I have always been queer, despite not realizing it till I became an adult. It is a little strange, to suddenly have so many things line up that previously seemed so unconnected. I was just a strange little shy kid, with bizarre fascinations. I was an “old soul” according to my mother, and I recall my father once asking, “Why do you have to be so weird?” Their hearts were in the right place. But the idea of queer was, well, queer to my family and to the society we were living in.

I grew up in rural southwestern Ontario, a well-established conservative stronghold, a few minutes’ drive from Tillsonburg. Cattle corn, tobacco fields, and forest patches surrounded the enclave of four houses that included my parents’ home. It was the 90s, a decade of over-the-top advertising and what was supposedly a liberal-media campaign of “gay propaganda.” Children were still allowed to be home alone, and I spent a lot of my childhood unsupervised, part of the last generation of latchkey children.

In this essay I explore how the different characters, television shows, and other media of my youth contributed to my then-unknown queer identity. However, I recognize that no one’s sexual orientation, or gender identity, should be assumed until/unless they openly share it, even if they happen to be a cartoon character. All these “found” queer representations and inspirations I mention may not be explicitly queer. There are completely valid arguments against what is now known as “queer baiting” or “queer coding.” But without these sometimes hidden/not-so-hidden subtexts and subtle clues, I and many other queer kids of the 90s would have faced a decade of popular media with little to no representation of ourselves at all.

Finding queer identity was more about clinging to tiny details, extending innuendo, filling in gaps, and claiming queerness in otherness. It was my way to avoid “symbolic annihilation,” the idea that if one does not see people like themselves in the media, they must be unimportant.¹ I relied on the connections I made with specific television programming, films, computer games, and fashion as a child to confirm that, yes, we exist, that I was not alone in being strange. That I was not alone in being queer. 

The definition of “queer” is purposefully unclear. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, queer can be an adjective, verb, or noun. Each of these forms focuses on the idea that queer is a lot of “nots”: not “normal,” not straight, not cisgender—enough to make queer seem downright offensive. Queer comes from the English language, which reminds us of the inherent limitations of all languages steeped in white, heteronormative history. Through exploring my own queerness and talking to others, I have come to understand queer as embracing the vastness of difference. Queer holds space for those who exist between and outside society’s expected binaries. Gender and sexuality are certainly aspects of queer identity, but they do not compose it entirely. Queer can be, and is, different for different people. One size does not fit all, and that’s okay.

My youngest years I spent obsessed with dinosaurs. I knew as many kinds of dinosaurs as my outdated books could tell me about. Due to my selective mutism I refused to talk to anyone, but I could recite the entire script of The Land Before Time (1988) along with the movie. I saw Jurassic Park (1993) in the theatres when
I was three, and I still remember every minute of amazement I felt. The female characters in the film were smart and brave, something that seemed completely logical to me, and I was fixated on the park’s all-female dinosaur population. I needed dinosaur everything in my life, to the extent that my mother even decorated my entire bedroom with a dinosaur theme.

At the time, dinosaurs were considered a “boy” thing, and to find sleepwear or shoes to fit my fascination, we usually had to go to the boys’ section. I could not have cared less which gendered section my dinosaur things came from, and when I entered school I was more than willing to defend my apparel decisions. I was confident that dinosaurs were amazing. My love for these extinct creatures contributed to my eccentric personality. My family grew to expect the unexpected from me, which gave me just enough freedom to explore the fringes without their disapproval.

