Horror is something that I was born into and feel every single day, deep within. It’s visceral and insidious coming from inside the body I was born into. Bodies are pretty horrific and freaky. They can perform feats of strength under extreme duress, they can regenerate themselves from certain degrees of damage, and in some rare cases they can even shapeshift. Out of the billions of people on our planet, there are millions of shapeshifters. They go by many names in different cultures like hijra or two-spirit; most people know the more commonly used word: transgender.

Transgender people use medication, make-up, body modification, and surgery to transform their bodies into something that is more in line with what their inner self looks and feels like.

My name is Alice and I’m a transwoman.

I’ve seen many articles about the terrible depictions of trans people in the horror genre and these articles seem to espouse the view that since the representation is bad, the movies are bad, and therefore *you* are bad for enjoying them. The vast majority of these also seem to be coming from outsiders to the genre. I grew up around this genre, and I want to give my own perspective, and my own opinion on how I view these movies. Wanna know one of my little secrets? I unashamedly love Sleepaway Camp and Felissa “Mangled Dick Expert” Rose. Saying that last sentence just alienated me from at least half of the trans community. Go me, woo.

Basically, what I’m saying is that while you read this, you should keep in mind that just because one is a fan of something doesn’t mean that their opinions match those expressed in the piece of media, nor does this mean that the fans of that media are inherently bad. There is no piece of media in existence that is perfect and free from problematic elements. It doesn’t exist! It’s never going to exist because times change and people change. What’s not offensive one year can change in the next year. And that’s fine. Many things are problematic in some way, and everyone has cultural blind spots. We as a culture and people should always strive to better ourselves. It becomes a problem when culture stagnates and doesn’t change.

My goal here is to address and acknowledge some issues with queer representation in the genre while also putting into context why these things happened as they did and what I’d like to see improve in the future. I want to open up a discussion about representation and it’s going to be a little harsh at times but that’s only because I love the genre and want it to improve. I know that it can; it’s a genre that celebrates The Other. Let it reflect that.

It’s really scary being a transgender person in the United States. I’m at a breaking point lately, watching my rights get slowly stolen away from me, my sisters, my brothers, and all those in between. For the past few years I have left my feelings off the internet because I didn’t want to deal with all the hatred being spewed out on the regular, but I’m done. I’m seeing the ability for transgender people serving their country in the military completely stripped away. Our own government has rescinded protections for federal workers and children protecting their right to use the right bathroom as well as removing the ability to report harassment when they go to their assigned bathroom. I’ve watched protections for trans prisoners across the board rescinded. This gives these trans prisoners the “option” of going into prisons that are incongruent with their gender identity, leaving them at an even higher risk for violence, or face solitary confinement for their own protection. Recently, the department of health and human services has proposed rules to “protect” doctors who would deny a trans patient health care based on a religious or moral basis ignoring the Hippocratic Oath. They’re trying to erase trans people at every level of government and from the public eye and take away any protections that have been put in place. The only way to fight this kind of hatred and bigotry is with exposure to trans people and education.

I love horror, it’s been a part of my life since the beginning. My first movie ever was Beetlejuice at the age of three, and following soon after I saw Ghostbusters. Those movies sparked a lifelong interest in the supernatural. I began scouring the kids section of the local video rental store for any kind of kid-friendly spooky and supernatural movies, and I rented them all; Mr. Boogedy, Bride of Boogedy, Ghost Fever, The Addams Family, and the Universal Monster movies. You name it.

My father is a huge fan of the Universal Monsters and likes weird fiction such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. I grew up around horror and media with horrific elements. My favorite game on my NES was Maniac Mansion which in itself is a parody of 1950’s Mad Scientist/Atomic Age horror movies; it was my introduction to the tropes of that genre. Eventually I ran out of age-appropriate spooky movies in the kid section and that was it for a while.

My father isn’t much of a fan of anything other than the older Hammer and Universal horror flicks so I didn’t really have any exposure to anything else until I was around 8 years old. I was at a friend’s birthday party and they decided to rent Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh. I had no idea what I was in for. I got partway through the movie, watching it in my peripheral vision. I was terrified. I basically went from black and white Dracula and The Addams Family to a man being suspended in the air with a huge hook in his back, blood spewing out of his mouth. It traumatized me. I became hysterical. My parents had to come pick me up, I didn’t feel safe even with all my friends at the sleepover. I just wanted to go home.

I was completely turned off by anything horror for the next few years… then I turned 11. My father and I were in Blockbuster, he walked up to me with a tape in hand and I noticed that it wasn’t a rental in a hard case, but rather a shrink wrapped, cardboard case. He thrust it into my hand and said, “I think it’s time you watch this.” I didn’t know what to think. It was a movie called Halloween. The cover freaked me out. There was a scared girl in the forefront and a creepy, out of focus man in the background. The man had a white, expressionless mask. It got under my skin and made my imagination go wild about what could happen. I’ve had horrible nightmares since a young age, I should note. They’ve been of a completely white man looking like he were made of marble coming to kill me and my family in various gruesome ways while being completely silent and expressionless. Naturally, my brain was applying these disturbing images to what Halloween 1978 might be.

