A Toast to Lilly Wachowski
Friday, March 11, 2016 at 8:45AM This week, the younger Wachowski sibling revealed that she has transitioned. Everyone raise your glasses to Lilly Wachowski!
In an open letter, Lilly detailed her recent struggle with different press outlets that have nearly gone public with her story, particularly taking the Daily Mail rightly to task for their vulturous treatment of trans individuals. While it's disgusting that press interference has pushed Lilly to reveal her transition publicly before she might have planned, her statements about the current state of trans acceptance and treatment utilize her sizeable platform perfectly. Thank goodness she got to tell her story in her own way.
The letter is a gorgeous bit of writing, a rare insight into the more introverted of the already media wary siblings. In one of the most crucial and eloquent moments of the piece, she questions our societal perception of gender:
But these words, "transgender" and "transitioned" are hard for me because they both have lost their complexity in their assimilation into the mainstream. (...) But the reality, my reality is that I've been transitioning and will continue to transition all of my life, through the infinite that exists between male and female as it does in the infinite between the binary of zero and one. We need to elevate the dialogue beyond the simplicity of binary. Binary is a false idol.
That sentiment is one that is also present in the sisters' work, and one of their most exciting themes, to boot. Now that both siblings are living openly (Lana came forward with her transition in 2012) perhaps they'll be able to explore that even deeper than we've seen with Cloud Atlas and Sense8. For the trivia obsessives, Nathaniel wondered if this made the Wachowski's the first sister directing duo? The names that immediately popped up were the Soska sisters. Do you know of any others?
Reader Comments (4)
A shame she felt coerced into coming out, but what a fantastic way to do it. The Daily Mail are the worst rag. Just terrible.
It's so important to have trans folks giving the lie to the gender binary. So much of the conversation around trans issues is played out with traditional, made-up gender norms.
Good for her for making such a rousing moment out of a really shitty situation. May she have much happiness and success, and may that Daily Mail reporter one day know the exquisite pleasure of having his privacy invaded so brutally.
Good for her. I'm actually blown away by transgender siblings, I can't think of any others--not that I know hundreds of examples. Still, I know plenty of trans people, none of whom I've ever heard say "my sibling is also trans".