How horror did trans women dirty
Hey, horror hottie.
Are you sufficiently scared by the news these days? I am. Scared enough to scrap my April newsletter draft in favour of this new (but late) one.
In case you missed it, the UK Supreme Court recently ruled that the legal definition of a woman will now be based on biological sex. This ruling affects more than just trans women — intersex, non-binary, trans men, and non-feminine passing people will also be impacted. And all because of a deeply held (totally misguided) fear of trans women. But where does this fear come from? Certainly not facts or statistics, which show the contrary.
When looking for a cause, you need only glance back over the last few decades of cinema to see that horror has—unfortunately—had some hand in it. Let's take a look, shall we?
The evolution of the 'trans killer' horror trope
Sixties: Psycho
Horror has long been a genre that mirrors social fears. You can tell the social anxiety du jour at any point in recent history just by looking at that period's most popular horror narratives.
When looking at trans horror—namely fear of trans women—Alfred Hitchcock's 1960's box office smash Psycho is arguably the most notable starting point. Although Norman Bates isn't a trans woman (like, at all), his modus operandi involves dressing as his long-dead mother.
As the audience, we discover this in a dramatic and horrifying grand reveal at the film's climax, in which Bates lunges from the doorway, dressed in his mother's clothes, knife in hand.
Although you can argue—as I have—that Bates isn't a trans woman, to an uneducated audience...he is. Moreover, Psycho paints gender non-conformism as a symptom of severe mental illness. As Red Broadwell from Gayly Dreadful points out, "Norman Bates has this blatant tie between his murderous tendencies and his relationship with gender (making the film painfully transmisogynistic)[...]"
(Not so) fun fact, Psycho is actually the second horror film Hitchcock made about trans women — he kicked things off early in 1930 with Murder!. Seems the guy loved making money off transphobia 😒
Seventies: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Skipping forward into the '70s, we see the impact of movements focused on women's rights, queer liberation, and civil rights. And where there are social movements, there is inevitably fear and pushback.
At this time, horror mostly fell into two distinct flavours — fear around social change and the horrors of the Vietnam War. The former tended to be camp and low-budget. The latter a hyper-real, gritty, exploitation-style horror. Tobe Hooper's 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre falls into the latter category.
Leatherface is one of horror's most iconic villains (in fact, TTCM is often credited as kickstarting the slasher horror genre). The chainsaw-wielding cannibal wears the faces of various female victims like he's playing dress-up, switching characters for different chores, events, or moods.
Although some trans communities feel Leatherface is strangely progressive in his authenticity, it can be argued that through him, TTCM unintentionally feeds into the transphobic relationship between transness and psychopathic mental illness, and the idea of trans women being males using the female visage as a costume.
Eighties: Sleepaway Camp
In 1983, we got Robert Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp, a horror film in which the killer is revealed to be Peter Baker, a teenage boy whose girl-obsessed aunt forces him to live as his dead sister, Angela.
Like Psycho, this film relies on the unexpected twist to shock the viewer and amplify the horror of the reveal. And, hot damn, it worked. Sleepaway Camp has one of the most iconic endings in horror — the once timid Angela slowly standing to reveal her naked body, mouth contorted in an unholy cry, eyes wide.
"[Sleepaway Camp's transphobia] comes from simple things such as saying, 'she’s a boy,' a transphobic statement to make based on seeing the genitalia alone. Genitals and chromosomes do not a gender make," says Alice Collins for Bloody Disgusting.
"Another transphobic issue within the film is people thinking that Angela killed only because she was transgender. This issue lays more with the audience but the film doesn’t really dispel the theory until the sequels."
According to Collins, Sleepaway Camp is a divisive film in the trans community. While some feel its portrayal of trans women is harmful, Collins can also appreciate it as a form of revenge fantasy. When so many aggressors are tirelessly fighting to take away her human rights or challenge her identity, I can't say I blame her!
Nineties: The Silence of the Lambs
Jump forward a decade, and trans fear is still thriving. Enter Jonathan Demme's 1993 horror/thriller, The Silence of the Lambs.
The film's killer, Buffalo Bill, is not trans (Hannibal Lecter even confirms this) but believes he is, abducting women to kill and flay them so he can make a female skin suit.
"His arc is undeniably one rooted in transness — becoming a woman is central to his motivations," says Stacey Henley for SYFY. Henley goes on to say that, although TSotL is one of the more positive trans-adjacent horror films and attempts to challenge some of the more harmful elements of the 'trans killer' trope, it's still not great when viewed through a modern lens.
"[...] it couldn't escape the sensibilities of its time and still ends up falling into a lot of problematic pitfalls. Whether it accepts the label or not, it was one of the last films to feature the trans killer trope so overtly, and looking back on it [...], we can see how it differed from the trans films before it."
Positive trans representation in horror
Luckily, the '00s began to usher in slow change (the most notable—and surprising—early example being Seed of Chucky) but several decades of harmful horror narratives have certainly had an impact on the minds of the general public.
Fortunately for us horror fans, the genre isn't just a mirror for society's fears. It's also a safe haven for marginalised individuals, contradictory as that may sound!
With that in mind, I wanted to do my favourite genre justice by pointing to the films that have kick-started the redemption arc. If you love horror and want to support positive trans representation, get a couple of these beauties into your eyeballs...
To support the trans community during this utterly shite time, you can get involved with one of these fab causes, write to your local MP, or sign one of the many petitions to challenge the ruling.
Stay safe, folks!