‘Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story Only Fuels Damaging Anti-Trans Narratives’

Just one minute into the trailer for Monster: Ed Gein, undergirded by the Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin,” Gein (Charlie Hunnam) writhes in a forest green bra and matching panties, before bunny hopping across his living room wearing nylon pantyhose, a modest house dress and a mask crafted from skin off a dead woman’s face. It’s a trailer that simultaneously repulses and titillates, the way that Gein’s crimes, as well as the aura around them, have revulsed and drawn crowds into moviehouses since his name first garnered headlines in the 1950s.

via: Pink News

Trans journalist Amelia Hansford criticises the unecessary trans themes in Monster: The Ed Gein Story and the creators’ failure to understand their own message.

Warning: This column contains spoilers for Monster: The Ed Gein Story.

There’s a school of thought in psychology about the relationship between intention and impact. The idea is, essentially, that the intention of an action is less important than the impact. You may not have intended to verbally harm someone, but you did, and that’s what matters.

I believe this holds true when creating art. To its creator, intent drives the concept and its themes, steering it towards its destination. To an outside observer, however, it doesn’t matter who is behind the wheel, a car crash is still a car crash.

Ryan Murphy made his intent clear when discussing Monster: The Ed Gein Story following the limited series’ release earlier this month. His intent was clear when explaining that the horror series asks its viewers to question whether monsters are born or bred, and that he wanted to use serial killer Ed Gein’s story to spark a conversation about mental illness. His intent was especially clear when he expressed the importance of dissuading the spurious rumours around Ed Gein’s gender identity.

I fully believe Ryan and co-creator Ian Brennan when they say they intended to “make a distinction” between the horrific murders Ed Gein committed and the spurious rumours around his gender identity and expression; I have no reason not to. The problem is that their intent is worth absolutely nothing to those watching the misguided, ignorant tripe that came from it.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story, rather than distancing itself from the deeply problemtic and misinformed depictions of Ed Gein as a trans fanatical cross-dresser, revels in it by having him obsessively dress in women’s clothes and skin, wearing lingerie and a mask constructed from the skin of a dead woman as he masturbates.

It’s these active engagement with such harmful narratives, bereft of nuance or self-awareness, that makes the completely imagined scene between Ed and trans actress Christine Jorgensen both cringeworthy and deeply, deeply offensive.

In episode seven, “Ham Radio,” Ed uses an imaginary Ham Radio to speak directly with the people he obsesses over. In reality, he is speaking to his psychologist, who has taken the role of those he is speaking with. One of them is trans actress Christine Jorgensen, who became the first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

During the conversation, Ed likens himself to Christine, saying he identifies with her and thinks he may be transgender himself. It then cuts – and I am not joking here – to Ed, lying in bed and wearing the skin of a woman, placing a sliced off vulva under a pair of women’s panties and looking at himself in the mirror in euphoria.

Christine then confronts Ed in what is supposed to be a watershed moment, telling him that he is not trans, but is more likely “gynephilic,” adding: “The transexual is rarely the perpetrator of violence, Mr. Gein. We are far more likely to be the victims of violence.”

Let’s make one thing clear before I delve into just how repugnant this is. There is no evidence to suggest Ed Gein was obsessed with Christine Jorgensen. Some reports claimed he had newspaper clippings about her alongside materials about anatomy and gender identity, but that does not determine an obsession with her specifically.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about this scene. It’s astounding the levels to which the show’s producers have mishandled the framing in a way that doesn’t just fail to nip these rumours in the bud, but instead seemingly allows the viewer to draw closer ties between trans people and murderous psychopaths.

How are we meant to read this other than Ed speaking to what he believes he should be? The way they both sit at this fictional Ham Radio, positioned similarly as though they are reflections of one another. There’s even a split screen showing the pair looking at each other directly.

And then there’s the skin suit segment. This one makes my blood boil.

Self discovery as a trans woman is an embarrassing, emotional, vulnerable thing and a key part of that is the moment we experiment with gender presentation. You sit there, alone in your room, close to tears as you try on the cheap clothes you bought online with a million deafening thoughts racing through your mind. And then, in that deeply personal moment, you see yourself in the reflection. It’s not perfect, but it’s you. It’s finally you.

Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan took that moment and spat on it. Like their subject, they carved it away from us, morphing and stitching it into this unrecognisable thing which serves only to satisfy their bleak intentions. Well done, Ryan and Ian, you’ve taken something that was precious and ours and turned it into another thing for apathetic gawkers to cringe at.

Even in its attempts to confront Ed’s misinformed feelings, the producers fail. You could argue that this is Ed addressing reality by coming face-to-face with what gender dysphoria truly is. Okay, sure, let’s look at it from that perspective.

If we are to believe Christine is meant to represent the lived reality of trans people, then what she represents is a stunted view of gender expression. She is a conduit for a psychologist, who tells Ed that transitioning should take “years and years of careful analysis” and flings around terms like gynephilic, which are routinely used by transphobic medical professionals to restrict healthcare. Congrats, Ryan and Ian, you’ve just promoted transmedicalism.

This is why intention means nothing in art. Ryan Murphy can repeat his intentions all-day long. He could start up a podcast where he repeats his intentions over and over and over again, but Ryan is not there when viewers are consuming his art. He can only speak to them through his creation.

If his intention was to truly make the distinction between trans people and the violence people spuriously pretend we cause, then he has failed. He has failed at a time when right-wing actors are pushing deeply hateful conspiracies about so-called trans-extremism. Rather than put out the fire of transphobia, he has thrown more kindling on the pile.