This is what toxic masculinity actually looks like: "Like, her dance will be on TikTok."

Yesterday, Vox published an essay by senior correspondent Alex Abed-Santos in which he spoke with NYU professor Joe Vallese.  The two gay men fawned over a new Hollywood horror production about a cherubic-looking but sadistic artificial intelligence doll that murders people as she becomes self-aware, all in an effort to decode why "LGBTQ people love" the horror genre.  Abed-Santos's byline read, "How a beautiful murder doll left us no choice but to stan."  I had to look up "stan," as I thought it was a typo; it's a modern invention meaning "to be an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity."

At the beginning of Abed-Santos's work, he notes he's typically a "scaredy cat" when it comes to horror flicks, but something about M3gan left him "deeply obsessed."  Shortly into the article, he includes this passage:

And while glamorous women who dance and are capable of homicide appeal directly to my homosexual tastes (I love Chicago!), I couldn't figure out why I desperately needed to see this movie.

I wasn't alone, either. All over the internet were fan-made videos of M3gan dancing as well as declarations — from people who hadn't even seen the movie — that M3gan was coming for the crowns of fellow murder dolls Chucky and Annabelle. A lot of that love was from queer people who were already (ironically and unironically) anointing M3gan as a queer icon, not unlike the way we'd done for Ma's Ma, or the mother in Barbarian, or the Babadook, or Pearl from X, or Scream's Ghostface.

Vallese then notes:

I think that as soon as I saw that trailer, and I saw that dance. ... You know, it was very clear to me that it was going to be sort of instant gay iconography.

Let me remind you, M3gan looks to be the same age as a prepubescent child and is dressed like a schoolgirl of yesteryear — her aura is meant to evoke innocence.  The dance to which Vallese refers is a hypersexualized strut (again, think TikTok) down a hallway as she (presumably) is about to murder someone.  At one point, M3gan does a flip where her dress rises, exposing her tights as she spreads her legs.

He goes on with this:

The escapism of horror films — I feel like it can be empowering. If you're not queer, you wouldn't necessarily understand what's exhilarating about a monster or a villain, and maybe it's one of the things that's not even totally explainable.

To this, Abed-Santos responds:

It's really not that different than loving our little M3gan murder doll, right? She didn't ask to be born into this world. She didn't ask for this life.

Escapism is empowering. Gee, I wonder why.

As a general rule, flamboyant behavior goes hand in hand with the queer crowd — drag shows, Pride parades, the gay men in the article even use the word when describing one of the villains with whom they resonate — but what is flamboyancy?  It's a dramatic and overstated outward expression of cheer, often by using bright colors and, specifically for the queer community, costumes and makeup.  By their nature, costumes and makeup are façades.  Now, why would the queer community hyper-obsess over dramatic pseudo-realities?  Well, a basic psychological analysis would recognize the deep-seated need to compensate and cover for the opposite.

Dr. James Dobson, a renowned psychologist, provided a brief synopsis of a book from a fellow psychologist, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi:

The bottom line is that homosexuality is not primarily about sex. It is about everything else, including loneliness, rejection, affirmation, intimacy, identity, relationships, parenting, self-hatred, gender confusion, and a search for belonging. This explains why the homosexual experience is so intense — and why there is such anger expressed[.]

"Such anger" would also explain the deep and admitted "obsession" the queer community (again, speaking in generalities) has with murderous villains from horror films.  Five days ago, Abed-Santos even retweeted this:

behind every gay person is a gayer, more evil gay person

— anania (@Anania00) January 1, 2023

(Time and time again, scientific studies conclude that members of the LGBT community are at a significantly higher risk of mental illness than heterosexual people.)

It was all so clear when Abed-Santos ended with "[s]he [M3gan] didn't ask to be born into this world.  She didn't ask for this life."  Sure sounds like psychological projection if you ask me...

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.