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

[lferion]

I have no idea if any of these are actually what you mean, but:

Patricia McKillip
- In the Forests of Serre has a Baba Yaga character
- The Tower at Stoney Wood has a selkie as a principal character
- Song for the Basilisk has Luna, direct heir to her father's power
- Fool's Run has The Queen of Hearts|Terra Viridian

Bujold - Lady Ijada in The Hallowed Hunt is a shape-shifter/were

P.C.Hodgell's Jamethiel, though I'm not at all certain how to categorize her, has interesting 'monstrous' aspects

Diana Wynne Jones' Aunt Maria in 'Aunt Maria'

Shelob & her distant offspring the spiders in Mirkwood

Nearly any Faery Queen written seriously, including Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, McKillip's Book of Atrix Wolfe, Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age, and so on

--the definition I think I am going with here is along the lines of 'powerful, frightening, and with knowledge, skills and desires/needs/agendas not in line to directly conflicting with what is considered 'normal/moral/regular' social expectation/behaviour/life' (and I hope that makes some kind of sense!)

[rachelmanija]

Are any of them LGBTQ?

[lferion]

The Faerie Queens certainly tend to be ambiguous, but I was more running along the lines of interesting ways of thinking about 'monstrous', so this list & the one below may not be what you are looking for.

The folklore figures -- especially the crones: Baba Yaga, many of the 'witches' don't get a sexual aspect to their stories at all, so it's hard to say. That right there is a thing: the powerful women in myth/folklore who aren't fertility-related don't get to have sex lives. But that's not the question you asked here.

Sorry!

[lferion]

Cannot edit to add: Folklore

Erishkegal & any Goddess of the underworld ever, including Hel
The Morrigan
Scylla and Charybdis
The Gorgon
The Eumenidies
(Actually, from a certain point of view, Any Goddess Ever, especially presupposing that 'monstrous' =/= evil or bad)

More fantasy &etc:
Achren in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books
Mombi, the Patchwork Girl, and sundry others in the Oz books
Ariane Emory (both of them, but particularly II) in C.J.Cherryh's Cyteen books