🧬 Mutants Like Me: A Trans Woman’s Lifelong Bond With the X-Men

In 1982, I was six years old when I discovered the X-Men.

X-Men #1, 1991

I didn’t know the word queer. I didn’t know the word transgender. I didn’t even know what made me feel “other.” But I knew that when I opened the pages of Uncanny X-Men or watched a rerun of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends featuring Firestar and Iceman, I felt something that didn’t exist anywhere else in my world: connection. Belonging. A flicker of possibility.

I didn’t know why I clung to this team of mutants so fiercely — only that they were hated and feared because they were different. And somehow, I understood that feeling. Deep in my bones, even if I couldn’t name it yet.

🧬 The Allegory I Didn’t See — Until I Did

It would take decades for me to realize what I’d been connecting to all along.

The X-Men were never just superheroes. They were allegory in spandex. Metaphor wrapped in action and angst. They weren’t saving the world from evil so much as trying to exist in it — survive it — despite being labeled dangerous, unnatural, or unworthy.

And that’s the queer experience in a nutshell, isn’t it?

Especially for trans folks like me.

We know what it’s like to be misunderstood. To have our identities legislated, debated, erased. To be told we are broken, wrong, or threatening — not because of anything we’ve done, but simply because of who we are. And we know what it is to live anyway. To fight for joy, authenticity, and community despite it all.

Just like the X-Men do.

So when I see mutants hiding their powers, or being outed without consent, or finding a chosen family in the wreckage of rejection — it doesn’t feel like fiction. It feels like autobiography.

It feels like home.

💥 Cyclops: The Leader Who Sees Without Being Seen

My number one favorite X-Man has always been Cyclops — and yes, I know he’s divisive.

To some fans, he’s the boring boy scout. To others, he’s the militant revolutionary. But to me, Cyclops has always been the one who holds the weight no one else wants to carry. The one who sees everything — literally through a visor — but is rarely ever truly seen himself.

He lives behind shields. Suppressing what’s inside him just to function in the world. He’s powerful, but his power is considered dangerous. Too much. Unstable.

Tell me that’s not a trans metaphor.

Cyclops taught me that you can be disciplined and determined and still be tender underneath. That you can lead while being misunderstood. That you can live in control and in contradiction.

❄️ Iceman: Freezing Shame and Melting Into Self

Iceman came out as gay decades after I fell in love with him — but when he did, it hit me harder than I expected.

Because I had always sensed it. Not just in his charm or humor or swagger, but in the sadness beneath it. The way he seemed like someone who was always performing something — the comic relief, the flirt, the team player — while secretly drowning in the cold.

Sound familiar?

Bobby Drake’s coming out story mirrored what so many of us experience: delayed self-realization, internalized fear, and the ache of having lived half a life in hiding. When he finally says, “I’ve been trying not to be me for so long,” I felt that in every molecule of my body.

It reminded me of the decades I spent pretending to be someone I wasn’t. And the eventual, radiant, terrifying relief of no longer doing so.

🔫 Cable: The Burden of Survival

Cable is a time-traveling mutant with a techno-organic virus and the emotional weight of someone who’s seen the worst of humanity and still keeps fighting for a better world.

He’s a character about endurance. About carrying the trauma of what was and the hope for what could be. He’s patched together, scarred, half-machine, half-legend — and he still shows up, day after day, to protect the future.

That hits different when you’re trans and disabled.

As an amputee, I’ve had to redefine what my body is capable of — not in spite of my difference, but because of it. As a trans woman, I carry the past and present in constant tension. And like Cable, I fight forward anyway. For my daughter. For my community. For a future that doesn’t fear us.

🛡️ Colossus: Strength with Softness

Colossus is solid steel on the outside, but an artist and protector at heart. He reminds me that vulnerability and strength aren’t opposites — they can coexist.

As someone who often has to be “the strong one” in a world that challenges my worth, I’ve long identified with his duality. He’s gentle. Thoughtful. Loyal. But also terrifying when someone he loves is in danger.

He’s what trans resilience looks like: the armor we wear, the tenderness we guard, the fire that lives just beneath the surface.

🎭 Gambit: Charm, Masks, and Choosing Who You Are

Gambit is mystery, flair, and rebellion.

He’s the rogue with a checkered past, the man who flirts with danger and reinvention in equal measure. What I love about Gambit is that he chooses who he wants to be — over and over again.

As a trans woman, I’ve done the same.

He reminds me that identity isn’t something you have to apologize for. That being complex, chaotic, and beautifully flawed doesn’t make you less worthy. It makes you human.

💫 What the X-Men Gave Me

They gave me hope before I had language.
They gave me mirrors before I knew I needed them.
They gave me the courage to fight for my future before I even knew it was mine to fight for.

Today, I’m 49 years old — a trans woman, a below-the-knee amputee, and the author of Reborn in Shadows: From The Ashes, a queer thriller about survival, identity, and the power of chosen family. I carry the lessons the X-Men taught me in everything I write and everything I am.

We don’t always get to choose the world we’re born into.

But we do get to choose the kind of mutant — the kind of human — we want to be.

And if the world fears us for that?

Well… the X-Men taught me how to handle that too.

With love and adamantium-strength defiance,
Maya Fisher
🏳️‍⚧️📚✊
TikTok: @authormaya.fisher
Website: www.authormayafisher.com