Satanic Panic - OutWrite Newsmagazine (Fall 2022)

Disguise to SNEAK into CHURCH?!

THEY COME OUT AT NIGHT!

Spikes for killing BABIES?!

for when prayer isn’t enough

Demonic Symbols!

Early Sunday morning at around 3:30 a.m., these so-called women were caught prowling the streets, hand-in-hand, carrying what can only be described as demonic contraband. With a rise in satanic worship and child abuse since President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration earlier this year, authorities are pointing to the city’s “out and proud” gays and lesbians, especially those who work in childcare. This sighting is one of many in continued on page 6

Why Ronald Reagan Is The Best President America Has Seen

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6th, 1911 to Jack Reagan and Nelle Wilson in Tampico, Illinois. Before being elected as the 40th President of the United States, he worked as

Two lesbians on their way to indoctrinate your children.

CONTRIBUTORS

Editor-in-Chief: Christopher Ikonomou

Managing Editor: Zoë Collins

Developmental Editors: Judah C, Kristin Haegelin

Graphics Head: Jackson Harris

Copy Chief: Bella Hou

Writers: Emma Blakely, Jennifer Collier, Judah C, Kristin Haegelin, Jackson Harris, Christopher Ikonomou, Mia Riedel

Artists: Zoë Collins, Kelly Doherty, Christopher Ikonomou, Steph Liu

Copy Editors: Emma Blakely, Jennifer Collier, Christopher Ikonomou

Layout: Christopher Ikonomou, Giulianna Vicente, Charis Shargel, Elliott Couts

Cover: Kelly Doherty

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Reader,

I wish I could welcome you with nothing but vigorous optimism, but the precariousness of my community’s position in this country is too important to be waved away. As a historical queer publication, it is our responsibility to make sure the most marginalized do not go unnoticed. The theme of our Fall 2022 print edition is Satanic Panic, named after the hysteria of the late 20th century that cast a dangerous shadow over queer people everywhere. With as much progress as we’ve made in the past few decades, the country has turned into a downward spiral in recent years when it comes to queer — especially trans — rights.

Engaging in gay sexuality was legalized nearly 20 years ago and marriage equality seven years ago, but our Supreme Court is now reconsidering those decisions to correct supposed sins of the past. People are no longer required to wear three articles of clothing that “match” their assigned sex at birth, but two states successfully banned gender-affirming healthcare for trans minors this year. There are rising numbers of trans people on TV, but violent crimes against our community, especially for our sisters of color, break new records every year. The rise of conservatism and the familiar American fear of deviance are coming to a head with queer people so often painted as the targets.

As many of us experience, that shadow of the Satanic Panic is now creeping back around seemingly every corner, but it is not over, and we are not gone.

The following pages ask you to be angry. They ask you to face a history of persecution head on. They ask you to bask in the beauty of reclamation. They hand you a match and tell you it’s okay to burn it all down; they encourage you to use the light to find a path forward through the darkness.

It may sound cliche, but the only way we can get through this time is unrelenting solidarity and love for ourselves and each other. Only the belief that queerness is a sacred, unshakeable force can plant us in the soil and let us push upward for centuries to come. It gets worse before it gets better, and I’ll be damned if we go down before we see the other side.

Christopher Ikonomou (xe/he)

Think of the (Straight) Children

Written by Kristin Haegelin

Illustrated by Christopher Ikonomou

In 1977, orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant campaigned against a new anti-discrimination law protecting gay men and lesbians in Dade County, Florida. She had it overturned and riding on the wave of this success, started Save Our Children, the United States’ first national anti gay group.

More than forty years later in 2022, Alabama has passed legislation banning gender-affirming healthcare for minors under the name of the “Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act’’ or SB 184. Florida quickly followed in their footsteps with their Board of Medicine voting to do the same in November of 2022.

Coupled with this extreme aggression towards trans youth, Florida has also banned discussions around sexual orientaton and gender identity in schools with the “Parental Rights in Education Act,” also coined the Don’t Say Gay law or the “Anti-Grooming” bill in the charged words of Christina Pushaw, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ press secretary. Within the past month, Rep. Mike Johnson has proposed the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” a measure that has the potential to extend Florida’s education ban to the entire country.

Are we starting to notice a trend in the names of anti-trans and anti-gay legislation? Why do

the words “children,” “grooming,” and “sexualization” keep coming up? What we can gather from this charged language is that conservative lawmakers are attempting to weaponize the protection of children. By depicting LGBTQ+ educators and issues as inherently sexual, the Christian political right has justified the presence of homophobia and transphobia in America’s legal system in both the present and past. To fully understand how this warped conception of the LGBTQ+ community formed in the first place, it is important to look at the moral hysteria of the Satanic Panic and how the movement found its scapegoat.

In the lead up to the 1980s moral panic, the progressivism of the 60s and 70s was still in full

ideology actually came out of a culmination of many predictable factors. Fears around the growing visibility of LGBTQ+ relationships, long-held Puritanical anxieties around Satanism, and a greater awareness around child sexual abuse created the perfect storm for America’s new scapegoat. The perfect pedophile, or monster, was the LGBTQ+ teacher.

