2. Superheroes

Two and a half years ago, Leo Sheng was in Ann Arbor, Mich., about to start a master’s in social work when a casting agent messaged him on Instagram. “Acting was not on my radar,” he says. Sheng flew to New York for an audition. As he boarded the plane back to Michigan, his phone rang: He got the part. In “Adam,” which premiered last August, Sheng plays Ethan, a young trans man so emotionally grounded that he becomes the ballast for the cis characters flailing all around him, thus flipping a trans narrative trope. Soon after, he was cast in “The L Word: Generation Q” as Micah, an adjunct professor of social work.

Sheng, now 23, recognizes the potential for social and political change in acting: Through characters like Ethan and Micah, he’s helping Hollywood revise its depictions of trans men, catching up to trans lives as they’re actually lived. Story lines are moving past transition into love, friendship, work, family — the everything-ness of a man’s life. Sheng and the other actors are portraying men not defined by crisis or fear, or hormones and chest-binding, but in the midst of full and (mostly) happy lives — “a type of happiness a lot of people want to know is possible,” Sheng says.

Sheng uses social media to further complicate the narrative, engaging in an ongoing deconstruction of who and what defines the male self. He posts about going to the gym and his evolving relationship to muscles. He wants people to see trans male bodies as they are, whether ripped or soft, hairy or smooth, boyish or dad-ish, scarred or not. Sheng recently posted about his period, a frankness that drew praise but also online attacks about his identity.

Something we can’t forget: Even as the actors appear in more and more celebrated projects, some people continue to deny their existence. The English actor, writer and director Jake Graf, 42, says in the past trans men were invisible, both onscreen and in broader society, in part because many could choose whether to disclose their identity: “Largely due to our physicality, we’ve been afforded the luxury of living that unseen, under-the-radar, stealth life.” Their reasons were complex and understandable (personal safety, social and financial stability, for example), but one consequence has been that there is now far less awareness of trans men than of trans women. Society has a long and unfortunate history of gazing at and fetishizing trans women, but that has been less the case with trans men. That’s a generalization, of course, but only in service of sharing a point many of the actors made to me: They now want to be seen; they now want people to know they exist. “Trans women have historically been more visible,” Graf says. “Trans men have been out there doing things much more quietly, which is great for them, but not great for visibility.”

Graf used to audition without disclosing his identity, and casting directors saw him as another guy in the gaggle. Only after coming out could he stand out, booking roles in 2018’s “Colette” and 2015’s “The Danish Girl” (based on a novel I wrote). With his square jaw and British charm, Graf embodies the classic leading man while also subverting the very notion. He started making short films, highlighting the fine-grain details of ordinary trans lives: a young man visiting his gynecologist; an older man recalling life before the queer and trans rights movements — a multiplicity of stories Hollywood is only now incorporating.

“There’s no one version of a trans guy in Hollywood anymore,” says Elliot Fletcher, 23. From 2016 to 2018, Fletcher took on three consecutive trans roles that, viewed together, proved groundbreaking. On MTV’s “Faking It,” he played a high schooler navigating his gender identity and sexuality. On Freeform’s “The Fosters,” he was the sweetly rebellious boyfriend. On Showtime’s “Shameless,” Fletcher plays an L.G.B.T.Q. activist who is simultaneously insulting, raunchy and endearing. The role he’d really love, though, is the next Spider-Man. With the right glasses, he could pass for Peter Parker. When I asked the actors about their dream roles, most said they want to play a superhero. A superhero implies someone elite, a status long denied to trans and gender-nonconforming people.