“We don’t know why a person turns out gay,” Alfonzo told me when we were alone in his private office after my most recent group confession. “In your case you’ve obviously misplaced your maternal needs. You would never have sought homosexual love if you’d received the love of your mother as a child. But then the father comes into play as well. Your father was a passive little boy with pockets of unexpressed rage, exploding onto his children. He never provided strong role modeling. I don’t think you even bonded with your father. Clearly, all your sexual liaisons with men have been an extension of that need you found lacking in your father.”

“So, it was my mother . . . or . . . what? I’m confused.”

“You’re confused because you’ve been searching for the love of your parents in every man you’ve been with sexually.”

“So you’re saying that no one is born gay?”

“Rarely is anyone born homosexual. Only a small percentage of people are born with a predisposition to homosexuality. But it’s rare.”

“Do you think I’m one of those people?”

He paused, looked me up and down.

“No. You’re definitely heterosexual. You don’t have any of the characteristics of a homosexual.”

“Characteristics?”

“Effeminacy, passivity, desperation to get a man, a drug addict, an alcoholic: you aren’t any of these things. The fact is, Peter, most gays learn their behavior. Therefore, it can be unlearned, though with great difficulty.”

This had always been my greatest fear: that my attraction for men had been created, and not by God; that my sexuality had been like a descending staircase I’d been pushed down, one step at a time, into the cellar of my homosexuality. Now I was trapped inside that prison, fearful that what had been done to me as a child, I would do unto others. Alfonzo was saying that I could unlearn my homosexuality, unlock my trap door, and ascend into the light of heterosexuality. But he might as well have said that we could prevent me from becoming like the fat man in my elementary school toilet: a dirty old man, preying on innocent children. Alfonzo’s words were like a lifeline, thrown out to me at sea.

“Ultimately, Peter, it’s up to you. What sort of life do you want? Do you want to have a life filled with casual sex in public toilets and bathhouses, always hiding, never being accepted by friends and family, a life of secrecy and shame, compartmentalizing your relationships? Only you can answer those questions.”

“Of course that’s not what I want.”

“Then you have to listen to me when I tell you what to do.” He rocked forward in his chair. “You have to stop arguing with me. During groups, in your individual sessions: You have to do as I tell you. Do you understand me? God created Adam and Eve, Peter. He didn’t create Adam and Steve.”

He laughed. I forced a smile, but his joke reminded me of how the boys used to crowd around me in my elementary school playground, pecking me and calling me “faggot,” or worse, simply my name, like a curse: “Gay-dicks.”

“When you get right down to it, we’re all heterosexual. Your true sexuality has been buried beneath years of self-abuse, but you’re just as heterosexual as I am.” His voice trailed to a whisper. “Only in my unique hands do you have any hope. You know that. You’ve seen what’s out there. You’ve lived the life of a homosexual. This is it, Peter. This is your last chance. You either fix it here, once and for all, or else you go back to the life you were living. It’s up to you. Only you can decide.”

By late spring 1990 my primal sessions had deepened; so too had my feelings of dependency. I believed that Alfonzo understood my suffering as no one else. I began to accept—or, at least at first, to not contradict—his views about the apparent causes of my homosexuality. Both in private and in the presence of other group members, he called me his “experiment.”

“I am going to revolutionize the field of psychiatry by being the first psychiatrist to find a cure for homosexuality,” he told one of my groups, looking at me sitting across from him.

In a matter of weeks, I had changed from arguing with his views on homosexuality to defending him if another patient objected to the way he screamed at me. I blinded myself to his faults (the way he chastised patients whenever they stepped out of line or disobeyed his instructions) and magnified his positive traits (his unexpected warmth and charisma).

Meanwhile, the insomnia and panic attacks that had driven me to seek help in the first place worsened. To counter this, Alfonzo again prescribed a dose of Surmontil.

“It’s your choice, whether or not to take the medication. But if you don’t, you’ll never get anywhere in your therapy. You need restorative sleep. Eventually, you won’t have the energy to do this therapy without some type of medication.”

There didn’t seem to be much of a choice in what Alfonzo told me. Either I took the medication or discontinued therapy.

I had the prescription filled that same night.

The medication’s dose was increased quite rapidly, then replaced with Sinequan, another tricyclic antidepressant, and used in conjunction with Rivotril. Elavil, yet one more tricyclic, soon followed.

Alfonzo explained that we would need to “tweak” my use of various medications and that some experimentation would be inevitable. The medications led to a great deal of sleep; for the first time in years, I didn’t have to worry about going to bed. No longer was I plagued by nightmares. Tossing and turning for hours, or lying in bed obsessing about what being gay would mean for the rest of my life—these all became events of the past. Sleep turned into something I no longer had to do. Sleep was done for me.

The Inheritance of Shame, from Brown Paper Press, is now available in stores across North American and online at all major retailers. 

I remember the day I booked the now-hit web series Carmilla like it was yesterday. I was so ecstatic I performed an awkward little happy dance to the dust bunnies in my bedroom when I received the call from my talent agent. I had never wanted to land a part so intensely. From the moment I read the character breakdown for the titular role, this unexplainable and innate feeling told me it was a role I had to play. Maybe it’s because playing a vampire was something I had always wanted to cross off my “acting bucket list,” or because Carmilla was described as being “capable of profound loneliness” and that spoke to me. But mostly, I think it’s because it would finally give me the opportunity to portray a lesbian on screen—and one who actually gets her fairytale ending.

As a pansexual woman, I grew up watching the only lesbian show that was available to me over and over again. It was Showtime’s The L Word, and when I first started to realize I was also romantically interested in women, it was my saving grace. As it flickered on the television in my teenage bedroom, I recall thinking how cool it was and hoped for the courage to be out and proud. Now my own fans tell me they have a similar experience when binge-watching episodes of our little show on YouTube, and it’s gratifying to be a role model.

