By now, if you haven’t unashamedly binge-watched the entirety of Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, you might be the only one.
On Sep. 21, Netflix unveiled the biographical true-crime drama that chronicles the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer while reenacting the murders from the victim’s perspective, primarily focusing on the grieving families and the witnesses of Jeff’s rampage. Additionally, the series touches on Dahmer’s childhood, home life and transition from adolescence to adulthood. Starring Evan Peters as the titular killer, Monster deep-dives into Jeffrey Dahmer’s psyche, exploring what permits an individual to take a human life.
Courtesy of social media publisher JOE, a tweet has surfaced — linking out to an article — that describes Dahmer viewers as “livid” and “flabbergasted” after learning that Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was tagged under both “Horror” and “LGBTQ” under Netflix’s catalog.
It’s no secret that Jeffrey Dahmer was gay, a revelation that he tried desperately to hide from family members during his murder spree. However, allowing the LGBTQ community to be associated with a vicious and merciless serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer is an unforgivable fumble on Netflix’s part. Because it apparently still needs to be spelled out in this day and age; murdering 17 young men has nothing to do with being gay, lesbian, trans, etc. It portrays the LGBTQ community in an unfavorable light and feeds into many gross stereotypes that link back to decades of oppression at the hands of ignorance.
Netflix has already removed the LGBTQ and horror tags from the series’ live listing, though by this point, many will quite rightly consider the damage to have already been done.
