Emily Asher-Perrin has a great post concerning the Marvel Comics Universe Loki’s apparently-canon genderfluidity. Emily brings up the point that gender is not about sex acts but identity. Loki-as-a-woman is not presented in the MCU as a guy who sometimes seems to look like a woman – but simply is female, a person who refers to herself as ‘she’. And so does everyone around her. Even Odin, in a line that actually made me sniffle when I read it.
I have an authorial stake in this, well beyond my fannish explorations of things Loki. In my original fiction, I have several genderfluid characters. Making the distinction between sex and identity becomes very important for plot reasons. Take Singer in Rhunshan, the fantasy novel soon to go out on sub: Sfassa is always thoroughly female, and Eridan is male no matter what species he is that day. But Hayfern can be either – or none-of-the-above – depending on mood or political expediency.
The fact that Disney now owns a huge stake in Marvel – and Loki – may mean we are finally getting away from the infamous Disney tendency to codify many villains as gay. Or maybe not. The studio handling of the Loki arc in Thor II was shameful and idiotic. Let’s not forget that studio execs were fully prepared to actually kill off Loki at the end of the movie, before Tom Hiddleston’s masterful and hilarious moment at San Diego ComicCon convinced Disney they had lightning in a bottle. They rewrote the script, apparently.
Jury’s still out for Disney’s future handling of the issue. But those of us who like and write gay and genderfluid characters are getting more ammunition in the mainstream genre markets.