#monstrous feminine

[monstrousdesirestudy]

Retvrn to Tradition (sexualizing the sphinx) aka time is a flat circle

Pictured above is the sphinx from Dragons Dogma 2 and a painting from Gustave Moreau titled “Oedipus and the Sphinx” (1864) which depicted the sphinx as a femme fatale ready to gut Oedipus for answering incorrectly.

Titties? Out.

Eye contact? Intensely made.

Victim? Acquired.

[poupeelait]

carol ann duffy, medusa // eiichi yamamoto, belladonna of sadness // frederick sandys, love's shadow // sylvia plath, lady lazarus // tinto brass, the howl // ethel cain, ptolomea

[pinootgu]

the second zine i ever made is now on itch: HYSTERIA this zine was made in november 2022 after a period of obsession and delusion over ken russell's 1988 horror comedy lair of the white worm. what began as a nightly ritual screening became a dive down "hysteria" wikipedia, leading to a rant posted accidentally to public instead of close friends and now this zine. this zine is a piece of propaganda for this over-the-top and not-very-good movie. deeply influenced by my experience as a transmasc lesbian, I came into this movie for lesbianism but found that fulfilled in a different way than most. It interrogates constructions of the monstrous feminine, masculinity, and hysteria by using peter capaldi's character angus as the lens for my lesbian thrills. it is accompanied by a playlist i made in the heat of delusion:

a print version + digital format pdf are free but tips r appreciated

[horizon-verizon]

Why do people always ignore how Jon puts Gilly’s hand over fire while threatening to burn her and kill her baby, as well as the wildling children he kept as hostages ? But somehow he’s definitely the hero and Daenerys is the tyrant.

If Daenerys was threatening innocent mothers like this we’d never hear the end of it.

Jon later admits that he’d willingly kill the other wilding children he has hostage if it’s needed.

“You will make a crow of him.” She wiped at her tears with the back of a small pale hand. “I won’t. I won’t.” Kill the boy, thought Jon. “You will. Else I promise you, the day that they burn Dalla’s boy, yours will die as well.” — A Dance with Dragons, Jon II

People are more desensitized towards a man doling out violence, even (or esp) against women and children, abused or not. Violence or destroying boundaries is the way a man affirms and/or obtains authority and respect from his male peers and in this system, it literally gets romanticized as necessary for those he is in charge of or wishes to be or others perceive him to be: "greater good" and all that. Because they say that he had to do what he had to do...but then argue Dany is "proving" how evil or unstable she is if she were to do anything similar, and they already try to by saying her violence against raping, pedophilic, dehumanizing slavers was "too much"...think about it. They don't say similar about male prisoners raping pedophiles or those who hurt kids, they even openly wish for the pedos to get "roughed" up in their cells. Oh, but a teenager former bridal slave killing slavers is too much.

That been the exact opposite for when women dole out violence for similar or even just to defend themselves or others. you see female monsters and monstrous characters take on a particular pattern of being more...simple, inhumane in stories with male heroes through the history of Western literature, but esp so from Victorian literature, the society/era where us Westerners inherited most of our ideas of sexuality and gender roles/expression--from the bourgeoise class to the working.

I hope you and anyone reading looks up the "monstrous feminine" theory first elucidated by Barbara Creed: horror film both have women as needing to be victims so they don't materialize as "castrators" (unmanners) of men AND positions mothers near bestial matriarchal figures, as monstrous because of their primal maternal instincts and reproductive capabilities. Think Grendel's mother in Beowulf. All in all, it's about abjecting women and esp their passion, or trying to "explain" something innately terrifying about them that presents, sometimes, an eternal and necessary, order-affirming challenge to male heroes or masculinized heroes/perceptions.

Anyway, back to Jon. The issue is this double standard; even if Jon "had to do" what he did to Gilly (he didn't), why isn't it when there is a slew of enslaved people (that these people imagine as brown bc of GoT even though they are pretty diverse in ASoIaF but either way are not Westerosi or "Westerners"), then it's not that serious as to leave hundreds of slavers dying on poles along a path to a city the same way they did to the enslaved? Because Americans and white people of today's world already don't care that much about trafficking, slavery, etc. unless it happens to them of course. And Gilly was not a Westerosi, either, but a wilding whose only role is to be there so Jon and Samwell can do whatever to become better versions of themselves in their minds.

[fieldbones]

If there is a god, he will beg for my mercy. I do not need God’s forgiveness. He needs mine.

