Meet Marvel's First Transgender Hero

Disney is encouraging young people to share their stories and help open people’s minds.

In an episode of Marvel’s Hero Project, a new series from Disney Plus that profiles brave young people, Rebekah shared her story.

Each episode celebrates young heroes and presents them with a comic book showing their “selfless acts of bravery and kindness.”

“I can change the world,” said the native of New Jersey. And she is right! Rebekah and her family joined organisations like Garden State Equality to give speeches, and show that trans people are not the terrible or confused people that the federal government and right-wing media make them out to be.

Rebekah wants to create change on a local level and within the hearts and minds of the public. She even appeared before the New Jersey legislature to lobby for Assembly Bill 1335- legislation that would mandate LGBTQ history curriculum in public schools. She understands that, as a marginalised person, she is underrepresented in books, TV, and movies.

“I’ve never seen myself in the history they’re teaching,” Rebekah told legislators, giving examples of abandoned LGBTQ people like Harvey Milk, Marsha P. Johnson as figures that young people need to learn about.

Marvel’s Hero Project is the first non-scripted production from the studio and tells Rebekah’s amazing journey as a young activist. The series shows Rebekah’s ‘coming out’ story, as a role model for other young trans people in a support group, a singer in her Christian church where her father is a pastor, and her fierce advocation for the trans community.