Originally Posted by
Mackandal
So many of you are missing the point. It is unequivocally a deliberate analogy. That is not up for debate here. The guy literally uses the word "trap". (People complain that comics are too hamfisted, but when they're handed something as blatant as this they don't see it.) It couldn't be more obvious if Rahne looked directly at the "camera" and said "Ay, this be a metaphor for trans panic, ye spaleen." That's not the question. The question is whether this is an appropriate handling of the metaphor.
I am trans and I am not terribly outraged by it. Ironically, (I admit as a man trans panic isn't as prominent a threat to me as to women, but) I have been triggered not my the comic itself, but by seeing my Twitter feed explode with criticism of the scene, reminding me how the world hates me, and everything is terrible for us, and there still isn't a trans mutant and we aren't shown anywhere and our supposed allies fuck up when they try to represent us and so many of us kill ourselves that we need a hotline, etc. Whereas when I read the issue, I thought "Huh, good use of the Metaphor. Fuck flatscans. This issue was better paced than the others."
We need canon actual trans rep (and everything else rep) on page yesterday, that is true. And they probably should have warned people ahead of time. But I thought the X-men were supposed to serve as a platform to illuminate the realities of marginalised peoples. Despite what I wrote above, it's possible that at lest one cis person will read the story and go "hey, this sucks, and happens all the time. I should do something about it or at least understand how terrible it is." Maybe the next time they see someone get off a murder charge because of the trans panic defense, they'll remember that the victim had a name and that all people deserve justice. Maybe a trans person will read this and instead of being hurt, think "Here is my experience, represented on paper. Here is light cast on my struggles." I don't often understand the modern trend of criticising struggles being spotlighted in sympathetic light. I think it's good to reinforce that something is bad.
I think a big factor is that there is zero trans representation and especially positive or happy trans representation. And that shouldn't be the whole picture. But I advocate for that without getting mad when the bad stuff is shown.