Gender nonconformity in horror has a weird track record. Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill, though never explicitly mentioned or debunked as not trans, carry a reputation of giving transfeminine people a bad reputation. Films like Sleepaway Camp and Dressed to Kill have more explicitly trans antagonists and provide further fuel to the idea that gender nonconforming people are irredeemably evil. But quite a few trans horror fans online (including myself) have been reevaluating characters that they feel exhibit traits or characteristics they relate to. And, while a good chunk of characters have no basis outside of self-indulgence, one character in particular has some evidence behind his new status as a trans icon.

trans headcanons are one of the most freeing things you can do as a trans fan. i will slap gender onto my favorite characters and you cannot stop me
— char (@alterego) January 5, 2021

Something that cisgender people don’t get is gender as something closer to a performance art rather than a concrete monolith or spectrum. The lack of understanding manifests itself in a lot of annoying ways: trying to make nonbinary a third monolithic gender is the most obvious (seriously if I have to hear “girls, gays, and theys” one more time I’ll start biting people). Because of the societal urge to create nice little boxes, the myriad of factors influencing gender get glossed over.

For example, the biggest influence on my gender is my sexuality: because I—a lesbian—have no need or want to perform anything for men, my connection to femininity is essentially nonexistent. Friends of mine have cited a disdain for the colonial gender binary or neurodivergency as other factors in why their relationship with gender is what it is.

Tobe Hooper’s debut feature The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is known for being a seminal work in the horror genre. It’s credited with being the start of the boom in the slasher subgenre. It’s been the subject of countless academic studies—most famously Carol Clover’s analysis in Men, Women, and Chainsaws—and inspired several popular horror franchises. Arguably its most obvious contribution to the cultural zeitgeist is the main “antagonist” Leatherface: a large, lumbering wall of pure survival instinct and raw power wielding a massive chainsaw used to prepare human prey for meals.

I use the term antagonist sparingly because Leatherface and his two brothers—later named the Sawyer family—are forced into cannibalism due to the 1973 recession that impacted rural areas significantly hard; this combined with the verbal attacks thrown at Leatherface by his older brother make him a more sympathetic, human killer than his later counterparts. However there’s another aspect to Leatherface that separates him from other slashers of his ilk: his masks and how he uses them throughout his onscreen appearance.

Having a masked killer in a slasher movie is pretty much guaranteed. Michael Myers has the modified Shatner, Jason Voorhees has the hockey mask, all the killers in the Scream cinematic universe don the Ghostface mask. Arguably, Leatherface also started this mask trend with his grotesque creations of dried skin. His first diversion from the now-prototypical masked slasher is the three distinct iterations of this mask each corresponding with the task he’s performing.

The most iconic mask worn in his on-screen debut is used for his procuring and preparation of his victims, the “Grandma” mask is briefly shown and is worn during housework, and the “Pretty Lady” mask is for dinner. His masks don’t serve the typical utilitarian purpose of obscuring his face as a way to seem more than man—it does the opposite. Obviously the fact his masks are made out of other people’s faces is meant to instill a similar brand of fear, but the masks are almost characters themselves. Unlike the other killers mentioned, there is no surprise unmasking of Leatherface; his true face is never revealed. This makes his masks his identity, emphasized further by the fact that he has different masks for whatever role he decides to perform.

Compared to Psycho and its portrayal of a gender nonconforming character, Leatherface is progressive. While Norman Bates has this blatant tie between his murderous tendencies and his relationship with gender (making the film painfully transmisogynistic), Leatherface’s choice to change roles has absolutely nothing to do with him and his family’s deranged eating habits. There’s no trying to explain why he changes his masks with some half-assed “psychosis” or “alternate personality” mess, Leatherface just does what makes him comfortable. Sure his method of self-expression is macabre and unsanitary, but it’s uniquely his.

Did Tobe Hooper seek out to make a relatively progressive trans character? Probably not. The masks Leatherface wears feed more into the antithesis of Norman Rockwell that the Sawyer family house provides. Nonetheless, whether intentional or not, Leatherface is an oddly accurate portrayal of gender nonconformity - one that trans horror fans latch onto to this day.