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Peter doesn’t pass. He knows that. It doesn’t make it any easier.
Aunt May offered, of course. He visited a gender specialist and talked about his options, about puberty blockers and testosterone and top surgery, but the truth is that Peter doesn’t want to physically transition. He gets dysphoric, sometimes, but he manages it by binding, by changing his name, by dressing in a black baggy jumper and science pun T-shirts.
Aunt May doesn’t slip up. She calls him he or they smoothly, as if he was never anything but Peter Parker. She legally changes his name, donates his old clothes to the charity shop in Queens, and corrects people when they misgender him. But people assume. The school gets it wrong. Strangers see Peter’s feminine features, hear his voice, and say she .
Peter, that’s an interesting name (for a girl)! or How do you spell that? As if there might be an extra letter in there that defers to femininity.
He calls himself Spider-Man. He signs his notes to the police, S-Man. The news picks him up as Spider-Girl, the newest femme fatale! Peter’s onesie costume doesn’t hide his curves or compress his chest. He doesn’t bind while he fights - because he needs every advantage he can get - and he pretends it doesn’t sting when people assume.
Thank you, Spider Girl! Peter winces as he says it is the least I can do. As he puts a shock blanket over someone’s shoulders, rings the police on their phone, and leaves a note with the webbed up criminals.
I left you a present,
Spider Man!
He writes out his name in full. One time he underlines the man . He hopes that will make a difference in the headlines. It doesn’t. What you see is what you get, apparently. He can’t ask Aunt May to correct the Daily Bugle about misgendering him because she doesn’t know he’s Spider-Man. She comments over breakfast one morning that there’s a new super in town - a girl, this time. I do hope she’s at least 18.
No, Peter isn’t going to tell Aunt May.
Iron Man tracks them down. He hovers in front of them as Peter sits on the edge of a rooftop, waiting for their spidey sense to ping. “Not thinking of jumping, are you?”
Peter simply says, “If I do, I’ll catch myself.” They shoot a web at the wall, to demonstrate.
Tony Stark asks them about the webs, says did you make them yourself?, asks for a sample, and invites them to Avengers Tower to meet the team. He doesn’t ask them if they like their handle - Spider-Girl. He just assumes.
“Great!” The billionaire exclaims, “We’ll see you at the tower tonight, Spider-Girl.”
Then he shoots off into the sky, rocketing away, before Peter can say, “...It’s Spider-Man.”
He tells Aunt May that he’s staying with Ned and he tells Ned that he needs to cancel because he’s going to meet the Avengers. Ned squeals into the phone at a decibel that only dogs can hear and Peter promises that he’ll bring him back something signed by Bruce Banner - their favorite super and scientist.
Peter swings his way to Stark Tower and climbs up the side of the building. He sits outside one of the windows, contemplating knocking, before JARVIS opens the window for him, greeting him with a bittersweet Welcome, Spider-Girl. Lanky and acrobatic, Peter swings right into the Avengers kitchen as they feast on piled high pizza boxes.
“Why not just come through the front door?” Hawkeye complains, loudly, before Steve Rogers - ohmygod it’s Captain America - elbows him in the side.
“Welcome, Spider-Girl,” the wet dream of a thousand suburbanite mothers says in that apple-pie all-American voice.
And Peter says, “Actually, it’s Spider-Man.”
He apologizes, says he’s read about “LBGQT issues” (god bless him), and continues on with his welcome. The rest of the Avengers pick up on the mix-up and move on from it easily, asking Peter about the crime in Queens and how long he’s been a vigilante for. Later on, as Peter sits in the window, waiting to swing home for his next day of school, Iron Man apologizes for his assumption.
It takes a while but the newspapers start to get it. After Peter fights side by side against an alien invasion, he proves not only helpful but instrumental, and Black Widow credits him simply: Spider-Man stepped up and saved lives. The headlines change from: Our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Girl Saves Cat From Tree to Spider-Man Fights Off Doc Oc In Time Square .
It’s not brought up. It just is. There are days when Peter corrects them, when he’s feeling like a Spider-Person and asks for that rare and precious pronoun, they. There’s the day when Tony Stark offers to pay for his transition - and Peter explains, no, I don’t need that - or when Bruce Banner says that Peter can use the men’s bathroom if he wants - and no, I prefer the unisex toilet.
There is the day when he takes off his mask, when Thanos has ravaged the universe, when he is disappearing into dust, and Peter says, I’m scared, Mr. Stark.
The day when Tony says,
you’re going to be okay, Peter.
It’s a lie when he says it, when he sacrifices himself, but it ends up being the truth.