Vox’s Emily VanDerWerff talks about the 1999 film The Matrix as an allegory for the trans experience.
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There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. The Matrix first premiered in and when it did, it was groundbreaking. In it, many trans spoke see a metaphor for the trans experience and breaking down the systems that keep you from knowing your true self. I wanted to know more about this, so I reached out to Emily Vanderworth, the critic at large for Box dot Com. Emily's piece, How the Matrix Universalized the trans experience and helped Me accept my own explores how the Matrix spoke to her own experiences as a trans woman. You can find the link to the piece and the episode description. Now. I was really excited to connect with Emily, but while we were going back and forth to confirm the details of our interview, I could tell something was up. That day, Harper's Magazine published a letter denouncing what is sometimes known as cancel culture, complaining that the freedom of speech and free exchange of ideas are being stifled by intolerant voices on the left. The letter was signed by people like Harry Potter, author j. K Rowling, who has a history of anti trans speech. The letter fits a common pattern in which people with power attempt to portray public critiques of powerful people as unacceptable, even when they use their power to harm people less powerful than them. Someone who also signed onto the letter works with Emily at Fox. Pretty understandably, finding out that one of her co workers also signed onto this letter didn't sit well with Emily. She reached out to her employer to let them know, and posted a segment of her response on Twitter. The letter, signed as it is by several prominent anti trans voices and containing many dog whistles towards anti transpositions as it does, ideally wouldn't be signed by anybody at Fox, much less one of the most prominent people our publication. She writes, and while her colleague signature on this letter made her feel uncomfortable at work, she made it clear that she didn't want him reprimanded. She just wanted to speak her peace and use some of that free speech they let her claimed to revere so highly. Can you guess what happened next? For the crime of being a trans woman expressing herself online, Emily was harassed, threatened, and attacked. Of course, she was angling to have this coworker fired or punished said critics on Twitter, even though she had very clearly said otherwise. The harassment got so bad Emily, someone who makes her living writing online, had to leave social media. She gave control of her accounts to her friends and logged off. Before she left, she tweeted the hypocrisy of celebrating so called vigorous debate only to call out those who offer a counter opinion. For offering such a counter opinion, It's obvious on its face, but I'll point it out anyway. They do not believe in free speech. They believe in free speech for them. During her time off social media, Emily was still down to talk about the matrix, and I thought maybe our conversation and subsequently this episode would be all about the fallout from the Harper's letter. But honestly, Emily is so much more interesting than any of the points made in that letter. But the implications of Emily being harassed off of her online platform by people who call themselves champions of free speech isn't lost on me, and it wasn't lost on Emily when we spoke about finding freedom online. The enduring power of telling your story and seeing stories like yours told starting with the Matrix. Do you remember the first time that you saw the Matrix? It just was like it opened up doors in my brain. I didn't quite realize it was opening up at the time. It was kind of one of the first ways I started to understand my trans like entity without having any clue that's what was happening. Um, I just knew that when I went online and pretended to be a girl, that felt really good in some some way. Pretended air quotes are around that for all my transfriends listening. Um, yeah, I I But the Matrix was kind of the first thing I saw that really delineated that difference between reality and the Internet and the ways that they kind of feed into each other. Now, what's interesting about this is that in the Matrix, reality is this like gray, horrible post apocalyptic landscape, and the Internet is this bustling, busy metropolis. But the Internet is like where things are wrong, where things are not right, and reality is like what you have to accept, which is a very pre coming out like sort of trans experience. But it's also you know, the movie is not just about trans identities. It's anti capitalist it's extremely diverse and multicultural. You know. Uh, certainly Wowskis didn't make all the right steps there, but they were sure trying for their early two thousands, late nineties. Um, so there's a lot more in there than just a story about transness. But there's also a lot of stuff in there about being trans and that's a really impressive thing to have pulled off at that point in time. Okay, So if you haven't seen The Matrix in a while, here is a quick submarine. Keiana Reeves has a routine life as a computer programmer, known by his alias Neo. He has this nagging feeling that something isn't right with the world. He's being presented what you know? You can't explain. What do you feel it? You felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong in the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind. Neo meets Trinity played by Carrie and Moss and Morpheus played by Lawrence Fishburne, who present him with a choice, take the Red pill or the Blue pill. If he takes the blue pill, the world will stay as he's always experienced it, but the Red pill reveals the true nature of the world. That the real world has basically been destroyed, and what we think of as the real world is actually a computer simulation called the Matrix, and unfortunately we humans are actually in pods of goo being used as human batteries for machines. You take the red Pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. As Emily writes, on its most basic level, the movie follows characters who break free of their real life via the Internet, creating online identities that feel more real than their physical ones. Once they're they choose new name for themselves, their clothes become a whole lot cooler and less traditionally gendered. In fact, rumor has it the role of Switch, the blonde side character in The Matrix, was originally meant to be a character who explicitly explores gender in the Matrix, but the studio ended up cutting in so in terms of the character