If you’re not familiar with the show, Carmilla is a modern retelling of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic novella of the same name. Written 25 years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the original story is considered the first vampire tale by some historians, and that it was Le Fanu who created the negative, oversexualized lesbian vampire trope. Nearly 150 years later, the story was revamped into a video-blog–style adaptation that takes a cautionary tale about the “dangers” of female sexuality and turns it on its head. Instead of an outdated homophobic story, the team created a version of Carmilla that offers both a queer-positive and feminist narrative. The importance of such a series resonated with many, and received a great deal of support in return, from executive producer U by Kotex, branded entertainment agency shift2, and production company Smokebomb Entertainment.

There are too many places in the world—unfortunately, even in Canada—where being anything but heteronormative is still not accepted. In some cases, it’s even illegal and many people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community (especially youth) feel alienated, isolated, and sometimes even suicidal. Many turn to scripted content for escape—but finding positive portrayals can prove difficult. Studies have shown that the landscape of media is slowly changing for the better: a GLAAD media report examining 2016 television series found almost five percent of characters were identified as LGBTQ+. But too often, lesbian characters’ stories end in misery: these women die, have breakdowns, or end up heartbroken. It fuels the misguided idea that there is something wrong with being queer.

That’s why it is so imperative that queer characters are no longer misrepresented in film and television. And that is why I think Carmilla is such an important and successful show: because it stars the queer heroes that LGBTQ fans deserve.

Carmilla is the full escape. It’s young adults solving mysteries and fighting evil in their supernatural university. It’s action and adventure, whimsy and campiness. Sexuality isn’t in the foreground, and it isn’t a harrowing coming-out story (albeit, coming-out stories are important to share too) but it still features an honest and realistic lesbian relationship—one that has resonated with fans.

I first realized how important queer representation in entertainment was in August 2014, when I was shooting the first season of Carmilla. We filmed it in only four days, over two blocks of shooting, and after the first block we released six episodes that began trending online. While sitting in hair and makeup, one of my co-stars showed me the first piece of fan art someone had posted on social media of my character. It was a charming pencil sketch of me as the broody gay vamp, attached to a virtual “thank you” letter. My heart melted and it brought me to tears. That is when I knew I was part of something bigger.

Today, Carmilla has three seasons, a prequel, a holiday special, more than 50 million views worldwide, and will soon be a feature film. One simple piece of fan art has become tens of thousands of creations, and it’s a digital phenomenon that allows me travel to comic conventions, media events, panels, and more.

But for me, it’s not about red carpets and the illusion of glamour. It’s about feeling the warm energy a room full of fans gives off, and meeting parents who say to me, “Thanks for telling my kid they’re worthy.” It’s the lives and perspectives that have been changed forever.

Carmilla is one of few positive queer love stories available on screen for LGBTQ+ audiences, and it is important for me not take for granted the gift of social responsibility that I have been given with this show. I hope to continue to accurately and fairly represent queer women, even as I shift into writing and producing content of my own. My heart and eyes have been forced wide open, and I encourage others to think critically about the media they’re consuming—all because of our fans, and a little web series that could.

This article is written from the standpoint of a clinical psychologist working in the area of trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mood and anxiety disorders, and that of an independent scientist who has spent the last decade addressing the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and 2-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) youth homelessness. In addition to our professional work, we also come to this from our personal and political standpoint as a queer, trans-allied woman and a queer, transgender (trans) man.

University of Toronto professor and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has been making headlines after publicly vocalizing his refusal to address his transgender and gender non-conforming students and colleagues with gender neutral pronouns, including the singular “they” or “ze” or “zir,” as alternatives to the binary “he” and “she.” He views anyone balking at his refusal as an infringement on freedom of speech and, in his opinion, contrary to scientific research on gender identity. He has also expressed concern that his refusal to address individuals with their self identified pronouns could put him at risk of being prosecuted for a hate crime under the proposed Bill C-16 and the Provincial Human Rights Code.

Bill C-16 proposes legal and human rights protection of transgender and gender diverse people across Canada. This means that the Canadian Human Rights Act will explicitly protect people from discrimination and hate crime on the basis of gender identity and gender expression.

The University of Toronto recently decided to allow Peterson his request for debate regarding this legislation. It is our opinion that this decision, under the guise of allowing “free speech,” puts the health and well-being of trans and gender non-binary students and faculty at risk, rather than supporting their rights for self-expression.

Suggesting that someone’s identity is not real and should not be acknowledged in language is not an issue of free speech, but rather an issue of wilful ignorance and marginalization. Not everyone’s gender identity is congruent with the sex they were assigned at birth, and not everyone’s gender identity fits neatly into the gender binary of “male” and “female.” Peterson has stated: “I don’t know what the options are if you’re not a man or a woman,” and “It’s not obvious to me how you can be both because those are by definition binary categories.”

People identify in many different ways, sometimes in ways that may not be “obvious” to us, which does not mean that a person’s gender identity is not real or should not be respected. It is not up to any of us to decide which name or pronoun a person identifies with. Respecting a person’s name and pronoun is not a complicated matter, nor should it be up for debate because a person’s name and experience of their gender are fundamental to a person’s identity. When we ignore someone’s name and pronouns and opt for our own, we do not acknowledge the individual’s identity as real or authentic. In doing so, we reject their truth and replace it with our assumptions. We imply that their sense of self-worth and safety in the world is not important to us. Such attitudes give rise to an insidious but powerful type of stress for the individual, which activates their threat system and negatively impacts wellbeing—including their physical, mental, and emotional health.

