was six, I decided that I wanted to be a boy. I went to school one day and the kids wouldn't let me play basketball with them. They said they wouldn't let girls play. So I went home, and I shaved my head, and I came back the next day and I said, "I'm a boy." I mean, who knows, right? When you're six, maybe you can do that. I didn't want anyone to know that I was a girl, and they didn't. I kept up the charade for eight years.
Kada sam imala 6 godina, odlučila sam da želim da budem dečak. Jednog dana sam otišla u školu i deca mi nisu dozvolila da igram basket sa njima. Rekli su da devojčicama ne daju da igraju. Otišla sam kući, obrijala glavu i vratila sam se sledećeg dana i rekla: "Ja sam dečak". Ko bi mogao da pretpostavi, zar ne? Kada imate 6 godina, možda i možete to da uradite. Nisam želela da iko zna da sam devojčica i nisu znali. Nastavila sam sa pretvaranjem narednih osam godina.
So this is me when I was 11. I was playing a kid named Walter in a movie called "Julian Po." I was a little street tough that followed Christian Slater around and badgered him. See, I was also a child actor, which doubled up the layers of the performance of my identity, because no one knew that I was actually a girl really playing a boy. In fact, no one in my life knew that I was a girl -- not my teachers at school, not my friends, not the directors that I worked with. Kids would often come up to me in class and grab me by the throat to check for an Adam's apple or grab my crotch to check what I was working with. When I would go to the bathroom, I would turn my shoes around in the stalls so that it looked like I was peeing standing up. At sleepovers I would have panic attacks trying to break it to girls that they didn't want to kiss me without outing myself.
Ovo sam ja sa 11 godina. Igarala sam dečaka po imenu Volter u filmu "Džulian Po". Bila sam opako dete sa ulice koje je pratilo Kristijana Slejtera i gnjavilo ga. Bila sam i dete glumac, što je udvostručilo slojeve glume sopstvenog identiteta, jer niko nije znao da sam zapravo devojčica koja glumi dečaka. Zapravo, niko u mom životu nije znao da sam devojčica - ni moji nastavnici u školi, ni moji prijatelji, niti reditelji sa kojima sam radila. Deca bi mi često prilazila u razredu i zgrabila bi me za grlo da potraže Adamovu jabučicu, ili bi me zgrabili za međunožje da provere s čime raspolažem. Kada bih otišla u toalet, okrenula bih cipele naopačke u kabini tako da izgleda kao da piškim stojećki. Kada bih išla kod nekoga da prespavam, imala bih napade panike pokušavajući da ubedim devojčice da ne žele da me poljube a da se pri tom ne odam.
It's worth mentioning though that I didn't hate my body or my genitalia. I didn't feel like I was in the wrong body. I felt like I was performing this elaborate act. I wouldn't have qualified as transgender. If my family, though, had been the kind of people to believe in therapy, they probably would have diagnosed me as something like gender dysmorphic and put me on hormones to stave off puberty. But in my particular case, I just woke up one day when I was 14, and I decided that I wanted to be a girl again. Puberty had hit, and I had no idea what being a girl meant, and I was ready to figure out who I actually was.
Vredno je pomena da nisam mrzela svoje telo niti genitalije. Nisam se osećala kao da se nalazim u pogrešnom telu. Osećala sam se kao da glumim u uvežbanoj predstavi. Ne bih se okarakterisala kao tranvestit. Da je moja porodica bila jedna od onih što veruju u lečenje, verovatno bi mi postavili dijagnozu kao poremećaj pola i stavili bi me na hormone da spreče pubertet. Ali u mom konkretnom slučaju, samo sam se probudila jednoga dana, kada sam imala 14 godina i odlučila sam da želim da opet budem devojčica. Pubertet je počeo i nisam imala predstavu šta znači biti devojčica. Bila sam spremna da shvatim ko sam zapravo.
When a kid behaves like I did, they don't exactly have to come out, right? No one is exactly shocked. (Laughter) But I wasn't asked to define myself by my parents. When I was 15, and I called my father to tell him that I had fallen in love, it was the last thing on either of our minds to discuss what the consequences were of the fact that my first love was a girl. Three years later, when I fell in love with a man, neither of my parents batted an eyelash either. See, it's one of the great blessings of my very unorthodox childhood that I wasn't ever asked to define myself as any one thing at any point. I was just allowed to be me, growing and changing in every moment.