of Switch, um there is this rumor that the Wachowski Is wanted this character named Switch to be played by two different actors. I believe it would be a man in reality and a woman in the Matrix, and that was supposed to be kind of an example of like how the Matrix could let you explore your truest self, because, um, there is I believe that that Morpheus says at some point early in the film that like, who you are in the Matrix is like your your brains self image. So in that case, switch would be like, oh, my self image is a woman, and the only place I can be that is in the matrix. And that would have complicated the whole clean dynamic between reality and the matrix so much more. Uh. The rumor is that Warner Brothers wouldn't allow The witchowski Is to include it. Um, it's been very hard for people to track down the source of this story. I tend to believe it because I have talked to people who heard about it. But you know, and it also really fits with what we know about the Witch how skis now? Which is? I think? Which is? I think what might be a little too clean and convenient, but it certainly would have been cool. I wish it had been in there. I think it would have helped me figure some stuff out more quickly. Or maybe it wouldn't happen. Maybe I just would have been like, that's cool. When Emily saw the matrix, she connected with it instantly. Using the Internet to become closer to understanding your true self is something both Neo and Emily have in common. My sister and I accidentally shared a Yahoo Chat account. This is back when Yahoo Chat existed, and she was she was a cheerleader, so she created the name cheer and Chick, and I accidentally logged in as that one day and it was immediately a barrage of people with male coded screen names being like Hey A s L, Hey sexy, you know all of that. And I hated it, but I hated it in a way that felt good, and I liked that attention in a way that I never liked attention I got for performing masculinity. All I had to do was change my screen name, and suddenly, like people were like, oh my god, you're pretty. Oh you sound really cool. Cheer and ship do you cheerlead? M A. S L. I'm you know, twenty two male California. Nice smile, and like, I mean, we were all lying. We were all lying in some way. That man probably did not have a nice smile. He probably had to get a cold and chilling smile that would scare you if you saw it in the middle of the night. But I was lying and I wasn't lying. You know, I didn't realize I wasn't lying, but I that was the truest thing I ever did, was pretending to be a girl online because it was it was it was so easy. In the Matrix, Neo's journey is accepting that he is the One, the figure who is meant to save humanity. He struggles to accept this identity and at times questions if he'll ever learn how to be the one, but that power was actually within him the whole time. He just had to accept it. It's something that really resonates with emilyne What I often tell trans women who are newly out is you already know how to do this. You don't know you know how to do this, but you are going to understand how to operate in women's spaces and function as a woman in society, both in all of the good and bad ways that that is implied within the patriarchy. You have this knowledge inside of it. You don't realize he's there, and you're going to unlock it and you're suddenly gonna be like, oh, yeah, okay, this makes sense. Um talk in two women makes so much more sense than trying to do the male bonding thing. Um, Like, going close shopping was the thing I always hated, and that was one of the ways that I was like, oh, I'm probably not trans because if I was a girl, I'd like clothes shopping, you know, that sort of that sort of reductive stereotype. But really I didn't like going clothes shopping because I didn't like wearing men's clothes. Now, like one of my friends wants to go shopping, that's great, it's fun, it's a it's a it's a chance to bond and hang out with friends, and like, there's so much more to womanhood, to gender, to all of that than what I'm describing. But like, you already have the base source code for femininity, for womanhood, for hanging out with the girls in your brain as a trans woman. It just you just need to find a way to unlock it. And that was what I That was what was happening to me in those chat rooms. I was logging in as a girl. People were treating me like a girl, and I goddy. I think I'm remembering. Um, there were some intensely validating experiences there when like there would be another woman logged in and she would like message me and be like, oh my god, it's crazy in here, and I'd just be like, yes, it is. It is crazy in here. We are two women talking about our experiences, how crazy it is to be a lot of into this chat room of this barrage. And then you know, we do some small talk or whatever, and it would inevitably come to the point where she was like, well, you know, who are you, where are you from? And like I would kind of freeze up because I've described this girl that wasn't real but felt real, and I was describing myself. It was the late nineties, so I had this super strong attachment to Reese Witherson, who who didn't a little bit older than me, but like Tracy Flick in election, you know, a lot of my friends saw her as a villain, and I was like, you know, I find her an aspirational figure. But we're not going to unpack that. We're just not going to think about that. And for as annoying as she can p Tracy Flick is who I would have been. That's that that girl I was always describing the chat rooms like kind of driven and type A and a little bit annoying and a little bit irritating, but inevitably is going to like take over the world. Um And I think the universe saw how potent that energy was within me, was like, we gotta tie one hand behind her back. So I think that's why. I think that's what happened. And my joke was, you know, it's just like how the Wachowski's cast Quiana Reeves and carry In Mosses trans women, because like they are both analogs for trans women in this movie. And you know, it was a joke, but it's really true, like Keanu, like Neo's, Neo's journey towards self acceptance is exactly what you're describing, and um, so honestly, honestly, so is the whole thing that Trinity is on. Like Trinity is like a trans woman and like her third year of transition, who's found this like girl at her support group who's like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm so scared. And then Trinity is like, no, we're gonna fucking run up some walls, We're gonna bring helicopters down. You have no idea how much power you have inside of you, and yeah, it's it's a movie about