In today's episode, we're going to explore how the monsters we grew up fearing were never the real threat.

They've always been mirrors, reflecting the parts of ourselves and our culture we've been too scared to face.

Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast helping parents of LGBTQ kids move from fear to fierce allyship and feel less alone and more informed so you can protect what matters, raise brave kids, and spark collective change.

I'm Heather Hester.

Let's get started.

In this episode, you'll discover what culture means when it labels someone or something a monster.

How queer communities have reclaimed monstrosity as a badge of resilience and creativity, and what parents can learn from this reclamation to help reframe fear into connection.

And be sure to stick around until the end, because in today's unlearned segment, I'm challenging the myth that protecting our kids from fear keeps them safe.

Welcome back to More Human, More Kind.

Today's episode is a little different.

We're asking a question that's haunted and fascinated us for centuries.

What makes a monster?

From fairy tales and folklore to politics and even playgrounds, the monster has always been used to mark what's strange, different, or feared.

But in queer culture, that same word has been reclaimed and turned into a symbol of resistance and pride and identity.

If you're a parent, an ally, or an educator, this conversation matters to you.

Because when we unpack what we've been taught to fear, we open the door to raising kids who are braver, more compassionate, and less afraid of difference.

In this episode, you'll learn how monster stories have been used to control and divide and how queer communities have flipped that script into empowerment.

You'll see how reframing fear into curiosity and compassion can change the way you parent, ally, and connect.

And most importantly, you'll walk away with relief and maybe even a little hope, knowing that difference isn't something to fear.

It's something that can make us stronger, kinder, and more human.

Because here's the truth.

The stakes are high.

If we don't stop to examine these stories, we risk passing down hidden biases and fears to our kids.

We risk missing opportunities to connect, to reframe, to teach resilience.

And on a bigger scale, we risk allowing harmful narratives to persist, the narratives that hurt LGBTQ youth and anyone labeled as other.

So let's get into it.

What makes a monster?

And how can that answer change the way we parent, ally, and show up with more humanity and more kindness?

So when I say the word monster, and I've already said it at least three or four times.

What did you think of?

What do you think of the most terrifying characters in a scary movie?

Halloween costumes?

The abstract concept of something that haunts you?

Let's interrupt that just for a moment.

What if monsters actually say more about us, about society's fears and biases than they do about the so called creature itself?

Monsters in mythology and in literature have for centuries been considered the outsider, different, feared, misunderstood.

Think about Frankenstein's creature, Elphaba from Wicked, Snape from Harry Potter.

All three different, all three feared because of those differences, all three completely misunderstood.

Let's go one layer deeper and think about the differences.

Were they physical, environmental, the result of the actions taken by others?

Or some combination?

All of the above?

Were they chosen to be the monster or the scapegoat because they were alone or part of a smaller group than those in power?

Queerness has long been coded in literature and film as monstrous.

The vampire as the seductive other, or the werewolf as a metaphor for hidden identity.

In creating this episode, I came across the work of Derek LeBeau, who is the creator of Queer Cinema Archive, in which he stitches together these moments of LGBTQ representation all across Hollywood's history, specializing in moments of queer coding, which is when directors and writers alluded to characters in their projects being queer rather than saying it outright, whether it was due to homophobic audiences or movie studios, or any combination of different factors depending on the time.

Later this month we're going to go way deeper on queer coding in horror films specifically, but for this episode I wanted to mention just a few films and characters and let me know if any of these surprised you because this was a really, really fun exercise for me to do.

So first is the Cowardly lion and the wizard of Oz, who is a lovable, limp wristed, self proclaimed sissy who really loves good hair and even blushes when receiving a kiss on the cheek from a wizard.

The next one is Mulan, which is undeniably one of the queerest animated Disney films.

It explores gender norms, it has a climax featuring multiple characters in drag, it has an arguably bisexual Ermie captain and the song Reflection, which still resonates with queer and trans people today.

In the musical Chicago, the matron Mama Morton is rather overtly lesbian in the stage version, but is more downplayed and queer coded for the film version.