“Minority stress,” or the chronic stress associated with attempting to cope with a variety of chronic factors related to one’s minority status is related to decreased psychosocial functioning. Elevated stress caused by the layering of minority stress on top of all the other stresses that an individual experiences in their life, particularly university students who have shown to be at increased risk for various mental health issues (such as stress, anxiety, suicidal thoughts), could exceed one’s ability to cope. This compromise in one’s ability to cope negatively affects performance, such as learning. It also negatively affects mental health in the long term due to the cumulative impact of this stress over time, erodes resilience, causes emotional fatigue and exhaustion, compromises coping, and can pose a risk for developing mental disorders and even increase the risk of suicide.

Trans and gender non-conforming individuals frequently experience stigma, discrimination, unemployment, homelessness, mental health issues, and face major barriers accessing trans competent physicians and counsellors. A high proportion of young people experiencing homelessness have been kicked out of their homes simply for coming out as LGBTQ2S—25 to 40 percent of young people experiencing homelessness in Canada identify as LGBTQ2S. Many of these youth are denied the most basic needs and rights, not only by the people that are supposed to love them the most, but also by support services that are meant to provide support and safety to all young people.

Discrimination, stigma, and the institutional erasure experienced by trans and gender non-conforming individuals in many institutional settings leads to elevated rates of mental health difficulties and suicidal risk. Transphobia has also been shown to be a major risk factor for suicide.

A mental health professional, and particularly a university professor, should be held to a standard by virtue of their authority and power in creating a cultural context, in recognizing the complex interplay of these stresses for the individual. There exists a high duty of care to the students he teaches and serves. It is incumbent on him to treat people with dignity and respect, set a strong example of inclusion, and create an environment that reduces stress.

As a university professor, it should not be so difficult to comprehend that gender identity is deeply personal and people have a right to choose how they identify their gender, name, and pronouns. Creating a culture of acceptance leads to greater affiliation and has positive impacts on mental health, coping, resilience, growth, and—of particular relevance to a university professor—learning.

Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is held annually on November 20, as a day to memorialize transgender people who have been killed or have died due to transphobic hatred and violence. Every year, there are new names added to the memorial list of trans people who have been killed globally as a result of their gender identities. TDOR also raises public awareness of the violent reality that so many trans and gender non-binary individuals face on a daily basis.

This year, the day before we commemorate the trans and gender non-binary lives that have been lost over the past year as a result of transphobic hate, the University of Toronto will be hosting a debate on “free speech” and Bill C-16 with Jordan Peterson. It is absolutely unfathomable that a university as highly ranked and respected as the University of Toronto would risk the psychological, emotional, and physical safety of a large proportion of students and faculty and risk its own reputation by welcoming a debate on transgender and gender non-binary identities by providing a platform to an individual who is not even an expert in gender studies, sexuality, human rights, or law.

On November 20, we encourage you to take the time to honour the lives of those who have been lost as a result of transphobic violence and hatred, and to learn more about how you can help put an end to obvious and subtle forms of transphobia. Unfortunately, transphobia is an everyday reality for far too many people and it is harmful to them psychologically, emotionally, and physically.

We know that creating a culture of acceptance leads to greater affiliation and positive impacts on mental health, coping, resilience, growth, and learning. The language we use to acknowledge the reality of another human being, such as using appropriate pronouns requested by an individual is but one example of how we can increase social inclusion. Research has shown this to represent an “intervenable factor,” substantially reducing the extremely high prevalence rates of suicide ideation and suicide attempts among transgender people. As a country we are heading in a very positive direction with recent efforts by our Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to introduce legislation that will ensure Canadians will be free to identify and express their gender as they wish while being protected against discrimination and hate. As Minister Wilson-Raybould has said, all Canadians “should feel free and safe to be ourselves.”

In the spirit of being free and safe to be ourselves, in the words of non-binary identified University of Toronto professor Dr. A. W. Peet, “Gender identity of real life people is actually not up for debate.”

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

When I first read the news about the massacre in Orlando, I sat and wept. My phone trembled in my palm as my newsfeed filled up with blood and bullets.

I wept like I haven’t wept in years. The grisly hate crime pounded a thousand drum beats on my chest, creeping into my marrow and heartbeat, shaking me to the core. I opened my mouth to scream, to hear my own voice and remember I am alive. Nothing would come out.

In the days that followed, the LGBTQ community wrestled with a collective grief and anger unlike anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. I waded through post after post by broken-hearted friends and strangers struggling to find words, struggling to find energy to rage, struggling to find hope.

Struggling, while having their own voice stolen.

I watched as most of the media erased the skin colour, gender identity, and sexual orientation of the victims. I watched as religious leaders glorified the mass murder as an act of God. I watched as politicians used this as proof that their discriminatory beliefs are righteous. I watched, and I wept.

In the back of my mind, I wondered if we were even surprised. Although one of the most deadly acts of violence against the queer community, it was certainly not the first. Violence against us is shockingly common and sometimes numbingly so. This was not the first time that our deaths had been politicized for those in power to get what they want, while continuing to erase our dignity and humanity.

This was not the first time we realized that we are not safe. We knew this at such young ages; we knew this before we had words for anything. We knew this from the moment we realized that we are different and that our bodies and our relationships would be seen as different. We know this after decades of expending a tremendous amount of energy to defend our worthiness to live and, God forbid, to love, on this planet.

We know this because we receive so many invitations to self-extinguish that some of us can no longer refuse, and most of us have come too close to accepting. So yes, we were shocked, but were we surprised? While we wept for the deaths of 49 people we didn’t know, we were reminded of the millions of tiny deaths we experience and are witness to.

We haven’t wanted to seem ungrateful, because we are now allowed to marry the same gender and are not only seeing ourselves represented on TV as pedophiles and shallow gay best friends. But can we just quickly mention the jobs we’ve lost, and the family members who have forbidden us to see their children, and the churches who have excommunicated us, and the research we have to do before we travel to make sure we won’t be arrested for holding our partner’s hand?

