I don't know what "virtue signalling" means to you, but to me it means
disingenuously expressing or promoting a "moral" value
in order to enhance one's own image.
IMO, the inclusion of trans characters in popular culture need not be about virtue signalling at all, for the following reasons:
Non-trans kids grow up in a world in which characters who share their gender are everywhere. These characters' gender is not generally an "attribute" that is "germane" to the story arc. It's just a basic fact about the character that may or may not feature in some way in the course of the narrative.
Trans kids, on the other hand, grow up in a world in which characters who share their gender identity are entirely erased from mainstream culture,
unless their gender identity is emphasised, problematised, or "dealt with" in some way. By this I mean that, in mainstream culture, no character ever
just happens to be trans in the same way that characters
just happen to be non-trans.
Imagine if we were having a discussion similar to this one in the middle of last century and you said something like, "The inclusion of Black characters in popular culture is just virtue signalling. Either their race is not germane to the overall story arc, and hence mere virtue-signalling to appease the activists, or it is."
I would answer exactly as I've just answered now. Placing Black characters in popular culture, in just the same way White characters always had been, was clearly a positive development. Black children should not grow up feeling that their race is obscured from popular culture and that whenever a Black person appears on screen, it's
because their Blackness is germane to the story arc (after all, White characters aren't written into scripts simply because their Whiteness is germane to the story arc).
The same goes for trans children in this century.
I've always seen superheroes' stories as representational of the experiences and challenges of real people. I can't see how any superhero story would be in the remotest bit interesting if this weren't the case...
Also, you seem to think Spiderman's human relationship with Mary Jane and the impact of his superhero status on this relationship is a legitimate topic for a superhero movie. This seems to contradict your earlier statement that "people with superpowers are the wrong vectors for exploring issues of human relations".
What it seems to me that you're really saying is that "people with superpowers are the wrong vectors for exploring issues of human relations
of trans people".
I think there's room in Hollywood for both types of trans characters, that is, trans characters who just happen to be trans in the same way I happen
not to be, and trans characters whose trans-ness is a vector for the narrative, character development, etc.
I can understand your concerns about such a story risking becoming a pamphlet/caricature. That's Hollywood in general, though.
TBH, amazingly, I'm not familiar with the Harry Potter universe so I can't comment on Dumbledore, lol.
In terms of how I see being trans integrated into a Jedi character, I guess in a similar way to how being
non-trans is integrated into Jedi characters.
For example, we see from the way Luke Skywalker looks and behaves that he's a man. The films don't explore what being a man means to him, nor do they (intentionally) explore how being a man shapes his experiences.
Could we not similarly see that a character is trans from their appearance and behaviour, while not feeling obliged to explore this aspect in any great depth?
Nice to have a longer discussion, and a respectful one, about this, btw