Netflix has landed in hot water after tagging its series about infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer as "LGBTQ+."
The case was made that Dahmer was allowed to continue killing and in at least one murder directly enabled by law enforcement—police returned a living victim who escaped to Dahmer's custody that he later killed—because of racial bias and homophobia.
Those facets of the crimes are a primary focus of the series.
But most people assumed the LGBTQ+ tag was applied only because Dahmer identified as a gay man.
People on social media expressed outrage at the tag, which they found inappropriate given the grisly and sadistic nature of Dahmer's crimes. Many criticized the series' very existence for the same reasons.
As many noticed, Netflix quietly removed the tag without commenting on it in any way.
But that has done little to quell the ire the tag inspired.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, created by Ryan Murphy and starring frequent Murphy collaborator Evan Peters in the title role has been controversial right from the start.
Dahmer came to be known as "The Milwaukee Cannibal" for the crimes he committed. Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer murdered at least 17 queer men, many of them people of color and some of whom were underage.
Dahmer has since become one of the most legendary serial killers in history because of the acts of cannibalism and necrophilia he committed against his victims, whom he killed after meeting them for sexual encounters.
Murphy, himself a gay man, chose to focus his series on the victims' lives and delves deep into how systemic racism and homophobia played into a sense of complacency among Milwaukee authorities that contributed to it taking more than a decade to catch Dahmer.
Regardless, the series inspired anger in many and Netflix's tagging the series as LGBTQ+ content seems to have added insult to injury given the negative representation of queer people Dahmer presents.
News of Netflix's tag left many on Twitter slack-jawed.
But others thought removing the tag was the wrong response to criticism.
Homophobia and racial bias were identified as major factors in Dahmer's ability to kill so many gay young men and teens.
All of his victims either identified as homosexual or engaged in homosexual sex work.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story received criticism from many of Dahmer's victims' families as well as members of the Milwaukee LGBTQ+ community.
They accused Netflix and Murphy of fetishizing and sensationalizing Dahmer's victims' horrific deaths.
A good case can be made for making or not making the series.
It is important to educate on how institutional racial bias and homophobia has real world deadly consequences, but people will need to decide for themselves if a drama series is the best method to do it.
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