An Incomplete Compendium of Gay Monsters

It’s Pride month, the time when we queers go big and loud with all the ways we don’t fit society’s demands. In the world of horror, there is a very cishet history of straight white men making art about young beautiful white women in peril. There is the puritanical morality of so many slashers: have sex and die. So you may not think of horror as a particularly queer genre. You would be wrong.

There are actually many LGBTQ monsters in horror. Maybe they’re not carrying the trans flag or sharing homoerotic sexual tension on screen, but queerness is a deeper question. 

Let us begin with the Babadook, who has been the grand marshal of a few Pride parades. The story of how this weird little guy who terrorized a mother and her young son became an icon of the LGBTQ community can help guide us through what it is that leads the queer community to embrace a character and recognize it as one of our own.

The film The Babadook doesn’t have anything overtly queer going on. But Netflix accidentally sorted it as an LGBT movie, which turned it into a Tumblr meme, and things changed quickly. (See this full write-up on Polygon from 2017 for the detailed story.) Suddenly queers everywhere were embracing the Babadook. Sure, he was a weird little guy who wore all black, but wasn’t it actually about the closet? Wasn’t the whole film basically about coming out to your family? 

Pop culture history is full of stories where queerness and gender fluidity are portrayed as monstrous, hostile, terrifying. So it isn’t surprising to see us identifying with and adopting the stories of creepy monsters who are, maybe, actually just misunderstood. Maybe we destroy because it was the only response to the violence inflicted upon us? (If you’d like a not-joke exploration of this idea instead of this definitely-a-joke post, you should pick up the novel All Us Saints by Katherine Packert Burke.)

But also let us acknowledge that gaydar exists, and that while I may try to make some arguments here, ultimately this comes down to my personal subjective gaydar system. This is a joke post and we have not reached out to any of these monsters for official comment.

Let us begin with the classic monsters: 

Vampires: pansexual

This one is obvious, since sexuality has always been a big part of the vampire mythos. Vampires are incredibly horny and are attracted to every gender. And our guy Dracula has a real sense of style and drama and isn’t afraid to be effeminate. 

Werewolves: trans

They are monsters who transform. It’s literally right there. Stories of transformation have long been special to the queer community.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: gay

The doctor is closeted, the mister is out. Put together as a single person, he’s on the DL.

Frankenstein's monster: queer

The monster is a sweet guy who just wants to hang out with his friends in a little cabin. He wants only acceptance and is rejected by his “father” for, well, being the person his father made. Literally.

Mummies: straight

Dusty, outdated, boring, not with the times, no fashion sense.

The Mummy (1999), however, is well-documented as the most bisexual film that has ever existed.

To move into more modern monsters:

Zombies: mostly not queer

This is a complicated one. Zombies in their original iteration are incapable of pleasure, but they are also incapable of thought. So while it may initially seem like they would fall on the aro/ace side of things, they cannot actually qualify for it. A zombie might as well be a table, so there is no potential gender/sexuality involved.

But zombies have changed a lot over the years. The zombies of 28 Years Later and other modern “running” zombies that seem to move with a kind of purpose don’t quite fit this definition. But once again, they don't really fit any definition. Samson would have sex with any gender of person, but he would also have sex with a pile of rocks. 

The only time zombies are truly gay is when a survivor realizes someone they care about has made the switch from human to undead and they have pull out their rifle to blow their zombified loved one's head off while crying a single tear. (Because this is actually a story about when you come out to your Christian parents.)

Sharks: straight

Yes, that includes Jaws and his successors. Those eyes are empty, my friends. 

Little boat trips with your pals where you bicker and drink and show off your scars: totally gay

Come on.

The Meg: gay

She just came out. She loves bright lights and parties. She just wants to be included.

Little boat trips with your pals where you try to kill the Meg: straight

Leave her alone!!!

The Alien in Alien: pangender

Every gender, any gender, all genders, thus correctly referred to as "you bitch" while also having a phallus for a head.

Chucky the Doll: gay

The entire Child’s Play cinematic universe is so obviously gay and dripping camp that I haven’t even seen anything in it and I still know that. 

The Cenobites from Hellraiser: pansexual, agender, deeply opposed to monogamy

Any combination of the Cenobites would tell you they saw you from across the room and liked your vibe. It doesn’t matter what your gender is. It also doesn’t matter how many of you there are.

This is really just the beginning, especially as it’s mostly monster-focused and thus excludes the larger universe of horror characters. I have yet to scientifically prove any of these by conducting… whatever analysis you conduct to determine the sexuality of a creature that's fictional and in some cases incapable of speech. 

Subjective as it is, I invite the commentariat of our paid Darker Times subscribers (subscribe today!)  to offer any oversights or counterpoints to this list. Happy Pride!