Nobody wants a monster girl

Why, even in our own fantasies, do we insist that only the male monsters get to f*ck?

Content warning: This is about monster-f*ckers. Nothing graphic, but reader discretion advised.

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A few years ago, I did a job interview in a graveyard.

Technically, it was in a rectory overlooking the graveyard, an old stone building turned into the regional office of a wealth-management firm. I came in because they were looking for a copywriter to advertise their “tax efficiency” services. Over some tea, they explained to me that they represented local multi-millionaires – clinic owners, Love Island contestants and one bestselling author who’d made a fortune writing monster erotica.

When I returned home and googled the author, I learned that my prospective employers had not in fact used the correct terminology for the genre: monster-fucker romance. It’s a hugely popular sector of the self-published romance genre. In most of these novels, a human woman falls for a male monster who is scary at first but quickly turns out to be sensitive, tender and anatomically innovative.

You can find books about insectoid aliens, snake men, half-orcs, full orcs, krakens, gargoyles, and even Krampus, which is sort of like an evil German Christmas goat. Hits include Ice Planet Barbarians (“You’d think being abducted by aliens would be the worst thing that could happen to me. And you’d be wrong.”) and Morning Glory Milking Farm (“Milking minotaurs isn’t something Violet ever considered as a career option but she’s determined to turn the opportunity into a reversal of fortune.”)

This impulse to sexualise the monstrous male isn’t out of the ordinary. After the release of Frankenstein, articles about how hot the creature is appeared in Vogue, CNN and the BBC. As The Cut put it, “Unlike the classic Boris Karloff version of the character (green, square, bolts), this Creature makes you think … Maybe I would.”

Female movie-goers have had similar reactions to Venom, Pennywise, Nosferatu, Shrek and the Shape of Water fish guy. Yet while women seem perfectly willing to extend erotic sympathy to the monstrous male, the same courtesy is rarely offered in reverse.

“I just don’t want to fuck something gross,” said my boyfriend. We were at dinner with another couple, Mia and Jack, discussing the gender disparity in monster-fucking.

“Not even if it’s got eyelashes?” I tried. “Like the dragon from Shrek?”

The two men made the primitive, unlettered protestations of people who’d never once fancied a cartoon animal. Mia, unfazed, crunched delicately on a carrot stick.

“I’d fuck the donkey,” she said. “He’s got something I like.”

Straight women, on the whole, seem to be more willing to look past the body than straight men. It doesn’t matter if Donkey’s a crudely animated hoofed beast if he’s confident and funny.

For the record, things seem a little more mixed in the lesbian monster-fucker community. While a lot of sapphic beasts fall into the “conventionally hot woman with horns” category, you can also find dragons, gargoyles, trolls and the Xenomorph.

Rare cases of men wanting to fuck true female beasts were either comedic¹ or the beasts in question were really just anime girls with tails. But I’m less interested in why men dislike beastly women than why women creators do too. Even in our own fantasies, why do only the male monsters get to fuck?

There are 38 Beauty and the Beast adaptations on IMDb, but only one gives us a female beast: Penelope (2006). The rom-com stars Christina Ricci as the cursed heroine and James McAvoy as her “beauty.” While male beasts are usually hulking, tusked monsters, Ricci’s curse amounts to a dainty pig snout. It’s easy enough to hide, which she does for most of the film. When McAvoy finally sees it, he recoils. She begs him to marry her to break the curse and he says no. Later, she breaks it on her own and they only get together after that. This movie was written and produced by (mostly) women.

If female monsters don’t conform to beauty standards, they aren’t afforded love. At best, she’s a supermodel with horns. At worst, her “monstrousness” has to be scrubbed away before the male love interest can stomach a kiss. Why, in stories made by women, is female beauty still the price of love?

Let’s start by exploring the appeal of male monsters. My first instinct was to assume that straight women liked them for their exaggerated masculinity. Monsters are violent, large, strong, dominant and also, per genre convention, they have absolutely giant willies.

But if you examine the catalogue of most desired monster bachelors, you’ll see that not all of them fit the pattern. Vampires are often decadent and feminised (Lestat, Edward Cullen). Also! Pennywise. Is he masculine? He’s an evil clown who lives in a sewer, which is true of a few men I’ve met, but I don’t think anyone’s into Pennywise for his raw virility.

On women’s “hear me out” posts, you can find Jack Skellington, the egg guy from Shrek, Tony the Tiger, Lumiere and the Grinch. The masculinity spectrum seems…permissive. It seems not every woman is into monsters for their raw masculinity. Scholarship suggests there’s often a bit more to it.

Behold the raw, barefoot masculinity of the egg from Shrek (love the hat)

In A Craving for the Creature: A Study on Monster Fetishism and the Monstrosexual, Collin Andrews argues that women don’t fantasise about male monsters because they’re masculine but rather because they’re not men. Monsters are, by definition, the other. They, too, know what it’s like to be gawked at, objectified and misunderstood. Because he’s not human, your monster boyfriend is exempt from the patriarchal hierarchy. His power feels (super)natural, not political.

It’s the man-vs-bear thing. By hooking up with a monster, you get all the manliness and none of the man. Someone with big biceps but no creepy search history. A sexual predator not a sexual predator.

If a huge draw of a monster romance is the idea that love can exist outside the power dynamics and disappointments of normal men, a female monster with a human man defeats the point. If I were a giant dragon with eyelashes, what on earth would I be doing getting a coffee with a podcast-listener?

Still, I can’t help but wish for some love stories that allow the beast-woman to be loved, not only fixed. One solution (which I’ll name The Shrek) is to pair the beast-woman with a beast-man. It’s a fantasy that someone might see your ugliness and beastliness and want you more for it. That love, real love, doesn’t polish you into acceptable femininity. It just lets you live, monstrous and adored.

Thanks for reading! If you’re a YouTuber or journalist who wants to take inspiration from this piece, I’m open to chat! Reach out at sithara42[at]gmail.com.

Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think about this. It’s ignited a lot of debates among my friends, so I’d love to hear your take. Also to be clear I’m not actually mad that men aren’t horny for true female beasts. I’m personally not into monsters either, but I find it pretty lame that a lot of people who’ve written about female monster-fuckers write from a place of judgement or condemnation.

Also slightly amended Thursday 13th after Marimo ‘s comment. They made a good point that the piece lacked lesbian monster-fuckers. I completely agree and I had fun deep-diving what kind of beasts lesbian monster-fuckers are into.

1. See: vaporeon copypasta – or better yet, don’t!