Pride Week Interview with Markus Utrio: Your intention is what matters, not whether you know the right rules
Helsinki Pride is celebrated from 28 June until 4 July 2021. In this series of interviews, four members of the Uniarts Helsinki community reflect on the situation of sexual and gender minorities through personal experiences, art, and wider societal debate. The series begins with Markus Utrio, Vice Dean responsible for the Faculty of Classical Music at the Sibelius Academy.
A prospective student interested in applying to the University of the Arts Helsinki asks how our university treats sexual and gender minorities. How would you respond?
I would say that we have an equal community. Everyone is accepted and valued as their own self.
This is a particularly important issue at Uniarts Helsinki because our mission is to support each student’s own artistic identity, which is a holistic thing. You can’t slice different things out of it. Sexual and gender identity is one element of it.
A central question is how we make it visible that we see people holistically and treat them with acceptance at our university.
Applicants from abroad, in particular, need this information. It may be that the applicant is unable to realise their artist identity in their own country due to legislation or an attitudinal climate. That is why it is important to open up human rights issues at Uniarts Helsinki.
How easy is it for a person belonging to sexual minorities to work in your own field of art today? Is non-discrimination self-evident?
Non-discrimination is not self-evident in our society. This is the case regardless of industry.
Discrimination has diminished in our society, also in my own field, music. It is not an island of its own.
What special role can your own field of art play in various minority issues?
Art can make different issues visible and raise our awareness of them. Art can be used to expose difficult and painful things to social debate, and thus awaken in us a desire to develop our own thinking. Artists have a role to play in this in our society.
Art of our time, such as popular music, can create lyrics that reflect current issues and thus have a different role in stimulating debate than historical repertoire.
On the other hand, we can look at what minority themes in different eras have been raised through art, such as racial issues, disability, or social inequality. Artists have the possibility to raise awareness on all of these issues, but not an obligation to do that.
Why do we need pride events today?
Personally, I can’t identify with the word pride. It is a concept from a different generation. For me, this week is not about pride or carnival, but about discussing equality issues as a society. That a person should not experience persecution or be inferior because of belonging to a minority.
As long as there are countries where a person can receive a death penalty because of sexual orientation or is denied things like the marriage institution, it is important to highlight the phenomenon.
Heteropride counter-movements are offensive. There are no countries in the world where heterosexuality can bring one a death penalty.
What frustrates you in today’s public debate about sexual and gender minorities?
Firstly, participation in the debate has been made difficult because it involves a strong normative: do you know the right rules of the discussion? Personally, I am afraid to say the wrong things, even though I am part of this minority and thus a subject of the discussion. I can imagine that it’s even harder for outsiders to engage in this conversation.
What is more important is that the intention is right than whether one can use the right words. What is relevant is the idea that dignity belongs to every individual, whether they belong to a majority or a minority.
It’s so easy to point mistakes, embarrass, or exclude people. When someone says that something is offensive, we can stop to listen and learn, what could be a better way to say it.
Secondly, I would raise the question of what is visible and to whom. At the Sibelius Academy, we have a lot of cooperation with schools in Russia and Singapore, for example. In their legislation, the expression of non-heterosexual identity is illegal.
It is, however, impossible to know what is seen as expression from the point of view of local law. Whose eyes are judging, where that limit goes? How does one determine that I seem to belong to a sexual minority?
The third phenomenon that makes it difficult to discuss these issues is that when we talk about heterosexuals, “we talk about humans and family life”, but when we talk about sexual minorities, we “talk about sex”.
So, what is the way for sexual minorities to talk about their lives and be heard as just ordinary talk about family, not as a manifestation? That’s why I talk about this and about my life in public.
What would you say to your younger self today as a guidance with all your life experience?
We need to be able to communicate to young people that they have the right to be who they are. Messages from family and friends, hobbies, or elsewhere in society are often shrouded, sometimes outright hostile. It is very much a matter of reading expectations. How do I fit in with loved ones and others?
It’s a question of how you can be with yourself. Dare to listen to yourself and find yourself. If you press, deny, or hide something about yourself, you never live fully. When you don’t live to your full potential, you certainly don’t do it as an artist.
If I could go back to the 80’s, I would urge to listen to myself and not live up to the expectations of others – what comes to career choice, becoming an artist, and sexual identity. We live here as ourselves, not for others. I do not encourage being selfish but respecting oneself.
I have lived another person’s life for a long time. I have been married to a woman and studied engineering. I cannot say it was a life lived wrong, futile or false choices, it has been my path.
Looking back now, I see that path has caused a lot of distress and pain. The ability to listen to myself earlier, both in terms of career choice and sexual orientation, would have made things easier for myself and others. Fulfilling others’ expectations in one’s own life does not radiate happiness and well-being where it takes place.