the skin of his totem animal to assume its power. Jack Halberstam, author of Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, writes, "The cause for Buffalo Bill's extreme violence against women lies not in his gender confusion or his sexual orientation but in his humanist presumption that his sex and his gender and his orientation must all match up to a mythic norm of white heterosexual masculinity." Halberstam says Buffalo Bill symbolizes a lack of ease with one's skin. He writes that the character is also a combination of Victor Frankenstein and his monster in how he is the creator gathering body parts and experimenting with his own body. Halberstam writes, "He does not understand gender as inherent, innate; he reads it only as a surface effect, a representation, an external attribute engineered into identity." Buffalo Bill challenges "the interiority of gender" by taking skin and remaking it into a costume. Portrayal of transexuality The film adaptation of Silence of the Lambs was criticized by some gay rights groups for its portrayal of Gumb as bisexual and transgender. References Hannibal Lecter characters Characters in American novels of the 20th century Fictional characters based on real people Literary characters introduced in 1988 Fictional characters from California Fictional characters with psychiatric disorders Fictional cross-dressers Fictional kidnappers Fictional LGBT characters in film Fictional serial killers Fictional torturers Male horror film villains Male literary villains Male characters in literature LGBT villains LGBT themes in horror fiction Fictional LGBT characters in literature