“There is a certain irony here, because many of the first werewolves to be outed in society from the 16th through the 18th centuries were actually women. Just as our American ancestors had their Salem Witch Trials, Europe had its Werewolf Trials, and a large number of the so-called “werewolves” tortured and burned at the stake were female. […]
In the 17th-century werewolf trials of Estonia, women were about 150 percent more likely to be accused of lycanthropy; however, they were about 100 percent less likely to be remembered for it.”
“Here’s also a pronounced lack of female werewolves in popular culture. Their near absence in literature and film is explained away by various fancies: they’re sterile, an aberration, or—most galling of all—they don’t even exist.Their omission from popular culture does one thing very effectively: It prevents us, and men especially, from being confronted by hairy, ugly, uncontrollable women. Shapeshifting women in fantasy stories tend to transform into animals that we consider feminine, such as cats or birds, which are pretty and dainty, and occasionally slick and wicked serpents. But because the werewolf represents traits that are accepted as masculine—strength, large size, violence, and hirsutism—we tend to think of the werewolf as being naturally male. The female werewolf is disturbing because she entirely breaks the rules of femininity.”
— Julia Oldham, Why Are There No Great Female Werewolves?
I always thought this was wild, because the idea of a person who goes through a change once a month, like the moon and its tides, with the spilling of blood, was such an obvious metaphor.
That all werewolves aren’t ‘AFAB’ feels like a man in history did what we always do and went ‘Hey you know what these cool stories could do without? Women.’ And no-one’s done a popular enough take on it ever since.
reverse werewolves. wolves that turn into confused but excited humans every month at the full moon and run around doing weird human stuff until they wake up the next day in the middle of an office with a suit loosely draped over their wolf form
Wulver: a werewolf in Shetland, that is said to have had the body of a man with a wolf’s head. It was reported to have left fish on the windowsills of poor families.
That is the nicest Werewolf legend I’ve ever heard of.
Now I wish I could draw because I’d love to draw this.
i tried
I don’t want to look this up and learn that it’s not true.
I looked it up, and it is true. See also: Faoladh, from Ireland, who protects and guards children, or the lost and wounded.
So many books and tv shows about werewolves worship this dominance culture, especially a male-centric dominance hierarchy, and sometimes it drives me nuts because it’s regarded as the default. That if humans transformed into beasts, of course most of the survivors would be men, and of course they’d be violent and territorial and murderous, and of course they’d be vaguely chauvinistic because ‘they can’t help it that’s just how werewolves are’.
It’s this idea that the metaphor for a beast as one’s inner nature is reserved for male characters and male violence, tossed in with frequently-inaccurate anthropomorphic assumptions about animal pack culture.
Where are the stories about the werewolf packs that are mostly female? Where are the stories about the fact that women who’ve born children have a higher pain tolerance than men and would better survive the bite? Where are the stories about the women who spend so much time controlling their passions and their emotions and their desires to navigate in a man’s world that they adapt all to well to controlling their mystical transformations too?
What does a pack of all female werewolves look like? Is there a hierarchical structure, or something else? Does it mean the same thing to be an alpha, a beta? What does it mean to be a lone wolf?
I want the stories about how men who are bitten are more likely to go mad from trying to keep a duality in their minds instead of coming to consensus and sharing space with their wolf-spirit. I want stories about the female alpha wolf who only offers the bite to other girls, because dudes have already fucked up ruling the human world, let’s not let them have the supernatural one too.
I want the story about the trans girl who’s trying to change her outside to match her inside, but all of a sudden has to deal with physically transforming her body three nights a month, because hell if you ever wanted a metaphor about not fitting right in your own skin, werewolves are a good option.
I want the story about how the hedge-witches took wolves as familiars and gave them human souls, turned them into human girls, and forced them to give up the wind and the snow and the grass for a life trapped in human flesh.
I want the story about the teenage werewolf girls who hunt down other monsters while they try to find the right shoes for prom and study for their written driver’s test. And when people joke about them going to the bathroom in a pack, it’s not really a joke. Because girls know a journey is not an adventure unless she brings her friends, and when they travel in packs, they travel in packs.
ok but what if like. werewolves transform under the full moon but theres just this one and by day hes a big tough guy and then when he transforms hes a tiny dog. just fucking. just fucking turns into the tiniest, fluffiest dog