It's a movie about what we in the trans community called self acceptance, the moment when you're like, Okay, something's going on here and I need to admit it to myself, And maybe you don't even admit your trans but you do admit to yourself that like, there is this world inside of you that you are not exploring, that something needs to be done about that. The Matrix is really about that, and I think it's telling that when it was written both Lana and Lily Wichowski it seemed to have even been closeted from themselves. The recent documentary Disclosure on Netflix, Lily Wachowski is interviewed about The Matrix and she's like, at the time, I didn't know, but I watched it now and I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. Um. Laana Wachowski came out sometime in the early two thousands, came out to herself. She came out publicly in I think two thousand two nine somewhere they're in there now. She came up publicly around the RelA of Cloud Alice, which was two thousand twelve. There were rumors about her for like the entirety of the two thousand's um and they were pretty cruel and nasty rumors, and I don't recommend going to look up their stories because they are bad. The Matrix was directed by sisters Lana and Lily Wachowski, who would later both publicly come out of strands in Lanna gave a moving acceptance speech for the HRC's Visibility Award about her journey to self acceptance and the desire to imagine and build worlds where all people can see themselves fully reflected. I am here because when I was young, I wanted very badly to be a writer. I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I couldn't find anyone like me in the world, and it felt that my dreams were foreclosed simply because my gender was less typical than others. But Lana Wachowski was kind of on the cusp of coming out when they were making The Matrix, and you can see that within that movie. It is about taking that journey towards self acceptance. And honestly, the poor reputation of the Matrix sequels, both of which I really like, and the second Matrix reloaded, I adore. I think it's one of their best movies. Both of those sequels are about what happens after you self accept and the ways that it kind of deconstructs the world in ways that you're not ready for that you don't always understand. There's this famous meme joke in UM in trans Woman Circles that's like it's the galaxy brain meme. So it starts, I wish I was a girl, UM, and the second one is I can just be a girl, and the third one is I always was a girl, and then the final one the Galaxy brain is destroy capitalism. Because that's what happens is you realize you question the gender binary and you're like, oh, wait, I should I just should be on the other side of it, or I should not be on the binary at all, or I should be totally removed from the spectrum of gender, or whatever your experience is, and you're suddenly like, wait, all systems are kind have made up and you're like, oh, we can just you know, once you see that you're seeing the matrix, you can't unsee it, and suddenly are like, how could we build better systems? Like if human beings require systems to operate and live and evolve, how can we do something better, and and that's kind of what the Matrix trilogy is about. Let's take a quick break center back. At its core, the Matrix is about someone seeking out the framework for understanding who they really are and having a hard time figuring out what it all means. At the beginning of the film, Neo's life is quote normal life follows a specific routine, but online things are different. And while the Matrix can be read as a metaphor for trans identity, built by two trans women, it's pretty interesting that the language of the red pill has been latched onto by anti feminist, white supremacist groups in those online spaces, being quote red pilled if it means for men to open their eyes to all the ways that women and the feminists have misled them, And it's kind of funny when you think about it. Yeah. I think there is this element of trying to build careful, scripted routines for yourself that I found to be often very true of pre coming out trans people across the board. You don't entirely understand the gender you were born into, but you can like make rules for yourself. You can create a programming language, you can exist within it. That's exactly what Neo is doing at the start of the movie. He has all these routines, he has all these subsystems. He's a program working within a program, and when he breaks out of the matrix, he begins to understand the ways in which he was misled and the ways in which society um the ways in which society did not give him a language for who he was. So yeah, I think there is I think there is a lot of metaphorical power to that idea of the red Pill. Clearly a lot of people have taken different ideas from it, but there is metaphorical power to this idea that you're being lied to. Your life is a program. You do not have free will, you need to develop free will by any means necessary, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And that is such a beautiful idea and a beautiful realization of transidentities. That is simultaneously something that apparently spoke to the all right, So, which is so funny. I mean, you point this out in your piece that the Right sees like taking the red Pill as this, you know, breaking through this lie that you know that has been holding down men and were so oppressed. But it's like, actually you're lattic onto something that trans women like like a framework that trans women built for you. You know, it's like very it's like almost kind of funny. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Um it's uh, it's horribly hilariously misguided. But at the same time it makes sense because, like I said earlier, this movie is pretty anti capitalist, not like hugely anti capitalist, but quite a bit. And there's this there's this range of movies from the nineties that are sort of about the ways in which the quote unquote victory of capitalism over communism and sort of the end of history. Uh, the as the the writer Francis Fukuyama dubbed it, the end of history had resulted in neoliberalism triumphing over everything else and capitalism the best system and all of this, and there's all these movies about well, then why does that feel so empty? You know? You have um, I think an early example that is ground Talk Day. Ground Talk Day is about like being trapped in these routines that don't really make sense and then learning to become a better person through those routines. But right in the year the Matrix comes out, you have the Matrix, which is about that you have fight Club, which