While other kids were getting Nintendo systems, I felt privileged and lucky to already have what I considered a great gaming unit: the family computer running MS-DOS, and with it a library of freeware and shareware games. My favourite was Jill of the Jungle (1992), a simple two-dimensional scrolling platform game where the players controlling Jill got to throw daggers at killer crocodiles, turn into a phoenix, collect gems, and beat up bad guys. As was natural for the time, Jill was a tall, blue-eyed blonde, and thankfully I was never subjected to the truly horrible box art this game had.²

Another game that I’m glad was never ruined for me by its overtly sexist marketing was Tomb Raider (1996). The demo lasted about twenty minutes of game play, which was more than enough time for me to decide I wanted to be a “lady adventurer” like Lara Croft. I later learned that the term “lady adventurer” was a euphemism for lesbian.³

By today’s standards, access to media back then was extremely limited, and being “out in the country” we had classic country cable: free analogue-access television. It included a handful of local channels, with the most glamorous being Citytv. Not only did the station broadcast from the big city of Toronto, it showed off the metropolis in a way no other station did. It had diverse anchors, and exciting city programming, especially to a young rural kid like me. Everything was cooler in Toronto. Citytv gave me glimpses of an adult life much different from what I was seeing firsthand. Unlike most of my other queer inspirations and connections, Citytv showed REAL people and REAL places, true confirmation that worlds outside of my closeted rural reality did exist.

Fashion Television (1985–2012) was the most memorable and influential of these programs for me. More or less a documentary series on runway culture, Fashion Television proudly featured fringe gender identities and non-heteronormative people as important artists and members of society.⁴ This show gave me real-life examples of people who were thriving outside of the constructed gender binary. It provided a basis for my understanding that there was more beyond the simple “gay versus straight” paradigm. The iconic “Obsession” theme song (by synth-pop group Animotion) always had me running to the living room, excited to see what strange and beautiful art I would get to watch that week.

To be honest, I did not understand a lot of it. I sometimes thought the clothing was too bizarre, the runway models too extreme; still I was entranced. Alone, I would put on my own runway shows, trying to replicate the walk, the makeup, the gestures, and any strange little tips I learned (such as putting Vaseline on your teeth to make them shinier). I always did these things in private, usually when no one else was home; by this time, I knew the best way to avoid criticism of my “weird” behaviours, which was to always try to hide them.

Thanks in part to the limited reception on our television, I also had VHS. Many of the tapes I owned were blanks with movies recorded off the television or copied from rentals. This meant I could have copies of movies I picked, rather than ones picked for me. Sometimes this also meant I could have movies that other family members picked, ones that were less socially appropriate for a young child. This is how I was able to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Interview with the Vampire (1994) more times than I can remember, before the age of ten.

My father had a bootleg copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and it was well-known in my family growing up. The film (originally a British theatre show) was bizarre, but I liked to dance and sing along to the musical numbers, and I enjoyed the strange costumes and makeup. I, too, wanted to be from Transexual, Transylvania; just like Riff Raff and Magenta, I wanted to live there, not here on normal, boring Earth. It was a headfirst dive into B movies, and a complete disregard for sexual purity and conformity. This film began my lifelong love of camp, a style that aims to disrupt sensibilities with bad taste and to invert social preferences. The Rocky Horror Picture Show celebrates queer culture and identity in ways unlike any other film, even to this day.

The other VHS tape that frequently screened at my house was Interview with the Vampire, a film beloved by an older sister with a teenage crush on both Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. While many movies use subtext to portray homosexual relationships, Interview with the Vampire uses so much subtext that it can no longer be called “subtle.”⁵ The Romantic-Gothic style of the film was alluring—another dreamy otherworld where things were more beautiful and where people seemed more like me.

Then came the sensation that was and is Sailor Moon (1991–97). From the first moment I saw it, I knew I was absolutely smitten. It was the story of a youth who embraced the strength in their femininity, who was allowed to be both a soft, caring princess and a warrior, who was never forced to choose between the two, because both were key aspects of who Sailor Moon was. Crying was a powerful force, embracing the strength of feminine qualities in a way that never equated strength with being a man.⁶ Even with Mamoru (otherwise known as Tuxedo Mask) as a primary character and love interest, the show was constantly reminding the audience of the power in found family, friendship, and, yes, queer love. All the other core Sailor Scouts (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus) are devoted to Sailor Moon, so much so that none of them ever has a long-term relationship outside the Sailor team.⁷

