Listicle: Eleven Forms of Misogyny in Horror Media
Misogyny permeates every part of our society, that’s just the nature of oppression. It’s difficult to go anywhere, speak to anyone, or look at anything influenced by our culture without having some implicit misogynistic message sent your way.
Despite this issue, we as an international community have greatly improved the way we represent women, especially in media. However, it seems there’s one type of media, one genre of fiction in particular, that still finds itself immersed in regressive, old-fashioned ideas about women. That genre would be Horror.
Now, I’m a Horror fanatic. Games, movies, books, everything Horror-related has been an important part of my life for nearly 2 decades — I watched my first scary movie (Hellraiser) at 3 years old! This trend upsets me not only because I’m a woman myself, but for the pure fact that this genre is a passion of mine. I’d like to delve deeper into the tropes and cliches that misogyny have influenced Horror media.
1. Sex is Scary!
Two covers for Hell House, both depicting women passively terrified. Images from: Too Much Horror Fiction
American culture is often referred to as “repressed” and squeamish when it comes to the topic of sex. Sexual imagery and themes in media are seen as uncomfortable, awkward, and maybe even gross to some. This aversion to sexuality is much more potent when it comes to women seeking and receiving our own pleasure (as opposed to just acting as an object for male pleasure).
It’s the fact that this concept — female sexuality and pleasure — is so taboo that it finds itself embedded within Horror media so often. It makes people cringe to see women embrace their sexuality confidently, especially if that woman hasn’t been designed/styled to be sexually appealing to a presumed straight, male audience.
Take for example Edith from the 1971 novel Hell House, a very well-celebrated piece of classic Horror literature. She’s the wife of a scientist studying paranormal activity in a famously haunted house (the titular “Hell House”). Being the “wife” character, she predictably doesn’t do much throughout the story and is even written to have a full mental breakdown when even briefly separated from her husband (but that’s a story for another day). She’s haunted and terrorized by the ghosts of Hell House by being made hyper-sexual, forcing herself upon the only other man in the house. This is supposed to be horrific, because she gets naked and vocalizes her desire for sex. That’s it, seriously.
2. And Liking Sex Means You Deserve to Die!
A depiction of the Whore archetype from Cabin in the Woods (2011). Image from: The Vigilant Citizen
This is one of the big ones, something about Horror media (specifically Slasher films) that we all seem to be familiar with. As the hit Horror-parody film Cabin in the Woods (2011) points out, there is a very formulaic structure to the group of teens being terrorized in any given “Slasher” Horror movie. They’re very recognizable tropes: the Nerd and/or Stoner, the Jock, the Token Racial Minority, the Nice Guy, and then of course we have the Virgin (always the “Final Girl”) and the Whore. The “Whore” is almost always a very attractive woman, usually blonde (and Caucasian), who enjoys sex and makes that no secret. She is often paired with her Jock boyfriend, and together it’s agreed by both the writers and audience that these two (but especially the Whore) having sex as teenagers/young-adults is so scandalous that they’re among the first to be picked off (but not before the Racial Minority, of course).
Contrast this treatment with the Virgin/Final Girl, whose modest and innocent nature make her demonstrably more valuable than the Whore. She is pure and untainted, so she’s the one who deserves to survive; only by virtue of her virginity and ignorance to more “vulgar” things.
3. Burn the Witch
Carrie (Sissy Spacek) from her 1976 movie. Image from: Sarah Duong’s Medium article
Women are rarely the antagonists of Horror media, almost always starring in a victim or supporting role. When they are written to be the “monster”, their portrayal says much more about the anxieties a male write-staff and/or audience have about women than they do about the female characters themselves. It’s for this reason that female Horror villains are often forced into one of only a few tropes, the most popular of which would be the classic “Witch.”
As Leon Thomas of Renegade Cut puts it in his video-essay The Feminine Horror: “If there’s one villainous archetype that is almost exclusively female, it is that of the Witch.”
Women have been associated with magic for hundreds of years spanning multiple different cultures. Long before Puritanical Christianity, much of this “magic” was considered to be of beneficial or healing nature. The tide turned when witchcraft became heresy, and women with these supernatural connections became thought of as “wicked” and to be conspiring with the devil. This archetype is typically associated with sexual deviance and a rejection of society.
The hit 1976 movie Carrie based on the Stephen King book of the same name is a perfect demonstration of this trope. Even though this girl is a victim, bullied mercilessly by her peers and emotionally abused by her mother, but by the end, you’re supposed to be afraid of her. She’s an incredibly sympathetic, tortured soul pushed to the edge of insanity, but her rage and rejection from her torment makes her the monster of her own story. Her depiction is a quintessential male anxiety, a cautionary tale of what happens when women gain power and liberation.
Speaking of liberation…
4. Female Liberation Means Castration
Yamazaki Asami (Ishibashi Ryo) in Audition (1999). Image from: Bloody Disgusting
Another very common form of female Horror villain is the “Castrator.” This is the absolute peak of male anxiety about women attaining power and personal agency.
