Wait…Batman is trans?? (the article)
Before there was Bruce, there was Bryce
Hidden beneath the cowl, the dark knight hides a secret deeper than their public alter ego.
It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me
No one has ever seen Batman’s true face. Not really.
Not even the people Batman called family. Mother. Father. They called her Bruce — as though raising her as a boy would turn her into one.
Bryce (what she knew her true name to be) fought endlessly with her dad over it. Every time he made her cut her hair, she grew it back out. Every time he punished her for “sounding like a girl,” she withdrew that voice a little more. Well, until he complained instead that now she never spoke at all.
Then he made sure to hear her voice. He hurt her until it came out unbidden. She learned to distance herself from the pain, but her body screamed with or without her.
At least pain had a purpose. It reminded her she was here. She was in her body. She was alive.
Into the dark knight
Her future had always belonged to her father. She was only twelve, too young to bear the weight of the entire Wayne legacy on her shoulders. But that’s what she was faced with now.
It was one thing when it was just her father and emotionally-absent mother forcing her to present as a boy. It was a game. A deception. As easily removed as a mask and cape.
As long as it didn’t turn into more — as long as those prickly feelings across her skin remained merely untamed fear. As long as they never became real.
What mattered most — the one thing her dad couldn’t take from her — was that her body was still her own. She’d pretend to be Bruce Wayne so that her dad’s company wouldn’t be, as he put it, abandoned to the vulture capitalists.
She had the rest figured out. As she grew up and finally took over the Wayne Empire, she would use the nights to live as her true self. She would shed the ridiculous playboy image her parents were sure to require. There would be only the girl underneath who would take a life dedicated to the night rather than no life at all.
Tragedy strikes
During the final moments of a movie — not even Bryce remembers what exactly was playing— Bryce decided it had to be tonight or never. Not because tonight was special, but because no night would ever be special unless she got out and she got out NOW.
Those prickly feelings had grown from fear to devastation.
Nothing appeared too obvious when she looked in the mirror, but appearances were deceiving. Something awful was happening to the only Wayne child.
She could feel her body shifting, morphing, growing into what her father had begged her to become. If it wasn’t stopped, her body would take on the common features of a boy, then a man.
Everything required to stop that from happening and set her body on the right path would cost money. Fortunately, the Wayne family owned at least half of Gotham.
But of course, money wasn’t the problem.
You must be more than a man
As the credits to the movie came on and the lights came up, Bryce didn’t move from her chair. Her nerves strangely calm, she let her parents rise first. They looked back at her with rage that they barely concealed as paternal concern.
If they were anywhere else, they would have shown her who had the power. Never a child. Certainly never a girl.
But in public? At the movies? They waited.
In fact, they sat back down.
As though they were a family with such intimate experiences that they took fulfillment basking in the afterglow of a good movie together.
When the last person walked out, Bryce’s father reached for her wrist. “Okay, it’s time for us — ”
Feeling as graceful as a trained gymnast, Bryce evaded her father’s hand and rolled over the chairs and to the other aisle. She’d always been so physical, able to manipulate her body, push it, control it.
It was a gift — if only she’d use it.
That was what was at stake now.
“Okay,” her dad said. “What is this?”
Bryce had rehearsed the words a million times. She’d also failed to say them just as often.
Her dad didn’t just want her to be a boy. Not even just a man. He wanted her to be a symbol. One that could inspire generations of men to come.
But she knew what words would disarm her father. After years enough accepting the cowl he forced her to wear, she would simply take it off.
“I’m trans,” she said. “My real name is Bryce, not Bruce. And I need for you to help — ”
Her father held up his hand. It wasn’t rage on his face. For the first time, she wasn’t sure what it was.
She looked at her mother with the hope she needed her to reflect. But her mother’s mask remained impenetrable, too.
Time seemed to slow down. Bryce studied the faces of her parents like they contained vital clues. As though she were the world’s greatest detective, capable of deciphering human feelings from an empty void.
Nevertheless, she felt fearless. No prickles crossed her skin any more. What was there to fear? This was her last chance for hope, at least with her parents. So she let herself feel that hope.
Then her father’s eyes narrowed and she knew.
What she’d taken as the night had merely been a deepening dusk. Her father would bring her into a true night, and it would be darker than she’d imagined.
The choice she never had
Bryce Wayne moved to evade her father a second time, but this wasn’t a movie. It wasn’t a comic book. It was a story turning more hopeless by the moment.
She just happened to be the main character.
He caught her arm. “You’re coming with me.”
“Thomas,” her mom said. “At least wait until we’re home.”
“That’s where we’re going. Home.”
He picked Bryce off the floor, like she was made of flour instead of petite bones that ought to weigh something.
She could pull at his hair, but that never worked. She could hit him, pound on his back, his head, but that never worked, either.
She could scream for help…but when had that ever helped anyone else?
Her mom, for all her faults, had discovered the only effective survival technique: there was safety in silence and shadows.
She’d let him have his way, as usual. And eventually, his guard would slip, as it always did. But this time, she would run, as he believed she never would.
The last shot of her life
Bryce Wayne hadn’t been sure, but her father had let her know in how he’d responded to her coming out. There was no place for her in this family. Not as long as he was alive.
