In This Broadcast

And werewolves are pretty trans.

Vampires are pretty gay. But have they always been? In this episode, Dany and Claire trace the vampire from plague-era folklore to the seductive aristocrat of the 19th century, and ask why the monster picked up its queer charge when it did.

Along the way: Sue Ellen Case’s argument about blood, “natural” life, and what happens when a culture builds its idea of nature around reproduction; the Spanish obsession with limpieza de sangre and the hidden converso anxieties underneath it; and Carmilla, Dracula, and Bram Stoker’s friendship with Oscar Wilde.

Then we turn to the werewolf. If vampire stories tend to be about desire you claim, and werewolf stories about change you can’t control, what does that say about the stories we tell, and about which queer experiences got to become aspirational first?