Though English translators and censors tried to straight-wash the multiple queer characters in Sailor Moon, they were not successful. Even with gender swapping, the love between Malachite and Zoisite is unmistakably queer.⁸ Despite my nearly nonexistent access to Japanese anime news, I knew well before Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune’s North American debut that they were not “cousins.” The English release made no attempt to cut the openly romantic aspects of Uranus and Neptune’s closeness, including their handholding and kissing.⁹ None of the fans I knew listened when the show said the two were cousins; we all knew they were lovers. When my friends and I playacted the show, this Sailor duo was always unquestionably gay.

The final season of the original anime series, Sailor Stars, was so non-heteronormative that it was not even officially translated with English subtitles or dubbing until 2016.¹⁰ Fans relied on fan-created copies for more than two decades to see the conclusion.¹¹ I never had the opportunity to see this season as a kid, but I did collect Sailor Moon trading cards that featured artwork from the entire series. Without any context, the art would openly display each of the Sailor Starlights as being both man and woman.

I had a card that depicted Sailor Moon and a Sailor Starlight in a very close embrace. Since I had no access to the anime, I made up my own final season with these characters. Although I cannot remember much of my finale, I do remember that I paired all three gender-swapping Sailor Starlights with Sailor Scouts, and they all lived happily ever after in Crystal Tokyo. This was another fantasy reality significantly more appealing than the one I lived in: a fantasy where love would save the world, and everyone could love how and whom they were destined to.

At some point, I started watching the best back-to-back after-school programming for my blossoming queerness: Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001) and Relic Hunter (1999–2002). The latter only confirmed my love for adventuring ladies, while the former inspired me with the stoic Captain Kathryn Janeway. But it was the Voyager character Seven of Nine that I was most invested in. She was an outsider who wanted to fit in with the crew, but even as she was accepted, she was always also acknowledged as being different. Seven, despite being strong-willed and intelligent, struggled with understanding her emotions.¹² I could relate to her confusion, her awkward attempts at socializing, and I admired her for holding her head up with confidence, never apologizing for being herself.

Males and females, girls and boys. These were the predefined roles where I came from. I felt a lot of pressure to be a girl, and, at times, I even enjoyed being one. But it felt like dress-up, a costume, more than it felt like me. I found out around the age of ten that my parents expected me to be a boy up until very close to my arrival, and my name was going to be Matthew. I spent a lot of time thinking about how my life might be different if I was Matthew. I thought I might be better at sports. I hoped I would be taller.

By middle school (grades seven through nine, for those who only had elementary and high school), I was more aware that I was weirder than the other kids. Strange in a way that I could never find the words to describe. Strange enough that other kids also knew. I was often labelled a lesbian and had no idea why. Countless hours I spent contemplating my sexuality, wondering alone if I was so weird because I was a lesbian. At the time, among my peers, there was only gay and straight: no in-betweens, no waffling. I felt I had to be a girl because I was born a girl, and that I had to be straight because I thought a few boys were cute. All these binaries and expectations seemed so logical to me, even as I constantly wandered between and outside them.

Being the youngest of five children, I watched my older siblings stumble into adulthood. They settled down with high school boyfriends, all lived close by, and began having children of their own. I wholly expected my fate to be the same. My parents often half-jokingly lamented that I might become an “old maid spinster with no children,” referencing my only older sibling who waited to have children till they were in their late twenties. If I hadn’t found those subtle forms of self representation, the quiet push against cis-heteronormative life, I would not have had the confidence to express myself as much as I did.

Throughout my childhood, I lacked the words to describe myself, but all the small connections and alternative lives I glimpsed were like breadcrumbs leading me to queer. Now, being an adult, I have had younger family members confide that I was a queer role model for them growing up, even before I was aware of my own queerness.

More importantly, with or without the word “queer,” we as a vast collection of peoples have always been here. I grew up out in the country. I persisted as a queer kid “out” in the country.