chat

I agree and would also add transmedicalism and transmisogyny to the list of harmful stereotypes perpetuated in that subgenre. To me, movies like Psycho or Silence of the Lambs are in the same tier of hateful propaganda as Birth of a Nation. But they have normalized their message so successfully that even in leftist spaces, people will just prove my point by doubling down and outright tell me "well the killers in these movies aren't actually trans women, look they even have a gatekeepy psychiatrist on screen who explains to us why that's just a dangerous man in a dress."

And what makes matters worse is that horror as an inherently transgressive medium actually makes it very easy to get away with a message that would be too subversive in other forms of genre fiction. You can make the perpetrators of institutional violence the monsters, or you can at least openly symapthisze with the monster. That's something you can get away with in horror. And i don't mind a sympathetic monster. It's not bad to teach people that the scary outcast actually has a point and deserves to be treated with kindness instead of being attacked on sight. Yet most writers and directors choose not to do that and stick to reactionary formulas.