Valerie appears in the book as the person in the cell with Evey. She's a lesbian who's life partner was taken away by the government, like herself, for being homosexuals.
Even though for us this story might seem almost cartoonish, it is still part of many people's reality. "Women are indefinable in a masculinist, phallocentric culture and language and this is necessarily more prevalent with lesbians, because they are other from both the masculine universal and the heterosexual hegemony."
what we see in Valerie's story is not a fable. It actually happened to homosexual people in Hitler's Holocaust, known as "The Pink Holocasut" between 1933 and 1945.
And it still happens nowadays with the neo-nazi groups. People are still not free to express themselves as they would want to, even though we are supposed to live in a more open and tolerant society.
"They came for me. they told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair. They held my head down in a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak. [...]
It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody. I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish... except one. An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never loose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I don't know who you are. or whether you're a man or woman. I may never see you. I will never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again."
What Valerie is saying here is that it is worth to live your life as true as possible, even if you only have a moment of freedom or real happiness, than live a long life full of lies and fear.
We should be able to live our lives without apologizing for who we are.
- Do you think our society will be more tolerant one day and accept people for who they are what they worth as a person and not care who they f%$&k with?
- Do you think you, dear reader, are a tolerant people with other that think or act differently than you? How?
Just a song to remind you that every person is beautiful in their own way....
References:
V for Valerie: Lesbianism in V for Vendetta by Derek Frasure
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/dfrasure_wpaper.pdf
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
I wholeheartedly agree with you! I believe that even though we are living in the twenty-first century, there are still millions of people out there who are not able to tolerate homosexuality. There are more important things in life that wasting a feeling on hatred. If a person no matter there sexual preference is honest, respects others and does not harm anyone is entitled of being loved as well as of loving another person. It does not matter with whom they go to bed at night (that stays between four walls), so why should we care! I hope sooner rather than later Chile in particular could be more tolerant towards homosexuals because we are all human beings and we have the same rights, so we should not be treated differently due to how we are, think or feel. Moreover, there is even a noticeable difference between homosexual men and homosexual women in terms of acceptance, nowadays due to this phallocentric culture you just mentioned, even gay men are more accepted and lesbians. What a shame is our society!
ResponderEliminarI tally with your vision !! It's common knowledge that gay segregation is a thing in our society. This shouldn't even be an issue, as my classmate said in the previous comment, there are more crucial problems across the globe!!! As to become a more tolerant and open-minded society, i think that it is important to be informed. Most of the ardent advocates of anti-same-gender marriage and homosexuality in general base their decision on misassumptions and stereotypes. I might have my hopes so high, but i think that one day in the near future, people from all over the world would start accepting this. In someway, we've already started doing so, same gender marriage is legal in several parts of the world. We are in baby steps toward inclusion. I never judge people on whether they think or act similarly to me. I think that diversity is so enriching and eye-opener, we can benefit from it.
ResponderEliminarDear author,
ResponderEliminarI could not agree more on your point. Even tough the world has changed a lot over the time in many ways it seems to me like homosexual segregation is still present everywhere. Tolerance is a term said by plenty but practiced by very few and that´s really a pity, since love is just love no matter what, we cannot judge each other based on stereotypes or prejudices imposed by a religious old fashioned society