Many Canadians were quick to lay the blame solely on America and its well-deserved reputation for violence and easy access to guns. “Thank God we’re Canadian!” people exclaimed. Believe me, I am thankful that I am in Canada. But the reality is that in our classrooms, in our faith communities, on our streets, we find a million ways to chip away at people’s lives. We may be less obvious, but we are not innocent. We have not yet arrived at the pinnacle of enlightenment and equality that we so often boast about. We may say “please” but we are just as lethal.

It’s true that things are much better than they were 50 years ago; we have benefited from the incredible pain and advocacy of our elders, LGBTQ and allies alike. But can’t our unwillingness to settle live in the same breath as our gratitude? It must if we are to have any integrity with the generations that follow us.

To achieve a better future, we must now move beyond lofty laws on paper and polite platitudes and hidden hatred. We must evolve into beings whose very DNA is imbued with an unquenchable thirst for equality, so that even one tiny death is one too many.

I look around at my community and see so clearly that inside our tears there is a stubborn and beautiful resiliency that fuels us. We are bone tired but more awake than ever. The wind may have been knocked out of us, but our voices are coming back stronger than ever. Too much of our lives have been silenced and spent on survival.

The crumbs and the closet are not enough.

Will the next generation of humans have to experience a million tiny deaths before they can even count to 10? Will we be able to live with ourselves, knowing we could’ve done more? All I know is that 50 years from now, if we stay awake, these tiny deaths can be replaced with a million tiny lights, each of us radiating in our unique ways, so that no one is forced to live or love in the shadows.

Photo courtesy of Pride Toronto/Flickr

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

As a wealthy Western nation, Canada enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world. Yet, there are truths about our country that are unfathomable: we have an unaddressed lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and two-spirit (LGBTQ2S) youth homelessness crisis; widespread homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia are an everyday reality; and, because of this, queer and trans youth who experience homelessness often report feeling safer on the streets than in shelters.

This needs to change. It is not enough to encourage young people to be themselves and promise them “it gets better.” We have an ethical and moral obligation to make it better now. We cannot afford to wait.

Canada needs a national strategy that addresses the issue of LGBTQ2S youth homelessness and meets the needs of this population. Consider the following quote, which illustrates an all too common narrative: “I have no place I feel safe. There’s nowhere to go, and I thought there would be because this is Toronto. If the rest of Ontario has nowhere for me to go I thought Toronto would at least have somewhere.”

LGBTQ2S youth are overrepresented in the homeless youth population, making up as much as 40 percent of homeless youth. Identity-based family conflict, resulting from coming out as LGBTQ2S, is a major contributing factor to youth homelessness. Once in the shelter system—meant to support all young people— LGBTQ2S youth often report minimal support and high rates of homophobic and transphobic violence.

It has taken many years of advocacy, activism, and research for this issue to gain attention and support from decision makers, the public, and the media. A major milestone was the opening of YMCA’s Sprott House in February 2016—Canada’s first LGBTQ2S transitional housing program, an important step in the right direction. But we still have a long way to go.

We need a committed, national strategy to end LGBTQ2S youth homelessness. This will allow us to respond to the unique needs of LGBTQ2S youth in rural and urban communities from province to province, and will place specialized housing with integrated supports at the forefront, as well as comprehensive mandatory LGBTQ2S cultural competency training for staff at drop-in and housing programs.

This strategy must include emphasis on longer-term solutions and prevention. It must do so through engaging shelters, youth-serving organizations, and most importantly youth themselves. Let’s ensure access to safe beds, as well as safe and affirming spaces and environments where youth can bring their full authentic selves. A national strategy to end LGBTQ2S youth homelessness is a promise that we will no longer tolerate homophobia, transphobia, or biphobia. It’s a message to the world that everyone deserves a safe place to sleep and no young person should end up on the streets because of whom they love or how they identify.

Illustration by Kat Verhoeven

I was maybe, what, eight years old? There I was, standing in my literal cave of a stinky basement—a carved-out hollow of dark, dank stone under my rickety old house—scrounging through books piled high into mountains of dust. I whipped out one book. The cover stood out: A woman with flowing ebony braids is striking an ultimate power pose atop a flying carpet. At her side sat a man with eyes agog in admiration. Aladdin and Jasmine, I wondered? No, far from it. It was so, so much better. Her name was Princess Cimorene, a protagonist girl with gumption, confidence, bravery; she was everything I wanted to be. And that was my introduction to the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, an epic fantasy series and my all-time favourite set of books.

I remember it as the first time, in my burgeoning mind, that I never wanted a book to end. This book was different. There was magic and enchantment, sure, but the true fairytale aspect was Princess Cimorene herself. A girl with some ’tude, some spunk (oh, and, yeah, she fully, coolly befriends dragons). In the following years, however, I’d come to learn Princess Cimorene was a minority. As much as I fell in deeper and deeper love with the genre, I was not heart-eyed at all over the dearth of characters like me. I soon discovered it wasn’t enough for authors to plop a female character into the story (which was rarity enough)—I wanted complex female characters, vulnerable ones, strong ones, ones that felt real and diverse. It felt paramount to me that I, and other readers like me, could see themselves in these stories.

In his November 2012 Tedx talk, “The Mystery of Storytelling,” literary agent Julian Friedmann argues prehistoric caves were the earliest cinemas. Hunters would go in, look at the paintings, and imagine the fear they’d feel when they went out in the bushes. They rehearsed it. It’s the same reason we use literature, theatre, and cinema. “When we’re looking up at the screen,” he says during his talk, “we’re certainly not looking at you, we’re looking at ourselves, because only we are the storytellers.” They gazed up at the walls and, in place of dragons and wizards under the flickering torchlight, they saw beasts, and in them they saw themselves. But where do girls and women, people of colour, and those on the LGBTQ spectrum go when they want to look at themselves?

