During this Pride Month, which has very much come from America to us, I'd like to tell you about some of Finnish queer history:
1903 Aino Malmberg published the first known lesbian short story in Finland, named "ystävyyttä" ("friendship").
1963 Christer Kihlman publishes a break trough novel Den blĂĽ modern ("blue mother"). One of the book's themes is homosexuality, and the book ended up winning the national literary price.
1966 Ilkka Taipale publishes a book "Sukupuoleton Suomi" ("genderless Finland"). In it a lawyer Herbert Gumpler criticizes the law that criminalized gay acts, because it left gay people vulnerable to extortion and violence.
1968 Keskusteluseura Psyke becomes the first registered queer association. It later starts to publish a magazine "96" for queer people.
These literary works and formal associations might seem boring compared to the "first pride was a riot" we hear from America. But the truth is that these published materials slowly moved people's opinions, and in 1971 "gay acts" were no longer a crime.
Also reminder that our nowadays well known and beloved gay icon Touko Laaksonen, "Tom of Finland" started his career in 1956 by publishing his art with that pen name in a magazine based in USA, because that stuff was still illegal in Finland, and even publishing with his real name could have got him into trouble before the law changed. But damn it he found a way to get them published anyway.
The moral of this history; never underestimate the power of a pen. A writing or a drawing can be a part of a change you want to see happening.
I continue to be annoyed by the fact that rather than peg the timing of the Helsinki Pride to any of these, or other local queer history events, the organisers chose the timing based the Stonewall riots.
Not only is it enough for the Americans to culturally colonise us, we eagerly do it ourselves.
