Gothic monsters are often sexual monsters. Zofloya is a Moorish Satan. Seductive and attractive, he is simultaneously repulsive and desirable. Vathek is queer, and when egged on by his dark-skinned Indian lover (a monster with green teeth and pasty, discolored skin), he becomes a sadomasochistic pedophile, murdering young naked boys in a homoerotic carnival of horror. Dracula sucks on the flesh of his victims, both male and female, adult and child, and his copulation with humans, like Othello's with Desdemona, always carries the threat of monstrous offspring.

XREF: Connects to literary tradition linking the Gothic's monstrous figures with transgressive desire, from Walpole through Dracula.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 430