These days, more and more, fantasy and sci-fi are our pop culture cave drawings of choice. The genre has played an ever-larger role, gradually increasing in dominance since the Second World War, says Lisa Makman, a Columbia-educated Ph.D. and English lit lecturer at the University of Michigan. Just look at cultural staying power of Harry Potter or Game of Thrones’ cult following. We have superhero movies galore, what seem like an endless amount of post-apocalypse books and movies, and a surplus of monster-human and dystopian love triangles. The new Star Wars grossed nearly $120 million at the U.S. box office on its first day. That’s not to mention the hundreds of spin-offs, imitations, and other popular shows and books—we’re saturated. And, yet, in a series of worlds where there are, quite literally, no boundaries, why have so few authors and creators imagined a world of diversity?

Fantasy and sci-fi have nothing and yet everything to do with reality. The twin genres aren’t about escapism; they’re a search for meaning. In them, we see a mirror of the world reflected back— our own modern struggles dancing in the cave light. In many cases, when we read fantasy we’re hoping for a sort of redemption: from war, from nuclear weapons, from broken hearts, from a depleting ozone. There’s a reason dystopian fantasy is on the rise. One of the most influential fantasy writers, J.R.R. Tolkien, coined the term eucatastrophe: “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.” He argues that a eucatastrophic state privileges us with a glimpse of truth—one that liberates us from our limitations. That’s why we read fantasy: truth.

Fantasy is all about truth. Alison Gopnik is an American psychologist who, in a 2005 Slate article, argued in favour of the genre. Those enmeshed in the world of fantastical lore, she argued, are more secure in their physical and psychological environments than those with a lessened propensity for the magical. “Children may love fantasy not because they can’t appreciate the truth or because their lives are difficult,” she wrote in the article, “but for precisely the opposite reason.” Such stories are important because, rather than offering readers escape from their woeful environment, they let readers embrace a single-minded determination towards truth. In other words, fantasy lets us work out our shit—but how do you do that when you can’t see yourself in the narrative?

When I got sick in my early 20s, fantasy became excruciatingly important to me. Doctors had no idea what was happening. I felt lethargic and on the verge of falling asleep all the time. I lost my job as a salesperson at Indigo. I couldn’t leave my bed for over two months; even watching TV became too tiring. Even now, way after the fact, doctors still have no idea what happened—the best they can surmise is that I contracted a devastating virus. But what I do know is this strange time in my life let me a lot of time to think. I’d imagine what was happening in my body. I felt like I was living in a corpse, everything was failing, weakening, into nothing. That’s where the image of the snake came in.

In my feverish, weakened state, I kept imagining a glistening snake in my lower abdomen, a venomous serpent. It felt like a mythical battle going on inside my body. Later, I was sure the recurring image was an instinctual urge to fight for my life. I felt on the verge of death and so everything became primal. I would imagine the snake shedding its skin and in it I wished for my own rebirth. When our ancestors looked up at the churning grey sky, they saw anger. In the sun and abundance of crops, they saw benevolence. When we have no answers, we construct tales. Centuries ago, they made gods. For everything prolific and small, we weave stories where answers have yet to present themselves. That’s what I was doing in those months. Without paper or pen, I was writing a fantasy story in my mind, discovering my truth, working it all out.

An interminable hope impelled me toward these stories—I would get better. The mystery illness would abate. Escapism buffers us against reality, even as it continues to be plundered. Fantasy helped make me proactive; I visualized what I could not see. After I recovered, I kept writing stories, but they evolved. I incorporated dragons as main characters in my story, and they would coalesce with female characters. I made these characters wild, defiant, feminine, and strong— exactly the kinds of women I’d always wanted in the books that I read.

In all the various mainstays and tropes in fantasy, women and dragons inhabit close quarters in our psyche—and this relationship has played out time and time again in literary and cultural scenes. Silken-haired Game of Thrones fan favourite Daenerys Targaryen is best known, for example, as the mother of dragons. After her husband dies, she cremates his body and burns herself along with three petrified dragon eggs in his remains. The eggs hatch, and she goes from being a child (who, it must be said, was “given” to said husband as a gift and political pawn), to a boss-ass bitch. It’s the quintessential rise of the phoenix.

Yet even Daenerys, often lauded as a model for awesome women characters, is problematic: she comes with some serious white savior issues, a whole lot of indecision, and much—too much—is made of the men who follow her out of devotion to her beauty and goodness. She’s as much of an example of how far we’ve come as she is of how far we have to go.

I often wonder where, as Game of Thrones continues, she’ll fit into Carl Jung’s theory of the dragon as the arch-enemy of the hero: “[The] mother dragon which threatens to overwhelm the birth of the God, which the Hero must defeat before becoming the Hero.” In Jung’s world, the father figure triumphs over the matriarch—a trend we often see in real life, but also in Sleeping Beauty’s puissant Maleficent. Though she’s recently received an Angelina Jolie remake, this spunky, spiky lady is best known as the evil dragon who battles the heroic prince. And loses.

Dragons are a classic villain, says Jordan Peterson, eminent psychologist and University of Toronto professor. He points to Medusa as a prime example. Even on her best hair days, this lady turned men into stone. She represents what Peterson says is man’s ultimate fear: a woman rejecting them. Taking a Darwinian approach, Peterson theorizes that when a woman rejects a man, he’s also rejected by nature—because, as gatekeepers to reproduction, women symbolize the power of nature, natch. When a (male) knight tames the dragon, he also tames the woman, ensuring survival through his offspring. It’s a fascinating theory, but one that reduces both women and men to their pure biological makeup. I suspect Peterson’s right—it’s a classic case of fantasy, but also one that needs to change.