So if you haven't seen either of those, check them out.

I don't know if Chicago is actually on stage anywhere right now, but definitely watch the film version and see if you can pick that out.

And then finally, a favorite of my kids is the film Luca, which is the coming of age story of two teenage sea monsters who bond over their mutual interest in the human world.

So the queer coded aspect of the story, the plot presents as following two misunderstood teenagers who form a close friendship and run away together.

They move into a small town with villagers who aren't accepting of people like them, so they try their best to stay in the closet.

All in all, Hollywood has a long history of associating queerness with their movie monsters.

Definitely, definitely.

Take a few moments and check out Derek's work on TikTok and Instagram @ Queer Cinemarxive.

I think you will find it fascinating and probably enjoy it as much as I did.

And then finally, the word and concept of monstrous has been a weaponized label used against anyone who challenges norms, whether it is queer people, women, people of color, and so on.

You can fill in the blank.

So let's take a few moments to think about deeper or even thinly veiled purposes for weaponizing this word.

Well, probably the most powerfully is that calling someone a monster dehumanizes them.

It creates distance and fear.

And whether it is from personal experience or being the parent of a child who has experienced dehumanization in some form, or even from just paying attention to the tactics of our current administration, when a person or a group of people is spoken about as less than human, it makes it much more likely that they will be mistreated or targeted with violence.

But here is the good news and just one more data point highlighting the resilience of the queer community.

They have taken the word monster, a word that was once thrown at them as an insult, and turned it into something fierce and powerful.

Instead of letting it mean scary or less than, they've reclaimed it as a badge of resilience and resistance.

What was meant to push them to the margins and to the shadows now stands as a reminder of strength and pride and the beauty of being unapologetically different.

In Disidentifications, Jose Esteban Munoz writes about how marginalized people repurpose harmful tropes into symbols of power, saying, quote, this working on and against is a strategy that tries to transform a cultural logic from within, always laboring to enact permanent structural change, while at the same time valuing the importance of local or everyday struggles of resistance.

Essentially, this is adjacent to this idea that I've been talking about, of holding the tension of the opposites.

Think of how drag queens have reclaimed exaggerated femininity that was once Ridiculed as freakish or queer horror fans identifying with the misunderstood creature rather than with the mob with torches.

Notice the language.

When your child or society uses words like weird, freak or monster, ask what is really being named.

Is it difference or is it fear?

When talking with your kids about this, invite curiosity into these conversations.

You can ask them questions like why do you think people are afraid of monsters?

And what do monsters teach us about ourselves?

This second one is a powerful self reflection question.

Even if you're not asking it to your kids, I highly recommend just sitting with it for a little bit and thinking about it.

Model how to reframe this.

Instead of monstrous equals bad, shift to monstrous equals strong, powerful and unique.

And finally celebrate this reclaiming of the monster.

Introduce examples of queer art, horror age appropriately of course.

Or even memes where monster is used with pride.

When Connor first came out, I realized how quickly people, even well meaning ones, my friends, or even some family members could other him with their words.

It wasn't always overt slurs or put downs.

Sometimes it was really subtle.

Actually, a lot of times it was really subtle, saying things like, well, that's weird or.

Or that's not normal.

And I watched and felt the way those words stuck.

In the beginning, I wanted just to erase them, to get rid of them, to do whatever I could to shield and deflect and protect.

But the more I learned about queer history and culture, the more clearly I saw that sometimes the power comes not from erasing, but from reclaiming.

From saying, heck yeah, I for sure don't fall in line with what is considered normal around here.

And that's where my beauty and power lies as a parent.

Reframing that has been one of my most powerful shifts.

Listen, I know that I definitely identify with the more insidious meaning of the monster.

The fears that I've inherited, the fears that I've created, the parts of myself that I was told to hide, that I have hidden over many decades.

The shame that I've kept buried deep inside.

But parenting brings those monsters right into the light.

So I've discovered and I've realized that the work isn't to destroy the monster, but to ask, what is this fear teaching me?

What is the truth beneath it?

And then to reframe it.

Take a few moments and I will bookmark this for you so you can come back to it if you are unable to right now.