Bernard Baran, an eighteenyear-old gay daycare worker, was one of the first victims of the Satanic Panic. Accused of mass molestation of preschoolers by his students’ parents, hearsay and homophobia plagued his trial from the start. Prosecutors brought forth heavily edited videotape interviews, cutting out large portions of footage where

swing. Yet, with this newfound change came a conservative backlash, manifesting fully in the Satanic Panic. Born out of a fear for the degradation of America’s moral values, this social hysteria centered around “hundreds of accusations that devil-worshiping pedophiles were operating America’s white middle-class suburban daycare centers.”1 It might seem like this conspiracy came completely out of the blue, but the

parents coerced their children into providing specific answers. As a form of medical “argument,” prosecutor Daniel Ford brought forth an expert witness to “testify to the prevalence of gonorrhea among homosexuals.” Despite the fact that Baran tested negative for gonorrhea and the aforementioned faulty evidence, he spent 21 years imprisoned before his convictions were overturned. Then there was the case of

“[I]t is important to look at the moral hysteria of the Satanic Panic and how the movement found its scapegoat.”

Margaret Kelly Michaels. In the article “How the Gay Establishment Ignored a Sex Panic Fueled by Homophobia,” Jim D’Entremont writes about how outside prejudices impacted her trial, stating “prosecutors devoted two days to exploiting a same-sex relationship in her personal history, implying that lesbianism had impelled her to force toddlers of both sexes to lick peanut butter off her cervix at the Wee Care Nursery School in Maplewood, New Jersey.”2

nies from the nieces shifted with each new line of questioning, and medical evidence was equally sparse, based on now-defunct forensic science on the supposed “correct” shape of a child’s hymen. Worst of all was that the accusations themselves stemmed from a malicious source. The mastermind behind these confessions was Javier Limon, Ramirez’s former brother-in-law. During her trial, Ramirez displayed love letters that Limon had written to her and

Among countless other allegations and trials throughout the next decade, the case of the San Antonio Four served as a momentary bookend to the Satanic Panic’s reign of terror. Occurring in 1994 with its trials running from 1997 to 1998, the case involved four openly gay women — Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez — who were accused of sexually assaulting Ramirez’s two nieces while the pair were under their care for a week in San Antonio, Texas.

As with the previous cases, there was little solid evidence to support this accusation. Testimo-

explained that she had rejected his advances on multiple occasions. Despite Limon’s clear motive for coercing confessions from his children, the court did not press him on the matter. These many injustices against LGBTQ+ educators and child care providers illustrate that historically, the American public has often equated queerness with pedophilia, allowing homophobia to thrive through carceral “justice.” When societal norms view queerness as more deviant and offensive than heterosexuality, queerness takes on a dangerous proximity to pedophilia — both are taboo, while they have abso-

“When societal norms view queerness as more deviant and offensive than heterosexuality, queerness takes on a dangerous proximity to pedophilia.”

lutely nothing in common. Under these harmful prescriptions about sexual orientation and gender identity, it is no wonder that these ‘save the children’-adjacent laws continue to proliferate. In Johnson’s “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” the very title implies that an understanding of LGBTQ+ relationships and gender is something that sexualizes children or corrupts. This message is only echoed by the actual body of the act, which lumps together “sexuality, sexual orientation, transgenderism, and gender ideology” alongside “pornography” and “sexual acts” in its list of off-limits material.3 Although not likely to pass, this act is only a harbinger of the hysteria to come.

Ultimately, the language of these laws and the victims of the Satanic Panic beg the question: which children are we willing to save? Criminalizing gender-affirming healthcare and removing LGBTQ+ issues from public school curriculum endanger transgender and nonbinary youth who are already at a disproportionate risk of depressive symptoms and suicide.

According to the Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, “more than half (52%) of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 1 in 5 reported attempting suicide.”4 In contrast, transgender and nonbinary youth in supportive

environments (i.e. who were able to change their name or had their pronouns respected) reported lower rates of attempting suicide. These laws seem much less preoccupied with preventing sexual abuse than stamping out LGBTQ+ youth before they reach adulthood. By removing protections for trans kids while proclaiming their goal of saving “vulnerable” children, conservative lawmakers show that they fundamentally do not recognize trans children as children, either assuming that they are confused cis children or already “sexualized” by their queerness and therefore, beyond saving. Overall, America’s anti-gay legislation from the past and present aims to protect hypothetical children from mythical monsters, and remind the LGBTQ+ community that regardless of our age or “innocence,” we are not worthy of our government’s protection.

1: Sarah Hughes, “American Monsters: Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970–2000.” Journal of American Studies, vol.51, no.3, (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 691-719.

2: Jim D’Entremont, “The Devil in Gay, Inc. How the Gay Establishment Ignored a Sex Panic Fueled by Homophobia,” Friends of Justice.

3: Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, 117th Congress, Section 4e (2022)

4: “The Trevor Project National Survey,” The Trevor Project, https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2021/.

