Thread by @TillyBridges

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re going to see how transphobia is lurking, just waiting for us, and all the ways society and those around us co-opt and erase trans voices in THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, part 3!

Please be sure you’ve read my previous Resurrections threads, and the threads on The Matrix, Reloaded, and Revolutions. You need that context!

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

Let’s dive back in right where we left off.

18:32 - Look at Neo’s jacket. It’s down to mid-thigh now. What do you think that means?

18:36 - The new Smith is introduced and is Neo’s new boss, aka in giving up and detransitioning Neo is working for/upholding transphobia by believing those lies about his potential future.

New Smith quotes from Old Smith. Like with Morpheus, society has changed him (but as we learn, at its core transphobia is no different, even if it wears a different face now), and blames NEO for the terrible things he did/said in the past.

What he’s saying is the equivalent of, “You MADE me do those things to you by daring to be out and trans and happy, it’s really all your fault this happened.” God DAMN that pisses me off (great writing, wonderful moment, very enraging!).

Smith offers Neo a smoke, and Neo says he thought Smith quit. Ah, but no. He didn’t give up his transphobia, he “quit calling it a habit. Now it’s just a guilty pleasure.” Semantics and appearances change, the core has remained the same.

Smith’s smoking in this scene is a metaphor (within the allegory!) that’s used so, so well to convey more than the words themselves. It’s brilliant writing/directing. Ready? Here we go.

Smith says this is about their future, which is complicated given their past. Smith knows about Neo’s doubts, about his reawakening subconscious, about his connection with his self-actualization. And he’s reminding him how that can jeopardize his future. Again.

19:45 Smith asks him about his therapy, if he’s had any “episodes,” aka doubts about this “reality” and wanting to go back to what’s ACTUALLY real. Neo tells him no, but look at that face. That is not a man who believes the words he heard.

He smokes here, pointedly, while making eye contact with Neo. As a reminder. Remember the metaphor is “we’re calling it something different now, but it’s the exact same thing on the inside.”

So what Smith smoking here conveys is that the hate of trans people is still in him, and watch yourself Neo, your “episodes” might just make it resurface. It’s a threat. An ultimatum. Remember your role in the matrix. Keep upholding it. Or suffer.

20:05 - He reminds Neo that they’ve had stunning success together, because of Neo conforming like a good little boy, as he’s “supposed” to. Not only has Neo won awards by detransitioning, he’s found success. Prestige. Adoration. All from cis people.

20:27 - Smith says a sequel is going to be made with or without Neo. Now look, I suspect we’ll never know how much of this is just for fun and how much of it is based on real things the Wachowskis were told, and it’d be interesting to know… but ultimately that misses the point.

Because again we’re talking about appropriation. Appropriation of the red pill that stood for estrogen/truth and was corrupted by cis white men who made it mean the opposite of its intent.

Appropriation of these intrinsically trans movies, which cis people have said (outright, directly to me and many others) are not trans movies at all and we’re seeing things in it because we want to.

This is about taking the voice from trans people, and distorting it into something to hurt us.

Remember that the Wachowskis saw this coming, and called it out right in The Matrix and in Matrix Reloaded. In the latter, Smith was so convinced he was outside the system he couldn’t see how much of a tool of the system he really was. THAT HAS NOT CHANGED.

Smith isn’t just transphobia here, he’s those who co-opt trans voices and stories and mutate them to their own grotesque ends (like Jude, also a red pill-er), and use it to harm us. Neo says he didn’t think anyone could do that, and Smith… blows out more smoke.

AKA “If you don’t think we can take your story from you and turn it into something entirely different, some bastardization of its entire point, try me. LOOK HOW MUCH HATE I STILL HAVE INSIDE ME.“ And thus, of course, Smith is excited by this prospect.

B R I L L I A N T.

