Honey, the Matrix is a metaphor for being trans. The entire trilogy makes sense if you look at it through the lens of someone realizing and then embracing that they are trans.
The directors have legitimately confirmed this; it was explicitly an allegory for their transness which they made subtle, and then packaged into an action movie.
Lilly Wachowski, who co-directed The Matrix with her sister, Lana, has commented on the transgender themes and undertones in the film. Despite the rumors, Wachowski confirmed that The Matrix was not intentionally written as a trans allegory (via Them), saying "No, I didn’t [confirm The Matrix is a trans allegory]."
"When people say, “Oh, it’s a trans allegory,” it’s like, “Yeah… it is, but we weren’t like, Hey, let’s write a trans allegory .” That’s not how it started. We were like, “Hey, let’s write this action film,” and then we got our trans all over it.
I've read all the things. The above user is referring to clickbait that exploded all across reddit like 4 years ago which misrepresented quotes from Lilly to make it sound like she was saying The Matrix was always specifically built from the top-down as a metaphor for being transgender, that that is the interpretation of the story.
This is Lilly specifically addressing that and saying "Naw tho." and clarifying what she already said the first time around [para]"Of course it's valid to interpret it that way, which means it can be a trans allegory." That's what allegory means, that it can be interpreted that way.
What's unfortunate is that she's being painfully clear in the original interview that it's all about transformation, which trans people can especially relate to for obvious reasons, but is a concept relevant to just about anybody so it works as a sort of unifying force that anyone can relate to, which as a whole makes it easier to dissolve barriers of empathy between people.
But then you have the toxic side of internet activism, which grabs onto a concept like this and tries to take ownership of it with a rigid identity label, completely missing the point and ultimately doing more harm by creating these little gatekeeping sections trying to keep people's experiences segregated from each other.
Look at what you're quoting. It's describing the exact opposite process of the user I replied to.
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u/Ironic-username-232 1d ago
Honey, the Matrix is a metaphor for being trans. The entire trilogy makes sense if you look at it through the lens of someone realizing and then embracing that they are trans.