Anonymous, Anonymous

Written and Photographed by Jackson Harris

I have this dream of dying in complete silence, and when the neighbors call to complain about the smell a few days later (and the firemen kick the door in), they’ll find my mother sitting calmly at the dining room table, knife in hand around a halo of sunburnt faces cutting branches from the family tree

no one left to know what’ll become of me a week later in the paper, cause of death: unknown

so I try not to sleep alone anymore — I keep my bandannas in a box filled with all the pictures from a life before: little girls who’ve lost their baby teeth and seashells drowned in bodega bleach covered in fabrics that gather on soap-stained floors right pocket, dark blue crimson garden rotten fruit

anonymous, anonymous

it’s pandemonium, uncontrollable, the blood rush to your cheeks. and this growing fear blooming deep inside: man, human, weapon, or disease?

everybody dressed in black they tell you that your kidneys will fail pretty early on— me, in my best suit

in-between the intake pages and the awkward exchanging of names and someone brought a bouquet of flowers, and i’m not positive, but there’s something i’m expected to say roses, keep your hands where we can see them please and death is a friend while flesh is containment

I believe in a short-term treatment plan. only the best. can you surrender?

sanitation, sanitation disinfecting nail beds

God loves you I am bleeding through my teeth but not enough to save you

and on the choir sings

‘There wasn’t a day when I didn’t think about it’ there are fireworks in my eyes

‘and certainly every time I had a sexual encounter’ abscess exile

‘it was in the front of my mind’ Americana dying

‘It inhibited me developing good close relationships’ but I’ve always been strong

‘A lot of my sex experiences were very furtive because of that’ can you surrender?

‘A nurse came out and put me in a side room and said, “I’m very sorry, he’s just died.”’ do you dare to sing along?

‘She asked me who I was and I said, “I’m his boyfriend.”’

Quotes from Andrew Anthony, “‘We were so scared’: Four people who faced the horror of Aids in the 80s,” The Guardian. Jan 31, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/31/wewere-so-scared-four-people-who-faced-the-horror-of-aids-in-the-80s.

Collage by Zoë Collins

A New Sort of Sin: A Study on Historic Connections of Lesbians to Satanism

Written by Emma Blakely

Illustrated by Kelly Doherty

In the broader scheme of American history, the Satanic Panic was one of many moral panics that got mainstream culture whipped up into a frenzy about the supposed threatened integrity of the ideals they held near and dear to their hearts. These moral panics were often a misdirected reaction to underlying issues; the public’s reaction to this was often to scapegoat other groups to deflect from the true cause of these issues. In America during the 1980s, the sexual abuse of children was finally being confronted after years of being ignored; and the public’s response to that frightening prospect was

to turn to an equally frightening cause (to deflect from the more uncomfortable idea that it was really people they knew and trusted that were sexually abusing their children): Satanists. The reason why Satanists in particular were blamed is thought to be found in a book — “Michelle Remembers” by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith — in which a woman (Michelle) supposedly recounts the abuse she suffered at the hands of Satanists. Although its claims were quickly disproved, its rhetoric took hold and Satanists became the perceived perpetrators of child abuse. Lesbians have also been scapegoats of similar moral panics and have been closely connected

to Satanism in the past, which may explain why they, along with gay men, were also victims of the Satanic Panic (read Kristin Haegelin’s article, “Think of the (Straight) Children” on page 2 for more).

“Satan’s Harvest Home,” a pamphlet produced anonymously in 1749 in London, condemns the supposed moral corruption that was taking place in Great Britain at the time; lesbians were mentioned briefly in this pamphlet in connection with Sappho — the WLW Greek poet for which the word “sapphic” got its roots — and blames her for inventing the “game of flats,” in which women gain sexual pleasure with “flat” contact between genitalia (better known nowadays as scissoring) without men. The anonymous author calls it a “new sort of Sin,” and the title connects the contents of the pamphlet (which also include sodomy, effeminacy of men, and prostitution) to actions of Satan.

Nearby, in France, lesbianism was strongly connected to Satan, likely due to its Catholic leaning. One novel by Denis Diderot, titled “The Nun,” outlines the struggles of a young girl forced to be a nun. At a convent, the head nun is revealed to be a lesbian and makes advances on the girl. When she rejects her by staying pious and chaste, the head nun goes insane.

Diderot’s intention with “The Nun” was to critique the corruption of the Catholic Church, but the fact that he did so using lesbianism is significant — in the book, lesbianism was equated to manipulation, desecration, and even pedophilia.

