As a transmasculine queer person, it’s more than a little painful to see the non-men in my community playing along with this, and worse still when straight people start posting articles about it. Furthermore, not many of these articles are being written by actual gay men. And those progressive bubbles are entirely superable on the internet: anyone can see the articles being written about how Pennywise is a “proud gay man.” That means that a lot of people are getting the message that the LGBT community not only condones being associated with implicitly pedophilic monsters, but actually encourages it. The misconception that gay men are often sexual predators is still very much alive, though enshroudment in progressive bubbles may make that hard to see. The image of the sinister Pennywise luring a six-year-old boy into the sewers to devour him is many people’s primary association with It, and it takes on a whole boatload of problematic significance if Pennywise is being read as gay. Most people recognize the demonic clown for what he is in the novel and films: a manifestation of pure evil who preys upon children.
While the Babadook is a lesser-known, goofy-looking monster with few pop culture connotations, Pennywise has been a staple of horror media for decades. There’s a significant problem with this, and it’s troubling that more people aren’t talking about it.