Kada se dete ponaša kao što sam se ja ponašala, ne mora zapravo da se deklariše, zar ne? Niko nije zaista šokiran. (Smeh) Roditelji me nisu pitali da se definišem. Kada sam imala 15 godina i kada sam pozvala oca da mu kažem da sam se zaljubila, poslednja stvar na mom i njegovom umu bila je da raspravljamo koje su posledice toga da mi je prva ljubav jedna devojčica. Nakon tri godine, kada sam se zaljubila u muškarca, moji roditelji nisu bili iznenađeni. Veliki blagoslov mog vrlo neobičnog detinjstva bio je to što me nikada nisu pitali da se definišem kao bilo šta bilo kada. Bilo mi je dozvoljeno da budem ja, da odrastam i da se menjam svakog trenutka.
So four, almost five years ago, Proposition 8, the great marriage equality debate, was raising a lot of dust around this country. And at the time, getting married wasn't really something I spent a lot of time thinking about. But I was struck by the fact that America, a country with such a tarnished civil rights record, could be repeating its mistakes so blatantly. And I remember watching the discussion on television and thinking how interesting it was that the separation of church and state was essentially drawing geographical boundaries throughout this country, between places where people believed in it and places where people didn't. And then, that this discussion was drawing geographical boundaries around me.
Pre skoro 4 godine, Predlog 8, velika debata o jednakosti brakova, dizala je mnogo prašine u ovoj zemlji. U to vreme nisam mnogo razmišljala o venčavanju. Ali me je iznenadila činjenica da Amerika, zemlja sa toliko nečistim postupcima sa ljudskim pravima, može tako napadno da ponavlja svoje greške. Sećam se da sam gledala rasparavu na televiziji i razmišljala koliko je zanimljivo to što je razdvajanje crkve i države ocrtavalo geografske granice kroz ovu zemlju, između mesta gde su ljudi verovali i mesta gde nisu. A zatim i to što je ova rasprava ocrtavala geografske granice oko mene.
If this was a war with two disparate sides, I, by default, fell on team gay, because I certainly wasn't 100 percent straight. At the time I was just beginning to emerge from this eight-year personal identity crisis zigzag that saw me go from being a boy to being this awkward girl that looked like a boy in girl's clothes to the opposite extreme of this super skimpy, over-compensating, boy-chasing girly-girl to finally just a hesitant exploration of what I actually was, a tomboyish girl who liked both boys and girls depending on the person.
Da se radilo o ratu između dve različite strane, ja bih automatski pala u gej tim, jer svakako nisam bila 100% strejt. U to vreme sam tek počinjala da se izvlačim iz ove osmogodišnje krize identiteta koja je oscilirala, u toku koje sam se menjala od dečaka do čudne devojčice koja je izgledala kao dečak u odeći devojčice, do potpuno suprotne razgolićene, ženskaste devojčice koja juri za dečacima do najzad samo neodlučnog istraživanja ko sam zapravo - muškobanjasta devojčica, kojoj su se sviđali i dečaci i devojčice u zavisnosti od osobe.
I had spent a year photographing this new generation of girls, much like myself, who fell kind of between-the-lines -- girls who skateboarded but did it in lacy underwear, girls who had boys' haircuts but wore girly nail polish, girls who had eyeshadow to match their scraped knees, girls who liked girls and boys who all liked boys and girls who all hated being boxed in to anything. I loved these people, and I admired their freedom, but I watched as the world outside of our utopian bubble exploded into these raging debates where pundits started likening our love to bestiality on national television. And this powerful awareness rolled in over me that I was a minority, and in my own home country, based on one facet of my character. I was legally and indisputably a second-class citizen.
Provela sam godinu dana fotografišući novu generaciju devojčica, vrlo sličnih meni, koje su zapale negde između linija - devojčice koje voze skejt u čipkanom vešu, devojčice sa muškom frizurom, ali koje su lakirale nokte, devojčice sa senkom na očima koja ide uz izgrebana kolena, devojčice kojima su se sviđale devojčice i dečaci kojima su se sviđali dečaci i devojčice i svi mrzeli da ih stavljaju u bilo koju kategoriju. Volela sam ove ljude, divila sam se njihovoj slobodi, dok sam posmatrala kako svet, izvan našeg utopijskog mehura, vatreno reaguje u toku debata, dok su eksperti počinjali da upoređuju našu ljubav sa bestijalnošću na nacionalnoj televiziji. Ova moćna svest naterala me je da shvatim da sam manjina i u mojoj zemlji, na osnovu jednog pogleda na moj karakter, bila sam legalno i neosporivo građanin drugog reda.
