Thread by @TillyBridges

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Ready to find out what happens when we start to think we’ve made the biggest mistake of our life? And when we start to realize how our (trans) voices have been erased? Here we go with THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, part 2!

As always, please be sure you’ve read not just part 1 of these Resurrections threads, but also the prior threads on The Matrix, Reloaded, and Revolutions, as they all build on each other and have context you’ll need.

https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1475194703544864769

Picking up right where we left off! (including with photo numbering).

14:25 - Look! By detransitioning, conforming, and pretending to be Thomas Anderson, society has REWARDED HIM.

14:29 - Yet he keeps reminders of the truth, unable to fully let go. But note this Trinity piece is from his dream/fear he’d lose her/his self-actualization. He keeps reminders to himself how difficult life was after transitioning, to convince himself not to do it again.

This isn’t a triumphant, victorious Trinity, is it? Any time he might start to think he shouldn’t have detransitioned, there she is. Falling to her death. To scare him back to conforming.

14:31 - He’s become such a part of the system, not only is he writing programs again, but he’s SUPPORTING THE BINARY. Why? Well why is the logo yellow? FEAR. Look how he sees the world, the city on the other monitor. And outside the window. FEAR.

14:33 - The other things he has displayed are MACHINES, parts of the matrix, and a reminder the time he told society it could fuck off and wouldn’t stop him. That was a nice memory, huh? Felt good. But it’s not even a real, or realistic, hand. It’s another simulacra.

14:34 - He obviously wouldn’t really mean that, because if he did he wouldn’t have, again, been rewarded by society.

14:44 - Oh the perimeter has been breached, huh? The subconscious and the doubts in your heart are coming for you? Nah, good thing there’s no red there OH WAIT.

And it’s a SKULL, showing you death/change (of his simulacra) is on the way. And read that text. ILLEGAL MEMORY ACCESS (not subtle, is it?) Morph(eus) is MISSING from the box he put him in (his subconscious isn’t buying the shit anymore) and it happened IN THE HEART.

14:55 - Neo looks inward to see what happened. And it’s been an EON (look at the sign) since he found any truth in there (the one bit of non-code, at the bottom, is Andersons, and it’s filled with red). The truth is inside his fake persona, but it’s been forever since he looked.

The shot of Neo’s phone, this alert about his IMPORTANT RESPONSIBILITIES INVOLVING WEALTH/STATUS pops up right as he’s aware something’s going on in his subconscious and heart. Ignore it, Neo! YOU HAVE OBLIGATIONS TO US.

15:31 - Neo goes to Simulatte. It could be this is an indication that the signs he’s living a lie are all around him, but also sometimes a joke is just a joke. 🙂

15:33 - Simulatte has a lot of fear in it, but that hasn’t stopped other trans people from living their truth. Also note that barista in the red there, which will be important later on.

15:35 - Jude says the original Matrix trilogy “shook” him, a cis white man using buzzwords to try to imply he knows, understands, and was moved by the originals. This is your first window into the commentary the movie’s making about the appropriation of the original trilogy.

Jude is possibly a reference to Jude the Apostle, who is the patron saint of… lost causes. Given what he’s the head of/personification for, that tracks preeeeeeeety well. He talks about how maybe we’re all just algorithms doing what we’re supposed to do…

…as he does exactly what society has programmed him to do, and misses the actual point and meaning behind the original trilogy. And he HAS to clarify that it was brilliant… but only within the context of the game. He’s thought about it no further.

He and those like him are the red pill-ers who’ve co-opted the original movies, and the very pointedly trans story from trans voices, and turned them into the opposite of what they are, misconstruing and warping everything the originals had to say. More on them later.

15:42 - Neo’s reflection is that of an old cis white man. But he’s not looking at it. This isn’t the way he seems himself, it’s the way society now sees him.

15:56 - Jude: “Your game almost ruined me.” And this is WHY he’s thought about it no further, because if he DID, he might question his own truth and he is in no way equipped to handle what he might find (even though, again, it could confirm how cis he really is).

16:10 - Trinity walks in, and look at the difference in Neo’s face. His subconscious being unlocked by the doubts in his heart has him longing for that self-actualization he once knew and abandoned, the truth of his existence he doesn’t think he can have. It’s… longing.

16:18 - Jude sees Trinity as nothing but a sex object, and not just that, but a “MILF.” I’m not here to educate you on fetishes, but that’s definitely a fetish. Remember our discussion of the fetishization of trans women from Revolutions?

Here’s a guy who thinks (or likes to pretend) he gets it, but the FIRST thing he does is fetishize Trinity in a way the movie itself absolutely does NOT. She’s not remotely sexualized in her intro. She’s a lady with kids going to get coffee, and this skeeze has to… be skeezy.

