Disclaimer: I thought of this while using this command line. I actually think Celeste and Matrix are good and trans rights are human rights.
Image description: [ First pannel; character turning his back on the Trans flag, Madeline from Celeste and the Matrix movie title screen : “I am not Trans”. Second pannel; character hugging a box labeled ‘gender’: “I enjoy the gender I was assigned at birth.” Third pannel; character typing on a laptop with the Arch Linux logo while wearing programming socks. A bubble shows the line on the screen : ‘makepkg -cis’. The character says: “When I compile an AUR package, I clean install files, install the program, sync dependencies; in a single line.” ]
makepkg -csi to make you feel like a detective who’s installing the newly developed tool that’ll crack the case.
How is the Matrix pro-trans? Looks it up
TIL it is now the Wachowski sisters who made the Matrix films.
There was also supposed to be a character who was a different gender in the matrix vs out, but it didn’t make it to the final movie
The Matrix is a full on trans allegory. I can recommend Tilly Bridgers “Begin Transmission” book if you want to know more.
Also the thing is just steeped in trans metaphor. Consider the agents deadnaming Neo throughout as “Mister Anderson” Ander being intended as the same word part as Androgens, Androgyny or Misandry… Mister Ander Son. The system keeps reinforcing his identity as Man man man.
Go listen back through Morpheus’s speech just before he offers a red and blue pill (back in the 90’s horomone treatments for trans women came in the form of little red pills)… It’s a sci-fi parable for gender roles and dysphoria. Of being forced into a system where oppression isn’t seen or heard or touched because almost nobody recognizes it. Only some nebulous but insistant feeling causes you to want to break free, to explore yourself.
And once you break free you no longer have the protection from the system. The system sees you as a threat. You must accept less resources and support outside of whatever small found family and resistance you gather.
Like all scifi parables some of it’s metaphor plays second fiddle to making the technical premise work from a narrative perspective…but whenever they start talking about the Matrix consider they are actually saying “The Bioessentialist construct of gender” and you can see a lot of the different facets behind deliberate creative choices.
All of the allegory went completely over my head, which is not unusual for me. And since I’m cis I have the privilege of not having to think about how gender roles affect me in day to day life. The “red pill” thing does make it pretty funny when you consider how right-wingers, who are super transphobic, took it as their own.
Writing this got me thinking that I hated the term “cis” when I first started hearing it years ago. It just sounded unpleasant, like “sissy” or something. But it’s grown on me through repeated usage.
Yeah a lot of cis people really reject the term. Some don’t like the way it sounds and wants to self identify with a word that they like more… A certain number stick to their guns in wanting to make sure that there is no word that is used for people who are not trans.
Sometimes they opt for wanting to be called “normal” without realizing that there is a value judgement implicit in that word. If you have a “normal man” and a “trans man” you are saying that transness is abnormal, pathologizing gender. You reach the same effect by omission of a word. If there is a man and a trans man then one of these things is assumed standard and the other the deviation.
Of course they don’t see a problem with this because under that model they personally don’t take on the psychological burden of constantly having to referring to oneself by terminology reserved for either the deviant or somehow inferior. To those unused to questioning their centrally held power the idea of just having a word to describe them in relation to others is seen as an oppression.
If enough people disliked the term cis they could band together and just come up with another value neutral word…That’s basically how we arrived at the less science centric terms for other sexuallities like “gay” as an example. “Homosexual” being a relatively new classification wasn’t exactly loved by the people to whom it was applied to beyond their consent as it sounded clinical. Other euphemisms had always existed but gay was purposely adopted as a synonym by the queer community.
I don’t think there would be objection from the trans community long as the term synonymous for cis was essentially was not trying to imply that it is somehow the default state of being.
Think of the potential slang we are missing out on!
Oh it’s both of them now? I remember when it was just the one. Or did I Mandela effect that?
Assigned Arch at birth
Thigh highs is something everyone can enjoy. Maybe if we got a pair on some bigots they’d wind up, and loosen down. Wait, scratch that and reverse it.
yay -cis