is about that. You have American Beauty, which is about that you have being John Malkovich, which is kind of about that. I think the Matrix is the one that's held up best of those. I love being John Malkovich for American Beauty, let's not talk about that. It's kind of movie when you think about it. Yeah, My Club is good, but so many people have taken the wrong message from it that it's it's also harder to defend. At least with the Matrix, you can be like, yeah, a lot of people have taken the wrong message from this, but it was directed by two trans women, so um. But yeah, there's this element of anti capitalism. So when people are like, I need to reject the prison that society has placed me in, they're so they're so close to what this movie is about. They're so close to this idea that, like, even if you don't want to go so far as to say capitalism is broken, to say that consumerism is broken, the idea that you can find freedom and self identity in things like in essence. I think every major philosophy, every major religion, rejects that idea. Things are not ourselves, we are not our things, So like, at the very least, that's what the Matrix is really talking about. So to talk about like to take get that far, get that far and grasping its message and get to a place where you're like, actually, it's talking about how women have made the world bad. Like I don't know how you make that that swerve. But every time I talk about this movie and I talk about it as an allegory for trans identities, um you know, like vox or someone posted on Facebook and the comments are full of people who are like, no, it's not about that, it's about this, and like, yes, that's your that is absolutely your right to that interpretation. That's how criticism works, that's how um our, understanding of art and the death of the author and all of that works. But at a certain point, the fact that it was written by two trans women and directed by two trans women has to enter into your consider oderration of what it's all about, and that for a lot of people, the idea that it's a trans metaphor is mind blowing. Like a friend of mine, Aaron read another trans woman, posted on Twitter, you know, the Matrix is directed by two trans women, and there's a metaphor for coming out somethink that's simple, and like fifty thousand people liked it, and we're like, just blew my mind and the cysts, I just don't know what we're gonna do. Why do you think the idea that the matrix is a metaphor for the trans experience kind of goes overlook so often? I mean, it's it's metaphor. Um, Let's take a look at Star Wars. You know. Star Wars is the probably the movie before the Matrix. Yeah, it's definitely the movie before the Matrix that changed the film industry at the most. And the Matrix lives in Star Wars shadow in the way that everything after the Matrix lives in the Matrix is shadow. So you look back at Star Wars. Star Wars is a movie that George Lucas when he started writing, it was like, Okay, America's the Empire, the via Cong are the rebels. Yet Americans always self identify with the rebels, because you know, that's how we like to think of ourselves. Our our foundational myth is scrappy underdogs overcoming this gigantic colonial power. But we don't think about how the makeup of those scrappy Underdogs was all white landowning men, you know, many of whom were slave owners, many of and even other people you know who weren't slave owners have done other horrible things. And we were displacing indigenous peoples and forcing them to move further and further west. And there's a lot to that foundational myth that gets written out. So we can see ourselves as the rebel alliance in Star Wars. But the movies continue to make more and more explicit that any colonial power like the United States is in line with the empire and the people who are being colonized are in line with the rebels. And yet you know, we still continue to be like, yep, we're the rebel alliance. Anytime you take a story that is based in reality and moving in the metaphor, it's going to be so many people who are like, yeah, I see this metaphor as directly reflecting my experience, and like that's fair, that's fine, you know, like all of those interpretations are valid. That's what happens when you're dealing with metaphor, and science fiction is inevitably always based on metaphor. In some way, I think it's important to take into mind that two trans women made this film, but I'm also a trans woman. I like the fact that there's this gigantic, defining piece of pop pop culture directed by two trans women. When I got to interview Lily Wichowski, I nearly crumbled into dust, Like I almost fell into fell onto the floor. And then she said she'd read my article, and like I, I left my body. Uh, I went up to heaven for a little bit, came back down. I was like, yes, if you haven't already guessed, stories have been immensely gratifying for Emily's understanding of herself. When she publicly came out of trands, she'd already made a career out of writing publicly online. In a piece for Box, she used the Handmaid's Tale as a means of coming to terms with and breaking down the walls around what it means to be a woman at once a kind of freedom and depression. What is it about stories and movies and science fiction and TV shows that really helps you understand the world around you and your place in it. Understanding womanhood is understanding your oppression within the patriarchy. That doesn't mean that you yourself are always oppressed. There are a million ways well, there are three big ways that I have a lot more privilege than most trans women. I'm white, so I benefit from these societal privileges afforded to white people in America. I am upper middle class, and I work for a company that covers you know, my health expenses. And I live in California, which is a state that has few structural barriers to transition. If you're an adult and you want to take hormones, California is like, great, go for it. Um. Those are three things I have that a lot of trans women in the world, the aask majority of trans women in the world do not have those three advantages. So that has helped me considerably. And I think especially when you grow up as a seemingly when you as when you grow up seeming to the world like a white straight system man, you don't encounter a lot of structural oppression. UM. One of the ways that film and television helps us understand ourselves better is exposes us to the stories of other people. UM. For instance, I am never going to have the experience of growing up that Barry Jenkins and Terrell Alvin McCreary did. But Moonlight is a movie that opens that window. To me, I can't