White colonialism has a history of reducing all others to a state of “lesser”. Depending on the group of people this “lesser” value can be split between sub-human as animal as well as sub-human as monster. Trans people, intersex people, and people of color have repeatedly and historically been designated into this second category. The vilification of othered bodies continues today, and this exclusion of minority bodies from the category of human stems from “a long- lived tradition of the so-called monstrous races, humanoid creatures with extraordinary anatomies and costumes who were thought to reside in Africa, Asia, or at the very eastern edges of the earth.” 1 These othered bodies complicated the separation of human and animal as well as self and other. More specifically, the existence of these bodies complicates the self imposed distance between the white, cisgender body and the animal. “Both animality and sexual difference become ways man ceases to be simply human- an instance of a species- and instead becomes the being who recognizes himself as becoming through difference.” 2 Seeing oneself through difference is the first step in embracing this difference. 

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Daemon Clelland, or Shrek666, is a artist and performer from Glasgow that combines monstrosity, medieval illustration, and science fiction to create bodies and the queer worlds those bodies are situated in. Through a use of practical special effects, Clelland’s monstrosity presents itself through  prosthetics and camouflage.  Although the artist assumes multiple bodies, he most often performs the embodiment of an ogre under the name Shrek666. As a trans man, he performs a hypermasculine trans rage on stage. Clelland leans into that monstrosity that is applied to trans people and expands on it, celebrates it. 

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The act of reclamation is powerful. If the dominant culture labels a marginalized person as dangerous, the fear that they create is through their difference. Reclaiming one’s monstrosity in order to subvert and take control of the narrative around oneself is one way to take back power.