Another French novel, titled “The New Sappho, or The History of the Anandryne Sect,” depicts lesbians separated from the church in a cult-y setting of their own, where they honor Sappho and her lovers in a temple. This cult-like organization of lesbians are equated to incubi, — demons that seduced women — so the Satanic dimension remains. Moreover, some of these

“[L]esbianism was equated to manipulation, desecration, and even pedophilia.”

religious sentiments connecting lesbians to Satanism still exist today. Beyond the protesters that never fail to show up to Pride Parades in June, holding signs whose slogans like “homosexuality is a sin” never seem to change from year to year (unoriginal much?), lesbianism has a religious connotation in other parts of the world as well. A magazine in Georgia (the country in Eastern Europe, not the state in America), published an article titled “Order of Lesbian Women,” which depicts Satanist lesbians who have orgies and chop people up with axes, so clearly the religious connotations that connect lesbianism to Satanism are not completely relics of the past. However, some lesbians and sapphic women reclaim the “Satanist” correlation in their

own ways. Much like how Lil Nas X made the music video to his hit song, “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name),” with themes of Satanism and devil worship to poke fun at people who call gay people Satanists just for existing, lesbians and sapphics claim the “witch” or “Satanist” term in a tongue-incheek, playful way. Some of my favorite women-loving-women artists on Instagram, including @jeniferrprince and @kelsijosilva, have art depicting WLW as witches, vampires, nosferatu, and even the devil herself. In these cases, it is less about actually being members of the Satanist religion or practicing witchcraft, and more a cute, fun reimagining

“[T]he religious connotations that connect lesbianism to Satanism are not completely relics of the past.”

“[I]t is less about actually being members of the Satanist religion or practicing witchcraft, and more a cute, fun reimagining of the labels that are used to harm us.”

of the labels that are used to harm us. In this way, WLW take a label that was cast upon them unwillingly to designate them as feared degenerates of society and turn it on its head into a source of fun Halloween merch that I am more than considering buying. In a way, this reclamation may also have much deeper implications. In many of these historical texts, lesbians’ connection to Satanism was largely born out of Christian (mostly Catholic) fear and the need to assign a scary name to that fear. The supposed moral crime of lesbians was, according to Christians, sexual freedom and promiscuity, and sexual pleasure without the aid of men. This was a direct threat to the norm of a heterosexual, nuclear family in Europe, hence the fear and demonization. By reclaiming titles such as “witch” and “Satanist,” lesbians also recognize their independence from men and emphasize the deeply meaningful community that can be found in bonds between women and other non-men.

WHAT THE DEVIL I S T H A T RACKET?!

Written by Jennifer Collier

Illustrated by Steph Liu

every queer person knows about this video, and virtually every queer person, regardless of religious affiliation, has been confronted with the “you’re going to Hell” speech at least once, whether directly at you or indirectly near you. It’s the ageold promise of damnation that is burned into our memories. So how do queer people learn to respond to religion-tinged hatred?

On March 26th, 2021, Lil Nas

X dropped “MONTERO (Call Me

By Your Name),” the lead single for his album “MONTERO” and a passionate declaration of queer love and desire. The single by itself would likely have received

While “Call Me By Your Name” was certainly the most explosive instance of a queer artist using Satanic imagery and Hell in their music, it was not the first and it absolutely will not be the last unforgettable declaration of individuality and expression. a largely positive reaction, as Lil Nas X already had considerable recognition. However, “MONTERO”’s music video featured Lil Nas X as an angel who rides down a pole from Heaven to Hell and gives the Devil a lapdance. Virtually

I put together a playlist of songs by queer artists who harnessed the themes of demons and Hell and gave an attentive audience a voice and a face to what was happening inside themselves and around them.

listeN to the plaYlist!

FamilY tree

Ethel Cain

Hayden Anhedönia’s unnerving Gothic aesthetic and disarming, hauntingly beautiful voice are a staple for any demonic-themed playlist.

“Family Tree” is a song off of Anhedönia’s first full LP, “Preacher’s Daughter,” a concept album that follows alter ego Ethel as she escapes her sheltered religious home and embarks on a harrowing journey that ends in her gruesome, tragic death (the story is not for the faint of heart).

Anhedönia mentioned to Billboard last May that she plans on writing a book and potentially creating a movie based on the life and legacy of Ethel Cain, Ethel’s mother, and Ethel’s grandmother in the years to come.

GOSPEL FOR A

New ceNturY

Yves Tumor

Queer experimental artist Yves Tumor’s sound intersects somewhere between psychedelic electronic and retro rock music, with music videos that can only really be described as vivid.

“Gospel for a New Century” is a track off of their album “Heaven to a Tortured Mind,” released in 2020. The music video for the song shows Tumor crooning into a mic, sporting two large black horns and demon-like makeup with backup dancers in matching costumes and contorting demon-like figures projected behind them.

The lyrics detail the singer’s yearning for a romantic partner, and the melancholy underbelly of a love lost. My personal theory is that this heartbreak is meant to identify the “New Century,” and that the lustful passion embodied in this song is characteristic of sin, hence the demonic costumes and imagery. Either way, the song in tandem with the video creates an absolute masterpiece that I highly recommend for your viewing pleasure.

t his hel l

Rina Sawayama

Rina Sawayama is a Japanese-British singer and musician who has been releasing music since 2017. Infused with a steady and infectious groove and strong vocals, the lyrics to Sawayama’s song “This Hell” center around embracement above all else, with cheeky confident lines such as “God hates us? Alright then / Buckle up, at dawn we’re riding.” The music video itself is a commentary on religion and its role in discrimination. It opens with Sawayama in an all-white outfit being driven to a church where she is then walked down the aisle to share a group kiss with two backup dancers in front of a row of angry protestors. The second half of the video follows her, now in an all-red get up, dancing in a club amid a sea of people of all appearances, kissing and dancing with everyone in sight.

h ellbou N D

Dua Saleh

Dua Saleh is a nonbinary rapper and musician. While they’re best known for playing Cal in season 3 of Netflix’s “Sex Education,” they have been writing and releasing music since 2017.

