“It felt like such a privilege, and also a huge responsibility”
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY HINGE
Nothing beats a queer love story. Especially when it’s real. Hinge knows this, and is using their second instalment of their No Ordinary Love campaign to celebrate LGBTQIA love.
Telling real life love stories, Hinge has worked with contemporary writers such as Upasna Barath, Hunter Harris, William Rayfet Hunter, Tomasz Jedrowski, and Jen Winston to share these real life romances. Offering an intimate look at five couple’s stories, No Ordinary Love is a way to celebrate the beauty that can come from online dating.
Told by Tomasz Jedrowski, one of these stories is Aissata (they/them) and Juno (they/them)’s tale of digital dating. DIVA spoke to Tomasz Jedrowski about why it’s so important to see queer love represented in this way.
What was it like to get a glimpse inside Aissata & Juno’s love story? How was that different to other work you’ve written?
It felt like such a privilege, and also a huge responsibility – I remember during our first meeting, when Aissata and Juno began to tell me about themselves, I was hit by an emotional vertigo, like: I can’t believe I’m being trusted with real people! This is their life, their love, and I’d better be really attentive and respectful and get this right. I knew I couldn’t just mould or modify them like I might some characters in my fiction. This made the No Ordinary Love project completely different to anything I’d done before, which is exactly why I agreed to do it.
Why do you think it’s so important that we get to see queer joy in dating at the minute?
I think it’s always been important to see queer joy in dating, first and foremost to show it to ourselves. Real queer love stories have always been underrepresented in culture, and that makes it crucial that we know – or remind ourselves – that they actually exist, that they are just as much a reality of dating as doubt or disappointments. Ultimately, joy is the reason we want to connect with others, and part of what makes us human. It’s also the exact opposite of fear and division.
What do you hope people take away from the No Ordinary Love campaign?
Stories affect us all in different ways, so I hope that people get from it whatever they most need in their lives right now in terms of emotional or spiritual sustenance.
What do you think you have learnt about queer love through working on this project?
A certain part of me wants to say something empowering and maybe a little easy like: “Queer love is just love!” (while another part cringes at how obvious that is) Who is the part of me that feels the need to speak in slogans? Maybe the young teenage Tomasz that grew up in the 90’s and still wants to be reassured – and reassure others – that queer love is just as ‘normal’ as straight love, and just as deserving of respect and protection. And I totally understand this need. Queer people have been shamed and oppressed for centuries, and it’s far from over. So one step towards equality is saying to society “we are just like you, see?”. Fascism is on the rise around the world, and there is no denying that love always has a political dimension, even when you’re not aware of it (probably because you take your privileges for granted). And yet, these power struggles are not actually what real love is about. Real love is never an ideology or a movement. It’s not something that wants to be proven to others, or put into categories, or even, frankly, understood. It just is. It’s our life force, that which makes us human. I can’t think of anything that’s more worth fighting for.
No Ordinary Love will launch as a five-part weekly series on Substack at no-ordinary-love.co.
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