When Frozen exploded onto the silver screen in November 2013 people absolutely lost their shit. I mean the entire human race went insane for this movie. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t come home at 4am from an eight hour shift behind a bar to sit down and watch the movie – because I did. Not even ashamed.

The movie is famous for it’s humour, gorgeous animation, unbelievable vocals from Adele Dazeem Idina Menzel, already famous amongst the gays of the 90’s/00’s as Maureen, the loud-as-hell protest artist in RENT and Elphaba, the misunderstood green witch from Wicked.

So six days ago I was causally strolling through Facebook when I saw that Buzzfeed had posted an article reporting on a new trending hashtag called #GiveElsaAGirlfriend in which people where urging Disney to give Elsa a girlfriend! Apart from the fact that Kristen Bell, the actress who plays Anna, recently announced that the script was complete and recording was about to begin – it got me thinking why giving Elsa a girlfriend was a STUPID FUCKING IDEA. I commented on the article and my comment received 687 likes, a new record, and I’d like to elaborate on what I said.

What Frozen did for woman was quite magnificent. It broke the age old rule that Princesses should jump on a horse and ride into the sunset with the first handsome bloke that flashes them a pearly white smile. In fact, what the movie did was poke fun at itself and show that even the handsome Prince could be a *spoiler* villain. But what Frozen did was have two separate female characters show young girls and little gay boys everywhere that the Prince isn’t always the best option and sometimes the poor, chubby faced guy can be your true love OR you don’t need no man at all. This is where the LGBT community seems to have jumped the shark – although I can understand why. Elsa’s kick ass song about letting yourself be who the hell you want to be quickly became a powerful anthem for LGBTQI+ communities as well as her lack of desire to marry or even show interest in men throughout the film.

What bothers me about the attitude towards Elsa and her lack of want or need for men is that she is automatically assumed to be homosexual because she doesn’t desire a male partner. Now I know what every Disney fan is thinking right now – “Erm – what about Brave!? Merida didn’t want to marry and she proved you don’t need a man!” which is correct. Kind of.

Merida is a Scottish teenager. Not only is she a Scottish teenager, she’s a Highlander – I am a Highlander and let me tell you, we’re a stubborn bunch. Merida was simply playing the “WOE IS ME. LIFE IS SO HARD’ card. She was rebelling against a system that she had no interest to partake in. When is another time you’ve seen Scottish people rebel against a system they have no interest in being apart of? Read a history book. Merida simply wanted to spite the mother who, for all of her life, has been ordering her and commanding her and shaping her into this Queen that Merida just doesn’t quite understand. She’s a child and acts like a child. She turns her mother into a fucking bear for God’s sake! Hardly a role model for young children. Even so – before Merida there was TEN Disney Princesses that ended up hot guys at the end of their movies. One Princess saying HELL NO to marriage is hardly going to undo the misogynistic attitudes Disney have forced upon audiences for years.

Elsa is a Queen, an adult who has her shit together, and she has no need for a man. What LGBT communities are essentially implying is that if a woman just casually decides that she doesn’t want a man instead of kicking up high heaven, and turning loved ones into woodland animals, then she must be a lesbian. Right!? Wrong. Why Frozen is so special is because it shows two very separate women: one naive about love and one brutally honest about love instead of this tired format that Disney has spat in our faces since 1937, with the release of Snow White – the first in a long line of sexist movies where women simply need men, literally to live. Anna doesn’t end up with the dashing Prince, which is a great message, and Elsa doesn’t end up with anyone at all. If a woman wants to fob all men off and instead focus on her career then that’s totally great! Good for her! More power to ya, sister.

Giving Elsa a girlfriend in the sequel will show that heterosexual women have to end up with someone eventually, much like Anna did, and can’t simply be happy and fulfilled on their own. Even suggesting that she could be a lesbian because of her lack of interest in men is somewhat damaging.

As a gay man, trust me, I am in full support of an LGBTQI+ storyline in a Disney film but shoehorning it into a sequel is not the way to go. I want a Queer character to come onto the big screen with a fan fare! I want to see little LGBTQI+ children lining up for a film that celebrates it’s Queer character. I don’t want Disney to say “LOOK HOW GOOD FROZEN IS. ISN’T ELSA WONDERFUL!? WE’RE MAKING A SEQUEL … oh, by the way – she’s gay.” In the future when Queer characters are a regular occurrence then that is the way to do it but the importance of a character like this should be celebrated because we have waited a long time for it. I don’t care if the story is between two Princesses, two stable boys or simply a boy owl and another boy owl – as long as Disney recognises our community and does it with respect, not simply making it a whisper during the sequel.

Fairytale bullshit aside – let’s get down to the real reason why we’ll never see Elsa with a girlfriend. The characters in Frozen are seen by the general public as kick ass movie heroines who should be admired and adored by the masses. For Disney they’re seen a product, an investment. For the first time since the early 90’s one single movie from Disney Studios is literally shaping the entire business. Mechanises are going through the roof, meet+greets are constantly sold out and entire sections of Disney parks are now being solely dedicated to Anna and Elsa – therefore, Disney won’t do ANYTHING that may affect the income that those two characters provide. The Walt Disney Corporation, as magical as it is, is just that – a corporation that is run by a group of businessmen in suits which is the important factor to always remember – they don’t give a shit about how you feel or what these characters do for you, they want your hard earned money and will do anything to grab it from you. To morph Elsa into the first Official Disney LGBTQI+ character could potentially cause catastrophic drops in sales for the movie’s merchandise. Imagine all the hundreds of thousands of parents and haters across the world who will throw anything Frozen related into the skip as soon as Elsa reveals herself as a Lesbian. It’s a harsh reality but sadly we all can’t live in the fairytale bubble where we GENUINELY believe that the soulless men in suits who run Disney will make their most profitable character gay.

So in conclusion: I believe/hope/pray/beg that Disney will eventually create a character who, although may not come right out and announce their sexuality at once, will allude to being gay but I also believe that it will be in a very quiet movie with not much publicity. It’s dangerous to forget how much hatred is in this world against people like me, gay/lesbians/trans/etc. and it’s extremely dangerous to forget how much money that Hatred has.