#doubleatlas

As part of our #BeyondTheStage programming for MJ Kaufman's "Double Atlas," we're diving into the horror canon! According to MJ, "queer vampire narratives draw on a complicated history of iconography that is both problematic and reclaimed. The following is a list of great queer horror stories!"

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1871)

Last year I wrote for two seasons of a horror TV show. Uncharted terrain for me, I had to get up to speed on the horror cannon. I would leave the writers’ room each day with a list of horror films to watch that night. Soon I had fallen in love with the genre. But not with its transphobia.  Horror, it seemed to me, had a habit of using trans characters to exploit viewers’ discomfort with gender and sexuality, particularly their fears and biases around misogyny, transphobia and homophobia. Trans characters showed up rarely, and when they did, they were problematic villains or helpless victims, their stories centered on cheap reveal plots. Also they were almost exclusively transwomen. Like a microcosm for our larger culture, horror had almost no trans representation, and what it did have was deeply harmful.