These female monsters are almost entirely centered around men: their motivations are to torture and emasculate central male characters, they typically have a backstory centered around physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of men (and now they’re taking their revenge), or they desire to dominate/control men by taking away their power. Female killers almost always take this form, and despite this idea that these women are “empowered,” it’s quite obvious that they have no personality or motivation of their own outside of the context of men.
Yamazaki from Audition (1999), Ann in Happy Birthday to Me (1981), Annie Wilkes in Misery (1990), Lola Stone from The Loved Ones (2009), Marie in High Tension (2003), Mandy in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006), Ginger from Ginger Snaps (2000), both Nadine and Manu in Baise-Moi (2000), Jennifer Check from Jennifer’s Body (2009)… There are so many of these examples, it’s kind of ridiculous. All of these female characters center their violence and rage almost exclusively against men, especially men they feel have personally wronged them in some way. Women having external motivations and desires that are separate from our relationships with men is an absolute foreign concept in Horror movies, it seems.
5. A Glutton for Self-Punishment
Megan Fox as Jennifer Check in Jennifer’s Body (2009). Image from: BuzzFeed
Another hallmark of female monsters is the act of self-mutilation. Now, inflicting wounds on oneself can be found commonly among male Horror villains as well, but it has an entirely different context and purpose.
Male monsters self-mutilate for pleasure, to intimidate, and to satiate their need to cut living flesh however they can. It’s a demonstration of power and dominance, evidence of their overwhelming blood-lust and malcontent (like Pinhead from the Hellraiser series).
On the other hand, when female monsters engage in self-mutilation, it’s often an act of revenge for some type of abuse (typically sexual) that they take out on their own bodies. If not a form of vengeance, then the violence they commit against themselves is for the purpose of “ridding themselves of evil,” to cast out the demon/ghost possessing them or their desire to kill. Again, it’s a pivotal part of their characters and their designs that have been specifically written to still somehow be all about the men in their lives. And when it’s not, it seems to spread this idea that women are incapable of being evil.
That might seem like a good thing on the surface, right? But it still isn’t treating women as equals. Men are complete and whole human beings who are capable of horrific things based upon their own malevolence. In contrast, women ourselves belong to separate categories: a doting, mothering counterpart or a sexual object to be used by men, incapable of individual motivation and not entirely human.
6. It’s All About the Womb
The extremely iconic final scene of Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Image from: Vanity Fair
“The pregnant woman is represented in terms of motherhood, in terms of caring for another and not, for
example, herself. In other words, pregnancy is represented in terms of the horrific and the abject. Horror films about monstrous pregnancies and births often associate the pregnant body with permeability, corruptibility and pollution. ” – Sarah Arnold, Pregnancy in the Horror Film: Reproduction and Maternal Discourses
Even in fiction, women can’t seem to escape the imposition of pregnancy. Societies dating back thousands of years have reduced women to our wombs and our ability to birth sons or heirs. Even today, in the supposedly progressive age of 2020, there’s still a very present stigma against forgoing to have children or terminating a pregnancy as a woman.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in Horror media. So, so many female characters only exist in a piece of Horror fiction to be made pregnant, however that pregnancy might serve the story. We have Rosemary’s Baby (1968), probably the most famous example, where a happy young mother has her child corrupted by a Satanic cult. She is passive, terrorized and gaslighted throughout the whole movie/book, and behaves almost totally complacent in her own suffering.
Then there’s a more contemporary example, the video game Outlast 2 (2016). The wife of the main character, named Lynn, is forcibly made pregnant by a different religious cult to birth the Anti-Christ. She only exists within the story to be a damsel, to be saved by her husband, to be raped, to be made pregnant, then to die. She has virtually no lines that aren’t screams of pain or begging to be saved.
Both of these women are major characters, but barely play a true protagonist role. They’re really only here for their uterus and to be victimized.
7. Stop Being So Hysterical!
Renai (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Patrick Wilson) from Insidious (2010). Image from: What’s On TV
This one drives me crazy! It can be subtle, but it’s present is almost every Horror film, TV show, book, or game that stars both a man and a woman as the main characters.
At the end of the first act, when the “haunting” or “supernatural event” or whatever it might be starts up around the characters, the woman will usually notice first and let the man know. He’ll call her crazy, say she’s seeing things or that she’s just over-stressed. She insists, he gets annoyed, then something big happens to prove that she was right all along. Sometimes the audience knows she’s right, sometimes we’re left to assume that she really is crazy, but it plays out the same every time. You can see it in many “haunted house” films, like Paranormal Activity (2007), Insidious (2010), and The Conjuring (2013).
Even in situations where the man will recognize some strange business going on, like in the aforementioned Paranormal Activity, they still doubt the spiritual element, dismiss her worry, and behave condescendingly to the woman who is justifiably terrified. Sometimes the woman is portrayed as losing her mind, crumbling under the weight, even when it’s the man being possessed and targeted by the evil, paranormal force, like in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980).
