Ryan Murphy Rips Netflix for Removing Dahmer Tag: Not All Gay Stories Are Happy

Ryan Murphy who created the Netflix hit Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story, criticized the streaming giant for removing the LGBT tag on the series.

On Sept 28, Deadline reported that Netflix had removed the tag, but numerous show-inspired battles have raged on, from victims families speaking out, to outrage over fans dressing up as Dahmer for Halloween, to a tourism boom in Milwaukee attracting the curious that has some business owners fuming.

The show has become Netflix’s second most-watched ever in the English language, in spite of mostly negative reviews and waves of social media-fueled controversy. Netflix quickly removed the offending tag after users on TikTok and Twitter protested. One posted a video, asking, “Why the f–k did Netflix tag the Jeffrey Dahmer [show as] LGBTQ? I know this is technically true, but this is not the representation we’re looking for.”

“There was a moment on Netflix where they removed the ‘LGBTQ’ tag from Dahmer, and I didn’t like it,” Murphy, 56,  told The New York Times, referring to the way the streamer sorts content into categories.

“And I asked why they did that and they said because people were upset because it was an upsetting story,” Murphy said. “I was, like, ‘Well, yeah.’ But it was a story of a gay man and more importantly, his gay victims.”

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, played in Dahmer by Murphy regular Evan Peters, was gay. He killed 17 people, many of them queer men of color he encountered in Milwaukee gay bars in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Murphy, who inked a $300 million deal with Netflix in 2018, told the Times he disagreed with the decision.

“I also don’t think that all gay stories have to be happy stories,” he said.