When I got home that night I shoved the tape into a drawer and that’s where it sat for a while. Each day I’d approach the drawer and open it, looking at the videotape. I was having visions of Tony Todd hooking a man floating in my head, along with the marble white man of my nightmares. I slammed the drawer shut. Five days later, I finally worked up the courage to put it in the VCR. I remember this night vividly because this is the night my life changed.

It was dark outside, the air was very crisp. It was late August and fall was around the corner. I was alone in the living room with the lights down low. My brother and aunt were in his room playing a board game. I hit play on the VCR and John Carpenter’s synth score began. I was so excited and scared that I barely blinked; I was transfixed. Once the credits rolled, I realized it wasn’t as bad as I’d made it out to be in my mind. Where was all this blood and imagery I’d built up over the past five days? I wondered what other horror movies were like since this one wasn’t so bad? When my Dad came home later that night I told him about my experience watching Halloween. He invited me into his room and pulled a tape out of his sock drawer. It was a copy of Night of the Living Dead. He didn’t want me or my brother to accidentally stumble upon it. The difference in my family is that instead of hiding porn in sock drawers, it was horror movies.

Shortly after this point, things in my family life began to take a sharp turn downwards and it got very abusive and scary. Horror became my escape, my comfort. It was very hard week to week. And then I found Monstervision. I found that if I could get to Monstervision and Joe Bob Briggs, I could survive the week. It became my focal point; for years this kept me going. That’s where the obsession took hold. I learned so much, I saw so many new movies, I lost myself in the stories behind the movies and actors to the point that I was able to distract myself from my daily life. I’m forever thankful and grateful to the crew of the show, as they are one of the reasons I’m still here two decades later.

Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters were my entry points, Halloween and Night of the Living Dead were what piqued my interest, and Monstervision made it go from simple interest to full blown obsession. It hasn’t slowed even a bit in 20+ years. I’m just as excited about horror now as I was then watching Halloween on that crisp August night two decades (and change) ago.

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Recently I watched Horror Noire. It’s a powerful documentary about the representation of black people in the horror genre from its inception. The growing AND positive representation was a wonderful thing to see. It filled my heart with joy. I loved it. I know how it feels to be under represented or represented completely wrong in a genre you love SO MUCH. As long as I’ve been watching horror I’ve yet to see a character that represented me. It’s been close with a few representations of lesbians, but not as a transwoman, and especially not as a transwoman who is a lesbian. “We’ve always loved horror movies, but they haven’t always loved us.” This line, in my experience is true. Positive representation for those like me are scant. Just have a look at Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, Tourist Trap, and Ticked Off Trannies with Knives. I haven’t seen an accurate depiction of a trans woman on screen in horror yet, and I’m patiently waiting for my moment of finally connecting to a character where I can say, “Look! It’s me! I’m worthy enough to be included!”

Some of what I’m touching on here I’m going to write further in-depth about at a later date but I still wanted to bring these ideas up as a primer to get you thinking about them before then and to give you an idea of where I’m gonna be heading with this column, Trapped By Gender.

As I watched Horror Noire I began to notice little things, little similarities in representation, and even cooler still a similar trajectory of better representation for trans people. A comment that resonated with me and reminded me of similar conversations I’ve had with my friends at various points was about how in the beginning of film as a medium, representations of black people were used most frequently for comedy. It got me thinking of all the times that cisgender (Cis comes from Latin meaning “on this side of” while the trans in transgender is the opposite in meaning “on the other side of”) characters in sitcoms, movies, and sketch comedy had to put on a dress because it was deemed funny, or they would try to “trick” some guy into a kiss for a canned laugh track. It had me thinking of the times that I’ve seen some dude put on a fat suit and “act” like a lady for wacky, funny antics. It’s either played for laughs or humiliation which leads to laughs for the other characters and the audience. That kind of representation is the stuff that kept me from accepting and being able to explore my true self for a long time.

One commentator talked about how at first black people weren’t even in the movies; it’d be a white person in black face, then eventually they were just there as aliens. I seem to remember trans people being literal aliens in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (I still love you, Tim Curry! Forever and for always!). A more recent example of trans people not even being cast makes me think of Jeffrey Tambor, a cisgender man, who not only played a transwoman on the show Transparent but allegedly proceeded to sexually assault the transwoman THAT THEY HIRED TO HELP HIM LEARN AND CONVEY THE REALITY AND TRUTH OF BEING A TRANSWOMAN! Why not just hire the transwoman instead of subjecting her to sexual trauma and forcing her into the marginalized position of teaching a cisgender person how a transgender person thinks, feels, and lives?

There are so many transgender actors out there already, and some of them even play in horror movies. Despite the reviews, THEY DID hire Laverne Cox to play Frank n Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show remake. There was also an effort at Netflix to hire a Non-Binary (A person that is neither male nor female) individual to play an NB person on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Even with the shoddy representation out there right now regarding trans people, IT IS GETTING BETTER.

As time moves on, things progress. They never stay the same no matter how badly some people want them to. Society as a whole progresses, and those who have their heels dug into the sand will find the ground beneath their feet disappearing and their arguments inconsequential as they’re left behind with outdated ideas and hatred. Those who wish to erase us from existence will find that impossible to do because as history shows, progressive ideas win out.

Your Horror Tran,

Alice