I was not an activist. I wave no flags in my own life. But I was plagued by this question: How could anyone vote to strip the rights of the vast variety of people that I knew based on one element of their character? How could they say that we as a group were not deserving of equal rights as somebody else? Were we even a group? What group? And had these people ever even consciously met a victim of their discrimination? Did they know who they were voting against and what the impact was?
Nisam bila aktivista. Nisam se razmetala svojim mišljenjem. Ali me je mučilo pitanje: kako iko može da glasa da se oduzmu prava mnogim ljudima koje poznajem, na osnovu jednog elementa njihovog karaktera? Kako mogu da kažu da mi, kao grupa, ne zaslužujemo jednaka prava kao neko drugi? Da li smo mi uopšte grupa? Kakva grupa? Da li su uopšte ovi ljudi ikada svesno upoznali žrtvu svoje diskriminacije? Da li su bili svesni protiv čega su glasali i kakav su uticaj imali?
And then it occurred to me, perhaps if they could look into the eyes of the people that they were casting into second-class citizenship it might make it harder for them to do. It might give them pause. Obviously I couldn't get 20 million people to the same dinner party, so I figured out a way where I could introduce them to each other photographically without any artifice, without any lighting, or without any manipulation of any kind on my part. Because in a photograph you can examine a lion's whiskers without the fear of him ripping your face off.
A onda mi je palo na pamet, možda, kada bi mogli da pogledaju u oči ljudi koje su klasifikovali kao građane drugog reda, možda bi im bilo teže da ih tako klasifikuju. Možda bi zastali. Očigedno, nisam mogla da pozovem 20 miliona ljudi na istu večeru, tako da sam smislila način da predstavim jedne drugima kroz fotografije, bez bilo kakvih izmena, bez svetla i bez bilo kakve manipulacije s moje strane. Na fotografiji možemo da proučavamo brkove lava bez straha da će nam istrgati lice.
For me, photography is not just about exposing film, it's about exposing the viewer to something new, a place they haven't gone before, but most importantly, to people that they might be afraid of. Life magazine introduced generations of people to distant, far-off cultures they never knew existed through pictures. So I decided to make a series of very simple portraits, mugshots if you will. And I basically decided to photograph anyone in this country that was not 100 percent straight, which, if you don't know, is a limitless number of people.
Za mene, fotografija nije samo izlaganje filma, već je i izlaganje posmatrača nečemu novom, mestu gde nikada nije bio, ali ono što je najvažnije, ljudima kojih se možda plaši. Časopis Lajf predstavio je generacijama ljudi kroz slike udaljene, daleke kulture, za koje nisu ni znali da postoje. Odlučila sam da napravim niz vrlo jednostavnih portreta, kao slike iz zatvora. Odlučila sam da fotografišem sve one koji nisu 100 % strejt u ovoj zemlji, što je, ako niste znali, neograničen broj ljudi.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So this was a very large undertaking, and to do it we needed some help. So I ran out in the freezing cold, and I photographed every single person that I knew that I could get to in February of about two years ago. And I took those photographs, and I went to the HRC and I asked them for some help. And they funded two weeks of shooting in New York. And then we made this.
Ovo je bio ogroman poduhvat i da bismo ga sproveli, bila nam je potrebna pomoć. Istrčala sam po hladnoći i fotografisala sam svaku osobu koju sam mogla, u februaru, oko pre dve godine. Napravila sam te fotografije, a onda sam otišla u HRC i zamolila ih za pomoć. Isfinansirali su dve nedelje snimanja u Njujorku. A onda smo napravili ovo.
(Music)
(Muzika)
Video: I'm iO Tillett Wright, and I'm an artist born and raised in New York City. (Music)
Video: Ja sam Ajo Tajlet Rajt, umetnica sam, rođena i odrasla u Njujorku. (Muzika)
Self Evident Truths is a photographic record of LGBTQ America today. My aim is to take a simple portrait of anyone who's anything other than 100 percent straight or feels like they fall in the LGBTQ spectrum in any way. My goal is to show the humanity that exists in every one of us through the simplicity of a face. (Music)
Self Evident Truths je fotografski zapisnik LGBTQ zajednice u Americi danas. Moj cilj je da napravim jednostavan portret bilo koga ko nije 100% strejt ili pak oseća da pripada LGBTQ zajednici na bilo koji način. Moj cilj je da pokažem ljudskost koja postoji u svakome od nas kroz jednostavnost lica. (Muzika)
"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." It's written in the Declaration of Independence. We are failing as a nation to uphold the morals upon which we were founded. There is no equality in the United States.
