Supervillains, trans folk and self-imposed witness protection.
How stories resonate for good... and for bad.
“Who are you?” the street thug quakes… “I’m Batman”. People love a moment where a hero declares their new identity. In fact we go buck-fucking-wild for all the “I’m Iron Man” moments that are now dished out to us on the reg. But we never think of Bruce Wayne as being ‘dead’, only that he evolved. Or when Peter Parker, trapped under rubble, panicking, crying out in terror, still manages to dig deep and escape we think of it as the moment he truly becomes Spiderman. Peter is still there, but he now has embraced the new identity. Settled fully into being ‘himself’. It is an addition to his identity, not a subtraction or an overwriting (don’t @ me bat-stans who consider Bruce to be the mask and the Bat to be the true identity, your point still proves me right just from a different direction).
This is how it goes for heroes, but we think about villains differently.
For villains, the past self needs to die. And while it informs who they are, their past isn’t a steppingstone, it’s something that needs to be excised from them, cut off and discarded so that they can be their fully formed malevolent self. Pasts are for leacving behind. Anakin is dead and gone, his name “no longer has any meaning” to Vader. Even the Joker, in all the varied tellings, is an enigma. His past is something that he is removed from, the man he was erased to become this new thing.
As a visibly trans person I get the full gamut of reactions. Scowling nannas, smirking teenage boys, generous and accommodating young women. But almost everyone is surprised that I have kept my birth name. Even wonderful, well-meaning people who I’ve known for years will put their hand out to shake mine and ask me to “re-introduce” myself as if the identity I had is gone and a new person is standing in front of them.
In those moments I flash through many sensations. Shock that that they think I have disappeared. Grief at the understanding that they think I want to cut off my past (among other things). And frustration. Frustration that these well-meaning, kind-hearted souls are doing this because all they’ve ever known is the story of the trans person moving away, cutting ties and killing off who they were… and that yet again I will have to explain it.
This story is so inexorably linked to the trans experience that I don’t know if we will ever unpick those stitches. The act of “self-imposed witness protection” is so inherently wrapped up in trans narratives people expect it. So much so that it is mistaken for BEING the trans experience… as opposed to a thing that trans people are forced to do to flee harm.
No wonder we are cast as villains. Every story you have seen where a villain discards their past resonates into the perspectives of those left behind by people transitioning. I can see how a person would see what I am doing as abandoning them and the relationships I have built. I can see how this may seem like obsession. But I am not trying to discover the secret to fusion power to take over the world nor am I trying to merge machines with my flesh to find immortality (though that would be fuckin’ sick). That isn’t what this is.
The truth is I didn’t die. I didn’t kill off the person I was. There’re far more parts of him that are exactly the same as the woman I am now than not. He’s still here within me. In the same way the teenager wasn’t killed off in order for me to become the adult, or the child killed off to become the teenager, or the infant killed off to become the child. They’re all still me. This woman I am now is an evolution. Sure, there’re parts of the “man” that never really existed, fabrications to keep my identity safe, but I didn’t commit an act of violence, of metaphorical murder in order to change. He was a steppingstone that still exists. After all the grief and sadness I’ve felt over the years I managed to dig deep and embrace who I have always been, adding it into my life.
–S
Really, really interesting and very well written. Its interesting, whether we look at villains or heroes, more common with heroes, there is that 'becoming' moment, the hero moment. I suppose that's why origin stories are so popular. But is it really transformation in an instant, are things ever so cut and dried? We see the same thing with characters carrying psychological trauma who, in the moment, seem to cast off their burdens and are healed. Something we know just doesn't happen. I guess that's also why we like movies and TV so much, real transformation is a journey, fraught with peril and hardship and real life doesn't supply so many hero moments (but then we don't look to closely at what those hero moments cost "...Peter Parker, trapped under rubble, panicking, crying out in terror..."). We should pay more heed to those who are on a journey of transformation, there's a lot to learn.