the big gay history of venom
justtt the whole thing. focusing on queer themes and matters of morality, because it turns out those things are pretty intertwined. explaining the major characterisation split that makes it damn near impossible to think of venom canon as one cohesive whole.
part 1: where do the the gays get off, anyway, sinking their sexy little claws so deep into venom?
good news! venom is queer at the conceptual level.
and we owe it all to: symbiotes.
1.1: the birds and bees, symbiote-style
first of all, the only two facts about symbiotes that have remained untouched by retcons and rereretcons over the years are these:
they reproduce asexually.
this means that symbiotes operate outside of the concepts of sex and gender. human standards do not apply to them. they’ve got no frame of reference.
so, when we do introduce a symbiote to our cultural context - by, in-universe, bringing it to earth, or, on a meta level, it being written for humans, by humans - there’s always, always something rife with queer appeal going on.
the venom symbiote would, in human terms, best be described as agender or genderfluid. pronoun usage for it has varied more widely than you’d think, but it has never expressed any objections to or preferences for any of them or any gendered terms. by all accounts, it simply doesn’t seem to care.
“it” has been most widely used for it, both negatively to imply that the symbiote is a thing, an animal, and positively to mean that it is non-human, fundamentally different. i use “it” for the latter reason. eddie, in the majority of depictions, does, too. the symbiote, itself, has also used “it” to refer to other symbiotes.
of course, one also has to consider that the singular “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun still hasn’t found widespread acceptance, meaning that “it” originally established itself due to a perceived lack of other options, too. as of 2018, the rex symbiote has been the only character to use the singular “they”.
then there’s flash, who goes from using “it” to using “he” to signify that he’s gone from considering the symbiote a suit to considering the symbiote a person.
and then writer dan slott, very unusually, has eddie refer to the symbiote as “he” and a “guy”, too, due to… personal preference, i guess.
amazing spider-man (1963) #800
so then you might think that the symbiote, by itself, skews more towards the masculine, right? not necessarily. symbiotes develop every aspect of their identity in the context of symbiosis, the venom symbiote especially so. with a male host, the symbiote, too, is more commonly thought of as male.
with a female host - specifically, with spider-girl from earth-982 -
again, spider-man’s use of “it” contrasts spider-girl’s use of “she” to showcase his negative and her positive attitude towards the symbiote. also, this sudden gendering happens during the symbiote’s final acts of redemption, likely intended to endear it to the reader, too.
now, if you’re thinking “hey, that kind of looks like a pattern wherein the symbiote being seen as sympathetic is linked to it being slotted into human social norms of what a person should be, including “either male or female"” - you know, you might be on to something.
one way or another, the venom symbiote’s been around the block, pronoun-wise. in the text, it displays a complete lack of regard for the very concept of gender, along with a readiness to go along with whatever’s projected on it.
now, of course, not every symbiote’s like the venom symbiote!
the toxin symbiote is also implied to be agender, but actually tries to bring this up to rebuff the assumption that it must be a boy by default. this makes a great deal of sense in the context of the toxin symbiote’s character and relationship with its host. defending aspects of its identity and worldview is pretty much all it does.
in this reference-ridden fever dream i’d need another research essay to try to make sense of, the carnage symbiote takes a female form, and then -
writer zeb wells consistently has cletus refer to his symbiote as a “she” -
- which cullen bunn follows up on.
and i mostly want to bring it up because you might think, if the carnage symbiote’s picked a binary gender and stuck with it, then that, right there, is a symbiote without queer appeal, which you said didn’t exist, right?
wrong, of course. note the crucial: picked. “female” certainly isn’t what the carnage symbiote was assigned, since she wasn’t assigned anything.
there’s no way to lose! any given symbiote either adheres to symbiote standards, being some flavour of trans by human standards, or adheres to human standards, being some flavour of trans by symbiote standards.
1.2: the alien is still in “love” with me!
let’s focus on the venom symbiote, now. here’s one of the few facts about it that’s remained relatively intact, though it’s been twisted this way and that: its feelings for peter parker were not platonic.
amazing spider-man (1963) #317
from the symbiote’s introduction, it was established that peter had, inadvertently, taught it human emotions, and that one of these emotions was love - soon followed by heartbreak, neither of which it knew how to handle, at all.
we won’t look at the rest of the symbiote’s romantic history for now - we’re looking at things that are inherent, things that are universally applicable. so for now, all we need to know is this: the symbiote is, without a doubt, capable of experiencing romantic attraction.
it is also, without a doubt, incapable of experiencing straight attraction.
that comes down to, well, its lack of a gender, mostly, but is intensified by the fact that the people it grows romantically possessive of are generally its hosts, and- remember how it kind of matches them, melds with them, is perceived as part of them? it truly doesn’t matter whether the host is male or female or something else, it’s always gonna end up… well, kind of gay. always.
venom: the madness #1. please do not read this.
the other kind of attraction the symbiote is, by its nature, implied to experience isn’t to its host, but along with its host, sharing their attraction to someone else. symbiote and host experience each other’s feelings with an immediacy that can make them hard to tell apart, after all.
deadpool: back in black #5. feel free to read this one.
but symbiosis is a two-way street. the symbiote’s been attracted to men. all of its long-term hosts are men. that’s right, i’m going there, try to stop me. none of their combined “venom” forms can be called straight, because half of venom isn’t, and the other half is, at the very least, getting front row seats to the experience of non-straight attraction.
1.3: new and gruesome ways to slip beneath the dress code
let’s talk about eddie, then. here’s a fact that’s been denied only by the greatest of cowards: this guy’s a body builder who’s got every single inch of his skin covered by sentient goo. he is bare ass naked underneath whenever he can get away with it. nobody forced him to shed the notion of underwear in favour of having his junk gently cradled at all times, he just thought that sounded neat because he’s completely detached from the social dogma.
the madness again. sorry.
this shit is inherently sensual and the homoerotic imagery kind of draws itself. pretty sure just eddie ending up so very naked so very often counts. these comics aren’t exactly aimed at women.
amazing spider-man, lethal protector and funeral pyre, here today representing the 90s.
you might’ve noticed something more specific about the symbiote’s habit of melting off of eddie, too: “eddie being hurt = eddie being naked” is the magic formula that makes him viable for sexualisation by comic book artists and audiences in the way big beefy men usually aren’t.
you know that debate wherein men’s bodies in comics aren’t/weren’t shown for titillation, but for identification, for power fantasies? eddie’s got that, but he’s also showing the most skin whenever he’s at his most submissive and vulnerable, and that really screws with heteronormative tropes!
mostly spider-man (1990) #37
is this naked chained up damsel in distress hanging from the ceiling and writhing in agony not oddly familiar??? have you not seen this somewhere before?
except it wasn’t a dude, then, drooling on his heaving pecs.
anyway. venom is gay, and we haven’t even gotten into the canonical matter of host loving symbiote!
part 2: the actual chronological breakdown. coming, perhaps, someday.
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