Or, I actually read the comics don’t @ me

Gwen Spider-Woman slash Ghost-Spider slash Spider-Gwen is definitely trans though guys.

Okay memes aside, I have Thoughts about the comics and they do partly involve the whole trans thing. And I guess like, there’s spoilers if you care about those.

Getting the Bad out of the way

Okay, I’m going to get the one thing that really pisses me off out of the way first so I can then do my more reparative reading.

Why the FUCK do they make her randomly lose her powers without even a fight due to machinations of a crime boss and then have her basically be under his control. That just feels icky. It ultimately does fit into the wider character arc of Gwen taking control of her own destiny, but like, cmon man write it better than just “oop the mad scientist lady who happens to be in cahoots with the crime boss dude snapped her fingers and wooshed away her powers”. I’m not gonna say it’s immoral because like, it’s the bad guys?? They’re meant to be… bad?? But the way it’s written is just ugh.

There’s also the later bit I think is a bit silly where there’s Spider-Geddon and we don’t really see the after-effects on Gwen of going through all that? Which is wild because it’s yet another status-quo-changing crossover event but eh.

Anyway.

Let’s do things differently this time; reparative reading

As I alluded to before, Gwen’s character arc is really about someone who got pushed into a set of responsibilites and deciding that she’s not going to submit to fate, taking control and going her own way. To the point where there’s a secret society of Gwens who control the multiverse. Nope they never mention that again, and nor will I. Gwen loses her powers while never having been unmasked to anyone but her father, giving her the chance to fade back into a “normal” life as Gwen Stacy, but she fights to stay Spider-Woman on her own terms, even if she falters and tangles with Matt Murdock for a while. The whole jail thing feels a bit like just torture porn at times, but thematically it works to show Gwen’s moral compass – she knows she hurt people, even if she didn’t mean to, and she needs to atone for it. The story spells this out very bluntly, I think she literally says that in dialogue. But I think having be spelled out like that is interesting in its own right, it’s taking all the people in the story who deride her for sticking to her guns and following how her dad raised her and saying clearly that they’re wrong, that sometimes you do get beat up for doing the right thing but you get right back up and keep on going, because you know you’re doing the right thing.

Tying into Gwen’s characterisation, an overarching theme I found interesting that’s mostly in the original Spider-Gwen run and not in the Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider/Ghost-Spider run is the way that it’s honestly pretty fucking dark but then shows that there’s still light at the end of the tunnel – even if it feels like everyone hates her after literally going to jail, “there are actually people out there who root for ‘Spider-Gwen’, who still believe in her”. Gwen loses her best friend, loses her powers, loses her other best friend, takes on the responsibility of Venom, and then goes to jail too to cap it all off, but after it all, she still has her dad and the Mary Janes and the motivation to keep on going. In short, shit’s rough but there’s still a reason to keep going.

Taken together, one could read a story of women’s empowerment in the Spider-Gwen run. Gwen’s world treats her as a menace for being a strong woman, trying to tear her down out of fear of what she could do – in the context of the in-comics universe, obviously due to her literal super-powers, but if we do a little feminisming, Gwen is dangerous in being a woman unafraid to take things into her own hands to enact justice, in contrast to the grim masculine world around her of men who revel in the power they hold over others and corrupt police clinging to their power. Towards the climax of the Gwenom¹ arc, she literally calls out that corruption: “This is your justice”. And in contrast to the spider-men, Gwen doesn’t discard the symbiote like they usually do. Instead, she embraces it and resolves to show it a better way of doing things compared to the anger and fear it had been fed. I’m most familiar with the Raimi depiction of the symbiote, so bear with me, but I find it interesting to look at the way that Spider-Man is disgusted by his emotions being amplified (so he destroys it) but Spider-Woman/Gwen is disgusted by her emotions being amplified (so she focuses on being better and not feeding the symbiote anger and fear).

I don’t know what this concept is called; the core of a character

If you do know the “proper” name for this concept I’m about to discuss, please do pick your favourite platform from the list here and tell me (I’m fully serious about this, I genuinely would love to know).

So. I don’t think either theme mentioned above is handled as well in the Ghost-Spider run, where Gwen essentially just runs away from people knowing who she is rather than dealing with it as I feel like she would based on her original characterisation. But this is just my reading on what the core of Spider-Gwen as a character is. Other people might disagree, and in fact, the author(s) of the Ghost-Spider run might be among those who’d disagree with me. This is where the whole discourse around “correct” adaptations comes from, really. Different people believe that different things are the core of a character or the core of a story, so when an adaptation strays from what they think are the key details, it’s bad, unfaithful, cringe, etc etc.

An interesting case study in this is comic book movies, a common point of controversy between what people believe is “the” definition of their favourite character (usually based on one particular run) and what the creative team making the film decide is the story they want to tell. I will openly admit that my favourite version of Gwen is the original comics run version, but that doesn’t mean that the Spider-Verse movie version is immediately bad. It’s just a different take on the same character and they made her a kid this time instead which is annoying but anyway.

Wait, she’s trans? Always has been 🔫

So you’re telling me that a punk rocker that has to “come out” to people as Spider-Woman and literally needs patches to keep her being Spider-Woman, literally fighting her way to continue being Spider-Woman, while wearing a suit that’s coloured with a striking blue/white/pink design could possibly be seen as a trans icon? That’s crazy.²

In the words of u/PaxLilith (banger username btw), who seems to be the most active mod of r/SpiderGwen, “there was a lot for transfems to latch onto”. And latch onto this character we did. Can you blame us? (Trick question, of course some people do…)

So the movies leaning into that more, leaning into something that was already there in the source material, is not surprising in the slightest. There’s a broader history of super-hero stories being used as allegories for minorities, heck, people like Stan Lee literally were Jewish and that came across in the kinds of stories they wrote. I’m gonna put it simply. If you’re too media illiterate to understand themes in a piece of media beyond “good guy good, bad guy bad”, you can fuck off with your “um akshully she’s a BiOLoGiCaL wOmAn”. The themes are right there, read them. Don’t just bring out death of the author when you want to listen to Ye or play the wizard game, bring it out when you start getting upset at people enjoying a piece of media that they feel represents them in a way different to what you think. Don’t tear other people down, tear down your own prejudice.