completely understand it, but I can empathize with it because I've seen through that window. I've seen people live those lives. And the thing that happens is when the film and television are such potent, powerful, um, such potent, powerful expressions of the self, because they're so riveting, they draw you in so much. I know plenty of trans women who found themselves through like video games, which is a similar situation. You know, they famously would always play the female character and be like this feels good. Um. Movies and television give you that space to open up and understand yourself better. And at some point I had to confront the fact that the characters I always most identified with were women. Like I always identified with Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I always identified with Rory on Gilmore Girls. You know, there was I just had this thing where I was like, Oh, these these girls, these teenage girls when I was a teenager, these teenage girls just they just speak to me on some fundamental level. Um. Similarly, Peggy Olsen on Madman. When I became an adult, I was like, oh, she's always overlooked for her work, and my brain would be like you are not overlooked for your work. So part of it is understanding the structural oppression that women face throughout the world, particularly in the United States, and coming to understand that within yourself and the ways that you see it without in the world. But also there's an element of personal oppression. I wasn't facing the oppression. I wasn't facing the roadblocks that Peggy Olsen faced to get my writing notice, to get things published. The second I was like, you know, I think I'd like to be a TV critic, Like people were like, here's some jobs, white man, and kind of like now I look back, and that kind of blows my mind. Like my qualification was I was a good writer, and I don't want to just march out that is a good qualification to have if you want to be a writer. But I just kind of asked for the job and people gave it to me, and like, WHOA, what is that? So I was not being kept down like Peggy Olsen, but I was. I was keeping myself down. Peggy Olson was doing all the writing in the back of my brain and this guy was all the credit for it. And there is an element of yes, understanding structural oppression. Yes, Understanding the patriarchy, yes, understanding the ways that women are are just just the microaggressions that women face every day when someone's like, hey, sweetie, how you do it, and you're just like, hey, fine. But even deeper and more powerful is the coming to understand and conceptualize of yourself as a woman and breaking through the layers of oppression you have placed upon yourself. And the reason the Internet is such a powerful tool to do that is because it gives that that Peggy Olson in the back of my brain an outlet where she can keep writing, and she can keep leaving the messages in that writing, and I can be like, you know, this is really interesting, the way that you seem disconnected from yourself, as though your true self is someone else, and then be like, oh, it's two thirteen. Let's put that on hold for a while. Um, so yeah, it is. It is a way in which the larger oppressions of society become visited in the personal oppression of the self, because you're terrified of the thought if I'm trans, that seems really hard. Can I just try to not be trans? That's what society is asking you to do, is to try to not be trans, and you are manifesting that within yourself. Film and television helps you break through that wall. I probably don't need to tell you that being a woman online sometimes means dealing with harassment. And the fact is, as we're talking, Emily has been driven off of her own platforms because people don't like that she's speaking up as the authority of her own experience. But for all the bad experience that she faces online, it's also where she builds community with other trans women. Every day, I wake up to two or three Twitter d m so I leave my Twitter dms open because that's how a lot of questioning trans women find me, and that is very important to me. That is part of what I think is like part of my reason to be on this planet is to help those trans women find their way. And I wake up to two or three d m s from guys who are like, hey, you're beautiful, Hey you know and it's not even like bad, it's just kind of like I don't need this, and I just delete them and like, that's just become I realized the other day that has become a low level radiation hum in my life. I'm just like, you know what, this is the thing I have to put up with, and I shouldn't have to put up with it. It's not a thing I should have to put up with. But you just getting near to it, you're just like, Okay, I'm a woman online. This is just how it is. And that also goes for you know, being a trans woman online. There are people who I really don't like trans women, but I tend to have them blocked or I tend to have them, I tend to not listen to them and just you know, immediately get rid of them from my my feed. There are just as many people who and these are trickier to find. Usually, there are people who fetishize trans identities. There's people there are there are you know, men who um love trans women and like I want to, but have turned it into kind of a fetish and have turned my identity into kind of a fetish. And in the community we call them chasers. Um, I don't know if I'm like breaking breaking a law saying that among the cists, but uh, And like they're harder to find because they're often just like they reply to you and they're like you're great, way to go, and you're like, oh, thank you. For your support. Good male ally, but sometimes and the problem is sometimes they're what we call eggs, you know, which is a trans woman who hasn't yet self accepted, but it's knocking at that door and like them saying you're a great way to go. Like I remember when Laura Jane Grace, the cigarettom against me came out, I posted a comment on my website, The A D Club, where I was writing at the time. I posted a comment that was like, good for her, she did great, and it's really good whenever anyone can overcome, you know, find themselves blah blah blah. And if you go find it, it's so obviously about myself and I don't know how to say that, and it's just but at the time I just was like, yeah, what a great thing, And like that's the problem. You can't always tell the people who fetishize you from the people who really do just want to celebrate you, or the people who are celebrating you because they want to celebrate themselves, because there's huge overlap in all of those areas. So I guess on some level, I just