i am not a unicorn
Or, Why Representation Is Important
I’m sitting across from a friendly, young-looking doctor in a small room at Kelburn student health. She’s very nice, and listens carefully to my concerns about the severe menstrual pain I experienced on the weekend. After I’ve explained what happened, she begins to ask me a few, routine questions.
      “Are you pregnant?” she asks, “because that can sometimes be the cause.”
“No,” I shake my head.
“You’re not sexually active then?”
I smile and shake my head. “Actually I am. But I’m gay, so I’m fairly certain I can’t be pregnant.”
The doctor looks suddenly embarrassed and apologises profusely. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed!”
“No, it’s fine,” I tell her. “Don’t worry about it. Honestly.”
Cut to a year later. I’m in the very same doctor’s office, but a different doctor is sitting opposite me, explaining the procedure for a cervical smear test. After a number of minutes I feel I should mention my sexuality, as she is clearly under the assumption that I’m straight.
      “I should probably tell you,” I say, as she is showing me the speculum she is going to use, “that I’m gay.”
      That familiar, uncomfortable look appears on her face and she blinks, obviously ashamed. “My apologies! I shouldn’t have assumed.”
      “That’s ok,” I say. “It happens all the time.”
When I look back on these moments I don’t feel any resentment towards the doctors who mistakenly assumed me to be straight. I understand that there are certain questions they have to ask, and that the majority of students they see are heterosexual. All the same, I can’t help but feel frustration at this continuous cycle of invisibility. It is not only doctors who mistake me for straight: friends, family, people I’ve only just met, all assume me to be hetero unless it happens to come up in conversation, which, for the record, it rarely does.
      It’s true; I am not “conventionally” queer-looking (whatever that means). I’m not “butch” and I don’t flirt. I don’t wear badges that declare my sexuality to the world, although I do have a small rainbow ribbon that I wear on my coat. It’s not that I’m shy about my sexuality – quite the opposite, in fact. I am openly queer, and I want people to know this about me. But I also don’t want to have to explain, in patient tones, to everyone I meet, that I like girls. It’s just not the kind of thing that’s easy to slip into the conversation (Hi, nice to meet you. It’s cold today, isn’t it? By the way, I’m, like, Sappho-level queer”). I am lucky to know people who generally don’t bat an eyelid when I eventually manage to squeeze it in somewhere. However, not everyone is so nonchalant. One friend, upon learning of my sexuality, couldn’t stop himself from exclaiming: “but you’re so feminine!”
      For a long time I considered this issue of my queer invisibility to be a minor problem, nothing compared to the suffering that many queer people face at the hands of violent discrimination. In high school I relished my heterosexual façade, as I didn’t want anyone to know my sexual identity until long after I had said goodbye to many of my classmates. Nowadays, however, I am tired of it.
      I am beginning to realise that queer invisibility is a serious problem. It’s not just the confusion factor: how do I know if the girl I like is queer? And how does she know that I’m queer? And how do I tell her without admitting that I like her? That is a frustrating cycle that tortured me throughout high school and my early years at university. Now, I am in a long-term relationship and it’s not a problem I come face to face with anymore. But queer invisibility brings with it other, more insidious issues. How hard it is, to come to terms with one’s identity, when most of the world doesn’t seem to know that your identity exists. As a young woman growing up, my family took delight in asking me if I had “found a nice boy yet?” I would always tell them, patiently, that no, I had not. One day, my grandma finally found it in her to add: “or a nice girl – that would be ok too, you know.” What a relief that was!
      Naturally, this issue extends well beyond our familial relationships and friendships. It is not just the people close to us who make these assumptions, but everyone, everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident than on the TV screen and in the pages of our favourite books. In a rather charming conversation filmed between Daniel Radcliffe and J. K. Rowling, the topic of discussion turned towards Albus Dumbledore, whose sexuality Rowling had revealed after the publication of the final book in the series. Dumbledore, it turns out, was gay. This did not necessarily come as a shock to her entire audience: assiduous readers had already noted the close relationship between Dumbledore and the wizard Grindelwald. However, the exact nature of their relationship is kept deliberately vague. Rowling comes to her own defence on this matter: “his gayness… it’s not really relevant,” she says of Dumbledore’s sexuality.
      Not relevant? To Rowling, this must seem an appropriately PC response. Homosexuality is no big deal, after all. Why should she acknowledge Dumbledore’s sexuality if it has no bearing on the story?
Now Rowling, I know, is wise in many ways. Nevertheless, in this matter she is dangerously oblivious to the implications of her attitude. And in any case, their relationship is important for the story at large. Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald is a significant one that explains some key things about Dumbledore’s character. Their homosexual relationship is relevant, just as relevant as Lupin and Tonks, Bill and Fleur, Molly and Arthur Weasley, Harry and Ginny, Hermione and Ron, &c &c. I could go on. How many heterosexual relationships does Rowling shove into her books, only to tell us that Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was simply irrelevant? Rowling’s cavalier attitude towards queerness does no favours for her queer readership. Apart from Dumbledore, there are no other queer characters in the books. None. Statistically, given the vast number of characters in Harry Potter, this is a grossly inaccurate representation of demographics. Furthermore, excluding queer characters on the basis of their relevancy sends a profoundly problematic message: that queer identities are worth including only if an Issue can be made of them. It is too much, apparently, to have queer characters in the background, quietly going about their queer business, with no obvious  “relevance” to the major story at hand.
Of course, the Harry Potter series is only one example of queer invisibility. Every day I am bombarded with posters for new movies, and advertisements for new TV shows. Where, I ask, is my queer superhero? (Where is my female superhero, for that matter?) Where is my queer protagonist? Most importantly, perhaps, where is my queer Disney princess? If popular film and TV was all one had to go by, it would be easy to assume that queer people, especially queer women, don’t exist at all (here I must acknowledge the excellent work of Orphan Black and Orange is the New Black to reduce lesbian, trans, and bisexual invisibility). It is not so difficult to see why this is a problem. Queer people already face discrimination every day, be it direct or indirect. We are reminded, constantly, that our sexuality is not “normal” in the eyes of most. Queer characters in literature and film are about as elusive as the unicorn. Yet estimates for the percentage of queer people in the world range from 3.5% to 20%, and even the lowest estimate suggests that more than 8 million Americans identify as queer. Disney, Rowling, Marvel, etc. can continue to deny it all they want, but the truth is that we, unlike the unicorn, exist! And we are tired of being kept in the shadows.