People really out there saying this as if the film did not completely thematically undermine the dominant trans ideology.

Should I go into this? https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1261759360851722240

Ok, so the first thing about the Matrix is that it’s a film divided against itself. It equivocates regarding the “splinter” in Neo’s mind being the virtuality of the Matrix and white collar anomie

See this, for instance. “Mr. Anderson” is Neo’s middle class office drone name. Taking the red pill is, subjectively, for him, an escape from *this*.

https://twitter.com/captaintransma/status/1261774149845831681?s=21 https://twitter.com/caderaspindrift/status/1261774149845831681

And he escapes to... well, two completely different things. One is the traumatically corporeal real world, which, if he were anyone other than “the chosen one”, would mean a world of heavy blue-collar toil.

But within the Matrix, Neo awakens to become... a superhero. And this is the exciting, enchanting fantasy of the film. That, more than anything else, is what the audience is there for. “I know kung fu.”

There is *some* psychical truth in this. Awakening to the virtuality of normie life *can* give you certain powers of manipulation over it—you can play where others suffer and toil.

But the critical point of this is that you must understand that the Matrix IS NOT REAL. The whole point of the series is that it is evil to keep people in the virtual world and the overriding objective is that the Matrix must be destroyed.

So, to get to the point: thematically, where would the transitioned-to gender of the trans person be fully expressed? Not in the world of concrete traumatic bodily reality, certainly. No, it’s in the Matrix.

So what we have, really, is a narrative sleight of hand that allows you to have it both ways. The Matrix is the enemy, you must transcend it, but you can only be a superhero/your preferred gender insofar as you are IN it.

And while there are interesting ways to philosophically integrate the virtual and real, this is not accomplished in the Matrix, which mostly relies on thematic equivocation to square this circle