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April 03, 2009

Queerly Canadian #9: House-proud?

Posted by Cate Simpson at 11:31 AM ET

This column is brought to you today by my apartment hunt, which even though it's being spearheaded by my girlfriend, is taking over all the other things I am supposed to be doing with my afternoon. It's funny how being gay can complicate the most mundane of experiences — not just public bathrooms (that double-take) and dating, but completely banal things like moving house.

I have to wonder, for instance, about the "LGBTQ-positive space" checkbox on U of T's apartment listings website (I'm not a student, but my girlfriend is). Ontario has laws about housing discrimination, so the landlords who don't check that box aren't actually allowed to refuse to rent to queer couples. But would we want to rent from them?

It's unclear what it means if someone doesn't check the box. Do they actually hate gay people, or did they just not see it? Do they assume that the box is only for people who would be especially delighted to rent to a queer person? Is it significant that the majority of listers who leave it blank aren't actual landlords but people advertising a room in their already shared apartment?

This box is causing me all kinds of extra stress and anxiety, because whenever I find a listing with a conspicuously absent "LGBT friendly" line, I worry about what we'd be exposing ourselves to by hiking over to view that apartment. (There's also a box for "international students welcome," which seems equally suspect to me, but we'll leave that for now.)

Being queer makes you feel suddenly very visible when you're doing things like apartment hunting, or anything else that involves you having to declare yourself as a couple to a total stranger. Like going to a restaurant on Valentine's Day. Or getting a lawyer to endorse your statutory declaration of common-law union (something else we did this year).

When I moved into my current apartment, it is hard to express the anxiety of the weeks between when I moved in and when my girlfriend finally called our landlady to tell her I was there. When she and her roommate signed the lease, the landlady pointed out that they were welcome to move their boyfriends in, so we knew an extra person was okay in principle. But calling her and saying the word "girlfriend" seemed like it might be slightly more complicated.

The call itself, when it was finally made, seemed to go well enough, until the landlady called a surprise meeting with our roommate. Was she coming over to reprimand her for moving lesbians into the house? Was she going to demand that all three of us leave immediately? Neither, it transpired; she just wanted to make sure our roommate was okay with having a third person in the house and with being responsible for my rent contributions.

All of which makes me think that, for some of us at least, the possibility of homophobia is ultimately far more wearying and harmful than the actual, far less frequent, fact of it. Obviously, it's an indicator of progress that I can make this statement, that I can consistently expect but rarely encounter discrimination. But I still eagerly anticipate a time when I don't carry that niggling unease, and when pronouncements like "LGBTQ-positive" aren't necessary anymore.

[Creative Commons photo by Turkeychik]

More entries on: Queerly Canadian

Previous: ThisAbility #22 Are We There Yet?
Next: ThisAbility #23: House Call

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