“hellbound” was released in 2020 as the second single off of their EP, “ROSETTA,” and can best be described as a dark lo-fi track that explodes into gritty, power. The music video is made up of clips taken from the anime series “Devilman Crybaby,” says Saleh in an interview with Them Magazine, portraying images of epic struggles between good and evil. Saleh adopts a prideful and powerful attitude through lyrics such as “Jumped into the portal, call me Hades of the grim / No, I ain’t no angel, I ain’t fallin’ from the brim.” The song flips the classic damnation of queerness and instead portrays it as empowerment.

Doechii is a queer rapper who is picking up exponential recognition with her explosive delivery and unique sound.

“Spooky Coochie” was released as a single in October of 2019. The music video features Doechii in the recording studio dancing around, and while that by itself may not sound that interesting, her energy is so infectious and confident that you find yourself unable to look away. The song does not treat itself too seriously, opening with a recorded audial sketch where Doechii asks some trick-or-treaters, “Back the fuck up from my door / What the fuck is you supposed to be, a tampon?”

spookie coochie Doechii

With lyrics like “I’m back like Chucky bride from the afterlife / Nothin’ nice, this the antichrist, it’s a bloody night”, Doechii turns these images into a source of confidence and creates a hype track that makes you excited for Halloween at any time of the year.

D emo N s

Hayley Kiyoko

Hayley Kiyoko (a.k.a. Lesbian Jesus) is a pop artist that took the LGBTQ+ community by storm. Her track “Demons” was released as a single preceding her 2019 EP, “I’m Too Sensitive For This Shit.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Kiyoko explains that the song was inspired by a voice memo she left for herself in a time of severe depression that said, “Please forgive me. I’ve got demons in my head. They’re trying to eat me until I’m dead” (now part of the song’s chorus).

Kiyoko created the dissonance between the lyrics and dancy instrumentals on purpose. In an interview with Nylon Magazine, she explains, “There was something so haunting about it that I wanted to try to turn it into something positive [...] I wanted to sing about mental health and battling the inner ‘demons’ many of us struggle with. But with a heavy upbeat track that everyone can sing and support you with.”

J u D a s

Lady Gaga

Arguably one of pop culture’s most iconic artists, Lady Gaga has certainly left her mark on the music world. “Judas,” one of the tracks off of her hit album “Born This Way” (released in 2011), ignited considerable controversy in the public sphere.

The song itself is a jolting electronic house hit with heavy danceable drums and a pulse that could pull anyone onto a dance floor. The lyrics talk about betrayal, as Gaga compares her lover to Judas, the biblical figure who betrayed Jesus. However, the lyrics also address the portrayal of women in the Bible, with lines such as, “In the most Biblical sense, I am beyond repentance / Fame hooker, prostitute, wench, vomits her mind.”

While the video has been interpreted as mocking religion, Gaga has since clarified that the video was “a cultural statement;” “It’s a metaphor for struggle, for perseverance,” says Gaga in a 2011 interview with Fuse. Truthfully, the song and video together open a Pandora’s box of interpretation, from a feminist teardown of the Bible to a heartbroken lamentation of betrayal.

Ellos Quieren Sangre

Written by Judah C

Illustrated by Kelly Doherty I

Her shoulders drooped with the weight of her Catholic guilt as the statue of white Jesus stared down at her, telling her, I know what you’ve done. His dark eyes seemed to be in perpetual melancholy as her own peered into them. That statue always scared her, always seemed to follow her home from church; it was the first thing she’d see in her grandmother’s kitchen, a miniature version of the statue hung up in her room right in front of the doorway. She had always accepted that Jesus would be a permanent part of her life, just as she had accepted that she bore responsibilities, as the eldest daughter and the first grandchild, to fall in line with what her family expected from her..

I know what you’ve done.

“Elenita, keep it moving,” Her mother whispered from behind her.

Elenita’s eyes fell onto the priest, who smiled at her, handing her the stale biscuit which was supposed to symbolize the “Body

of Christ.”

“Amen,” Elenita replied, apologetically.

Elenita bowed her head as she returned to the pew where her family sat.

Elenita. Little Elena. That’s what her whole family called her, as if she was perpetually a child, someone that needed to be protected. She was an adult now, going off to get her masters degree in the spring! Still, her grandmother’s name was Elena; Elena was reserved for her, the matriarch. Elenita knew that all too well, but when the stranger asked her for her name, she responded with the more mature, “Elena, my name is Elena.”

“Elena.” Elenita loved the way it flowed off the stranger’s tongue, how Elena followed with a toothy smile. “That’s such a beautiful name.”

