Was The World Ready For The First Trans Supervillain?

Alex Mell-Taylor
11 min readJan 17, 2020

How Mr. Robot pressed up against the limits of representation.

Trans representation is so sparse in media that, for some, you can squint and pretend like it doesn’t exist at all. There have been a few noteworthy standouts in recent years (e.g., Pose, Orange Is The New Black, Grey’s Anatomy, arguably Steven Universe, etc.). Yet for most of cinematic history, the few visible trans characters on film and television have been either “evil” or tragically silenced.

Trans people have barely started to see themselves reflected back, albeit imperfectly, from the silver screen. We had only just gotten to the point where trans characters were being portrayed as actual people when Whiterose, from the hacker tv show Mr. Robot, effortlessly walked on screen and changed everything.

Her portrayal, though controversial and flawed, will undoubtedly represent a shift in how we will perceive trans characters in the future. She is one of modern cinema’s most enticing villains, and yet, one has to ask: is this portrayal the breaking of a trend or the enforcement of one?

An Abridged History Of Trans “Evil”

When we first meet Whiterose, as she casually lights up a cigarette, we are told upfront how powerful “he” is (at first, the protagonist Elliot mistakenly assumes the gender of the world’s most legendary hacker). She is the leader of the Dark Army, the elusive hacker collective behind some of the world’s greatest hacks. Her time is so precious that she times their initial conversation, and will allot Elliot no more than three minutes.

This initial impression of power is never questioned. There is a moment in episode ten of season two where Phillip Price (Michael Cristofer), the CEO of E Corp (a combination of Enron, Bank of America, and Facebook all rolled into one) is talking about the worlds most influential people and says:

“In my life, as I was making my way, I always asked the question, am I the most powerful person in the room? The answer needed to be yes. To this day, I still ask that question. And the answer is still yes.

In every room in the entire world, the answer is yes with the exception of one. Or two. And that drives me.”

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