What's in a name...
This post originally appeared on my Substack
The current arc in The Dreaming: Waking Hours, a comic by G. Willow Wilson, takes place in a fairie world that relies on traditional English folklore rules of the faerie folk. These faes are tricksters who seek to constantly play with humans. Their most paramount rule is the Law of Names, the belief that names have innate power, and that faeries and humans alike should use aliases and conceal their true names in the company of each other. If someone was to discover the true name of an individual, then they would have power over them.
This creates a tense situation when Heather After, a witch at odds with the rulers of faerie, is confronted by the villain saying that he now has power over her, for he has retrieved her birth certificate and learned her “true name”. Operating under fae folklore the reader understands that this means some sort of danger.
I immediately understood the gravity of the situation; Heather is about to be outed as a trans woman. Hearing “birth certificate” in combination with “true name” gave me a gut-turning feeling of familiarity. The reveal that Heather is not only trans but about to suffer a very real traumatic experience.
The knowledge of Heather After's trans identity is one that is revealed to the reader, not on Heather's own terms. the villain seeks to reveal this "secret" information in order to catch Heather off guard, make her feel weak. This is an experience that is very common to trans people. The myth of the "true name".
Transgender people are often seen as malicious hiders of the truth. We hide our “true” selves behind chosen names, clothes, and pronouns. Transphobic people believe that if they seek out this “truth”, some piece of information they can use to invalidate our identity and confront us with it, then we have lost our power. Our secrets are revealed to the world and we can no longer trick those around us. This commonly comes out as deadnaming, the action of using a trans person's birth name in order to identify them as the gender we were assigned at birth, rather than the gender we identify with in reality.
Once I understood that Heather was trans I felt conflicting emotions; joy at the idea of representation, and dread at the realization she will be made to suffer in order to capitalize on her transness. Most trans representation in media seems to require any trans characters to experience some level of trauma that is exclusive to the trans experience; it equates their character to being trans and being trans to suffering.
In the case of Heather After it is not unreasonable for her to falter at this act of hate against her, this is a natural response for any person. What is unfortunate is that the reveal of her trans identity and her first interaction with the audience as a trans woman is a specifically transgender trauma.
So I read on with bated breath, cringing as I turned the page to the next panel. As the fae begins to speak this "true name" he finds himself choking, unable to speak. Heather stands over him, unphased, and speaks to this creature attempting to deadname her;
Heather is not phased by this creature attempting to deadname her, because the name on her birth certificate has no bearing on who she is. Heather's true name is Heather.
Heather is an adult woman, who has lived her trans identity from a young age (we’ve seen her as a young girl in flashbacks) and has never gone through the legal process of changing her name or gender marker on her birth certificate. Trans people often feel like legally changing your name will be the piece to the puzzle, which finally makes it easy to live as yourself. In reality, it’s just an extremely difficult hoop to jump through in an attempt to “prove” to society that you deserve to be treated with respect, and it will still never be enough for many people.
She doesn’t feel the need to do that or to prove anything to anyone. Her confidence and power are exhilarating. My birth name does not matter and does not invalidate who I am as a grown woman. But being deadnamed still feels like a gut punch.
Wilson communicates a trans experience that centers on self-validation, that we can attempt to determine what is true and what is meaningful.
All trans people wish they could stand up (and maybe magically kill) all those who would try to hurt us. And although Heather’s reaction may be as real as the faeries, it’s the ideal, the fantastic...The Dreaming.