"Držimo do toga da je istina da su svi ljudi stvoreni jednaki." Napisano je u Deklaraciji nezavisnosti. Kao nacija, ne uspevamo da održimo načela na osnovu kojih smo osnovani. Jednakost ne postoji u SAD-u.
["What does equality mean to you?"] ["Marriage"] ["Freedom"] ["Civil rights"] ["Treat every person as you'd treat yourself"]
["Šta tebi znači jednakost?"] ["Brak"] ["Sloboda"] ["Građanska prava"] ["Ophodi se prema svakoj osobi onako bi se ophodio prema sebi"]
It's when you don't have to think about it, simple as that. The fight for equal rights is not just about gay marriage. Today in 29 states, more than half of this country, you can legally be fired just for your sexuality.
Kada ne morate da mislite na to, vrlo jednostavno. Borba za jednaka prava nije samo borba za gej brakove. Danas u 29 država, u više od pola ove zemlje, možete legalno da budete otpušteni samo zbog vaše seksualnosti.
["Who is responsible for equality?"]
["Ko je odgovoran za jednakost?"]
I've heard hundreds of people give the same answer: "We are all responsible for equality." So far we've shot 300 faces in New York City. And we wouldn't have been able to do any of it without the generous support of the Human Rights Campaign. I want to take the project across the country. I want to visit 25 American cities, and I want to shoot 4,000 or 5,000 people. This is my contribution to the civil rights fight of my generation. I challenge you to look into the faces of these people and tell them that they deserve less than any other human being. (Music)
Čula sam stotine ljudi kako odgovara isto: "Svi smo odgovorni za jednakost." Do sada smo fotografisali 300 lica u Njujorku. I ne bismo mogli ništa od ovoga da uradimo bez velikodušne podrške Kampanje ljudskih prava. Želim da projekat proširim na celu zemlju. Želim da posetim 25 američkih gradova i da fotografišem 4.000 ili 5.000 ljudi. Ovo je moj doprinos borbi za građanska prava moje generacije. Čikam vas da pogledate lica ovih ljudi i da im kažete da zaslužuju manje nego bilo koje drugo ljudsko biće. (Muzika)
["Self evident truths"] ["4,000 faces across America"]
["Očigledne istine"] ["4.000 lica u celoj Americi"]
(Music) (Applause)
(Muzika) (Aplauz)
iO Tillett Wright: Absolutely nothing could have prepared us for what happened after that. Almost 85,000 people watched that video, and then they started emailing us from all over the country, asking us to come to their towns and help them to show their faces. And a lot more people wanted to show their faces than I had anticipated. So I changed my immediate goal to 10,000 faces. That video was made in the spring of 2011, and as of today I have traveled to almost 20 cities and photographed almost 2,000 people.
Ajo Tajlet Rajt: Ništa nije moglo da nas pripremi za ono što je usledilo. Skoro 85.000 ljudi je odgledalo ovaj video i počeli su da nam stižu mejlovi iz cele zemlje, gde nas pitaju da dođemo u njihove gradove i da im pomognemo da pokažu svoja lica. Mnogo više ljudi je želelo da pokaže svoje lice nego što sam predvidela. Odmah sam promenila svoj prvobitni cilj na 10.000 lica. Ovaj video je napravljen u proleće 2011. i sve do danas, otputovala sam u skoro 20 gradova i fotografisala skoro 2.000 ljudi.
I know that this is a talk, but I'd like to have a minute of just quiet and have you just look at these faces because there is nothing that I can say that will add to them. Because if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture of a face needs a whole new vocabulary.
Znam da je ovo samo govor, ali bih želela da imam minut tišine i da pogledate ova lica jer ne postoji ništa što bih rekla, što može da se doda ovome. Ako je slika vredna hiljadu reči, onda je slici lica potreban čitav nov rečnik.
So after traveling and talking to people in places like Oklahoma or small-town Texas, we found evidence that the initial premise was dead on. Visibility really is key. Familiarity really is the gateway drug to empathy. Once an issue pops up in your own backyard or amongst your own family, you're far more likely to explore sympathy for it or explore a new perspective on it. Of course, in my travels I met people who legally divorced their children for being other than straight, but I also met people who were Southern Baptists who switched churches because their child was a lesbian. Sparking empathy had become the backbone of Self Evident Truths.
