Yara Veyt about her sexuality
- ‘Uit de Podkast’
This LGBT+ podcast by Marie Van Uytvanck was a part of her bachelor thesis project for ‘Radio journalism’ at Thomas More university college. Marie is the narrator and she tells her story in five episodes, combined with voxpops as well as interviews from other people and musical interludes: #1: Introduction - #2: How and when do you know it then? - #3: Denying and hiding - #4: Are role models important? - #5: Coming out
Yara Veyt (Luca) appeared in one voxpop and one small interview, about her sexuality.
EPISODE 2: ‘HOW AND WHEN DO YOU KNOW IT THEN?’
(1:02 - 1:30)
“Well… Knowing is a big word, anyway… Because there is a big difference between Googling if you might be ‘falling out of the boat’ and actually defining things. And I think, naturally, I kinda had that feeling of not walking the line. You have those quite fast. In my case, I felt it in primary school. Maybe even kindergarten, although I don’t know if I was concious of that fact.”
EPISODE 3:
‘DENYING AND HIDING’
‘DENYING AND HIDING’
(5:23 - 9:50)
“… First, I denied it, to myself. Once denying wasn’t a possibility anymore, then it evolved into hiding and proving the opposite. I did that by not actually being homophobic, but making very distinct comments about it. I can’t really explain what I mean. But there was a scene in the web series ‘wtFOCK’, that totally relays that feeling. The main, Robbe, still hiding in the closet, goes to his ‘girlfriend’’s dance recital with his friends. The clip will speak for itself.”
*A part of clip 4 from season 3 episode 4 - Robbe’s comment about the gay dance teacher, Jens being defensive and Robbe starting the discussion*
“That’s what I did. And while on the subject of ‘wtFOCK’… I called someone…”
"Did you ever deny it? At one time, denied it and gave a reaction? Like ‘I’ll try to prove the opposite’?”
“Euhm… No, I don’t think so. Not in the literal sense… I had boyfriends… Not like my friends, who did hold hands and all that, on the playground with a boy. Stuff like that…”
“Right now, you can hear Yara. She’s 19-years-old and plays Luca in the web series ‘wtFOCK’. And in real life, she likes girls.”
“Maybe, I did it with fashion, I guess? But I let go, at a certain point. Yet, I had the idea that I had to dress the same as the rest.”
“I recognize the struggle, yeah. The same for me. Especially when I was around 12 or 13, in puberty, I thought: ‘My whole life, I’ve been wearing different clothes than other girls… I’ll wear more dresses’ ”
“And that’s such a shame that you feel that way about yourself. Like ‘Shit, I don’t fit in’. Yet, sooo many children feel the same and you still think you’re all alone. You don’t feel good about it…”
“Yes, yes, true.”
*musical interlude*
“I remember… My whole life, I went to a school with uniforms. In primary school, boys could wear large trousers or shorts and girls could wear dresses. One year, the rule changed and girls could wear large trousers in the summer too. I remember that, back then, I just tossed all my summer dresses. And often I asked myself: ‘Why can’t girls wear shorts?’. I kinda get it within the context of a school with uniforms, that it wasn’t really… But I remember that in my 6th year, for a long time, I rolled up the legs of my trousers, so it became shorts. And it looked horrible, it was incredibly ugly. Yet, every time a teacher passed by and pointed out: ‘Well, you’re a girl, you can’t wear shorts’, I said: ‘Those aren’t shorts, these are trousers rolled up’.”
“That just goes to show you how ridiculous rules like that are.”