Monstrous Women

[rachelmanija]

I will be attending Sirens again this year, and am thinking of panels to propose. This year's theme is monsters, and as the con is about women in fantasy, that would be female monsters.

Last year, there was only one panel with an explicit LGBTQ focus, and practically the entire con attempted to pile into it, forcing it to shut some out for lack of space and leaving the poor people doing the panels scheduled opposite to speak to nearly-empty rooms. It seems clear that there is enormous interest in the topic, and the con could easily support several more panels on the theme. If you're considering attending Sirens (by far my favorite con I've attended in the last five years or so), please consider proposing something along those lines. (The overall con theme is "women in fantasy," so monsters are not essential.)

However, the obvious panel would be LGBTQ monsters, particularly female and female-identified ones. I am thinking of proposing this, taking a wide view of "monster" - some monsters are literal, some more ambiguous, and sometimes the identity or orientation itself is condemned as monstrous.

Can you suggest fiction or even folklore featuring such "monsters?" So far I've thought of the lesbian vampires in The Gilda Diaries, Micah in Liar, and Mystique in The X-Men. I'm OK with spoilers in comments, so long as they're marked on the subject headers. (So beware spoilers in comments!)

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

For any of you who like queer eroticized fairy-tale retellings, I cannot say enough good things about Patrick Califia's short story "Blood and Silver", which has Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf lesbian dominatrix. That probably sounds almost jokey from such a nutshell description, but so long as you aren't put off by the BDSM content it's really quite moving and romantic; totally Better Than It Sounds. (It can be found in two of his anthologies, No Mercy and Blood and Silver; Califia's also written several short pieces, most of them interlinked, about gay/lesbian/bi vampires, and one full-length novel, Mortal Companion, involving two of the recurring vampire characters.)