Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 18:54:52 +0200 (MSZ) From: Bj|rn Skolander Subject: SWEDEN: LOUISE BOIJE AF GENNAES COMES OUT LOUISE BOIJE AF GENNAES COMES OUT The Swedish novel and TV series writer Louise Boije af Gennaes (33) comes out in Reporter 1995/6 as bisexual, lesbian or as she puts it herself, as a loving person. "Does one have to put a label on one's love? Isn't it enough to love, and to feel some kind of great gratitude to be able to do so?" - My girlfriend is the best human being I ever met, and I am very grateful to be able to to share my love with her. - Now I want to tell all how I am living, and of course I hope to be a role model for others who have not yet come out. As a public person you have much responsibility. For me it is important to take decisions on the grounds of courage instead of on the grounds of fear. - Men are often uninteresting - at least white, heterosexual middle/overclass men. The are born and grow up with a superior position compared to others. They have never been exposed to oppression. Never been forced to reflect and to develop. - Dykes are my heroines. I become happy when I meet lesbians. They have a kind of courage and go-ahead spirit, which one otherwise seldom finds in women. If one is a lesbian in our partriarchal and sexist society one is situated at the bottom of the scale. One has the lowest status and the least assets of all groups, because women generally earn less money than men, and are having less of both money and power. In that situation to openly declare that one is loving only women is indescribably courages. They are worthy of all respect in the world. Louise Boije af Gennaes is having a position and a number of personal qualities that makes her the perfect public-person-lesbian-role-model. That is not just as a role model to other lesbians or bisexual women, but also a teacher or intermediater of the gay and lesbian experience to straight members of society. She is successful: has written three novels and several very succesful TV-series. She is an aristocrat and is a very attractiv women. Af Gennaes is probably the first Swedish female celebrity that publicly declares her love for women in recent years. The lesbian experience has often been hidden from the public sphere, and has instead been depicted in literatur by lesbian authors, as Anna-Karin Granberg, Karin Boye or Eva Alexandersson. Or has been made visible by representatives from the gay and lesbian movement, as by the Reporter journalist Mian Lodalen, who with intervals appears on one of Sweden's popular talk shows. Tranlated and complemented by Bjorn Skolander