Nakon što sam putovala i razgovarala sa ljudima, u mestima kao što su Oklahoma ili mali grad u Teksasu, došli smo do traga da prvobitna premisa i dalje važi. Vidljivost je zasta ključna. Bliskost zaista vodi do saosećanja. Kada problem iskrsne u vašoj kući ili u vašoj porodici, šanse su mnogo veće da ćete osetiti saosećanje ili da ćete potražiti novo gledište na stvar. Naravno da sam u toku mojih putovanja upoznala ljude koji su se legalno odrekli svoje dece jer nisu bili strejt, ali sam isto tako upoznala ljude koji su bili južni baptisti i koji su promenili crkvu jer im je ćerka lezbejka. Iskra saosećanja postala je glavni oslonac za Self Evident Truths.
But here's what I was starting to learn that was really interesting: Self Evident Truths doesn't erase the differences between us. In fact, on the contrary, it highlights them. It presents, not just the complexities found in a procession of different human beings, but the complexities found within each individual person. It wasn't that we had too many boxes, it was that we had too few.
Ali evo nečega zanimljivog što sam počela da učim: Self Evident Truths ne briše razlike među nama. Zapravo ih naglašava. Ne samo da predstavlja složenost koja se pronalazi u različitim ljudskim bićima, već i složenosti koje se pronalaze u svakoj pojedinačnoj osobi. Nije da smo imali previše kutija, imali smo ih premalo.
At some point I realized that my mission to photograph "gays" was inherently flawed, because there were a million different shades of gay. Here I was trying to help, and I had perpetuated the very thing I had spent my life trying to avoid -- yet another box. At some point I added a question to the release form that asked people to quantify themselves on a scale of one to 100 percent gay. And I watched so many existential crises unfold in front of me. (Laughter) People didn't know what to do because they had never been presented with the option before. Can you quantify your openness?
U jednom trenutku sam shvatila da moja misija da fotografišem "gejeve" bila sama po sebi greška, jer postoji milion različitih nijansi homoseksualnosti. Pokušala sam da pomognem i ovekovečila sam upravo ono što sam čitavog života pokušavala da izbegnem - samo još jednu kutiju. Dodala sam pitanje formularu koje je tražilo od ljudi da izmere sebe na skali od jedan do 100% gej. Mnogo egzistencijalnih kriza odvijalo se pred mojim očima. (Smeh) Ljudi nisu znali šta da rade jer im nikada niko nije ponudio tu opciju. Da li možeš da izmeriš svoju otvorenost?
Once they got over the shock, though, by and large people opted for somewhere between 70 to 95 percent or the 3 to 20 percent marks. Of course, there were lots of people who opted for a 100 percent one or the other, but I found that a much larger proportion of people identified as something that was much more nuanced. I found that most people fall on a spectrum of what I have come to refer to as "Grey."
Kada su prevazišli šok, veliki broj ljudi izabrao je negde između 70% i 95%, ili 3% do 20%. Naravno bilo je i ljudi koji su izglasali 100% jednog ili drugog, ali otkrila sam da mnogo veći procenat ljudi sebe definiše kao iznijansirane. Otkrila sam da većina ljudi spada u kategoriju koju sam počela da nazivam "Siva".
Let me be clear though -- and this is very important -- in no way am I saying that preference doesn't exist. And I am not even going to address the issue of choice versus biological imperative, because if any of you happen to be of the belief that sexual orientation is a choice, I invite you to go out and try to be grey. I'll take your picture just for trying. (Laughter) What I am saying though is that human beings are not one-dimensional. The most important thing to take from the percentage system is this: If you have gay people over here and you have straight people over here, and while we recognize that most people identify as somewhere closer to one binary or another, there is this vast spectrum of people that exist in between.
Dozovlite mi da pojasnim - a ovo je vrlo važno - nikako ne govorim da preferencija ne postoji. Neću čak ni da spomenem problem odabira protiv biološkog imperativa, jer ako iko od vas veruje da je seksualna orijentacija izbor, pozivam vas da izađete i pokušate da budete sivi. Fotografisaću vas jer se trudite. (Smeh) Ono što pokušavam da kažem je da ljudska bića nisu jedno-dimenzionalna. Najvažnija stvar uzeta iz ovih procenata je sledeća: ako imate gej ljude i strejt ljude i dok shvatamo da se većina ljudi definiše kao nešto približno jednoj ili drugoj krajnosti, i dalje postoji širok spektrum ljudi koji su između.