But I'd love for you to take a few moments and really reflect on a few questions.

First, what were you told was monstrous about you?

When you were growing up.

How do you respond when your child shows you a part of themselves you don't understand?

Where in your own life might you reclaim a word or a label or a fear that once haunted you?

So, for example, one word that I've really dug into to understand better is the word shy.

I was always called shy, painfully shy, considered shy as a child.

And I now realize in adulthood that that was not just being shy, that there wasn't something wrong with me, that it actually was social anxiety, and I just didn't have the tools at the time to be able to manage it.

I jokingly now say that I am an extroverted introvert and.

And that's the way I walk in the world.

And so shy, to me now means something completely different than it did.

And it.

It.

And it's not even that it means something different, it feels different now that I have really dug deep to understand what it was and what it is now.

The other label that I have, and I think I'm still really working on, but I wanted to throw it out there because I think that there's probably some others out there who probably identify with this, is the label of being the good girl.

And for me, growing up, that meant that I would be loved as long as I adhered to the family rule book.

Now, I did not understand that as a child.

I understand that now looking back.

But I knew that I was afraid.

Like, painfully, completely, utterly afraid to not be the good girl because of the consequences that would occur.

And.

Now understanding that being able to break free from that and being able to kind of flip it and seeing that what that was was transactional or conditional love.

And what it's allowed me to do is use my voice, do what I'm doing right now with you, use my critical thinking skills, use this big, beautiful brain that I was given.

And yeah, of course there have been consequences to that within the system of my family of origin, but being me and discovering who I am, who I really am outside of the context, and that that confinement of the good girl, quote, unquote, good girl has been so worth it.

So I just encourage you to take some time.

It will be messy, just like that was just now, but, oh my gosh, so incredibly worth it.

So how does kindness figure into this discussion of and the reclamation of the monster?

Well, I think that kindness in this context is about seeing the human beneath the quote, unquote monster.

It's remembering that what may look frightening is often just misunderstood.

And sometimes the kindest thing we can do is to pause, to use our gift of curiosity and to replace that fear with love and celebration and validation.

Moving on to the unlearn.

So here again is where we shine a light on the myths, the noise, and the unhelpful messages we've picked up and choose to let them go.

Because when we do, we free up space.

So much space for courage and for kindness.

Today's Unlearn is about the myth that protecting our kids from fear keeps them safe.

So we were told if we shield our kids from scary things, they'll be happier and safer.

But here's the truth.

Avoiding fear doesn't make it disappear, similar to problems.

I think that the character Keely in the show Ted Lasso said it best is one of my very favorite quotes from the show.

She said, problems are like mushrooms.

Yeah, the longer you leave them in the dark, the bigger they get.

And that is exactly.

Ditto for fears.

So what if instead we helped our kids walk with their fear, perhaps even play with it?

What if monsters could be guides instead of threats?

That's what reclamation teaches us, that fear loses power when it's named based, even approached with humor.

So here's your five minute action this week.

The next time your child talks about monsters, ask them what makes this monster scary?

And then flip it.

What could make this monster powerful in a good way?

And play with that answer.

Let their imagination lead.

When we unlearn avoidance as the go to tactic for fear, we are able then to reimagine what is possible.

And that is how we act our way into a kinder, braver world.

Today we explored how monster stories shape fear and how queer communities have reclaimed them as symbols of strength and pride.

We talked about how reframing difference can transform how we parent and ally and how what we fear often holds the key to our own transformation.

Monsters aren't here to haunt us.

They're here to teach us.

They remind us that what's strange or unknown isn't necessarily dangerous.

It can be where our greatest empathy and creativity are waiting to grow.

Thank you so much for being here, for leaning into these hard and beautiful conversations with me.

Remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday, so make sure you're following so you never, ever miss one.

And if you'd like to learn more about reframing fear and supporting your kids, visit MoreHumanMoreKind.com to get weekly tips, strategies and action items.

Let's continue to see the humanity in each other, no matter the differences.

Until next time, Remember, you are not alone.

Sam.