And just look at Neo’s response. He’s starting to realize the kind of people he’s surrounded himself with, and how awful it actually is.

16:23 - Jude says he was “raised by machines.” I mean, I don’t even need to explain this. SUPER TEXT. He then says he’ll be his “best self,” but he just means he’s not going to say those thoughts out loud. And that’s all it takes for him to be his “best self.”

Meanwhile Neo’s looking at Trinity, HIS best self, and all he’s lost, all he chose to give up, because life was so hard and his heart is broken. And this dick thinks all it takes is just pretending to be civil to people who are rightfully offended by his skeezy real thoughts.

16:57 - Against Neo’s wishes, Jude goes to Trinity to introduce him. Jude’s actions/repulsive behavior are forcing Neo closer to self-actualization.

Just like how Neo got out of limbo in Revolutions by choosing to NOT take the Merovingian’s path, because rejecting what you DON’T want can get you closer to what you do.

Here in the Matrix Trinity is identified as “Tiffany,” though she says everyone calls her “Tiff.” In TERF terminology, there are TIFs and TIMs, aka “trans identified females” and “trans identified males.”

They’re transphobic terms they use so they don’t have to refer to us as women and men. This is showing you society won’t even give his self-actualization the right of being called a woman.

EVERYONE calls her Tiff instead. You’re not a real woman Neo, it’s so wrong you would think you are. Go back to working for us/upholding the matrix and maybe we’ll give you another award.

As Neo walks over, note his jacket is waist-length. Why do I mention this? OH NO REASON, STILL. Just remember it for later.

17:24 - They touch for the first time. Look at them. LOOK AT THEM. Something has awakened. Neo’s remembering that love of self that got him so far, before society betrayed him yet again and didn’t hold up their end of the bargain in being a welcoming place to all.

In Revolutions he tried to give up his duality, of being both his old self with internalized transphobia alongside his self-actualization. He tried to just be whole, because his hope for society was it would let him, that it would let us all.

But it DIDN’T. And it broke him. He detransitioned and gave it all up.

And now, forced to wake up by the thing that’s been Bug-ging him (that he made a mistake), his subconscious has broken out of the prison he tried to put it in, and he’s remembering what it felt like to love himself that much. To be who he really is.

17:42 - Trinity’s husband Chad comes in. Which is a pretty loaded name, as a “Chad” is slang for your typical “alpha male” right-wing MRA dude. BUT that actor is Chad Stahelski, a stuntman who often doubled for Keanu and who directed “John Wick.”

Now you may think that makes it just coincidence, buuuuut if Lana really wanted him to play Trinity’s husband, she could have named him something else. If she wanted him to play someone with the same name, he could have been any other character.

Choosing to have him play Trinity’s husband, and also be named Chad in dialogue (note there was no reason his name had to actually be said out loud, we didn’t need to know for story reasons) is all on purpose. It’s society’s message to Neo.

Even self-actualized, you couldn’t escape. Look how you (as Trinity) would conform, you’d have a husband and kids and obligations, you’d HAVE TO BE PART OF THE GENDER BINARY. And that’s why Neo and Trinity are interrupted by him, right here, at this moment.

I believe this is also why he detransitioned. He thought this was the only path forward, forced to carry out sexist gender roles that are not what he wants.

Remember the context for these movies has changed. Lana Wachowski is an out trans woman. We know she’s attracted to women (she has a wife).

This moment is saying, given trans people seeing sexist, patriarchal gender roles as possibly all that exists after transition, it can make trans people detransition. Or at least consider it.

Because every facet of our sexist cis binary society is set up to bombard you with messages that you must conform, that it’s the only way forward. And very obviously it’s not! But the messages are so strong, and so ubiquitous, they can take their toll.

There’s also a bit I want to say about Trinity’s “kids,” but we’ll get there later.

Neo and Trinity separate, though not without sparing longing looks at each other. But that’s not the end of it, goodness no.

18:21 - But it’s the end of living a lie. And so Modal 101, the fake reality Neo constructed for himself to keep him pretending to be a man in the cis world, thanks to his doubts awakening his subconscious, is now GONE.

Note it was on Device 0 (remember we zoomed into the zero in the opening), part of the binary. But that now returns an error, again an ILLEGAL MEMORY WAS ACCESSED, that of his true self. He’s well on his way, but doesn’t even realize it yet.

Next time we’ll see how as SOON as he reconnects with his self-actualization, transphobia's there to remind him to stay in line.

And we’ll see what society will do to try and stop him.

And just how deep the erasure of trans voices goes.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.