The 2026 Miss Gay Maryland America pageant was held at Hub City Brewery in Hagerstown, Md. on Saturday, Oct. 10. Jalah Nicole was crowned the winner, and Maria Posa was named first alternate. Both competitors qualify for the Miss Gay America pageant in Atlanta in January.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Spooky season is here, making it a fantastic time to talk about queerness and horror. More precisely, it’s a chance to explore how the horror genre emerged and transformed our perspective on queer identity. 

Horror is far more political than most people realize. 

Personally, if sci-fi was the genre that helped me understand what it feels like to be different, it was horror that truly allowed me to explore queer relationships and queer rage.

Let’s dive into how horror as a book genre has evolved — moving from portraying queer and transgender identities as monstrous threats to becoming a space where queer people can process our own fears, rage, sexuality, and trauma: from the deeply queer undercurrents of vampire fiction to the liberating “monstrosity” of trans rage.

The ‘monstrosity’ of transness

It’s 2026, so let’s begin with the elephant in the room — or rather, the biggest conservative scapegoat in our community (thanks for actual political monsters). But trigger warning: trauma crawls to the surface like a monster breaking through.

Imagine two scenes:

Fifteen-year-old me, a trans teenager who didn’t yet know they were trans, was reading Thomas Harris’s “The Silence of the Lambs” (1988) for the first time (yes, for me it was first the book, then the movie.) I “encountered” Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who used human skin to make a female costume because he wanted to be a woman. How did I feel? Cringed out, humiliated, and even more determined to hide. And I wasn’t yet permitted myself to think that I’m trans, but I felt terrible without knowing why. It was one more message from mass culture: if you think you belong to a gender different from the one assigned to you at birth, you are a “psycho.” The intersection of ableism and transphobia is striking in stories like this. People with mental illnesses, who in real life are much more often victims than aggressors, are portrayed as dangerous to society, while transness is presented as a mental illness.

Now imagine an adult me, a couple of years after coming out as trans, reading Andrew Joseph White’s young adult horror novel “Hell Follows with Us” (2022). It portrayed actual monsters and a trans boy, Benji, turned into a monster by his cultist family. I felt joy and sympathy for Benji, who stood up against the apocalyptic cult that destroyed humanity, despite his parents raising him to destroy what was left of the human race. His trans rage and rebellion felt justified, and the main character never felt like a pathetic freak.

This is the main difference between classical portrayals of trans people in horror and the changes made by trans authors and creators reclaiming the genre.

When Harris wrote “The Silence of the Lambs” and Jonathan Demme directed the movie (1991), the story made it clear that Buffalo Bill was not a “real” trans person and that real trans people were harmless. But this raises an important question: how can we decide who is a “real” trans person and who isn’t if someone’s gender identity differs from the one assigned to them at birth? The trope of an aggressive, perverse person who “wants to be a woman” has existed throughout modern fiction, with the “Psycho” (1960) movie being another famous example, that stigmatizes cross-dressing and gender non-conformity and, by association, trans women.

Aggressive trans characters and trans characters in serial-killer fiction have every right to exist. White’s young adult horror novel “You’re No Better” (2026), which is coming out this October, features a trans autistic boy trying to prove that he is nothing like his famous serial-killer father. There is also the transgender novel “Manhunt” (2022), featuring two trans women, Beth and Fran, who survive by hunting men transformed into monsters.

Honestly, I’m currently querying a vampire novel with a trans teenager who runs from his transphobic MAGA family and has literally become a monster, so it would be hypocritical of me to object to controversial or monstrous trans characters. They can be violent — but not because they are trans. They can be driven to become monsters by society, but not because of their supposed “perversion.”

Trans horror written by trans and trans-friendly authors can help process rage and alienation. Many trans horror authors reclaim the label of “monstrosity” without turning their characters into caricatures, perverted villains, or pathetic creatures, as often happened in more classical, cis-hetero normative horror.

Queer romance and forbidden love

For me, “The Vampire Chronicles” by Anne Rice was my first introduction to non-judgmental, queer-centered fiction as a teenager. As Rice famously observed, all her vampires are bisexual, and it was remarkably brave to publish books in the 1970s and 1980s where queer families, desire, and drama were simply part of the plot without any silly sensationalism. The 1994 film adaptation of “Interview with the Vampire” was the movie through which many people I knew who weren’t into queer stories first saw these dynamics onscreen. And the new AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire” (2022-current) TV series is, in my opinion, one of the best representations of messy queer relationships between traumatized people, addressing family trauma and the intersection of race and queerness. I recommend it even more than “reality-based” shows such as “Heated Rivalry” or “Queer as Folk.”

Gothic literature has always had a queer undercurrent. From Lord Byron’s homoerotic image of the undead to the lesbian desire of “Carmilla” and the obsessive relationships surrounding “Dracula” (book published in 1897), vampires have long been associated with forbidden desire, sexuality, and relationships outside social norms. “Carmilla,” published in 1872 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, still resonates with the lesbian community today. “Carmilla” is unapologetically queer, declaring romantic passion for the human woman Laura without hiding her desires. Of course, “Carmilla” is literally a monster — but how else could an author write a forbidden queer love story in 1872?

New retellings of “Dracula” and “Carmilla” have become even more increasingly queer. Kat Dunn’s “The Hungerstone” (2025)  is a sapphic story about feminine agency and the relationship between Carmilla and Lenore, a bisexual British woman in Industrial-era Sheffield, framed around sapphic emancipation and forbidden love. “Dracula” has also inspired plenty of retellings, most notably S. T. Gibson’s “A Dowry of Blood” (2021) — an explicitly polyamorous, bisexual retelling told from the perspective of one of his brides. It explores abuse and the importance of breaking codependency in queer relationships — a topic underrepresented in more “serious” fiction.

Vampires have also become a cross-cultural way to speak about queerness. For example, Dawn Chen’s “A Vampire in Beijing” that will be published in 2027, offers a sapphic story about the modern Chinese queer community and its unique struggles.

Together against the monsters

Another major trope in queer horror is queer people, especially queer youth, fighting monsters together. Those monsters may be supernatural, as in “The Dark We Know” (2024) by Wen-Yi Lee or “This Raging Sea” (2025) by De Elizabeth, where groups of bisexual, queer kids fight side-by-side with an old evil. Ultimately, these external threats represent a conservative society, oppressive stereotypes, and real-world mental health struggles.

Although horror historically mostly exploited queerness for sensationalism — harming real-world queer people in the process — today it has transformed into one of the most effective spaces to explore queer identity and trauma in our own language.

The Center for Black Equity held its annual BE. Gala at Conrad Washington, D.C. on Saturday, Oct. 5. Lolita Leopard Miyake-Mugler and Anthony Oakes co-hosted the awards ceremony.

Honorees included journalist and producer Justin Stewart; nonprofit leader Nikki Alexander; HIV advocate Marlene McNeese; the nonprofit organization FreeLux Project; actress Monroe Alise; public health advocate Tori Cooper; Manassas Park Vice Mayor Darryl G. Moore; Rev. Dr. Carmarion D. Anderson; Bishop Steven Sawyer; government relations professional Courtney Snowden; Senior Deputy Director of HAHSTA at D.C. Health, Clover Barnes; and Texas state Rep. Venton C. Jones. 

The event was presented by Gilead.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)