Jun 10

Jun 10 [Pride 2022] Signed, Sealed Delivered: Asexuality and Horror

dreadful, Gayly, Gayly dreadful, Gayly Helpful, LGBTQ, Movies, Pride 2022

PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO THE GAYLY HELPFUL FUNDRAISER FOR THE TRANSGENDER LAW CENTER

The horror and science-fiction genres have been political and LGBTQ+ since their creation. Period. Signed, sealed, delivered.

Thank you, Mary Shelley.

One thing that the horror and science fiction genres offer to audiences more than other genres is a larger room for interpretations. While many of the stories in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone focus on social and political commentaries, they could also overlap with stories about LGBTQ+ lives. It’s all about your perspective and how you view the stories.

As for me and my perspectives- it’s been about a year now since I first identified myself as being on the asexual spectrum. It didn’t feel like there was one solid “Eurika!” moment but rather a series of me taking note about how I felt about things with partners past and present that involved sex. Years back when I first realized I wasn’t straight, I never actually felt like I was wrong until someone told me I was. Even then, I didn’t feel like I was a freak.

When I was first realizing I might be asexual, I did feel like a freak. I guess sometimes I still do. I’ve grown to accept my asexuality as a part of my queerness, but it’s still a process. Sex seems like such an integral part of life and society, no matter if you’re straight/gay/lesbian/bi/pan/queer, so it’s still easy to feel like more of an outsider when you look at sex and just feel “meh”.

So many horror stories use sex as a tool somehow. Randy’s rules in Scream say, “Sex equals death,” then he goes on to point out, “it’s a sin factor.” Sex is used to drive story plots a lot, be it the campy movie where the killer is waiting for the couple to be vulnerable mid-coitus or during the sweet, sweet afterglow or the naked girl running screaming from the monster or, more in a more serious way, the rape revenge subgenre. Sometimes it’s there as a joke and sometimes it’s there to address something more serious but, either way, starting around the 1970’s, sex was common in horror.

As far as sex and sexuality, we’re seeing more open LGBTQ+ creators and characters as the years go on. The standards for those characters are low, meaning that they’re not the butt of the jokes and they don’t die, but it’s a bar a lot of stories still fail to get over- looking over at Willow and Tara, to say the least. We only just got our first openly LGBTQ+ character in the Scream franchise and she lived (for now).

While there are a good handful of horror characters we can feel are asexual, there haven’t been any explicitly open asexual characters. Off the top of my head, I feel that Nancy of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Sidney of the Scream franchise could be asexual. And before you argue “Well, they both have kids so they must have had sex-” there are parents and married couples who are on the asexual spectrum. Meaningful relationships and marriages aren’t solely based on sex.

While those on the asexual spectrum might not crave sex, we crave the countless other forms of intimacy that aren’t sexual. Cuddling, sharing memes or inside jokes, sharing food or knowing someone’s favorite candy, and most definitely watching horror movies together.