It means more money, wealth, and power for him. He doesn’t care at all if he has to co-opt and corrupt all of Neo’s self-love to do it. In fact, that’s the part that MOST excites him. Because doing so… will remove the “inconvenient anomaly” trans people are to the system.

21:10 - Neo sees Smith’s mouth taken away, in a callback to what happened to Neo in the first movie. This is Bugs and Morpheus inside him, his heart and subconscious telling him it’s time to fight back, to take away bigotry’s power over us. STOP LISTENING TO THE HATE, NEO.

21:29 - Neo goes to see his therapist, The Analyst. As with The Architect, his name tells you his exact function. Like Neo’s subconscious, like transphobia, society itself has changed, but it’s still an old(er) cis white man (no offense NPH, you’re great). Look at all that blue.

An analyst is someone who gathers data. They interpret the information they see. Cis white men are still running society, but they’re looking at trans people, at youth, at rebellion, at counterculture, to find ways to better enact their goals (of keeping themselves in power).

Just like Jude saying he was “shook,” like Smith saying “O M G,” The Analyst talks about Neo getting “triggered.” They’re all part of the same system, using what they see as cool buzzwords to show you how hip and on your side they are.

Look how KIND they are, they made it “possible” for trans people to exist in society… with buzzwords and memes and rainbow capitalism. It doesn’t matter that society still oppresses us, it tries to have the APPEARANCE of acceptance, and we should be so grateful for it.

And this ties right into why he takes the form of a therapist. I’ve seen a lot of folks think this movie is telling you therapists are bad, or can’t be trusted, but I think that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Analyst has taken the form of someone you SHOULD trust. He’s PRETENDING to be on your side (just like with the buzzwords). Because that’s the easiest way for him to worm his thoughts back into your head, get that internalized transphobia churning again.

It’s a perversion of something good and true and real and vital… just like Neo abandoning his true self and going back to pretending to be a man was. Society will do whatever it has to in order to uphold the cis binary matrix, even pretending to be someone who only wants to help

21:45 - Neo thinks he’s losing his mind (which he feels he must be if he’s considering re-self-actualizing), or else he’s trapped in the matrix like he was before. Both of these lead him to the same result, mind you. And it terrifies him, just look at the yellow all around him.

21:55 - The Analyst is in blue, but this is not the same doubt as Bugs. This is not the doubt that society is wrong, but the doubt that society is RIGHT. Neo’s fighting the war on two fronts.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer to him that detransitioning was wrong, but all those forces that overwhelmed him and made him detransition ARE STILL THERE, and applying more pressure than ever. He’s trapped.

22:05 - The Analyst: “Maybe it’s not as binary as that. … This attack took away your voice.” SEE? I GET you. I’m on your side! Listen to me and do what I say and all will be fine. This is exactly what The Architect always told him, and that he was empirically WRONG about.

The Analyst then says Neo’s a suicide survivor. That may be literal (this stuff weighs heavily on a lot of trans people), but it’s also allegorical. Neo killed his own self-actualization, gave it all up, to go back to this. And that is 100% a very real kind of death.

ALSO it’s a reference (as we find out later) to Neo leaping off buildings in an attempt to fly, aka feel the gender euphoria he misses. And society sees THAT, the desire to be self-actualized, as killing the “real” cis versions of ourselves. W H O A.

23:13 - Neo’s reflection is fractured, split into pieces. Which one’s the real Neo? Doubt everywhere.

23:19 - And to clue you in to what The Analyst’s true motivations are, you get the blue pill. He’s doing nothing but seeding Neo’s mind with doubt, obfuscating the truth. Blink and you’ll miss it, but the pill bottle says it’s from Folly Bridge Pharmacy (that… speaks for itself)

The medication is listed as Ontolofloxin, which isn’t a real drug. The name’s a combination of ONTOLOGY, a branch of metaphysics that examines the nature of reality and existence (!)...

…INCLUDING questions about how people/things are GROUPED INTO BASIC CATEGORIES AT A FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL (!!)...

