Skimpy Costumes Are Activism: An Upset Gay’s Tribute To Sydney’s Cancelled Halloween Parties

Following the cancellation of Halloween Whores, I’ve spent some time reflecting on why the seasonal costume party is my all-time favourite Sydney event. The conclusion I’ve come to is that Halloween, often dubbed “Gay Christmas”, is actually a queer holiday far gayer than Pride Month, or even Mardi Gras. 

For normies (affectionate), Halloween is often considered a chance to “dress up” and become something else for the night. Something strange, outrageous, risqué, or even a bit frightening. Something, in other words, unapologetically queer. Conversely, for many gays (and kinksters), it’s one of the only times of year we can be totally ourselves. 

Doms can chain their subs, handlers can leash their pups, leather daddies can deck themselves out in police gear, and maids can… well… exist, all in the public eye under the very reasonable pretense of “costume”. And me? Well, I get to wear my fangs to Sydney Sauna, which, if I’m being honest, I would be just as happy doing any other night of the year.

But the resonance gays feel for Halloween goes far beyond personal styling or kink. Rather, for many of us, the holiday is a reclamation of monsterhood itself.

Queer People Are No Strangers To Being Monsters

There’s a reason some of fiction’s most recognisable monsters, from The Powerpuff Girls’ HIM to The Lion King’s Mufasa, are queer-coded. There’s a reason in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the titular villain is described as having long, “evidently effeminate” fingernails. There’s a reason The Little Mermaid’s Ursula was based on a drag queen. 

Queerness has been treated as monstrous since time immemorial.

And because so many of us grew up being told that gayness is evil, that a feeble wrist means a feeble heart, its no surprise so many of us “deviants” have come to identify with the monsters we were once boxed in with. 

You Think We’re Monsters? Guess We Are Then.

We’re predatory, you say? Good, I guess we’ll adopt a deeply misunderstood apex predator as our mascot. Oh, you think we’re creepy and weird? I guess The Babadook is one of us queers then too. Throw a Kamagra sachet into the line outside Arq, and you’ll hit six gays whose childhood hero (and gay awakening) was an X-Men mutant. 

Cheekiness aside, the LGBTQ+ community’s love of monsters isn’t just a matter of childhood obsession or reactionary meme culture. Rather, we identify with monsters because we share their story: one about being misunderstood and demonised for our strangeness. 

What is Frankenstein’s monster, if not an innocent child whose own father could not look at him without being overcome with terror and disgust? Even Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is widely regarded as an allegory for the immense shame and duplicitous lifestyle forced upon queers in puritanical societies.

But I won’t bog you down in queer theory, and I certainly won’t lie. Admittedly, gay Halloween parties are just… really hot.  I love sharp canines, and I’ll take any excuse to dress up in a fun, camp costume. But there’s something else going on too. 

In fact, there’s a word for it. A word for when a former Christian kid steps out onto a dancefloor with black horns, an upside-down crucifix tattooed to their neck, and a cheeky, fanged grin. A word for the hallowed moment a gay man is not only accepted, but celebrated for all the things the world once said made him monstrous.

I’ll let you decide what that word is, but it certainly isn’t “boo”.