And the reality that this presents is a complicated one. Because, for example, if you pass a law that allows a boss to fire an employee for homosexual behavior, where exactly do you draw the line? Is it over here, by the people who have had one or two heterosexual experiences so far? Or is it over here by the people who have only had one or two homosexual experiences thus far? Where exactly does one become a second-class citizen?
Ovo predstavlja jednu komplikovanu realnost. Na primer, ako izglasate zakon koji dozvoljava gazdi da otpusti zaposlenog zbog homoseksualnog ponašanja, gde tačno podvlačite liniju? Da li je to ovde, pored ljudi koji su imali jedno ili dva heteroseksualna iskustva do sada? Ili je to možda ovde, pored ljudi koji su imali jedno ili dva homoseksualna iskustva do sad? Gde tačno na liniji neko postane građanin drugog reda?
Another interesting thing that I learned from my project and my travels is just what a poor binding agent sexual orientation is. After traveling so much and meeting so many people, let me tell you, there are just as many jerks and sweethearts and Democrats and Republicans and jocks and queens and every other polarization you can possibly think of within the LGBT community as there are within the human race. Aside from the fact that we play with one legal hand tied behind our backs, and once you get past the shared narrative of prejudice and struggle, just being other than straight doesn't necessarily mean that we have anything in common.
Još jedna zanimljivost koju sam naučila iz mog projekta i putovanja je kako seksualna orientacija loše povezuje ljude. Nakon toliko putovanja i upoznavanja toliko ljudi, dozvolite da vam kažem da postoji jednako mnogo kretena i divnih ljudi i demokrata i republikanaca, atletičara i kraljica i sve druge polarizacije koje možete da zamislite unutar LGBT zajednice, kao što ih ima jednako mnogo u ljudskoj rasi. Na stranu to što se igramo sa legalnom rukom koja nam je vezana iza leđa, ali kada konačno prevaziđete toliko pričanu priču o predrasudama i borbi, samo zato što niste strejt, sve ovo ne znači da imamo bilo šta zajedničko.
So in the endless proliferation of faces that Self Evident Truths is always becoming, as it hopefully appears across more and more platforms, bus shelters, billboards, Facebook pages, screen savers, perhaps in watching this procession of humanity, something interesting and useful will begin to happen. Hopefully these categories, these binaries, these over-simplified boxes will begin to become useless and they'll begin to fall away. Because really, they describe nothing that we see and no one that we know and nothing that we are. What we see are human beings in all their multiplicity. And seeing them makes it harder to deny their humanity. At the very least I hope it makes it harder to deny their human rights.
U beskonačnom širenju lica koje Self Evident Truths uvek nalazi, nadam se, dok se pojavljuje u sve više platformi na autobuskim stajalištima, bilbordima, Fejsbuk stranicama, pozadinama na kompjuterima, možda dok posmatramo ovu povorku ljudskosti, nešto zanimljivo i korisno će početi da se događa. Nadajmo se da će ove kategorije, ove binarnosti, ove prepojednostavljene kutije, početi da postaju beskorisne i da će početi da se raspadaju. Jer zaista ne opisuju ništa što vidimo, niti bilo koga koga znamo, niti ono što jesmo. Vidimo ljudska bića u svoj svojoj raznovrsnosti. Kada ih vidimo, teško nam je da poreknemo njihovu ljudskost. U najmanju ruku, nadam se da ovo otežava poricanje njihovih ljudskih prava.
So is it me particularly that you would choose to deny the right to housing, the right to adopt children, the right to marriage, the freedom to shop here, live here, buy here? Am I the one that you choose to disown as your child or your brother or your sister or your mother or your father, your neighbor, your cousin, your uncle, the president, your police woman or the fireman? It's too late. Because I already am all of those things. We already are all of those things, and we always have been. So please don't greet us as strangers, greet us as your fellow human beings, period.
Da li biste odabrali da baš meni poreknete pravo na kuću, pravo na usvajanje dece, pravo na brak, slobodu da kupujem ovde, živim ovde? Da li ćete odabrati da me se odreknete kao ćerke ili kao brata, sestre, majke, oca, komšije, rođaka, ujaka, predsednika, policajke ili vatrogasca? Prekasno je. Jer sam ja već sve to. Mi smo već sve to i oduvek smo to i bili. Molim vas da nas ne pozdravljate kao strance, pozdravite nas kao ljudska bića i tačka.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)