I want to talk a bit about the monstrous queer.

For a long while, queer identities have been associated with rebellion against the norm, and thus has been considered immoral from the perspective of the power brokers of society.

So, a lot of stories have tried to make their villains more abhorrent to the straight viewer by also making this villains queer. Now, what happens when entire generations of queer people are exposed to these stories as their primary source of queer representation?

Well, one option is to self-loathe, which I’m sure that a lot of folks too. But also, we currently live in a society that has room for queer identities to flourish. There are niches that have been created and maintained, where people like myself can meet other queer people.

And so, from the villainizing of queer people in media and the acceptance of queer people in their subcultures, an unusual synthesis occurs. These queer people, like myself, identify with the monster, but we transform the moral component of the monster.

A monstrous queer may be a monster still, but only because society has framed them as such, has pushed the monster to the fringes, labelled the monster, stoked unreasonable fears. But the monstrous queer is a force of individualization and identity formation.

The monstrous queer is a synthesis that happens internally and from a place of pride and self-confidence. It is a flowering, the veils of repression being peeled away to reveal the fullness of an identity that is not understood by the masses, and that denies being understood.