#theme: queerness

[herinsectreflection]

I'm So Evil, And Skanky, And I Think I'm Kinda Gay (Bad Girls)

In 1872, a full twenty-five years before the release of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu published Carmilla. This story depicts the relationship between the young and innocent protagonist, Laura, and the confident and mysterious title character, Carmilla. A friendship blossoms between Carmilla and Laura and the two become close, but over time Laura becomes suspicious of Carmilla’s strange behaviour. She flees from her, and it is revealed that Carmilla is a vampire who has been preying on Laura – feeding on her nightly and attempting to turn her into a creature of darkness. Carmilla is confronted, killed, has her head removed and body burned, and the ashes of both are thrown into the river. 

A simple story and much shorter than a true novel, Carmilla’s historical impact outweighs its length. Not only is it one of the earliest and most notable pieces of vampire fiction, and a great influence on Dracula itself, it is also the origin point of one of the most controversial tropes in this genre of fiction: the Lesbian Vampire.

The vampire myth as constructed by Dracula and its compatriots positions vampires as a corrupting sexual influence upon women. Older men sneak into the bedrooms of virginal young women, penetrate them, and therefore transform them into something tragic and ungodly. They personify a threat to patriarchy; a threat perceived in the form of female sexuality. The idea is that an unmarried woman having symbolic sex will irrevocably twist them into some kind of monster.

The Lesbian Vampire exists as an extension of this idea, focusing on one of the most diabolical threats to patriarchal ideology – a woman who sexually desires another woman. Carmilla’s victims are exclusively female, and her pursuit of Laura is very visibly romantic in nature. She kisses Laura, confesses love for her, the two take walks in the moonlight and embrace each other. This is what leads to Carmilla feeding upon Laura and threatening her death. Symbolically, there is no separation between the two. The danger Laura is in is caused by same-sex desire. Carmilla’s villainy is her lesbianism. The trope does not have to include vampires in a strict sense, but more generally the link of sapphic seduction leading to corruption.

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[herinsectreflection]

I Guess Her Generation Isn't Cool With Witchcraft (Gingerbread)

On the 24th May 1988 the Conservative government of Great Britain, led by Margaret Thatcher, passed a law known officially as the United Kingdom Local Government Act 1988. This Act had many effects, but by far its most famous and influential section was the part that has come to be known as Section 28. Section 28 outlawed any school or local authority in the United Kingdom from “promoting homosexuality”, “publishing any material with the intention of promoting homosexuality”, or “promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. Given that the act (intentionally) made no effort to define “promotion”, the effect was clear and predesigned: from 1988 until its full repeal in 2003, queerness was illegal in British schools.

This justification for this discrimination was the same one that is always trotted out - the protection of children from predatory influences. Homophobic attitudes were rising in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, whipped up by an entrenched conservative government and a vulturine news industry. The likes of The Sun, Daily Mail, and The Telegraph ran regular scare pieces about the homosexual lifestyle and its apparent attempts to indoctrinate children. The most benign depictions of queer acceptance were accused of being pornographic, of being propagandic, of “glorifying homosexual intercourse”. One book - Jenny Lives With Eric And Martin - was described by The Sun as “vile” and Today as “gay porn”[1], and was deemed controversial enough to kickstart the movement that resulted in Section 28. It depicts a girl with a gay father, engaging in such salacious events as going to the laundrette, and planning a birthday party.

The accusations leveled at these books were lies, and easily revealed as lies to anyone concerned enough to engage in actual research, but their purpose was not to be true. Their purpose was to combine latent homophobia in the general population with the instinctive human desire to protect the young. Together, these elements create a powerful boogeyman. This boogeyman was then paraded out during the general election of 1987, in which the Labour Party was attacked for their (claimed) promotion of such offensive materials. This was an imagined threat cooked up by bigots and seized upon by political actors most interested in protecting their capital. It worked. The Conservatives won the election with 42% of the vote, and remained in power until 1997. 

It is into this cultural landscape that Buffy airs the eleventh episode of Season Three, Gingerbread. The plot revolves around the deaths of two young children, and how those deaths spark a wave of anti-witch paranoia among the townsfolk of Sunnydale; a paranoia that escalates into censorship, persecution, and eventually a literal witch-burning. The dead children are eventually revealed to be an evil demon exerting some kind of mind control on the population, which is standard practice for Buffy hijinks. The important aspects are the real-world parallels that this storyline is intending to highlight.

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