These character interactions serve to reinforce stereotypes about women being irrational and hysterical. Even when the woman is proven right by the narrative, her male counterpart’s stoicism and calm demeanor are often portrayed as much more practical and intelligent, despite it almost getting their whole family killed.
8. Perpetual Victimhood
Kate Siegel as Maddie Young in Hush (2016). Image from: New York Times
“The function of monster and hero are far more frequently represented by males and the function of victim far more garishly by females.” – Carol J. Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws
This is a carry-over trope from other forms of fictional media, especially in comic books, graphic novels, and video games. It’s the classic cliche we all know and hate love, the “Damsel in Distress.” This has already been implied in previous sections, but it;s just so damn pervasive it would be a crime to not mention it. Female characters tend to be the protagonists of Horror media. But don’t be fooled, this role is not intended to give these women agency, it’s too show them being hunted, tortured, and repeatedly victimized by whatever the antagonistic force may be. Almost always their tormentors are men or male-coded monsters.
These female perspective characters usually, unlike their male counterparts, are passive and take little action against whatever it might be that’s terrorizing her (ghosts, demons, serial killers, zombies, monsters/creatures, etc.) They run (though not very well, considering their high-heels), they hide, and they wait for a man to actually take control.
Examples include: The Halloween series, Hush (2016), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1977), Suspiria (1977), the Friday the 13th series, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2003), the Nightmare on Elm Street series, You’re Next (2011), the Alien series, the Scream series, Psycho (1960), 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), Black Christmas (1974), Would You Rather (2012), Feast (2005), The Descent (2005) and its sequel (2009), Slashers (2001), the Evil Dead series, Happy Death Day (2017), 31 (2016), Cherry Falls (2000), Jeepers Creepers (2001), Resident Evil (2002), The Shining (1980), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Martyrs (2008/2015), A Quiet Place (2018), The Babadook (2014), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Carrie (1976), Drag Me to Hell (2009), The Innocents (1961), CAM (2018), Gerald’s Game (2017), The Orphanage (2007). The list just goes on and on. If I were to list every single movie, book, or game with this trope, I’d be writing for 2 weeks straight.
9. Indulgence in Female Suffering
Lucie (Troian Bellisario) from Martyrs (2015). Image from: Flavour Mag
There is a rather popular sub-genre of Horror films known as “Splatter” built on the foundation of torture and extreme violence. Popular entries include the Saw series or ever infamous The Human Centipede (2009). These types of works have never been my cup of tea, but when I do watch them, I notice a trend. The suffering of women is fetishized, elongated much more than sequences with men, and very much made sexual.
Martyrs (both the 2008 and 2015 versions), A Siberian Film (2010), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), and Cannibal Holocaust (1980) are just some notable examples of Splatter films that explicitly sexualize extreme violence against women, and all are absolute staples in the sub-genre. They “indulge” so much in the rape and torture of women (who are usually very young, maybe even teenagers) to the point where it seems much more like a fetishization of violent misogyny than a Horror film.
10. Offensive Feminine Caricatures
Wendy (Shelley Duvall) in The Shining ‘s (1980) most famous scene. Image from: Empire
As mentioned before, Horror media has a real bad habit of making women hapless victims, removing their agency, and surrounding the entire context of their characters revolve around men in some way. When added together, these tropes form a very dangerous archetype of womanhood.
Additionally, there’s the “Temptress,” the Seductress who seduces men and weaponizes her sexuality. A women whose entire personality, motivation, and personal expression is defined solely by the attraction that men have to her.
The Passive Martyr, the Hysterical Bitch, the Nag, the Succubus, the Woman Scorned. They serve to paint women as either irrational and ineffectual or conniving and men-obsessed. Media has an observable effect on people’s perceptions of themselves and the world around them; passing around these ideas, especially when so widespread, can help warp and manipulate the way women’s emotions, fears, behavior, or sexuality are viewed.
11. Female On Purpose
Image from: Den of Geek
Lastly, I’d like to cover this key detail. It’s something that applies to all minority groups across all forms of media, but it feels particularly apt here.
No female character in a piece of Horror media is female for no reason — meaning that the writers, director, etc will choose to make a given character a woman for some specific intention in mind. No woman can exist in these universes merely because women are half of the world’s population, that’s just not good enough. Male is the assumed default, and to deviate from it you must have a good justification for your choice.
The protagonist is female, and she’s female because she’s giving birth to Satan’s child. The antagonist is female, because when possessed by a demon, she becomes hyper-sexual and masochistic. A supporting character in the main group ensemble is female, because she’s the “Whore” who is murdered by the serial killer early on.
Nothing will ever make me stop loving the Horror genre, and I have no desire to convince anyone else to do so either. But, these issues are still very much prevalent and they desperately need to be addressed. Horror media and its communities are overall very unwelcoming to women and especially to Feminist critique. If we can challenge the body-shaming of the beauty industry, popularize the #MeToo movement, and embrace Feminism into the cultural mainstream, then we can start re-shaping the Horror genre away from its misogynistic ties.