Too often both women and dragons represent wild natural forces, either within us or outside us, but always ones that must be tamed and conquered. After watching a video clip in which mythologist Joseph Campbell describes the Western dragon as a symbol of the untamed wild, it struck me that in myth women, too, usually symbolize an uncontrolled element of nature. In her seminal book Women Who Run with Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes analyzes the roles of female characters in classic tales. “Wildlife and the Wild Woman are both endangered species,” she writes. “Over time, we have seen the feminine instinct nature looted, driven back, and overbuilt.” To Estes, the Wild Woman has been mismanaged just like the wild lands, relegated to poorest land in the psyche. I can’t help but agree.

It’s truly hard, if not seemingly impossible, to break away from archetypal figures. Since the dawn of stories, through goddesses and sorceresses, powerful women have graced our imagination. And there are shining examples of diversity like my treasured Enchanted Forest Chronicles stories. At the same time, we’ve collectively kept women largely in narrow roles—and that’s not to mention both the stereotyping and scarcity of heroes who are people of colour or LGBTQ. Luckily, I’m not the only one who’s desperate for more diversity. While change seems slow, many authors are starting to defy standard narratives, and many of them are Canadian women.

I spoke to Vancouver-based author and teacher Linda DeMeulemeester about the inspiration behind her award-winning children’s fantasy series, Grim Hill, which follows two sisters who move to a new house and battle supernatural forces. DeMeulemeester was drawn to the power women have in Celtic mythology. While other mythologies portray women with power and supernatural abilities, DeMeulemeester stresses, that power often resides in their ability to weaken men. That’s not what she was after. Instead, legendary Celtic figures like Queen Maeb intrigued her—these mythological women who held wealth, power and influence of their own accord, not in relation to their sexiness. “Influence is the key,” says DeMeulemeester, “that they had power to make important decisions and contributions.”

Influence also means it’s not all about muscles. While it’s nice to see women with sheer physical strength, I’d also like to see more stories where women can depend on cleverness, wit, talent. Ontario-based children’s author Alison Baird agrees. As a young woman, Baird was in love with larger-than-life heroines. She recognizes now that these books, often women-authored, were likely written as a way to address the need for strong, brave, proactive female figures in fiction. But eventually, she became disillusioned with the trend. The heroines felt a little too strong, a little too unrealistic. “I could not, as a nonathletic bookworm,” says Baird, “relate to a woman who could wield a broadsword and handily defeat a male opponent on the field of battle.” The female protagonists in her many fantasy books rely less on physical strength and more on strength of character and cleverness.

This concern harkens back to an age-old question: Can women still have it all? My answer is: why the hell not? Fantasy gives us room to be optimistic: we strive towards admirable characters and learn from evil ones. Fantasy gave us one of TV’s greatest feminists, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a character that flips patriarchy the middle finger,shows that feminine doesn’t equate weakness, is never defined by a man, shares her power with other women, and on. (Though she’s also a pint-sized, white blonde.)

Yet, Buffy went off-air in 2003. More recently we have Marvel’s Jessica Jones, a complex superhero who helps us confront rape culture and sexual trauma. There’s also Rey from Star Wars, who, it should be noted, was criticized for being too awesome—some film buffs, views, and pop culture writers called her a Mary Sue, a term used to deride a woman character who’s good at everything. Apparently, to them, she was unrealistic. Let’s just pause a second to ponder this: In a world full of fantastical scenarios, it was the heroic woman that caused them to stir uncomfortably in their seats. And let’s not even get started on the noticeable lack of Rey toys in the Star Wars sets, despite her status as the main character.

Strong women characters who are in charge of their own fates isn’t a new trend, says Liz Johnston, manager of Toronto’s Mabel’s Fable Childrens Book Store. It’s often one book, though, that makes it mainstream and enlightens the populace, like the recent Hunger Games. (Although it’s worth debating whether protagonist Katniss’s ultimate reward of a husband and babies is a positive message or not.) Johnston says that the number of female protagonists in popular dystopian fiction has helped advance diversity. Once something becomes so widespread and popular, she says, it makes it easier for book publishers to pick it up. She’s noticed many publishers are now starting to move away from books targeted toward males, which is a welcome change.

While recently browsing the children’s section at Indigo, I noticed two categories: “LGBTQIA” and “We Need Diverse Books.” Admittedly, I didn’t know whether to feel happy or uneasy. While I want increased awareness, I also hope the day will come when such classifications won’t exist—that diversity will be just as much a part of fantasy and sci-fi books as plot, spaceships, and magic.

I think about Tolkien, whose work I like but also find uncomfortable. Traversing the plains of Middle Earth while reading Lord of the Rings as an adult, physical descriptions of some characters—the evil ones—snapped me out of my eucatastrophic state. I was transported back to my living room couch, shaking my head. As John Yatt wrote in the Guardian: “Perhaps I’d better come right out and say it. The Lord of the Rings is racist.” Tolkien’s evil characters have dark skin, slant-eyes, broad features, and dreadlocks. After I wrenched the spear of truth from my heart, I thought, “Damn, this Easterling—enemy of the free people, sallow and swarthy, dark hair and dark eyes—sounds just like my uncle.” So maybe, for now, I’m just happy to know children browsing the many colourful covers can find themselves.

Almost universally, white is seen as divine and a force of good, where as darkness is evil. When these features are projected on characters, I start to drift out of these worlds. I’m trying to see myself in the forces of good, but the good doesn’t look like me. My hair is thick, dark, and curly. My eyes are an almost black-brown, cupped in dark circles. I’ve never read a description in a book that refers to my features as angelic, and let’s face it, neither have most readers. Because angelic is an assumption; one of beauty, one of light features, one of worthiness.