got used to the low level radiation home of terrible people. On another level, UM. I mentioned earlier my best friend and she reached out to my I had a long for a long time, I had a secret Twitter account where I posted as a girl named Emily and was talking about my journey towards transition. I had that account for over a year before I came out publicly, and I still have it. Um, it's a Sandalwood Emily. I leave it up so that people who are questioning can go back and see my journey, go back to the very start in March and read all the way through. Um. But uh, my best friend reached out to me in d M there and was like, listen, I really love the stuff you've written. Because I was writing a newsletter under the name Emily Emily sandal Wood, and she just was like, I really love the stuff you've written. I speak so deeply to me. I'm pretty sure I'm a trans woman. It was her like guy account. Um, I will take one million harassing tweets for that one DM for that. She is my heart. She and I have been through so much together and I adore her. The Internet is a terrible place, but it's also a place where you can find the people you need. I am and I'm in so many communities without of trans people that are closed you know, they're they're slacks or discords or Facebook groups or whatever. And those people have found each other over the Internet, usually overread it or Twitter, two platforms we think of as gross and horrible and bad, and yes they are, and yes I have been subject to Twitter harassment um, both on a hugely large scale and on as really minor scale where you just learned to tune it out, which is maybe not what you should do. The second I came out, somebody on four chun Um doctored up an article supposedly written by me about how white babies are white supremacy that I had supposedly written this and it was obviously fake. It didn't use any of Box's typefaces. It was written published under the my old name and then the last name Van Whirf, which is the name I've never viewed. It's just easy, Honestly. The thing I respect least is the craftsmanship. Like if you want to try to like get me in trouble with people, you can at least like make it look real. You google it, it doesn't come up. I identify myself as a person of color within it when I'm very obviously like just milky white. Um. I and my friends used to call me the Milkman when I was like like corn fed Captain America Midwestern Shocks. And so many people have approached me about this is you did you do this? And there's so many people who like our online and they're just like, yep, this is yet another trans woman who just thinks, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And it's people project shit onto me all the time. Now. People just project whatever they want to on me. That's the thing I've realized. I'm trying to write about this. I'm trying to write about the harassment trans women in in the world. Are our phantoms. People hear us, they see us, but they don't really. They have injured a version of us that they believe in so much more strongly. And we can be in the same room with them and there can be something making noise upstairs, you know, rattling chains or thumping around on the floor, and people will be like, there's that trans woman again, and you can be there be like I'm not that, I'm this person, I'm someone else, and that's all they'll hear. Is the phantom. But then you'll find someone who's in the room with you and sees you and knows you and says, Hi, you are the person I've been looking for my whole life. That's worth it. It's worth it for that. When people have quote intellectual debate about trans people, they talk about them like they're this abstract concept conjured up for the sake of argument. And even when media outlet's wrote about the harassment Emily phased after speaking up when our coworkers signed the Harper's letter, they covered it like some kind of petty ideological workplace dispute. But this is about Emily's actual life and our actual lived experience as a trans woman. Gender is hard coded into us in a way that I think it's hard persist people to understand or imagine. I think art is the best way to express that. I can tell you all the times until I'm blue in the face that like womanhood makes more sense to me. That taking estrogen made my brain come alive in the way it never had. That having that my body increasingly feels like my body, and before it was just kind of like the substraction that I existed within that now I can be like Yeah, it would be cool to look like Keanu Reeves for a day, but I would immediately want to come back to who I am right now because this is home. This is what feels like home. I mean, it would be cool to look like Kiana Reeves day. He's very handsome. He's very handsome. I don't know if you've noticed. But more after this, quick brain, let's get right back to it. Just like Neo, use the internet to help understand the true nature of identity, Emily is hardened to say so many people using social media to get closer to who they are too. The thing I always tell people who reach out to me on Twitter dot com like, I just don't feel attached to my manhood. It's usually trans women. I'm my manhood at all, And I'm like, it's worth probing that you might just be a cist guy who has like these restrictions that have been placed on you that you don't feel comfortable with, and learning what those are and better defining yourself is fine? Is good? Is optimal? Everybody should have to examine why their gender is the way it is, and what about the ways it's been programmed in for them work for them, and what don't. I'm a very feminine trans woman. I've run all the way the opposite direction of how I was raised. But I like it. I like wearing dresses, and I like, you know, going out for for for brunch with my girlfriends when we can leave the house. Um, I like all those things that you as socially it with an extremely basic white lady, because I'm an extremely basic white lady. But like that feels good, That feels like a home. I want everybody's gender to feel like home to them, and I think for many SIS people it doesn't, and they don't look into it and they don't understand why when it might be just one thing. It might be just like, okay, yeah, I'm a SIS guy. But but this thing where we all sit around and you know, um, compare notes about women we've had sex with doesn't feel good to me. It doesn't feel right to me. I don't like this aspect of my gender. Then you could cut it out of your life and you'll feel better, you'll feel more whole. Or maybe you're like me, and you sat there and listened to all of that and you're like, oh my god, I feel like really uncomfortable