Girls Like Vampires Because We Want To Have Sex With Gay Guys?

The real root of the vampire trend, according to Stephen Marche at Esquire, is that straight women want to have sex with gay guys. It’s an interesting thesis, but I’m not buying it.

Marche argues that Twilight’s Bella falls for Edward because he’s “strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her”—just like why the straight girls at his high school lusted after gay dudes. But the common thread among the triumvirate of recent vampire hotties—Edward, True Blood’s Bill, and Buffy’s Angel—isn’t that they’re “strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by” the nonvamp women who love them. What they share is being hot, strong, and supremely protective. They lurk in shadows, lending a slaying hand when Buffy is outnumbered; avenging Sookie’s childhood molestation; stopping the car on a collision course with Bella. That seems just about as heteronormative a fantasy as you can get.

Marche’s argument continues:

Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That's what everybody wants, isn't it? Sex that's dangerous and safe at the same time, risky but comfortable, gooey and violent but also traditional and loving.

OK, I guess all of that sounds good. But how is having sex with someone who could kill you with a hickey “nonthreatening”? In most modern vampire dramas, the vamps are exerting tremendous, nonstop self-control to keep from chomping the woman they love. Having sex with them is the ultimate risk. As they usually tell their soon-to-be-lover in hushed undead pillow talk, they worry that once they let go a little, they’ll lose control entirely. And that’s not a groundless fear—look what happened to Angel.

Marche goes on to claim that True Blood “connects vampirism to homosexuality explicitly.” His proof: the roadside sign in the opening credits that says “God hates fangs” and general talk of “mainstreaming” vamps. Well, that points to the “vampires as social outcasts” theme. But it seems a big leap to get from that to “vampire craze as proof that all girls want to schtup gay guys.” I see the vampires' fight for equal rights in True Blood as similar to the struggles of mutants in X-Men. But in X-Men, that mutant/non-mutant tension seems more a stand-in for the relationship between blacks and whites (with Xavier as MLK and Magneto as Malcolm X) than a gay/straight thing. So, would Marche also says that X-Men comic books popular with nerdy boys because all nerdy boys want to have sex with black men? Or something?

Tags: gay rights, movies, Race, TV, vampires

Samantha Henig is the associate editor of Double X, and can be reached at samantha.henig@doublex.com.

Comments

buffy and x-men

By: devviepuu | Wed, 10/14/2009 - 11:02

i have to agree with "minor quibble." buffy and x-men both contain specific scenes that explicitly play on the idea of "coming out" to one's parents/friends/peers much in the way one might imagine coming out as gay or lesbian teenager to one's parents/friends/peers. x-men does tend to carry that metaphor farther than buffy does, but it exists in both texts.

Minor quibble

By: sjcaustenite | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 15:37

As a gay X-man fan, there are some definite deliberate parallels between the struggle for mutant acceptance and that for gay equality. Perhaps the clearest example is in the second film (X2: X-Men United) in which Bobby Drake, aka Ice-Man, "comes out" to his family as a mutant. His mother asks, "Have you tried not being a mutant?" Moreover, as being a mutant is (generally) an invisible difference, much like sexuality, the concept of hiding, self-loathing, and learning to accept ones-self as different have been recurring themes in the comics for years.

That's not it at all!

By: justamoment | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 15:36

Really...that is so NOT it. I actually had to explain this to a male friend of mine recently when he asked me (as his wife is a Twilight maniac and I am not)why women liked the whole vampire idea so much. The explanation is infinitely simple. Women desire older men who have experience, power, wealth, maturity, and intelligence. However, women also are deeply physically attracted to strong, fit, virile, hot-blooded younger men both because of appearance and because of the age at which men reach their sexual peak physiologically. The lover-vampire is usually hundreds of years old- giving him all of the qualities of an older man- but has the appearance and raw sexuality of a younger man. Thus the modern lover-vampire archetype fits perfectly the idealized dream that all women fantasize about. And while we may not dream about vampires specifically, we do long to find that perfect balance between the benefits of age and the passion of youth.

Vampires as hyperbole?

By: jaimi_p | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 14:50

My own theory is that the danger these dreamy vampires present to the girls, and they are always girls rather than women, is just an exaggeration of the fear every girl has when she dares to love any guy. Boys are unreliable and incomprehensible, not to mention just as clueless about girls as we are about them. The only thing scarier about dating a vampire than dating any other guy is that he could LITERALLY rip out your heart and stomp on it, rather than just doing it figuratively.

Overselling...

By: hcduvall | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 13:02

So Marche may be overdoing it when he says girls want to have sex with gay men--they don't even want that when they're reading yaoi, the genre of homoerotic manga for a mainly female audience--but saying the idea is flawed because vampires drink blood or boys like the X-Men is selling it short in one, the danger is safe as its a fantasy and the other fans primarily aren't identifying with the romantic scenes, they don't want to be Wolverine with Jean Grey, they want to Wolverine when he's fighting ninjas. The main worthwhile point from the article is that combination of safety and danger within the fantasy. Edward's not actually ever going to kill Bella, and the audience knows it. It's the frisson of danger rather than any actual danger.

It strikes me that a lot of the appeal may be that vampires are sexual creatures that don't have a lot of actual sex. None, really, as the bodily act is replaced with a bite, so in effect, at least for a portion of the audience that may be too young or less experienced, they can get the idea of something who's reality isn't known yet.

sounds like another take of pure idiocy

By: dano | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 12:22

Lets see in every vampire movie wherein I have lusted for the vampire, they have been hotties and bad boys. Gee - you mean hetero women don't find hot bad boys attractive? I must be unique in that regard.

Whatever

By: igardner | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:48

Yeah, dude, I'm not buying it. The allure of vampires is not that they're repulsed by you. Actually, it's exactly the opposite. He's been alive for hundreds or even thousands of years, presumably been with LOTS of women (and so knows all the tricks in bed -- BONUS!), but out of all those women, YOU'RE the one he chose. Whether it's Sookie and Bill, Buffy and Angel, or Bella and Edward, he sees her as so special that out of all the available women in all the years it's for her that he breaks his rules about not giving himself over to passion. That, it seems, is most of the allure behind being with a powerful man. Leave it to "Esquire" to completely misunderstand the situation. Whatever.

Vampires

By: LenoraBabb | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:15

Also, a key element of the Vampire appeal, the way I see it, is that they take you (mostly, sort of, generally) against your will. This is nothing like a gay man, whom one would have to take against HIS will.