[Reader-list] Norway: The Untold Story

[A. Mani]

The Untold Story

Aug 11th


In lots of ways, it is the ideal human interest story. It is the story
of heroism in the face of the unthinkable. Yet we did not get to hear
about it until a week later, and it is worth asking why.

Two campers on the other side of the lake from the island of Utøya,
where the Norwegian massacre happened, heard gunfire and screams while
they were eating their supper. Without thought for their personal
safety, they took their boat and crossed towards the firing. Bullets
hit the boat, but they pulled the fleeing youngsters from the water
and crossed back and forth repeatedly. It was not a very big boat, so
it took four trips to save 40 teenagers who may otherwise have been
shot, or drowned trying to escape. Without them, the massacre could
have been considerably more bloody even than it was. So why have we
hardly heard about them?

In the first place, Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen are women. A lot of
the press like their tales of heroism to fit standard narratives, in
which men protect and women nurture. In action films, women are mostly
there so that the manly men can be rivals for their love, and to make
sure that audiences never ever think that there is anything even the
littlest bit gay about the boyish tussling for supremacy they enact
while being heroic. Women are not, in these narratives, supposed to be
competent: they don’t drive well and they twist their ankles running
away in unsuitable shoes.

In the second place, Dalen and Hansen are lesbians. In television
narratives, the few heroines we are allowed to see are always
heterosexual; even when they are allowed to be competent, and wear
sensible action-adventure outfits, they always end up melting into
some man’s arms in the end. Mainstream culture does not like the idea
of lesbians being people who would put themselves in danger to save
teenagers, probably heterosexual teenagers, that they have never met.
We are far more used to lesbian couples, in very special issue-driven
episodes, being in danger, and having to be rescued themselves.

Third, they are a married couple and you can just imagine news editors
in Washington worrying that, if they pushed the story, they would be
accused of promoting "the gay agenda". American rightwing pundits that
came close to saying "well, we disapprove of Breivik’s methods but you
have to understand that there is something quite sinister about a
summer camp of leftwing youth activists" was never going to be happy
with lesbian heroism, and married lesbian heroes would just have made
their heads explode.

It is a shame. We all need stories about people who put themselves in
danger to save lives when bad things are happening; we all need to
know that there are people out there who are not ideologically driven
killers. In particular, gay teens need to be told not just that it
gets better, but that they, personally, may one day get the chance to
step up, be heroic and make it better. [By the Guardian]
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A. Mani



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A. Mani
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