II III

“It’s not real.” Her hands traced the cross on the Bible as she

looked at Elenita. “Do you believe in any of this stuff?”

Her name was Soledad. She had just moved from some far out place, and was staying with one of the local families while working in their restaurant. Soledad. Solitude. Elenita wondered if she’d always been alone. Soledad seldom mentioned her past, completely living in the present, abandoning whatever haunted her.

Elenita, eager to gain the

respect of Soledad, shook her head. Elenita knew that was a lie. She often had violent dreams, where Jesus wept as his hands dragged her down. She would struggle against them, desperately attempting to atone for the sin of her existence. She would cry out to him, apologizing for being the way that she was — she couldn’t help it.

“I won’t laugh at you if you do,” Soledad reassured Elenita, noticing the discomfort spreading

onto her face. “I know everyone in this town does. I have my own personal beef with God. He wants blood, you know.” She set the Bible down on the wooden drawer with a loud thump, making Elenita jump a little. “Ellos siempre quieren sangre.”

Soledad took a seat next to Elenita. Her fingers traced the skin of Elenita’s neck. Soledad’s fingers were cold, as if she had put them in ice. Elenita’s breath hitched. Had they always been that cold?

“You shouldn’t leave your neck wide open like that, Elena,” Solidad said quietly, dusting a piece of lint off as Elenita turned red. “A vampire could bite you at any time.”

get married to a man, have many children. Elenita didn’t have much time; she was already 28. Would they exile her? Kill her? How could she survive without her family?

Her chest felt tight, guilt at the forefront of her fragile mind. She tried to sit up, but it only made her chest hurt. She kept trying to breathe, but the oxygen couldn’t get to her. Elenita could see the white hands from her nightmares. Was this God’s punishment for her? She tried to apologize, but without the oxygen the words couldn’t escape her lips. She wanted everything to stop, and she started frantically clawing at her chest to see if a gaping hole could help her breathe better.

“Elenita!” Her mother burst into the room, dark eyes wide. “What’s going on?!”

IV V

Elenita could see her when she closed her eyes. Every thought she had, every inkling of feeling, was consumed by Soledad. Even when she prayed, those sacred places were desecrated by her impure thoughts of Soledad. Elenita wanted to hold her hand, wanted to love her the way a man loves a woman, but the guilt, the shame, consumed her as well.

Her appetite was stunted, and she laid for hours in her almost pitch-black room. Elenita couldn’t handle disappointing her family or the Church. They’d want her to

Elenita was inconsolable, convinced she would die this violent death.

his warm hands on her shoulders, his eyes soft and kind.

“Her name is Soledad,” Elenita explained, looking into her lap, remorse settling in her bones. She hated that he was touching her, but she couldn’t say anything. He was a man of the cloth, after all. “Father, can girls like girls the way boys like girls? I think I like her like that.”

Elenita looked to the priest, and saw worry flood his features as his lips tightened into a straight line. “Do you know about Soledad?”

Soledad, worried, put a hand on Elenita’s shoulders. Elenita’s first instinct was to swat it away, but there was a comfort there, and god did Soledad’s eyes look pretty, even when they were filled with anxiety. “Is that it?”

“The priest told me about you,” Elenita began, tears welling in her eyes. “How you corrupted me and my spirit.”

Anguish replaced anxiety and Soledad looked away. Her hand fell from Elenita’s shoulders. “Do you think that’s what happened?”

VI“Hey, where have you been, Elena?” Soledad smiled with that toothy grin, the one that Elenita missed. And she called her Elena Not Elenita. “It feels like you’ve been avoiding me.”

Elenita didn’t have the courage to tell her that she had been ignoring her. Ever since she talked to the priest, Elenita believed that Soledad was the source of her problems. But the panic attacks didn’t stop; they just kept getting worse and worse. The priest said they would go away once she committed herself to God. Elenita’s brows furrowed as they stood facing each other, right outside the church. “I’ve been busy.”

by Steph Liu

To Walk A Mile

in Her

Shoes You Must First Wear Her Skin

Written and Illustrated by Christopher Ikonomou

Content Warning: violence, rape/sexual assault

The horror genre has a transphobia problem.

I’m an avid horror fan whose apartment requires a warning to enter with all the horror villains plastered to my walls. I am also a transgender person who knows that negative depictions of my community, however unintentionally harmful, do have an impact. To understand these consequences, I will be discussing four horror films that feature transmisogynist tropes and explore how their portrayal causes real harm to the trans community.

Spoiler alert “Sleepaway Camp” (1983), “Insidious 2” (2013), “Terrifier” (2016), and “Silence of the Lambs” (1991)!