Rachel Cain

[diaryofaphilosopher]

But the monster also makes us realize that in an unequal society they are not equal. Not because they belong to different ‘races’ but because inequality really does score itself into one’s skin, one’s eyes and one’s body. And more so, evidently, in the case of the first industrial workers: the monster is disfigured not only because Frankenstein wants him to be like that, but also because this was how things actually were in the first decades of the industrial revolution. In him, the metaphors of the critics of civil society become real. The monster incarnates the dialectic of estranged labour described by the young Marx: ‘the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker; the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker; the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature… . It is true that labour produces … palaces, but hovels for the worker… . It produces intelligence, but it produces idiocy and cretinism for the worker.’ Frankenstein’s invention is thus a pregnant metaphor of the process of capitalist production, which forms by deforming, civilizes by barbarizing, enriches by impoverishing – a two-sided process in which each affirmation entails a negation. And indeed the monster – the pedestal on which Frankenstein erects his anguished greatness – is always described by negation: man is well proportioned, the monster is not; man is beautiful, the monster ugly; man is good, the monster evil. The monster is man turned upside-down, negated.

— Franco Moretti, "The Dialectic of Fear."

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[milkbloodguts]

Putrid Feminine

There's something so horrifying and putrid about my femininity. Every time I lean into it, I become a God. I can't just be pretty, I want to fuck, destroy, possess, be the centre of attention, be the best.

I want to cut others down with my tongue, persuade with my breasts, and lather myself in blood to soften my skin. I want to take a knife and pull myself apart at the seams, like a cheap pair of stockings yanking each vein out like a loose thread.

I've never understood how to be feminine, every attempt I make is monstrous, bitter, putrid.

I am holding a lighter up to the wax of myself trying to reshape myself into something pretty and quaint. Instead I am just fleshy and pink, writhing and seething.

-H.R.

[machetebisexual]

This is my meal, I call this Girl Dinner

Photo by Enion Z Photography

[theglamourempress]

🕷🥀🖤

[meddling-in-horror]

I Changed My Thesis

Originally, my history BA thesis was going to be deconstructing the Starz/Sky TV collaboration Penny Dreadful. 

I changed it.

I had been forcing my way through the show to make notes for my work, but then one day I started thinking about Bill Gunn’s ‘Ganja and Hess’ way too much and it changed my whole concept.

Now, I’ll be writing my thesis on linguistic violence against women and the monstrous feminine in horror, examining terminology used against women and how those words are contextualized historically within horror as a genre. 

There’s a lot of material to cover in this paper, as I already have over 50 sources, but to give an idea of what I’m looking at, the following are the movies I’ll be using for the paper:

Am I Quiet Enough For You Yet? Audition (1999) Last Night in Soho (2021)

...Will Still Become a Wolf When the Autumn Moon is Bright Ginger Snaps (2000) The Company of Wolves (1984)

I Drank All the Blood That I Could Ganja and Hess (1973) A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Holy Water Cannot Help You Now Def By Temptation (1990) Possession (1981)

They Come to Drink, They Come to Dance, to Sacrifice a Human Heart The Lure (2015) She-Creature (2001)

Burned But Not Buried This Time The Craft (1996) The VVitch (2015)

So stay tuned for ‘At Least You’ll Sanctify Me When I’m Dead: A History of Linguistic Violence Against Women and the Monstrous Feminine Within Horror’.

This is gonna be fun.

[monstrousdesirestudy]

Was thinking about werewolves and gender again, and it reminded me of this book my ex showed me. It's an illustrated diary from the perspective of a high school girl who got turned into a werewolf along with her brother. I think the vibe is solid and properly monstrous. Curious if you've read it.

I have not but it looks like a lot of fun! I always loveeee recs that feature the monstrous feminine so I will definitely be giving a look into this!

[sirendeathcult]

Pearl (2022) // Mandy (2018) // Jennifer’s Body (2009)

POV: you just asked me how I’m doing

[moonlysdarkthings]

Can’t wait to explain not Eraserhead to men. Sir, the baby’s name isn’t Eraserhead it’s a metaphor.

[so-many-ocs]

get off your ass and write books with monster chicks. it seems like no one wants to write girls with supernatural rage anymore.

[n0vilunium]

Dear friends of tumblr,

My name is Leila and i am an independent musician. Today, i released my debut album - Monstrous Feminine 🌗🕯️🪽

The album is for and about anyone who has been vilified for the power of their being. It is about reclamation and resistance. May it encourage you to hold your life with both hands.

The album centred around experiences of the feminine, heavily inspired by the depiction of women in horror and Barbara Creed’s writings on the Monstrous-feminine.

If you like women, women in horror, eccentric, eclectic and weird music, the gothic, dark academia and things that are both empowering and vaguely unsettling - i really encourage you to check out the album! Being an independent artist is so vulnerable and i am so grateful for any support of what i love most 💓🌙

[aracne-textile]