right now there's this element of I feel like a spy, like a spy who's like learning secrets about how I behaved. And I didn't understand that when I was in high school and all my friends were like, um, I didn't understand why that may be uncomfortable. At the time, I thought it was because I was a good Christian and I didn't like to think about, you know, sexuality at all. I do like hearing other women referred to that way, like it is worth examining your gender. If you think your sis, you're probably just gonna land on yeah I'm a man or yeah I'm a woman, but you might go somewhere more interesting, you know. I think I see. One of the things that I think is really encouraging to me. There's a number of people who use he, they or she they pronouns, which is like, yeah, okay, I'm comfortable being identified as a man or a woman, but there is this part of me that does not fit that binary and that is where that they comes in. It's somewhere in the mushy middle, and most of us live in the mushy middle. Like, yeah, I'm very feminine, but I have several traditionally masculine things. I like, that doesn't make me non binary. I don't want to claim that identity, so that is worth. That is encouraging to me. This idea that like more people are accepting that gender is flexible, that it can change over time, that it can um you can have better understanding of yourself over time, that whatever was hard coded into you by society is not necessarily what's hard coded into you by you. I mean, you're seeing so many seemingly heterosexual people now be like, you know, I think I might be by or I think I might be paned because that door is open, and I think that's going to happen with gender, and I'm excited for it to happen with gender, and I hope it happens with gender, because I don't think any of us is holy man or holy woman. We're all some combination of things from those those types, and then we just we use words and pronouns to describe who we are, and it's always an exact. Really early on in transition, I read something along line, so there's I don't I think it's eight billion people. There's eight billion people on the planets. There are eight billion genders, And like it seems like a lot, but yeah, genders are vastly personal experience, and then we create these umbrellas to place them under. And we only had two for a long time, and now we have a bunch more, and that's good, that's great. I think it is an exciting time. I think that in the US especially, there is a dawning awareness of the ways in which trans identities are real and intersect with other identities, be that, you know, womanhood, be that racial identities. Um, there's a there's a much greater awareness of the ways that trans women of color, particularly black and Latino Latina, particularly black and Latino trans women are hugely at danger of violent crime and like. But there is now increasingly an awareness of that. Awareness is not action. Awareness does not save the lives of any of those black trans women, but hopefully it makes it easier and better and more just for future generations, and hopefully that life expectancy, you know, raises up to a level where, you know, the same as any of the rest of us, get to lead long and fulfilling lives. And we have things we need to work on in the US, where it's far worse as the UK. The UK has become just a disaster area for trans people, these structural barriers they face, the degree to which folks with very large platforms like j K Rowland are making it harder for people people exist there. I live in a country, the United States, where there's a a extremely conservative Supreme Court that is making the country demonstrably a worst place for equality, and yet they enshrined trans rights basically, um, like the very baseline level of trans right. So it's not crazy, like the least they could do. At least they could do. They enshrined it because they were like, you know what, the Constitution forces us to do this, and like that was piece was like, you know what, I don't want to do this, but I kind of have to. So thank you, thank you neial course for that. Um, that's not happening in the UK. The UK is increasingly run by transphobic people for transphobic people, and that's going to be a fight we have to win. Um, that's going to be a I'm glad to undertake. But also I'm not in the UK. I have trans woman friends in the UK and they are terrified, you know, especially now that the UK is no longer in the EU, and they can't just DeCamp for like Germany or a country that's better for trans rights. You know, Um, I'm going to have to marry all of them so they can move to the US, where we have the where we have the you know what. I don't want to do this, but I have to. Well, Emily was offline. Her friends took over her social media accounts so she wouldn't have to deal with the barrage of threats and harassment. Her friends used the opportunity to raise money for House of tulip, an organization that supports trans and gender nonconforming folks experiencing homelessness as a way of finding a little light amidst all the darkness. So what have the last forty eight hours been like for you? The thing I found so interesting is when I was harassed, it was about forty eight hours of the worst I've ever been online, and I most through the thread about how hard it had been and just like how I couldn't sleep and how I faced death threats. Now, I just kind of wanted to no longer exist, not in a self harmy way, just like, oh, it's really hard to be alive right now. So I posted that and a friend of mine who works at Twitter, and then people at Box Media who have contacts at Twitter, both were like, I think I can. I think I can find a way to take care of this instantly the harassment dropped. But probably and it wasn't because it wasn't happening. When I go and look for it, I can still find it, but I really have to poke around because it's been hidden beneath so many layers, and good, I'm glad it's in beneath so many layers. That kind of hateful speech is I believe, you know, it exists within society, but doesn't have to be on privately owned platforms. Like if somebody wants to stand in the public square and yell about how trans women shouldn't exist, I'm not going to stop them, but they should not be given a bull horn. You know, they should not be given a bullhorn. A corporation should not come down to that person and hand them a bullhorn emblazoned with their their their symbol or their logo rather and let them just shout into it, like if they want to shout in the park whatever. But what happens functionally is that online they you know, one person becomes five people, sometimes literally, sometimes they set