There are some days I hate the fact that I\u2019m queer. I know that\u2019s not super politically correct to say, but it\u2019s true. Sometimes I just don\u2019t want it \u2013 I don\u2019t want the burden of self-disclosure, the stress of vulnerability, the double-takes after delicate admissions over coffee. During Pride Month, especially, it feels blasphemous: I\u2019m supposed to be proud, liberated, and free, or whatever. But there are times when I\u2019m none of those things.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019ve gone through the bullshit and faced the disappointment, the silence, the rejection for \u201ccoming out\u201d as something you\u2019ve always already been in the first place, it hurts. It does something to you. Maybe it\u2019s a fundamental wound that only some people feel. I\u2019m sure there are a whole bunch of truly well-adjusted queer angels out there who have no idea what I\u2019m on about! I hope so, anyway. For me, though, even when things are perfectly good \u2013 when I\u2019m enjoying a sweaty beer at Tempelhof under a nectarine sunset \u2013 I\u2019m still haunted by something. And that haunting is closely intertwined with my experience of queerness. It\u2019s okay, though \u2013 I\u2019ve realized now that it\u2019s just about making friends with those ghosts.<\/p>\n
So when I heard that our favorite queer icon Kristen Stewart would be producing a show about LGBTQ+ ghost hunters, I recognized it as something honest. We don\u2019t know a lot about the show yet (it\u2019s in its early stages of production, there\u2019s an ongoing casting call<\/span><\/a>), but its mere existence weirdly testifies to my experience: it\u2019s all about the queer bond to that which haunts us. Ghosts are kind of inherently queer already, if you think about it. Both haunted and haunting, they bridge two worlds (inhabiting neither fully), they dwell in limbo trying to process a fatal wound, and they scare people a lot of the time. People run away from ghosts. It\u2019s not their fault, it just is what it is. But what about those people who don\u2019t run away from ghosts? The ones who hunt them down? They\u2019re the very same people who run towards the horror and embrace the strange. They look for it, they lean into it. Ghost hunting isn\u2019t just a niche queer topic for a television show \u2013 on some level, it\u2019s what a lot of queer people do all the time anyway. We familiarize ourselves with fear, we build a home there. We even seek it out, strive to dig deeper, linger longer, and get on more intimate terms with our trauma.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something cathartic about running towards ghosts: our favorite bisexual emo-folk singer Phoebe Bridgers has built her entire style around embracing them, for instance. Her 2017 debut album Stranger in the Alps <\/i>features an image of a young girl painted over as a cartoonish white ghost with empty black eyes; her acclaimed 2020 album Punisher <\/i>features her donning her signature <\/b>skeleton suit in an eerie red-lit moonscape. It\u2019s not just her aesthetic either, Bridgers\u2019 lyrics<\/span><\/a> also tilt into the supernatural: \u201cWe’re not alone \/ I’ll find a new place to be from \/ A haunted house with a picket fence \/ To float around and ghost my friends \/ No, I’m not afraid to disappear.\u201d <\/i>That she rose to fame in the midst of the pandemic seems entirely appropriate. As the gothic horror of mass death collided with everyday niceties in 2020, Bridgers brought together haunted houses and picket fences. She isn\u2019t afraid of the dark. For her unrelenting interrogation of what it means to be haunted, her willingness to probe the depths, Phoebe Bridgers has been called<\/span><\/a> the \u201csavior\u201d of \u201cqueer, depressed 20-somethings.\u201d<\/p>\n Thinking through Kristen Stewart\u2019s paranormal ambitions and Phoebe Bridgers\u2019 ethereal persona, I find myself transported back to the midst of the pandemic, curled up under my striped duvet watching Netflix\u2019s The Haunting of Bly Manor<\/i> (2020). Another spectral media experience amplified by that year\u2019s atmosphere, it was described to me as \u201ca sapphic love story with ghosts\u201d rather than a horror series. The show works through the protagonist\u2019s queer trauma as symbolized by the ghost of her homophobic ex-fianc\u00e9. It impressed me: I hadn\u2019t thought that supernatural horror could better approximate that fragile emotional landscape than a more realistic narrative. Even two years later, at a moment when much more optimistic queer romance novels<\/span><\/a> and rom-coms<\/span><\/a> are thriving (which I love, don\u2019t get me wrong), I continue to find myself drawn to this tragic ghost story. That probably says something about me, but I believe it also says something about the salience of the genre for speaking to the queer experience. Supernatural horror is the only genre that doesn\u2019t shy away from fear or sugarcoat discomfort \u2013 it\u2019s extreme, but it\u2019s honest. It doesn\u2019t pretend that things are fine. As in Bly Manor<\/i>, things are scary and broken and normal rules don\u2019t apply. Even when characters make through it to the end, they end up haunted. That\u2019s also what it means to be queer sometimes: we endure and hold trauma. We hold a lot of other things, of course, but that\u2019s always there too \u2013 at least for me.<\/p>\n The choice to look ghosts in the eye is a brave one. It\u2019s not easy, it comes with sweaty palms and a racing pulse. This choice to face it \u2013 like horror, like ghost hunting, like queerness itself \u2013 can even be understood as a celebration of being alive. We can go through scary things, painful things, and come out the other side. It\u2019s not that everything is fine, it\u2019s just that there\u2019s more. I find that so beautiful about the queer community: we tend to our ghosts. I love that every day.<\/p>\n"}]},"yoast_head":"\n