CREATURE

An interrogation of a distorted, yet coveted form

Quinn McClurg

Disclaimer: this article is a spiritual successor to my “On Being (Oneself)” and discusses sensitive topics such as misogyny, transphobia, assault, and mutilation. It is meant to interrogate why I, a trans-woman, feel so affirmed when I appear inhuman.

Disgust is universal, likely having existed throughout the entirety of our species history, serving as the main justification for caution, violence, or ostracization. The effects of disgust operate on both an individual, internal level and an external, communal realm.

Roughly, one can be perceived as disgusting simply by harboring a non-normative identity, notably disability, ethnicity, poverty, religion, sexuality, or gender. Each of these identities are filters through which one sees the world, even stacking atop one another to create additional, more ambiguous filters. However, I conjecture that the identity that contributes the most to internalized and projected disgust is the last: gender—even being gay, disabled, Black, Asian, or welfare-dependent specifically have cultural connotations of being effeminate in nature, and therefore inferior. 

It’s clear that the impossible myth of feminine expectation is the oldest and most widespread cultural tradition. Objectified, violated, lectured, spectaclized, fetishized, and pressured, a woman in any culture is raised to be disgusted by oneself, held captive by others' perceptions of her body. Though any human body seeps, bleeds, sweats, and weeps, women’s bodily functions are the most stigmatized and abhorred; thus, women must keep them secret, usually at the cost of their own health and pleasure.

In folklore, the masculine is brutal, hulking, but the feminine is obscure, monstrous. Arache to Ammit, penanggalan to Ītzpāpālōtl, and Gaia to Sedna, the female form is distorted and dreadful, dismembered and devouring, forced to endlessly birth beasts and horrors. Perhaps the prevalence of the monstrous feminine is due to its shocking juxtaposition; however, it’s clear that this tendency to project and create monsters is the end product of dehumanization’s most extreme measures.

Speaking of the inhuman: queer people exist, and will serve as our exemplar of communal disgust. Given the long histories of oppression, government neglect, medical malpractice, AIDS, social pressure, and internalized shame, there is no surprise that queer communities were founded on resisting and embracing disgust in its many forms to survive. The resulting product is unarguably kink culture, BDSM, radicalization, resounding civil rights advancements, endless influence in every artistic sphere, the general health of nightlife everywhere. 

Unsurprisingly though, being queer still carries a potential death sentence, inspiring familial neglect, medical malpractice, violent crime, and criminalization. Domestic and internationally, many in positions of power actively wish for queer eradication. To be queer is to expect and embody death—your own, your friends’, and the millions’ that came before you.

Now, following our trajectories of disgust, femininity, monstrosity, queerness, and demise leads us to the practice of drag. Historically, drag is a forbidden, comedic, or ritual practice to perform and be seen as the “other”—the fragile, the ideal, the humorous, the exaggerated, the devious—the cross-dressed. Presently, drag is the purest, most concentrated form of queer expression and identity—flamboyant, brazen, exposed, ambiguous, and incorporated skin-deep. Then and now, to see someone in drag is to see the deepest truths of their body and soul laid bare—all you need to know is how to read.

Finally, we arrive at this article’s foundational text: the Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, a horror-themed drag competition show, built upon the three pillars of Filth, Horror, and Glamor—a perfect encapsulation of this article’s arguments.

Ideally, Glamor encapsulates flamboyance, excess, grace, and a somewhat modest femininity; Horror represents the uncanny, inhuman, internal, bestial, or “other”—the monstrosity we despise but endlessly threaten to become. Lastly, Filth represents the joy of embracing the taboo, the elation following a complete divorce from all puritan expectations of cleanliness, and the sensuous acceptance of one’s own alien, repulsive, and festering flesh-prison (body).

Unfortunately, Dragula doesn’t fully achieve my ideals, as the trash queens and creatures are always the most divisive and eventually sent home: unanalyzed Glamor seems to be most contestants’ defaults, Horror usually falls far short of unsettling, and Filth is often ableist or classist in execution (ex: Pricilla Chamber’s finale: a janitor with a skin condition eating hair out of her dustpan). However, there still are the Abhoras, Yovskas, and HoSo Terra Tomas of the world, literally leaving me breathless and uneasy after each performance.

For now, my interrogation of why I feel most affirmed when presenting as a creature is concluded; I cannot appear as a “true woman,” so I present as something uncategorizable, ungendered, inhuman—my desire to inspire revulsion and avert eyes daily is a reclaimed and embodied reflection of what has been projected upon myself and my communities. 

Here’s to a dictum of Filth, Horror, and Glamor—an invitation to be as queer, radical, disruptive, and gender non-conforming as you can. We cannot let the ones who are killing us push us further into the closet.