Sometimes you get what you want, on page, spelled out, from your favorite comics: sometimes you have to guess or invent. We’ve both been X-fans since the early 1980s, when no mutants were queer or trans on-page—so we decided which ones were queer and trans for us. (Except Warlock, who we’ll defend for the rest of our lives as nonbinary from the start.)
We pored over the pages for cues and signals and broad winks about who was dating whom, who didn’t fit in, what Claremontian gal pals were, and how to read Destiny’s link to Mystique. We’re both trans: we were looking for trans rep, too, before we knew what we were looking for, and like a lot of X-fans, we’re still waiting for rep that is long overdue.
If you want openly gay, apparently cisgender mutants you can now find them, starting with Northstar’s over-the-top coming-out scene in Alpha Flight #107. And for every canonically gay or bi mutant, you can find least two more who aren’t quite out on panel, but whom fans can read that way.
If you want to be able to read any significant, ongoing mutants as trans, though, you still have to do what we did back in the 1980s: look for subtext, for hints or for allegories, which you can then share with other fans. Any mutants can be trans if you want them, as other critics have said. That holds for mutants who are, or should be, or could be, binary trans (like Stephanie), assigned male at birth and now living as the girls we knew we should be, or vice versa (trans guys). And it holds for mutants who are, or should be, or could be, nonbinary (like Rachel): not only men nor only women, sometimes one gender and sometimes another, multiple genders, beyond gender or none of the above.
That second category– nonbinary people– is especially lacking in representation today and seems especially fit for mutant comics: so many mutants have powers or backstories that lend themselves to nonbinary readings. They might go alongside Marvel’s handful of non-mutants who are already on-page nonbinary: Loki, for example, and sometimes Hulkling, and Cloud. Such readings reflect fannish discussions that have continued– comedically or seriously– for decades; they’re also ongoing and earnest ways to invest in these characters, to explain why we see ourselves in them, and some of us have since at least the 1980s. They’re not substitutes for the literal representation we seek, but complements for it. And since we’d like to get them out there on the Interwebs in the year 2020, we’ve made our favorites into a list.
I: Mystique
Mystique wouldn’t be who she is if she couldn’t take on whatever body she wanted or needed, at any given time. One of the few Marvel mutants who canonically presents in both binary genders, Mystique has lately suggested that her own identity might lie somewhere in between, or else inhere in the shapeshifting itself. Seanan McGuire’s magnificent X-Men: Black: Mystique even worked her nonbinary identity into a joke about transphobic bathroom rules. Raven Darkholme herself narrates these wonderful panels, dark blue on light blue:
II: Warlock
This alien shapeshifter’s homeworld may or may not have binary gender as we understand it (are there women or girls there?); Warlock’s he/him pronouns, like his normally bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical humanoid form, might well be matters of convenience. Warlock’s first story arc, starting with New Mutants #20, involves his refusal to be a space-fighting, dad-killing, patriarchally awful Real Man. Plenty of men refuse that kind of violence too, but it’s a good start for a fan favorite who won’t fit easily in anyone’s boxes. Except Doug Ramsey’s.
III: Magik
No one can tell Magik what to do, or who to be, or what to call herself: not with all she can do, not after all she’s been through. She hit puberty in a land well outside the human gender binary and before that, as a child of six, she was given the Darkchild body, which shows up in many ways in different times, is part demon (there’s no reason to think demon genders are like human genders), and somewhat under her control. Her experience of embodiment falls way beyond any simple definition. Comics’ greatest Sword Lesbian has surely told her best friends how she feels about the body she displays, and what her identity means to her: it’s OK with us if those friends don’t want to talk about it yet.
IV: Morph
Some real life nonbinary people are nonbinary all the time: neither he nor she, thank you very much– only they, or xe, or no pronouns at all will do. Others shapeshift and feel more guy on Tuesday, woman on Wednesday, neither/nor for most of that weekend. This formerly shy Generation X mutant hasn’t talked about how his shapeshifting, joy-bringing, mind-calming powers affect his sense of his gender from moment to moment, role to role: not on panel, at least, and not yet. But he could.
V: One Of The Stepford Cuckoos
No one knows which one. Except the other Cuckoos. And they won’t say.
VI: Warbird
Feathered and badass, surprised by her own artistry, not necessarily much for human anatomy, the Shi’ar alien Ava’dara Nanganindini became the late star of the Marjorie Liu Astonishing X-Men run, and hasn’t been seen so much since: her coming-out arc may not be over yet, and there’s no reason that modern Western gender categories– or any other categories– should pin this winged figure down.
VII: Mercury
Canonically gay or bi (she’s dated Bling!) and canonically able to alter her shiny shape or dissolve into liquid metal, Cessily Kincaid and her powers make a really useful allegory for the way that nonbinary identities can flow around, short-circuit, overspill, or otherwise escape the society that seeks to contain them. Could she be more than an allegory? Could she be nonbinary herself? We’ll wait for her to get more than a cameo in the DoX era, and hope she lets us know.
IX: Beast
Hank McCoy likes to push buttons, literal buttons (like the ones that start up dangerous machines) and figurative ones (as when he claimed to be gay during Grant Morrison’s run). We’re fine if you want to read him as a furry cis guy, but we can also see him as other than, more than, a mere man. What if, great sesquipedialian loquacious scientist that he is, Hank’s still trying to find the right rubrics for his true shape?
X: Quentin Quire
He’s rebelled against everything else: why not the gender binary? And he has that nonbinary haircut. Gwenpool might know.
Never let it be forgotten, however, that Illyana can tear him apart like a baby goat.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
