Photo by: FedericaVangelisti Photographer

Heteronormativity is the word to express the way of life of our society, the way we should live, act and react: is the reinforcement of certain beliefs by many social institutions and social policies.

Sex: refers to the male and female duality of biology and reproduction.

Gender: refers to the socially constructed roles, behavior that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women. These beliefs include the belief that human beings fall into two distinct and complementary categories, male and female; that sexual and marital relations are normal only when between people of different sexes; and that each sex has certain natural roles in life.

Our system is the binary gender system. The role that have nowadays words such as Man or Woman, and what it means nowadays to be a man or a woman, and to fulfill the role, it is an important topic in these days. These words are now obsolete, but rich of hidden meanings. Watching the television, while walking around, you can see in every moment of your life what society think about men and women. Men are usually connected with the God of war (Mars) and the Godness of Love (Venus). Women have to be pretty and clean, well dress, take care of children and possibly be hard-workers, in the same time. Men should care less about fashion, like football, soccer, and hard sports. Since you are a young boy or girl you have to follow the lines, and often is possible to be denigrated, if you do not properly fit into the stereotype.

JUSTINA, LITHUANIA, said: "I think that the role of parents in the family...it's only their business! I do not agree with the stereotypes of the woman whocook, wash, at home and the husband make a money. I think men could also be a babysitter and women make a career. And about sexuality, in LT women are like the products for commercials, everywhere in commercials, TV, press are showed sexy blondy girls, and it makes me sick!"

But what happen if you step up the lines, if you feel different? This is an important topic of our societies, and too often it remains unexpressed. Governative labels are an instrument of legal power to redefine ourselves. For instance, if in your country it is forbidden to get married with a person of your same sex, you could feel uncomfortable to accept your sexuality. This starts when you are in the kindergarden: you start reading stories about a prince and a princess, and you understand that it is the normality. But what normal means? Actually it is not so easy to say. The current definition refers to something constituting a norm or standard or type or social norm; someone could say that it refers to scientific laws as well. The reality is much more complex. You are who you are. No way to say that you can be less normal than someone else. It should be fair enough that your sexual identity, or sexual orientation, is not important to define yourself, since you don’t want to. My teacher about this topic, explained me this, saying: when you go out you don’t have to say: I would like a beer and yes, I’m lesbian. Nobody should care about who you love.

MARIANA, BULGARIA: "I believe that everybody has the right and choice to be whoever they want to be, if this doesn't harm the others around him. Not fitting the classical heteronormative structure doesn't do harm to the societal norms, it expands them to capture the diversity of all people in our world. It may just be harming the mentality of the old-fashioned people, who don't want to understand that things are not black and white. But that's for good. Open your eyes, people, see the colors! My country is very backwards thinking when it comes to gays and lesbians. Especially about gays,as they work against the classical image of the "Bulgarian macho". But I still hope things will change in our black and white world."

We have plenty of declarations of human rights, but most of the modern governments seem to not care so much about the issue. The rights are there, but their real implementation is an actual and complicated issue. The thing is: you could not care, but there are people who are gay, lesbian, trangender, trans-sexuals, bi-sexuals, and the government should care about them.

YUNUS, TURKEY: "In Turkey half of women population face the domestic violence, this rate rise till %97 if you go to poorest and socially isolated places. And while %70 of man population work only 1/4 of women work in Turkey. And the amount of girls who do not go to any school is 600.000 person more than amount of boys who do not go to any school. Only this data shows something about gender roles in Turkey. But why the situation is like this? In Turkey, as most of late-capitalist countries, family is the key subject of social and economic structure of country. Basically, to have ties with soil and survive through man's arm power, different roles of gender, and woman has right to live if she do her duties in home. So the measurement of being a free individual and "person" and to enjoy all the social rights depends on economical freedom. The success and honour of family is identified in terms of the woman's virtue. This is a typical characteristic of feodal economic culture. Violence about woman is also related with this issue. Because of woman/girl does not have a place to go (cause she doesnt ve economical freedom, a job, opportunity to find a job) she has to stay at home and suffer. Of course the situation is diverse In west of Turkey, in the big cities, their suburbs( especially eastern and south-eastern people and romas live in suburbs) and in the East of Turkey. And this fact brings us to another case. While west of Turkey almost capitalised and especially in big cities like Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Bursa, Antalya, Balıkesir, Eskişehir...etc woman might have economic freedom, most big part of south east Turkey is still enjoy feudal economy. So will we wait till the sistemic economic change 100s years ? should we only watch when girls who has lost their virginity before marriage killed by family 100 year more? And only say ınfra structure determines super structure ? I think human rights cannot leave its sociologic evolution. There are international norms and we have to work for a social transformation of changing perceptions of people towards each other by changing ethical norms and paradigms. Homosexuality cannot be separated from all these facts. Because of man is important for surviving of family and all society's economy, to be a man is also important. In our culture identities are constructed by looking the other or easily creating the other. İf there is no "other" we cannot enjoy the real feeling of "us". That is why especially gays and bisexual men are the subjects of “otherization” and discrimination. But honestly to be tolerant is aside, it s too hard to understand the general hate against homosexuals in Turkey."