…and “floxin” is a class of antibiotics used to treat infections. The blue pill is to destroy Neo’s sense of self and reality, his transness, which society sees as an infection! (!!!) HOW. MUCH. CLEARER. MUST. MS. WACHOWSKI. BE?

23:25 - Neo takes the pill, and his reflection shows this is keeping him as the old cis white man society wants him to be/sees him as. But the reflection is STILL FRACTURED.

23:35 - This entire sequence of the game company execs discussing what to do with the sequel is funny, a lot of it is probably true in a myriad of ways, but at its heart is showing you how so many people who professed to love the Matrix, and want more of it, never understood it.

They think it’s about gunfights and leather and action and every single one of them misses the point, misses its purpose, misses its message. They miss the story of transition, the story of how hard cis society makes it to exist as us, the promise of a better future for us all.

These are again the red-pillers, the MRAs, every blue-pilled person still blinded by the matrix. It’s the willfully ignorant taking the voice away from trans people, telling us what it was REALLY about… while having absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

It’s also full of more buzzwords and “cool and hip” language, just like Jude, and Smith, and The Analyst used. See? WE GET IT! (they don’t.) WE’RE WITH IT! (they’re not.)

These movies belong to the Wachowskis first and foremost. They are theirs, and they’re very personal art, reflections of their truth and their heart and their message.

But beyond that, these “belong” (in a loose sense) to the entire trans community. They’re ALL WE HAVE, because we still are so very rarely allowed to tell our own stories. Our voices are taken from us, distorted, skewed, or suppressed and destroyed altogether.

See what passes for trans representation in a lot of media:

https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1303366557809082368

See my exact thread on this based on a lot of the reaction to my first Matrix threads! It’s full of cis people TELLING me that the movie made by trans women, about trans people/women, telling an intrinsically trans story… was absolutely NOT that, no way.

https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1437851397681152005

And so to me while these scenes are really funny on the surface, it also digs a little hole in my heart. Because it’s very, very real, and very, very painful to have the only mass media specifically by, for, and about us taken away and be told by cis people that they know better.

And in so many cases, cis people are the gatekeepers, guarding all the doors and holding all the keys, to everything trans people need to self-actualize. And now they want to take these movies away from us, too.

https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1336395275565367296

And note just how often, as Neo goes through the motions, he’s surrounded by yellow. He knows they’re taking trans voices, HIS voice, and it scares him. But there’s tons of blue, both good doubts and bad, everywhere he looks.

Also note HE IS NOT GOOD AT PRETENDING TO BE THE CIS MAN SOCIETY WANTS HIM TO BE. That’s no accident.

But just like with Jude, it’s pushing him closer to accepting he’s really trans, he’s coming around to it again and he’s rightfully terrified. And Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” could not be a better fit as he’s pushing himself right onto the path to re-self-actualizing.

25:30 - The message scrawled on the bathroom stall: “It is so much easier to bury reality than it is to dispose of a dream.” It’s easy to pretend you’re not trans, but so hard to give up the knowledge that you actually are. I mean what have I been telling you? It’s right there.

Next time we’re going to see Neo wake up and start listening to his heart and his subconscious, but it’s not going to be easy. Especially with transphobia right on his tail… and possibly in everyone he meets.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.

ADDENDUM: several people have asked, so let me briefly address the "trans politics" line dropped by one of the game execs.

I didn't mention it in the thread because it was obvious (to me! but maybe not to others) it was more of the exact same thing they'd been doing.

It's just another instance of "shook," "O M G," "triggered." It's them saying "oh yes, yes, we understand what you think it's really about." But from their words and their actions, it's abundantly clear they do not understand what it is really, actually about. AT ALL.

Also yes, there's a reason the group is so diverse (we'll discuss that with part 4) and there's a reason one of them is in red (we'll discuss that in one of the last threads toward the end).

Okay, good talk! Thanks for reading.

Part 4 next week! 🌟