One way to discuss the effect of media on our real lives is through cultivation theory, the idea that we learn things from entertainment that we take to be reality, and as a result they inform our reality.1 For example, research such as a 2016 study found the portrayal of gender

norms and rape myths (such as victim blaming) in sitcoms like “Parks and Recreation” perpetuated participants’ real attitudes towards abortion and contraceptives, especially for those who already held some misogynistic beliefs.2

So why do fictional portrayals of trans people matter? Simply put: because they’re killing us. Violence against trans people, particularly trans women, has been rising steadily for years, while hundreds of anti-trans laws are being proposed across the United States. If media has the opportunity to influence attitudes towards a marginalized group, I’d rather it didn’t equate non-cisheteronormative gender expression with mass murderers. Perhaps the most famous analogy to transness in horror is the character Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs.” Buffalo Bill is a serial killer who kidnaps and tortures women before killing them and wearing their skin. I went into this film with an open mind, only to cringe when the word “transsexual” is used several times. In addition, Hannibal Lecter, an institutionalized cannibal psychiatrist, mentions

how Bill requested and was refused hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery several times. However, Dr. Lecter insists that Buffalo Bill is not “truly transsexual,” a point that’s affirmed by most horror fans when this topic comes up. If Bill’s gender is unimportant, then why is transness directly referenced in the film? Why do we watch the serial killer dance around wearing women’s clothes and makeup? If you ask those same fans, they’ll answer that it’s a detail to show how deranged Bill is, but the idea that “men dressing as women” are unhinged does not exist in a vacuum; it

woman’s scalp and cut-off breasts while dancing around in an absurd performance of femininity. Why? Because men performing femininity is weird and disturbing! You’d think we could forgo the morbid drag and be convinced of

implicitly links trans behavior to violence and perpetuates preexisting transphobic beliefs past the point of fiction. We’ve seen this idea come to life in cases like Sabrina Prater, a trans woman whose viral TikTok of her dancing in a run-down house led to murder accusations, Buffalo Bill comparisons, and doxxing. This transmisogyny is present in many popular horror films. In “Terrifier,” an infamous grindhouse film, killer Art the Clown wears a

his irredeemability when he saws a woman in half from vulva to skull.

In less literal depictions (and by that I mean no one’s wearing anyone’s skin), there are films like the cult classic “Sleepaway Camp.” The story follows a teen named Angela at summer camp. The audience learns that she lost her family at a young age, so she doesn’t talk much. She then experiences attempted rape by a pedophile, constant bullying from

“If media has the opportunity to influence attitudes towards a marginalized group, I’d rather it doesn’t equate non-cisheteronormative gender expression with mass murderers.”

fellow campers and counselors, and repeated sexual coercion by a boy, Paul. One by one, each of the perpetrators are killed in grotesque ways (‘penetration with a hot curling iron’ grotesque). At this point in the film, I’m rooting for the killer; many queer people are attracted to the horror genre because we see ourselves in the monsters, and this was a perfect example. In the final scene, Angela

forced her to secretly transition because she had always wanted a daughter. (A woman who goes crazy after a man leaves and then defiles a little boy with femininity? It’s a twofer!)

Yet another example comes from the supernatural flick “Insidious 2.” In the previous installment, the leading man Josh saves his son Dalton from the film’s demon/ghost dimension

decapitates Paul, but the “big” plot twist is… that she has a penis. A shocked counselor gasps, “She’s a boy!”, addressing the “head” that had fallen in her lap (but not the right one in my opinion, pun intended). We learn that her divorced adoptive mother

and becomes possessed by an old woman’s spirit. We learn that this ghost is not a woman at all, but a man named Parker Crane, a serial killer who murdered 15 women. The only times we see Crane, other than as a scary ghost, are when he’s hospitalized for attempting to castrate himself and in scattered close-ups of him putting on a black wedding dress and lipstick in front of a kidnapped future victim. Similar to the plot of “Sleepaway Camp,” we learn that he grew up with an abusive mother who forced him to be a girl. It’s also implied that Crane gains sexual gratification from this ritual of crossdressing and murder (similar to Buffalo Bill). How does a boy who hated being a girl become a man who

“If you think too hard, the aforementioned idea that transfemininity and crossdressing are inherently horrifying rears its ugly head.”

dresses up as a woman to kill women for sadistic, sexual purposes? If you think too hard, the aforementioned idea that transfemininity and crossdressing are inherently horrifying rears its ugly head.

In the end, transness is demonized. The issue becomes a positive feedback loop: writers infuse their implicit, transmisogynistic biases into their work, so viewers begin to associate transness with those negative tropes, strengthening the link between transfemininity and horror and inspiring future writers to begin the cycle again. We perpetuate the idea that trans women are predatory men wearing a woman’s appearance (her skin), like a disguise for nefarious purposes. This terror bleeds into reality, and real trans women pay the price. A 2012 study by GLAAD found that in shows with trans representation aired in the previous decade, trans characters were cast as villains or killers in 21% of episodes on every major broadcast network and seven cable networks.3

Experts like Brennan Suen from Media Matters for America trace responsibility for transphobic attacks largely to media portrayals of trans people, stating, “When you ‘otherize’ them, villainize them and portray them as criminals, it does get ingrained in the culture.”

So, horror writers, please stop using our identities as your next scare factor. If the only way you can think to make your character unnerving is making him a man in a dress, maybe go back to the drawing board.

1: Stuart Soroka, “Cultivation Theory,” (Lecture, UCLA, October 12, 2021).

