Translator: Gisela Giardino Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
I went to a party a few months ago,
at a schoolmate's house.
I showed up with some other mates from our class.
The party was OK.
Good music, dim light,
I met a few people; overall a nice atmosphere.
Soon we approached some friends of my friends
and I spotted someone I liked.
I didn't pay them much attention at first,
but later I came closer to talk
because this person was the only one who didn't know anyone.
I felt attracted to their cool and ease to bring up a conversation
so we spent the rest of the party together.
The person I met was Juan.
Later that night, back home, my head was a mess.
Never before it had happened to me that I got hooked with a guy.
When I go to a party I'm not thinking who I'm going to relate with.
I'm looking for fun and to enjoy it.
However, I didn't think I could like him.
Because it was not usual for me.
It was against what was natural to me.
Also that night so many questions were rumbling in my head.
For example, what criteria do we consider
to determine if we like someone or not?
Their physique? Their gender? Their personality?
A combination of traits?
It wasn't clear to me either why I was asking myself these questions.
If I had no doubts about other things.
There was no answer to them.
Why do I like certain foods so much?
I don't know! I like them, that's all!
This whole situation... the questions, the answers,
led me to think about two things.
First, why do we have the need
to pigeonhole people for their bodies,
their gender, personality or brains?
Second, how come we end up liking someone for these traits?
It's not very clear yet for me.
But I think that we work with a sort of filter
that tells the good from the bad of a person
given our criteria.
After a long time I concluded that this criteria, for me,
was just if I liked his person and if I felt comfortable in their company.
I didn't care who that person was.
I didn't care what they liked either,
if they were male or female,
or whatever.
If that person liked me and I liked that person,
there was nothing else to worry about.
I see sexual orientation not as a gender of preference,
but as the set of filters with which each of us one chooses.
For me there's no such thing as being gay,
straight, pansexual, bisexual...
because I don't understand the concept of gender.
I don't understand what makes you male or what makes you female.
Therefore, I don't understand either sexuality as it's usually regarded.
Even when it's still difficult for us to determine our tastes.
Why is that?
Because the idea of ​​love under this social system we live and relate in
is to be married by 30,
in a monogamous relationship, with a partner of your opposite sex,
with two children --eldest son, youngest daughter--.
That's what each of us are taught consciously and unconsciously.
And not to follow what each of us deeply like.
These filters were changed, modified and even loosened
because they had the opportunity to be rethought
throughout history.
I think we live in a particular time,
where not only a wide but deep reflection on these filters is going on.
And also a reduction of those filters
that were imposed by someone other than you.
I see this every day.
On the street, in marches, at school...
And that's a great thing!
Because we are increasingly more the ones who think like that.
And that's what follows in the fight
for free sexual expression rights.
And this happens to me:
I don't have in mind the gender filter.
And maybe in 5, 10, 20 years, other people won't have it either.
If this filter didn't exist in people's heads,
some serious current problems wouldn't take place,
like discrimination, inequality,
and the inequality of rights for being who you are.
Thank you.
(Applause)