Even in writing this article, I realized my sources were a pretty homogeneous group: they were all white. While I’m glad to have spoken to women—and those who identify on the LGBTQ spectrum—it was clear that it’s not just characters of colour who are absent, but writers, critics, booksellers. When Léonicka Valcius started Centennial’s book and magazine publishing program in 2011 she realized the same thing: “I walked into my class—of 60 to 70 people—and saw it was primarily white. There were a handful of people of colour, and a handful of men. That was another ‘huh’ moment.” Later, she came to the conclusion that CanLit “felt like very dead white guys writing about the Canadian experience that meant nothing to me.” That’s when Valcius started the #DiverseCanLit movement, a weekly Twitter discussion about all things diversity in Canada’s publishing world. Valcius says books are like time capsules, and when people look back to CanLit, they should have an opportunity to see how everyone—not just a select few—lived.

Certainly, I’m happy that J.M. Frey exists. Frey is a Guelph, Ont.-based science fiction and fantasy author, as well as a pop culture scholar and a self-described fanthropologist (a term used to describe employing anthropological techniques to study fans and fandom.) She is best known for her book Triptych: a sci-fi novel that follows three narrators as they recount major turning points in the life of a character named Gwen Pierson. Frey’s goal is to write intersectional, feminist novels, but she admits it’s hard to train herself out of writing the genre’s tropes.

She knows it’s frustrating for female readers and writers, especially those who identify as LGBTQ and/or as a person colour, to read or watch prolific fantasy tales. Echoing my earlier thoughts, she asks me: How can an author imagine all these incredible things, yet not imagine a diverse world? While she agrees fantasy is evolving, she also concurs that it’s doing so slowly. “For those of us who want better now, now, now,” she says, “it’s difficult to know we could have much more inclusive media, and more protagonists who are different.”

New Brunswick-based fantasy author KV Johansen adds that “the tendency still exists to use the heterosexual male as the default main character.” Lately, in an attempt to redress past favouritism toward male heroes, publishers are pushing for female protagonists—to the exclusion of men and boys. For Johansen, it’s not a perfect solution. Like me, she hopes we’ll soon outgrow this exclusionary categorization for the sake of equality. She’s not holding her breath, though, noting that there seems to be more reluctance in some segments of “fandom” to accept women, non-white, and non-straight heroes than there is to accept other inverted expectations and clichés—like “aged-and-creaky-archetypes and traditionally villainous creatures.” In other words, readers can get behind a good vampire, but not necessarily a complex, Black, gay, woman hero.

Later, though, when I speak to John Sellers, the children’s review editor for Publishers Weekly, he cautions against getting caught up in what’s meant for boys and what’s meant for girls, or certain categories. Sellers says publishers have an increased interest in diversity in children’s books, including a movement to stop “gender publishing” and start giving kids permission to read what they want to read. Books are packaged more neutrally and even so-called romance books are trending toward typographical covers. “Stories about people of colour, sexuality and identity,” he says, “have been more widely explored in recent years.”

While Sellers and others like him acknowledge the push towards diversification, publishers only make up one part of the equation. Opportunities must exist for readers to see themselves in stories, and for writers to create stories. It’s not enough for those books to be published; they have to be widely promoted, taught in schools, and made easily available. We should all be happy we have people like 11-yearold New Jersey girl Marley Dias, who launched the social action project and book drive #1000BlackGirlBooks after she became tired of reading about white boys and their dogs. She aptly called her assigned school books “monochromatic”.

Whenever we read a fantasy or sci-fi book or watch a movie, it’s our own self-discovery that’s the driving force of these many great quests. Vital to the exploits and the encounters is the identity that is revealed—and challenged—throughout. I’m hopeful that Sellers and others are right: that we’re seeing a change in the genre and using our great imaginations to craft a bigger world. Because everybody, not just beefy white dudes, deserve to open the doors to adventure, just like I did that day in my smelly basement.

Photo by Benoit Rochon

We know we missed many of the amazing Canadians who out there doing great social justice work in this issue, so we’ve decided to feature new all-stars online at this.org throughout January and February. In our first online-only profile, we introduce you to Courtney Cliff, a 23-year-old activist who is doing amazing social justice work with gay straight alliances in Alberta.

Know an all-star who didn’t make the list, but you’d like to see featured? Tweet us your nominations at @thismagazine or send editor Lauren McKeon an email at editor@thismagazine.ca. We can’t wait to see who you pick so we can be even more inspired! Also stay tuned for more content from the magazine. 

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Waiting outside a meeting room at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Courtney Cliff is only pretending to look at her phone. It’s 2011, and Cliff is in the first year of her sociology degree. She’s seen the rainbow-coloured posters for InQueeries, a student group that welcomes LGBTQ, straight, and allied students, all over campus. Today is the group’s first meeting of the year and though she wants to join, Cliff is too nervous to go inside. At 19, she identifies as queer, but has never been part of a LGBTQ community—growing up in a conservative Alberta town, Cliff’s peers bullied her because they suspected she wasn’t straight. At Cliff’s high school, support groups for LGBTQ students were non-existent. Outside the InQueeries meeting room, she feels like she’s about to jump off a diving board in front of a huge crowd. Twenty minutes pass before Cliff finds her courage and steps inside. “If I don’t do it now,” she thinks, “I probably never will.”

It’s an instant fit. Within a year, Cliff is the president of InQueeries, and is also involved in other activist groups, including the MacEwan Sexual Health Club and the Feminists of MacEwan Club. Now 23, Cliff is fully entrenched in the advocacy world. Still located in Edmonton, Cliff works part-time with as the community liaison worker for the altView Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to making Strathcona County a better place for LGBTQ citizens. Her job is to work with youth and teachers in the area’s public schools to create Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs)—groups like InQueeries that, as official student clubs, serve as a safe space for LGBTQ students and straight allies. Cliff says she hopes she can do the job forever. She adds that she lives vicariously through the students, who have—positive—opportunities she didn’t at that age. With her work today, she believes she is seeing what her high school experience would have been like if there were a GSA: so much better.

Kiyl Fairall, who co-founded the MacEwan Sexual Health Club in 2013, says that Cliff looks at things from a broad perspective to see who’s missing from important conversations and why. It doesn’t matter what’s happening with Alberta’s political climate, Fairall adds, Cliff doesn’t get discouraged—she keeps fighting. “She continues to show up for and support the kids she works with through her job at altView,” Fairall says. “She tells them that despite pushback, your experiences, stories, and identities are valid.”

Living in Alberta can be challenging for LGBTQ activists and youth. Cliff has faced—and continues to face—obstacles while she fights for equality in the province’s conservative climate. On April 7, 2014, the Liberal party urged the Alberta government to create legislation that would require school boards to develop policies to support students who wanted to form GSAs. The province’s Progressive Conservatives (PC) responded in December by introducing the Act to Amend the Alberta Bill of Rights to Protect our Children, otherwise known as Bill 10. The bill would give Alberta school boards the option to reject students’ requests to create GSAs, although the students would have the “right” to appeal to their school board and then the courts. The bill has created a divide amongst parties, and some PC members resigned in face of the ensuing criticism. The bill has passed its second reading, but is currently on hold.

With the possibility of the bill looming, however, Cliff says she and her students are “resilient” and “fighting” for youths’ rights to have a GSA without barriers. The students are taking action, and a group has started a letter writing campaign to support one another from school to school. Cliff believes that if these kinds of support systems had been there for her in high school, things would be a lot different today. To imagine how different, she only needs to look at the youth she works with and their shifting attitudes toward themselves. It amazes her, especially when she reflects on her own self-perception as a teenager. “It’s cool to see them be so aware of themselves,” Cliff says. “They have found a way through their identities to become activists at such a young age.”

Representing Vancouver’s self-identified queer femme community, The Femme Project is a collection of 70-portrait style photographs accompanied by sound recordings of interview excerpts and wall-mounted quotes. Subjects represent individuality regarding age, ethnicity and fashion. They identified as trans, bi-sexual or lesbian. As one quote from the collection reads: “I am a black femme lesbian immigrant. I think I have it all covered.”

Latour prefaces The Femme Project’s written profile with a quote from Butch is a Noun: “Human beings, as a rule, are pack animals.  We seek the comfort and safety found in the company of commonality, the relief at being recognized for who and what we are.”

All women featured in the project discuss a similar feeling of exclusion and invisibility. “It’s important for people who identify as anything—including butch and femme—to have space, recognition, community, representation and shared common experience,” says Latour. “It provides a sense of belonging. A sense that we are not alone.”

There seems to be a persistent stereotype that envisions gay women as wearing combat boots and flannel, not summer dresses. The Femme Project instead highlights a more diverse truth (along with more diverse challenges): stories of growing up looking like all the other little girls, or having a mother feeling like they had no warning before their daughter came out. “I do not need butch arm candy,” reads another collection text, “to validate my performance of queer gender.”

So far, the exhibit has brought women together, creating a community where they feel they belong. “Identification with something, with a group, with an activity, with ethnicity, with geography, with sexuality—it creates bonds,” says Latour. “It creates value, it creates the opportunity for increased safety and visibility. It can be a collective force for positive change.”

When she began working on  The Femme Project, which was finished in 2010, so many women wanted to be a part that she needed to raise extra money in addition to what she received from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council. The Femme Project is currently on display—taking up all the main rooms—at Whitby, Ontario’s Station Gallery. It opened May 24 and runs until July 6, coinciding with World Pride.

Sam Killermann’s Genderbread Person

On April 29, B.C.’s Maple Ridge-Mission MLA voted against allowing people to change their gender designation on their birth certificate if they haven’t had gender reassignment surgery.

Bill 17 was first introduced March 10. Maple Ridge-Mission MLA Marc Dalton voted against Section 115, saying, “My concern is it might lead to more self-acceptance issues with young people.” In the past, Dalton has called homosexuality a moral issue, like pornography, adultery, gambling and abortion as well as promoting a church that aims to cure homosexuality in the legislature.

Perhaps Dalton should read GLAAD’s tips for allies of transgender people: “It wouldn’t be appropriate to ask a non-transgender person about the appearance or status of their genitalia, so it isn’t appropriate to ask a transgender person that question either.”

Gender and sex can be independent from each other. As the World Health Organization explains, “sex” refers to a person’s biological and physiological characteristics, where “gender” is about socially constructed roles; what a society sees as masculine or feminine behaviours. Things like sexual orientation are not dependent on an individual’s gender; a transgender person, for instance, is not automatically gay.

Dalton doesn’t get it, and probably never will. Gender, like sexual orientation, is not a choice. As teacher and staff liaison for the gay-straight alliance at Thomas Haney Secondary, Kathryn Ferguson, says: “Thank you, Mr. Dalton, for reminding me why we do need gay-straight alliance groups in the public school system.”

Plus, in our pursuit to compile the alternative answer to mainstream media’s not-so-progressive body and sex coverage, we want to hear from you! We’ll be printing our favourite reader answers to the following three questions:

Tell us about your “first time.” At This, we love us some diversity. So please, please, please help us cover the full range of “aw” to “awkward” with stories that also show the full scope of sexuality, gender and ability.

So you already know 125-gazillion ways to pleasure “him.” But how do you pleasure yourself?

Oh, sex education. Share your best (worst?) sex ed stories with us. Was your class helpful, quaint, terrible? We want to hear it all, from ha-ha to horrible.

Email your answers to editor@thismagazine.ca or leave them in the comments sections. We don’t need your name—it’s completely anonymous if you want it to be!