Guest post: Heroes vs. Gender – The Shimmer Manifesto by Miranda Sparks

For as long as I can remember I’ve loved superheroes, from when I was small and watching Adam West reruns on TV, and well into the present where I still collect comics and write superhero fiction. These elements plus my own lived experience have culminated into Shimmer, the pseudo-diary of a transgender teenage superheroine struggling to find her place in the world.

Shimmer tells the story of Kaira Cade, still known to most of the world as Justin Cade, a confused, naïve, shy high school girl carving out a new identity in a world that is either confused, intimidated by or hostile toward transgender people. In contrast to this she is also Milestone City’s own holographic heroine, Glimmer Girl, in which she is freely able to enjoy an uncompromised identity while fighting to save the day.

Her experiences in either persona are so distant from one another that she feels torn. Glimmer Girl is able to enjoy an authentic life in which she can carry a female title without fear of shame. The cost is her friends, family and history. Kaira on the other hand has an established existence but has to face the nearly daily attempts of others trying to take away her identity. All of these problems stem from the same place, that she was once identified as one sex but didn’t have the traditionally matching gender to go with it.

It seems to be of no coincidence then that the most notable heroes are the ones who have been most strongly gendered. You need only mention their names, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, to see its importance, and it makes sense. An individual sense of gender is pivotal to how many humans shape their identity, even to the point where they might customize their body to better accommodate it. Can it really be any coincidence that such figures of mythological stature are titled after something so innate?

The binary language of ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘male’ and ‘female’ extends far beyond merely identifying a general collection of physical features. In the Western world we’ve clung to the notion that men are naturally masculine, are rough and tumble, sexually aggressive, that their role is that of worker, provider and ultimate authority figures. Women on the other hand are designated to be feminine, soft, placid, delicate, sexually submissive and are traditionally tasked with domestic duties and the role of primary carer. In many cultures there are enforced roles and experiences saved for specific sexes despite an individual’s qualification. Deviation from this model has typically resulted in violent backlash even in our modern, contemporary society. This reflects equally in the idols shaped by a collective.

From birth we have a specific path set before us, if not by our parenting then by our own system. ‘Woman’ and ‘man’ are forcibly internalized, sometimes with a great deal of struggle, sometimes with none at all. When a hero invokes a specifically gendered name they speak to a wide human commonality to which an audience is immediately connected, thus further cementing their dazzling iconography deep into our psyches.

For Glimmer Girl her gender title isn’t bestowed as much as it is claimed. As a hero her legend is not entirely her own and depends a great deal upon how her actions and appearance are interpreted by those who would tell her story. For most that suffix is not worth a second thought while for those whom the bar is set so impossibly high it often means the world.

However it is not merely birthright that has gender bestowed upon a hero’s title. Take for example Superman and Batman, two of the most iconic if not the most popular characters to ever exist within the subculture. Both were both structured around a masculine ideal: strong, capable, barrel chested, and better knowing than their female peers. Even mild mannered Clark Kent was square jawed, deep voiced and dapperly dressed before being reinvented around the time of Christopher Reeve.

On the other side of the binary is Wonder Woman who, while not strictly being the first female superhero, was the first to come from a place where the thoughts, actions and contributions of women being highly valued was a positive thing. But though she shares similar powers to her male counterparts it is not her strength or physical prowess that defines her, but rather her warmth and compassion, traits determined by tradition to be predominantly female.

Things have changed a lot since the inception of modern heroes, some things haven’t, same as the characters themselves, but the gendered ideal not so much. Society as it is today has progressed closer toward basic equality than it ever has before, but still the knowledge that there are no exclusively male and female traits remains widely subconscious.

In this sense Glimmer Girl and Spider-Man are ideological cousins. Imagine Peter Parker who, unlike Superman and Batman before him, is not bestowed with an incredible amount of bulk, nor does he have a deep handsome voice, nor is he attractive to the opposite sex with his mask or without. His ineptitude is not for show, and while Clark Kent may preserve his secret identity by exposing a canister of unprocessed film Peter loses a paycheck. His success is not guaranteed, his life is not simple to navigate, right and wrong is not always clean-cut, yet still he wears the title of ‘man’ without anybody calling it into question. The invention of Glimmer Girl intends to take this one step further.

How is gender defined? Those who have never experienced the sort of personal incongruence by the gender non-conforming might presume it is the same thing as sex, citing it as tangible proof of their perspective. Some might even go so far as to call common chromosomal patterns regardless of most individual’s ignorance of their own. For others still it is defined by behavior or sexuality in place of allowing someone to balance their own needs against the expectations thrust upon them.

And that ultimately is the point of Shimmer. Its subtle goal is to evoke the same power of the iconoclasts, to help challenge the rigidity of sex, and through the prism of Glimmer Girl to make more available a status not automatically conferred to people like her. Through superhero fantasy the powerless are made powerful, creating a rich modern mythology at its very purest.

It doesn’t matter so much that the heroes themselves have not always had the best writers or artists to portray them, because that is the least of their significance. Instead the true power of the superhero, at least the ones that penetrate deep into our cultural subconsciousness, is their symbology and the way the audience identifies themselves within it. We see and project onto them the things we wish to emulate, whether it would be the preservation of truth and justice, or merely the extraordinary resolve to conquer our own limitations and step into greatness: and behind the mask and away from the tights they could be any one of us, even you under the right circumstances. All it takes is for one incredible transformative event for an individual to reach their maximum potential and then go far beyond. Such profound fantasy does not deserve to be limited by anything, least of all gender.

* * * * *

Miranda Sparks is an Australian web author with a borderline obsession for superheroes. The fact that most of her stories feature transgender characters has nothing to do with the fact that she’s trans herself and is eager for wider representation in TV, music, fiction. On her off days she enjoys Doctor Who, 80’s cartoons and a whole lot of Kamen Rider. Her superhero web serial, Shimmer, is one of the two great loves of her life and will probably go on forever.