2: Nathaniel Swigger, “The Effect of Gender Norms in Sitcoms on Support for Access to Abortion and Contraception,” American Politics Research Volume 45, 1 (2016), https://doi. org/10.1177/1532673X16651615

3: GLAAD, “Victims or Villains: Examining Ten Years of Transgender Images on Television,” GLAAD, 2012, https://www.glaad.org/ publications/victims-or-villains-examining-ten-years-transgender-images-television

“This terror bleeds into reality, and real trans women pay the price.”

Ronald Reagan and Creating the Conditions for Satanic Panic

Written by Mia Riedel

Graphic by Christopher Ikonomou

The Satanic Panic almost perfectly coincides with former-President Reagan’s term, beginning in 1980 and dying out by the early 1990s while Reagan’s presidency lasted from 1981 to 1989. While Reagan himself did not acknowledge the moral panic, he created the perfect conditions for it and knew how to champion himself as its hero.

Moral panics are something most people have had the misfor-

tune of seeing before, especially after Donald Trump’s presidency. A familiar contemporary moral panic is the current transgender panic sweeping through the United States, one which has conservative leaders in a chokehold. This moral quandry with gender, demonstrated through such things as asking soon-to-be Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown “what is a woman?” in her interview with Congress and the Florida Board of

Medicine voting to ban gender-affirming care for minors, exemplifies a hyperfocus on minute “issues” that are deemed out of control and in need of correction. By deciding what people can and cannot be, conservatives push an agenda of correcting what they perceive as deviant in society, forcing people to assimilate into traditional American values. One thing the political right worries so much about is these values, and of course, that worry is not unique to our current time. Reagan didn’t start the talk

about gender, but he did let a disease do the talking for him, as he kept silent about the AIDS crisis until 1987, when it had already killed nearly 28,000 Americans. By willfully ignoring a disease that effected the citizens he was supposed to represent, Reagan created an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ where intrinsic qualities of a person could be the deciding factor in whether or not they were included in American ideals. Also, it’s important to remember that gay and trans liberation cannot be divorced from one another; an attack on one group means there’s soon to be an attack on the other, as both groups are viewed as sexual deviants. Facing different issues does not negate a

common enemy. Nowadays, this common enemy takes the form of the rising evangelical Christian right. Of course, there has always been evangelical Christians in the United States, but social progress in the United States is typically — and unfortunately — followed by a harsh conservative backlash.

During the 1980s, the Christian right emerged alongside the Moral Majority, a conservative Evangelical lobbying group that mobilized conservatives in America, facilitating the creation of the political right we know today.

They endorsed Reagan and are largely to blame for his election, as the Moral Majority created a dichotomy between two Americas: the one they envisioned, with Reagan as a hero correcting the deviants of society, and the one without him where deviants became Americans.

Reagan rose to power at a time when white Americans felt insecure about their social status in the United States. The late 1950s to early 1970s were marked by a time of social progress; civil rights, queer rights, and women’s rights groups had made tremendous strides, such as banning racial segregation, securing the right to contraceptives, and doing away with sodomy laws. These

“[G]ay and trans liberation cannot be divorced from one another...”

rights not only meant the United States acknowledged the existence of marginalized groups, but that these groups were starting to become a part of American values. Through these legislative changes that improved the lives of disenfranchised Americans, conservative Americans felt as though their standing in the country had been threatened; they believed they needed to weed out what they saw as non-American values, rather than expand them to include marginalized groups.

Since these marginalized groups were encroaching on their conservative lives, they needed

gan focused on crack in order to place the blame of drug abuse on people of color; white Americans used the same drug (also called cocaine), but were not equally targeted by this legislation. Believers in the Satanic Panic applied this stigma behind drug usage to their children, fearing that drugs would cause their children to fall astray from American values, becoming like the racist caricatures Reagan waged war against.

While the Moral Majority never spoke on the Satanic Panic itself, they frequently attributed American values to Reagan’s policies and condemned the same

to dealt with. And that’s where Reagan Satan came in, with fears of loud music, drugs, and hippies (all considered deviant), those who conservatives, especially the Moral Majority, took it upon themselves to correct.

For example, Reagan’s unsuccessful war on drugs was mirrored by the Satanic Panic’s fear of children abusing drugs. The war on drugs became a time of racially profiling people of color and queer people with little actual progress in curbing drug addiction, as the policies of the war focused less on rehabilitation and more on criminalization. Rea-

groups of people that the panic implicitly criticized. The Moral Majority opposed queer liberation and the Equal Rights Amendment (that guarenteed rights regardless of sex), thus alienating queer people and feminists, casting them into the other America — the America of the deviant minority, the sinful America. Through picking and choosing which groups to include in their morality and endorsing Reagan in their campaigns, the Moral Majority made Ronald Reagan out to be a hero that would save America, keeping it as ‘great’ as conservatives believed it once was.

“And that’s where Reagan Satan came in, with fears of loud music, drugs, and hippies.”

“I am proud, that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.” – Karl Heinrich Ulrichs