Surrounded by science and technology, with very few frontiers left to penetrate, it's an odd thing for a 21st century society to continue to lean on monster stories. From movies to games, it's become a vast industry of entertainment to explore what we know are mere figments of our imaginations—or at least, artifacts of our cognition. Monsters aren't real, but they are still among us.
Fear of the unknown becomes encapsulated in the bodies and behaviors of monsters. Any decent horror film exploits the deep, ancient parts of our brains to cause even the most hearty and posturing human to feel something. A tingle on the spine, a falling sensation in the chest, or a subtle feeling of dread teasing your mind.
Monster stories spoke to me as a kid in a way that other stories did not initially. I was a closeted queer kid without any concept of why or how I was different than my peers, yet I still knew that I was. I felt like a monster from stories I'd read or even ones I'd created: Something different, something others feared, despite being benevolent—the good guy. Being misunderstood and misrepresented makes it easy to relate to the creatures we've invented since the beginning of our humanity. And the worst part is that we usually make monsters out of humans.
Monstrous
I just finished a delightful, queer monster book by John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In. It has everything my inner child craves in a monster story: action, conflict, dark humor, secrets, and companionship. It is possibly my all-time favorite. I can't recommend it enough—no matter your orientation or identity.
We're dropped instantly into a dangerous situation for our protagonist, Shesheshen, an amorphous creature who can absorb items (usually body parts, but other things, too) to help her shapeshift to take the form she needs. She often re-works the things she has swallowed to construct a form that passes as human.
Immediately, this monster reflects the queer experience of "passing as straight," which is how we often describe ourselves when we're closeted. Keeping up appearances that make it seem like you belong, that your experience of the world is the same as all of the straight / cisgender people around you. Even though in Wiswell's world, being queer is not really seen as out of the ordinary or monstrous (as it certainly is in the real world), Shesheshen reflects the stress of hiding in plain sight as she flees from monster hunters into a nearby town, trying to blend in with the locals.
Secrets, lying, and pretending may not be monstrous behaviors in themselves, but from experience I know that the weight of these things are harmful over time. It's part of the minority stress that I experienced as an outcast, even though it was never overt (I was lucky to never be accused of being gay or made fun of for my gender non-conformity in appearance as a kid). I, like Shesheshen, found myself in dangerous circumstances in public. I didn't have to be the target of bullying or rage to know that I could easily become the target if I did not wear my mask well.
As Shesheshen works to hide as a human, she observes that this town has already started celebrating in anticipation that the monster hunters who were sent into her lair had succeeded in slaying her. She notes:
These emotions she didn't know how to carry. There was the insult of having her death celebrated when she wasn't even dead. When she was, in fact, amidst them all right now, and only out here because they'd sent killers to fail in her home. But this. To be dying from the poison of those assassins, and while looking for emergency food to survive the injury, to be told by a drunk rich boy with inconvenient hair that she had never really existed. Now their songs made unkind sense to her. This reverie was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.
Part 1, Chapter 3, transcribed from the audio book (punctuation is my best guess).
We, here in the twenty-first century, have an effective strategy for getting rid of monsters: make them non-existent. To wipe away identity is a very effective means of violence without getting any gore on your hands! We've seen this as trans people have been persecuted in the U.S. by removing any acknowledgement of their identity on passports, IDs, and other legal documents. Oh, you're trans or intersex? Sorry, you have to fit into either M or F on this form—and it better match the arbitrary M or F that someone decided fit you best at birth.
Of course, this tactic isn't actually new. Other communities have been devastated this way for thousands of years. Indigenous people all throughout the world have suffered this erasure of identity. Ancient cultures and languages have been punished into secrecy or out of existence by invaders and colonizers. What great losses have we inflicted upon each other as the drive to eradicate, conquer, and assimilate have been implemented throughout history?
The Conflict
The title of the book haunted the entire story. While our heroic shapeshifter falls in love with a human despite all the dangers that it poses to Shesheshen's own life, there's still the uncomfortable "truth" that accompanies her monstrous nature: For Shesheshen, to love someone means to build a nest in that person—the body becoming a source of food for the offspring to devour and disintegrate entirely. A disturbing likeness to parasitic insects that can inject their eggs through a stinger into another host that is often eaten alive from inside out.
How can I love this main character, as I am so prone to do, having followed her journey and empathized with her so long, knowing that the outcome will be the utter, painful destruction of her love? I listened with rapt attention throughout the book, dreading the final conflict when everything is exposed; when both characters fully understand one another. How can I love a character like that?
The question gives me pause now, because I know it's a question all of my family and friends have had to grapple with once they know and see me as I am. How can they love a person like me?