Despite how much it would hurt her mother, as soon as her dad’s burst of rage ended— which was sure to burn hotter and longer than ever after those three little words — she would leave.
“The night is darkest before the dawn,” her father said as he carried her down the side walkway along the seats. “And I promise you, if you turn this into a fight, the dawn will be a long time coming.”
He went down the walkway to the exit that led to the alley behind the theater. Safe enough in her father’s mind because it was out of view and earshot — a place for him to have his say without anyone to hear.
Her mom came out the door behind them. She didn’t dare stop her husband, no never that. But she did reach out her hand in a barely-restrained impulse. The fear in her eyes shifted something in Bryce.
Was something awful about to happen?
The birth of a hero
Bryce Wayne or Bruce Wayne, whatever you call her now, her memory is close to perfect. She remembers details, numbers, dates, facts, impressions, faces, sounds, smells, tastes, accents, movements, designs— all with an overwhelming amount of detail.
But when it comes to the rest of that night, all she has are fragments.
Her father realized they weren’t alone as soon as the door shut.
Someone else was in the alley. A fight started.
A gunshot rang out once, twice. If there were screams, Bryce couldn’t hear them through the BANG. BANG.
The sound pierced her mind like a bright light. She needed the darkness not just to see but to think. To exist.
Pain couldn’t stop her. Not this time. She had to push through.
She looked ahead of her —
And the man had the gun leveled at her —
He was going to shoot her too.
So she did the one thing she never let herself do. Not because she wanted to. Because she had to.
She screamed.
A moment’s hesitation
The robber slowly removed his finger from the trigger.
Why hadn’t he shot her? Why hadn’t he — ?
Then she saw it in his eyes. Why he’d hesitated. Why he was starting to smile.
“You ain’t a boy,” he said, his smile growing larger. “You’re a girl.”
You’re a girl
Bryce desperately thought of what to do. What could possibly stop this man.
A scream had worked before. What would finish the job was the right scream. The one her father had taught her to make with all of his endless training. Pointless, she’d called it. And painful.
Well it could save her life now.
She screamed as deeply like a man as she could. She prayed that if the sound of a boy didn’t stop this man — that the part of her she kept hidden most of all would tell him she wasn’t the thing he wanted.
She kept that hope alive despite the utter silence of the dark place holding her until he was done.
Heroes need a savior
“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”
One day, Bryce sat at the window to her bedroom. She watched the night sky, the moon, the clouds, the occasional bat.
Her days were empty, but her nights at least held the memory of what had happened.
That and the fear that it would happen again. Not to her, no. She’d said no in every way she could. You couldn’t take that kind of innocence from a person a second time.
But just because she was no longer innocent didn’t mean others weren’t. There were lots of people in Gotham. Many of there were just like her.
Those people were heroes in the making, and they needed a savior. Was there another way forward? She couldn’t see it. Try as she did…she just couldn’t.
If that was her trauma limiting her ability to see a different path, then so be it. She could only choose from the terms available to her.
It had to be this way.
Maybe it was always going to be like this.
Maybe it was destiny.
Gotham deserved a worthy protector, even if it wasn’t the one Bryce Wayne needed.
So she would hide her true self. Because she could take it. Because she wasn’t a hero. She was a closeted guardian. A transgender warrior. A secretly female dark knight.
Writing exercise
The first taste is free, but to finish the story, I need that contract from DC.
While I wait!
I want to hear YOUR story. Write your best Tweet Fic (280 characters or less) response to this prompt.
And if it leads you to write something longer? Maybe DC will hire all of us to write an anthology show reinventing their most famous characters as trans superheroes :)
Where to start your story
Pick any point from the life of Bryce/Bruce Wayne.
Switch up their gender if you want. There’s no need for them to even have any gender. An a-gender Batman is just as valid.
Will you start as far back as their childhood? Or will you keep the story to the era after tragedy broke their family?
Will you tell Bryce’s life as a baby? Or will you go far ahead into the future — when they’re looking back on the decisions that came to define their life? Was it worth it?
What was it like before they felt dysphoria? What was it like when they did? What was it like after they chose how to live with their experiences in a world they believed required them to cultivate a body in defiance of their true self?
Does Bryce at first take puberty blockers? Does she train in such extreme conditions because she hopes that ferocity and talent will be enough? Does she hit a point where she worries that whether a more muscular body is right for other girls, it’s absolutely not right for her?
Not when it means letting testosterone flow through her body, pushing it into an unimaginable physical peak of hardened features she can’t help but feel are wrong for her.
But it does mean safety. Both for others — and for herself.
What happens when a crisis puts the people Bryce/Bruce Wayne loves in danger…and the only way to save them is to embrace the physical changes she has until then held at bay? To let her body advance into the form of a hulking caped crusader that no one would ever suspect was actually a girl?
ADDITIONAL READING
A new ‘Batman’ comic confirms that sidekick Robin is queer Batman Confirms He’s a Transgender Ally ‘Batgirl’ Casts Trans Actress as First Trans Character in DC Comics Live Action Film
JUST FOR FUN
10 Times Batman Got Over The Death Of His Parents (And Promptly Forgot)
The end
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