Celebrating Diversity
I was fourteen when Queer as Folk first aired in the UK; eighteen when I moved to
Manchester and became a part of the gay scene which that show represented. In
the interim, there was plenty of backlash against the characters depicted in
QAF. Plenty of gay people were horrified to see so much hedonism, so many gay
men drinking to excess, taking drugs, sleeping around, and chasing their youth
(or youths, more generally). “That isn’t us!” came the battle-cry.
Fifteen years later, after an avalanche of
PR, court cases, and editorials in newspapers from wet-eyed couples who just
want their kids to grow up in households recognised by the state, one could be
forgiven for thinking we’re all living according to a new dominant norm. Except
that isn’t the community I know and love, it’s just the “That isn’t us!” cries
have become quieter.
Maybe these days I’m an old hypocrite,
given in a few short months I’ll be living the wholesome, gay-married-with-kids
life that we’re all supposed to be living now, but I hate that my community—the
diverse, vibrant, multicultural community I came of age in—has prostrated
itself before the public and sworn those days are behind it. Like everything
between 1969 and gay marriage was a rather unfortunate adolescence but now
we’ve all grown up.
I know plenty of people who haven’t “grown
up”. Plenty of people who don’t want marriage, or kids, or even monogamy. And that’s okay. There is no one way of
being straight, or white, or middle-class, or anything else, so why should
there be only one way of being gay?
Kids now are richer in more ways that I
was, in more ways than I can count. They have thousands of films, TV shows, and
books in which they can see their futures projected—futures with a HEA, not an
untimely death, social ruin, or prison walls. I love gay romance for that more
than I can say. I write it for that reason, because when I was growing up, I
searched for it so hard and never found it. I want kids to see that no matter
what their parents, teachers, priests, imams, or rabbis say, there is hope.
There is a future for them. And I want that message to reach all the kids out there in need of
hope—the kids who don’t identify with male/female-gay/straight binaries; kids
who are drawn to various aspects of BDSM; kids who don’t want to settle down or
get married.
This is where romance limits us. In part,
that’s the fault of the genre. Boy meets boy, they fall in love, and live
happily ever after. That’s the nature of the beast. And sure, boy can meet boy
who likes getting a little freaky in the bedroom and they can still live
happily ever after. Boy can meet boy and together they can overcome the
indoctrination of a conservative, religious upbringing and still live happily
ever after. But where’s the story for the boy who doesn’t feel like he’s
missing part of himself; the boy who’s happy with his own company and maybe a
string of somebodies to help him scratch an itch?
The answer, of course, is that romance is
stumped when it comes to independent living. The latter boy is what our romance
hero should be before he meets the
love of his life. Then he’ll realise how empty his prior existence was, the
illusion of being previously happy will melt away, and he’ll understand that he
was missing something all along.
Except I don’t buy that.
Firstly, I think the narrative that we’re
all better when we’re with somebody is incredibly damaging. I’ve seen too many
people stay in toxic relationships because they can’t imagine anything worse
than being single. Self-worth is too little addressed in our culture,
particularly in romance.
Secondly, the thing I love most about my
community is its diversity. That’s what we celebrate every year at Pride when
we watch LGBT firemen and policemen, athletes, drag artists, Dykes on Bikes,
doctors and vicars, old and young, black and white, Christian and Muslim,
strippers and dancers and accountants and shopkeepers marching together for a
common cause. Whoever, whatever. We celebrate them all. I can’t imagine
anything sadder than seeing all that diversity wiped out for the sake of
appearing palatable to “everybody else.”
Our civil rights are not dependent on us
living lives that other people deem acceptable, and nor is our happiness
dependent on us fitting into a neat little box, be that in life or in romance.
Which is why I’d love to see more diversity within m/m. Not just
other-than-white guys, but effeminate guys, overweight guys, guys who aren’t
particularly attractive. Guys who have open relationships without it being a
big deal; who don’t long to settle down but want to keep moving, see the world,
experience everything it has to offer.
TV offers some strides in that direction,
but romance is depressingly uniform. Built, beautiful, straight-acting white
dudes meet, fall in love, get married. Don’t we want more than that?
The answer, sadly, is that very few people
do. At least as an overall percentage of the genre’s readership. Too many
times, I’ve seen people melt down on Goodreads because an MC noticed a waiter
was cute after he’d met his intended, and therefore he was cheating. Too many
times, I’ve seen brilliant, brilliant
books—books that nail the community I know, and the people who inhabit
it—passed over because they’re different. Because people don’t want the
reality, they want to lose themselves in an alphaman fantasy.
I get that it’s only fiction, and romance
is supposed to be an escape where we forget our hang-ups while we drool over
someone else’s chiselled six-pack, but there’s also the issue of representation. The LGBT community came
together and changed the narrative from hedonism-without-consequences to
married-with-kids for a reason: because what one of us is seen to be doing, we
are all seen to be doing, and when the actions of that one earn the disapproval
of people who are holding our civil rights over our heads, we can all lose everything. That only happens to
minorities (look how many people demand their Muslim neighbours apologise for
the actions of ISIS, but how nobody expects their Christian neighbours to
apologise for the KKK, for example).
In het romance you can have as many silly
alphaman/damsel-in-distress tropes as you like, because there are plenty of
counter-narratives to remind the impressionable that they’re only fiction. With the LGBT community, those counter-narratives
don’t exist (or if they do, they’re frowned upon). Either we’re
married-with-kids or we’re going to hell in a handcart, and that’s why I think
it’s our responsibility as authors and readers, queerfolk and allies, not to
suppress those counter-narratives, but to welcome them with open hearts and
minds.
Authors (and I include myself, here) need
to be braver about writing more diverse characters, but readers also need to
give them a chance. Ten or fifteen years ago, everyone was losing their minds
at the idea that flogging someone could be hot. Now you can’t move for BDSM
titles. Perhaps it’s time to open another new frontier in romance, celebrate
diversity, and make realism the new sexy.
Born in Liverpool, Kate Aaron is the bestselling author of the #1
LGBT romance titles 'What He Wants', 'Ace', and 'The Slave', and other
critically acclaimed works.
She has the best of friends, the worst of enemies, and a
mischievous muse with a passion for storytelling that doesn't know the
difference between fact and fiction. Kate is engaged to award winning author AJ
Rose, and together they plan to take over the world.