Maybe that seems harsh—maybe you're upset that I might think that you would think that. Yet, I know well that we often think thoughts and feel feelings that we do not want. We all make mistakes, for sure, but we also fail to be perfectly whole and consistent in the way that our perception of ourselves pretends that we are. We can have thoughts that horrify us, like a mother thinking that she might not be able to love her queer child, then regretting the thought, disgusted with herself.
I think when we encounter disgust in a moral conflict—like whether you can love a queer family member or friend—it is an opportunity to reflect more deeply, rather than a sign that you are unequivocally right. Like my therapist told me, "Thoughts are not facts." We still have to deal with them, however, and explore why we might be having these thoughts or feelings. Is there a system that has inserted its own ideas or values into yours? Do those ideas and values serve you?
Disgust is seemingly an integral part of our experience with humanity and monstrosity. It is summed up well in the book, On Monsters, by Stephen T. Asma, page 184:
The philosopher of horror Noel Carroll...arrived at his own mismatch theory by noticing that most horror monsters are disgusting as well as threatening. He argues that human beings seem especially disgusted by "impurity." Things that we find impure and consider to be abominations are usually interstitial entities, in between normal categories of being.
To be queer is to be in-between. Even the word queer carries the baggage of "appearing, feeling, or behaving otherwise than is usual or normal." It is very easy to demonize a smaller group of people—especially those you don't know personally—and exploit our intuitive sense of disgust by pointing it towards those people you want to exclude, dominate, or destroy. We've been doing this...always.
Disgust can be helpful for us in identifying danger—such as encountering...things...that could carry disease. We know there is danger to be found even among our own social circles: emotional and social dangers that are every bit as real and harmful as physical dangers. So perhaps disgust is an attempt to help us sort through the possible dangers that we face. Sometimes it also promotes pro-social behavior, like refusing to take part in a system or a policy or a company that harms vulnerable people for profit or power.
The problem with ascribing monstrosity onto a population of humans, wholesale, is that the perspective of human vs. monster is completely relative. Throughout U.S. history (that which I'm most familiar), the LGBTQ+ community has been called demonic by churches, criminals by law-makers, and mentally-disordered by psychologists. Monsters, indeed. But as more time, experience, advocacy, and information has been collected, allies find themselves in the uncomfortable space, knowing that they may have at one time thought of the people they love as monsters, when the real monstrosity was that deception—the removal of humanity from other humans.
Demonization of people is not a mere thought-experiment or innocent theological argument. It has measured, harmful impacts.
In a society like ours where homosexuals are uniformly treated with disparagement or contempt—to say nothing about outright hostility—it would be surprising indeed if substantial numbers of them did not suffer from an impaired self-image and some degree of unhappiness with their stigmatized status. … It is manifestly unwarranted and inaccurate, however, to attribute such neuroticism, when it exists, to intrinsic aspects of homosexuality itself. (p. 400)
—Homosexual Behavior: A Modern Reappraisal (1980), Judd Marmor, as quoted in the Abstract of Prejudice, Social Stress, and Mental Health in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Populations: Conceptual Issues and Research Evidence
The Way Out
Monsters are alive and well in our minds—that may not be something we can evolve out of for thousands or even millions of years more. Trying to outrun our monsters may be as effective as running from our own shadow. Pretending something (or someone) isn't there is also a poor choice in strategy—and may even end up harming us in the ripples caused by our social violence.
Instead, we can take our modern-day approach further. The goal isn't to erase the existence of these "monsters," but to examine them more deeply. If the fear of the unknown is ultimately what a monster is, then we ought to learn more about what we don't know. Dehumanizing someone makes it impossible for us to access our empathy, and in a way, we stray from our own humanity at the same time.
"...we must see the battle—at least for a moment—from the deck of the enemy warship, because each person has his own perspective, his own reality, no matter how much it may differ from ours."
—The Gift of Fear, pg 109, Gavin De Becker
Monsters also provide us an opportunity for self-reflection. We can all relate to monsters in some way, because we've all made choices in the murky waters of ethical and moral conundrums that have harmed others, ourselves, or were simply wrong. We are all a part of systems that are bigger than us that perpetrate horrors on people that we don't usually see up close.
Just like they reiterated many times in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we have to always be questioning, "who is the real enemy?" When it comes to humans, our intuition can be deceiving, and outside of immediate danger (please still trust your gut and stay safe) I would suggest that we use the time that we have in safety to remain curious and open-minded.
If our world seems teeming with more monsters than it has in the past, why might that be the case? Are we being manipulated to see more monsters among friends? Could we be wrong about the monsters we've been taught to hate? What needs are in question—are my needs not being met, or are my "enemy's" needs not being met? Is there space for us to both exist as we are?
I think the ultimate lesson from Someone You Can Build a Nest In is perfectly captured by this review of the book from The Guardian:
“This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding.”