MEHMET, 22: "The roles of men and women mostly depend on the area they have been living in and the family of the person. But it is a fact that most of the men think that the natural, physical differences should make women unequal to the men for other issues in life such as ; the man should decide for the women and the women should stay in, cook, take care of the kids. From the other hand conservative family style is another affect on those situations(mostly for women). The way they raise the child makes them less confident not just in life but also in their houses since s/he has been told to do everything for their lives by their parents which turns out to make the men the leader of the house and make the women obeyer since the men are considered to be smarter and more powerful. So that they can make the women do anything and they can do anything they want such as being violent. However; it all ends up with the lack of education of the people."

We should not care about what normal is, we should just care about people, and their happiness. Unfortunately, for someone, this seems to be a fairy tale.

JUSTINA, LITHUANIA: "this is my opinion, Lithuania is homophobian country..even it try to show the world how liberal it is. Few months ago, it was Vilnius Baltic Pride 2010..almost half of country was against, it was big conflict between both sides, anyway it happened with a lot of police, security ( the participants were minority in comparison with police forces). I think this event showed all situation in our country...still sovietic view and lack of tolerance for different people.t.. of course there are some famous poeple who are loved even they are different . And my personal opinion, i don't have any against when we are talking about family...wedding bettween the same gender for me is ok..but children adopting...hm i don't know. It's difficult situation."

JURGA, 21, LITHUANIA: "I think that women and men should have equal rights. In Lithuania, in my opinion, the rights are quite equal, because laws are ensuring this. Talking about society, I would divide it into two parts: older generation and younger generation. Older generation still thinks that there are works and different tasks for man and for women, that women have to do all domestic duties and raise children. But younger generations don't divide works for women and men. At home they divides task between themselves and women don't have to do everything by their owns. I could say that nowadays in Lithuania women are quite independent and strong, they can fight for themselves. Homophobia is a little bit different. Our society is still too conservative and people are still intolerant for gay people. But I cannot say the same thing about the whole society. Of course, there are people who are tolerant and do not hate gay people. As for me, I think that gay people are the same people and all people can decide freely what to love and which orientation to choose. So just let them live as they want."

About homosexuality?

MEHMET, TURKEY: "And the homosexuality problem is generally because of people not being familiar with the topic. For most people in Turkey homosexuality doesn't exist since they don't know much about it. Being gay for a man is considered to imitate women which is a temporary phase or illness. And being gay for a women is nothing but a sexual fantasy for the most of the heterosexual men which they would have seen in adult movies. Even if they see a homosexual on tv or somewhere they can never expect that to happen their children, their friends because it's not acceptable for them at all which occurs a huge social pressure for homosexual people preventing them to come out."

JOE, FROM UK: "Homosexuality here isn't massively problematic. There are some homophobic people, as there always will be, but it's not too bad. There are some areas of the country that are very homophobic, and other areas that are very homosexual. For example in Soho, London there is a massive gay community, so it is widely accepted there. It's clear here that a lot of gay people are proud, which is shown by the gay pride day, and various other events like that. However, obviously it's not ideal to be a gay person, and for someone to come out isn't particularly pleasant. but the majority of people in this country are widely accepting of the gay culture. I have a high number of gay friends, and they are all very proud of their community, and there are a lot of gay clubs in England, especially London, which i think helps promote the idea that gay people should not hide away."

DONNE, FROM SOUTH AFRICA: "Well in my hometown there is hardly any discrimination :D, Being homosexual here is accepted within our community, there are how ever many afrikaans people who look down upon homosexuals, it is much more harder for guys to be freely gay around here then for us lesbians, for instance you will see many lesbian couples holding each other in public places but you never see gay guys like that in public, except for in our local gay club aqua nightclub, then people can be free."

CANDICE, FROM SOUTH AFRICA: "Well, gay life in South Africa is legal as well as gay marriages. There is and always will be discrimination by the more conservative people out there, as well as by the very religious people. I live in Cape Town, and here they call it the PINK City. It is the gay capital of our country:) We have quite a few gay bars and clubs here. Some very up-market, and the others for everyone else:) The last homophobic attack I heard of was in about 2005/2006 and it was a fairly well known south African actor, who was gay. A group of guys attacked and beat him up, and he died. His name was Brett."

Last April I had the opportunity to participate to an interesting workshop which took place in Berlin about discriminations and diversities in the context of the EU, particularly concerning the gender issues. The host association was Kombi-Kommunikation und Bildung- which works since the 70’s about the topic, especially focusing on sexual discriminations. Gender refers to the social constructed roles, behavior, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women. I want to underline that this reports are made with people in different countries, who have different backgrounds and sexual orientations, as well as, I guess, different ice-cream flavors. Valeria Venturini