Dangerous Things in Feminine Places

DANGEROUS THINGS IN FEMININE PLACES;
twelve trans(gressive) tales of transformation

It has always been frustrating to me how the horror genre is dominated by the fears of cisnormative audiences.
Many plots in the horror genre involve the bodies of cisgender people being violated, transfigured, surgically-modified, or otherwise “ruined” in ways that reinforce cisnormativity as the standard. Trans identities and bodies are conspicuously absent from these narratives, unless we are the objects of revulsion.
This erasure is curious in a genre that so often deals with sudden, frightening bodily rebellion.

When trans women are represented in horror, it is almost exclusively in a capacity that “others” us
by depicting our bodies as objects of cis repulsion and terror, specifically when seen through a phallocentric lens that constantly asserts the gender binary. These harmful stereotypes have shaped what I refer to as
“the archetypal faces of the monstrous trans-feminine.”

These archetypes are common cultural depictions of trans women created by cisgender writers that perpetuate anti-trans biases, such as “the Source of Cis Sorrow” (which reminds us how hard it is to love a trans person), “the Trap” (which reinforces trans women as devious and deceptive gender-bending men in dresses, seeking to sexually prey on unsuspecting cis men), “the Self-Castrator” (which posits that trans identity is so challenging, self-surgery is sometimes our only escape from the self-hatred and confusion), “the Annihilating Androgyne” (wherein identity and fantasy are conflated, creating a genderless “other” that is purely seen as a threat to cisnormative life), and “the Forcibly-Feminized” (where cis men are “transformed into women” as a way to emasculate and avenge a wrong).

By exploring these familiar tropes, we can gain insight into how trans women are perceived, and interrogate negative presuppositions about bodies and identities that transgress traditional gender norms.

Desperate for fresh portrayals of trans women in literature, I decided to write stories where I could subvert predictable cis expectations with a distinctly-trans lens that centers the fears, desires, experiences, identities, bodies, and dreams of trans-femme characters. In these narratives, the daily anxieties I feel associated with my gender identity and expression are hyperbolized into nightmarish post-modern fables that reveal the terrors of existing as a trans woman in a cisnormative world: puberty is not an affirming rite of passage, but a bodily insurrection; gender, identity, sex, and bodies exist in a metamorphic state; traumatic memories can be interacted with in a virtual world; gender deviance is a crime punishable by death; the human form can be designed and altered; love can transcend anatomy, or sublimely corrupt it, “passing” can mean the difference between life and death.

Portraying cisnormative society and its expectations as the true villains allows for the examination of fears that are rarely seen in mainstream horror because of how antithetical they are to the anxieties of an average target audience.

Inspired by the works of Caitlin R. Kiernan, Angela Carter, Carmen Maria Machado, and Clive Barker, the thirteen stories in this up-coming collection combine science-fiction, body horror, and fabulism to explore the shifting masks of identity, the plasticity of the flesh, and the shadow-space between the two. These tales echo with the laughter of trans women in moldering cemeteries; pulse with the desires of trans women in virtual-reality worlds; writhe with the sorrows of trans women in the homes of those we love; shudder with the fears of trans women in every city and town as we struggle to exist in a world that considers us deviant, predatory, unstable, or -

“dangerous things in feminine places.”

C O N T E N T S

- what to expect
- a passing glance
- the painted lady
- red in tooth & nail
- doll parts
- imaginary friends
- all that glitters
- dangerous things
- timelines
- a girl like me
- homecoming
- Venus in verdigris