up five accounts, and sometimes it's just like they shout loud enough that other people start shouting with their shouting. Other people start shouting with their shouting, and like, sometimes that's how good ideas spread, but most of the time that's how bad idea is spread. We know so much about how that takes people from maybe have a couple of questions about transidentities that they're not sure about, and it radicalizes them. It pushes them further and further in the direction of transphobia. And then there's somebody right there reaching out their hand to be like, have you heard about anti semitism or you know, have you heard about here are some of the other other things you can do to make the world the worst place. And that person's like, thank you know, but now I'm going to try This doesn't happened with everybody, you know. I don't think I don't think J. K Rowling is suddenly going to, you know, start um. I don't think J. K Rowling is suddenly going to start like hurling racist, racist slurs on Twitter. But this is much like like now she's much less likely to examine the way she uses characters of color in her books, which is almost never good, and you know, like like that's just that's the the The prevalence of social media makes it so easy to not self examined, to not ask those questions of yourself, and just like find some of those people with bullhorns and just be like, I agree with you. So my experience with Twitter was I think they could make the platform better if they really wanted to. For all the people on Twitter accusing Emily of wanting to crush free speech, she's actually really open with free discussion and criticism. In fact, she says criticism has been helpful for her own understanding of the world and her place in it. The nice thing about it or is if I say a thing, and um, somebody doesn't agree with that thing, who's from a different identity than my own, and they push back against it, that's valid, you know, like they're I don't do everything perfectly. People should criticize me. I'm not above criticism. People have criticized me and I've tried to make amends or edit the article that they're you know, not happy with or whatever, and you know, it always feels kind of shitty, you know, You're always like I can't believe I screwed up. I wish I hadn't screwed up, and you're kind of like taking it on yourself. It's a natural human reaction. But I've learned to not push that out, you know. I've learned to be like I've learned to have the self pity that's okay, that's a human thing, but also be like, Okay, when you screw up, you screw up. A lot of people don't learn that, and honestly, me learning it was directly tied to come out as a trans woman, because you kind of have to learn to just deal with you realize all of the ways in which society is telling why is about you? And then you start to be like, well, what are other lives I believe about people who aren't like me? I think it is hard to escape the lies that are told about groups that are not like you, but it's even harder to escape the lies that you've told about yourself. Um, I uh, spent years and years and years and years no way. I wanted to be a girl, but thinking that that didn't make me trans. I hadn't known from when I was a little kid, well actually I had, I just had those memories forcibly taken away from me. I know I wasn't in tremendous pain about my gender. Well actually I was. I was hiding it from myself. I just felt like an automaton. And then one day I read this interview with Daniel Lavery, the trans guy writer, and he was like, I felt my whole life like I was a brain in a jar, and now I don't. I was like, I feel like a brain in a jar. And I had known I was trans, but I thought there was like a like a test I had to pass p S a T for transit getting in probably elite programs. And right up until I published my essay, I was convinced that somebody was going to come and say, you're not trans enough. And then I published my essay and everyone was like, oh cool, your name is Emily. Great, we love it. And now I have so many people and this is kind of this is kind of a shitty thing to say, but I hope people never stopped tout staying I've forgotten your dead name, and like, I'm sure they have, um, but that's also kind of great. It's also kind of great to know that like Emily makes more sense to the world than my old self did. If you go look up videos of me on YouTube, they're they're I'm just kind of sitting there like a lump, just like gazing inarticulately into the distance. And then somebody will ask me a question, and I'll speak up very you know whatever, I'll speak up very smartly about whatever it is I'm talking about, because my brain, you know, is still interested in the same things and whatever. But there were so many lives I've been told my whole life that I had internalized about what it meant to be trans, about what it meant to be a woman, about what it meant to be the intersection of those two identities of trans woman, about what it meant to be, you know, a gay or straight or whatever. All of these sort of spectrums that we fall on or fall within. And I think one of the reasons that transphobia has run so rampant right now. Uh So, it's because we're the flavor dure which will pass in time, Um, I mean never entirely structural inequality never goes away, but some of it is. Also we symbolize of breaking down of that order a little bit. We symbolize a breaking down of Oh, if this binary isn't real, what other binaries aren't real? What other systems are inequitable but other systems can or should even be burned down? How is the matrix real and how is it false? What does it mean to take a red pill? What does it mean to take a blue pill? What are you comfortable with that you shouldn't be comfortable with? And what are you uncomfortable about that you should examine more? What does it mean to live in a world that is not entirely real, that is built for you by people who want to maintain their own power in the name of everything else and above all else? Why is that spider drone living in your stomach? Because that's crazy. Leave it to Emily to send us off with a matrix joke. To donate to Healse of Tulip, the nonprofit creating housing solutions for trans and gender nonconforming people in Louisiana, check the link in the episode description. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech? I just want to say hi. You can be us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There are no girls on the Internet was created by Me Bridgetad. It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Todd Special thanks to Matt Owen. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcketsh