Representation beyond Pride

Picture five people in a row. Focus on their physical appearance and what they’re wearing, how they move.

Who are they? Can you hear their voice?

Are they you?

As writers, we deal with this on every page.

June is Pride month and it’s a beautiful time to celebrate queerness in all its forms. Pride can be a really happy festival, but we’re not just Queer for Pride; the temptation for many big corporations and organisations within publishing, as well as the rest of the world, is to roll out the LGBTQ+ rainbows on 1st June and have them tucked firmly away by July.

Pride is a celebration but it is also a protest, and we need to fight the inequality still running rampant. Yes means Yes for equal marriage but that doesn’t always translate to the writing world.

Representation beats homophobia – it beats transphobia, biphobia – from books to movies to adverts to songs, if the words we hear around us all day long truly represent a diverse mix of people in a positive way, then our world is no longer small. If you’re not a queer woman then watching two women buy a car together in an advert might mean nothing, or reading about two women falling in love, but as someone who grew up being told she was "too queer", I can verify, it means the world.

Representation matters

It’s so important to hear different stories written by authentic voices and it’s up to us to tell our stories with truth, to put our realities out there: when we see ourselves, we can be ourselves. It sounds simple, but considering how obvious a statement that is, it’s sad how so many of us do not find characters we recognise, represented in fiction.

Gay characters written by gay writers are always going to hold more truth and reality than a gay character written by a straight writer, even with the benefits of using sensitivity readers. As a bi/queer woman, I love reading bisexual characters, especially when they haven’t been written as bi just for a plot point.

It’s up to us to speak up if a writing festival we want to go to is not representing LGBTQ+ authors, and to buy books and read library books from LGBTQ+ voices

A character’s sexuality does not have to be a series of struggles to overcome before they are allowed to be considered "equal" – we already are equal. We’re not too queer. We’re not too anything. We just are.

There is always a place for truth in memoirs and in fiction, and sure, our stories can be horrifically sad, they can be a lifetime battle as for many, but our suffering isn’t all we are; we need to celebrate love too, and our lives in all their wonders – and not just for ticking the plot-box.

Things are getting better – or they were, before the outbreak of Far Right American values struck these shores – but the only way we can keep from slipping back into the dark ages where panels in writing events are all straight white men of a certain age, where every short story collection published is by a straight white man of a certain age, and where all big-marketing-budget-books are written by…

Yeah.

The only way we can move forward is by actually moving forward: publishing more diverse books and backing the writers.

Things really are improving, but when LGBTQ+ themed books are published they’re rarely the ones with the big marketing budgets. Without marketing, books are harder to find for a reader, and if the readers can’t find them, the books won’t sell and the chance of an author’s advance for their next book will dribble away, and then for many authors they simply cannot afford to write, and their stories are lost.

Stories getting suffocated 

Advances aren’t just a number fight between publishing houses for the big names, they’re the reality of paying an electric bill, of being able to sit and write without having to take on the second job, or without being strung out, worrying how to pay the rent. Equality means actually being equal in all things, including cost.

Publishing is a business and, as much as it doesn’t always seem the case, we the writers and readers, have a say. It’s up to us to speak up if a writing festival we want to go to is not representing LGBTQ+ authors, and to buy books and read library books from LGBTQ+ voices – to celebrate one another in all our glorious differences, whether in romance, crime, horror, literary or adverts about cars.

If the big "they" are not listening, we have to shout louder. Write in truth, and then sing it to the world. Someone will hear.

We tell children they can be anyone, but how many of the stories we read for ourselves, teach us the same?

Those five characters in a row each have something to teach us. I cannot know your story unless you tell me, and I cannot hear it unless I listen.

This Pride, let’s show some love for representation that lasts right the way through until Christmas, and beyond.