So was Switch supposed to be a woman in the Matrix because of a bug and in the real world he was his true self, or did the machines allow her to live her true gender in the Matrix?
Just because it’s a trans allegory doesn’t mean they figured it all the way out. I think it was mostly the broaching of the topic and putting the ideas into normal people’s head that something like that could happen. I can imagine a very different social experience if explaining trans in the early 2000s could have been boiled down to “I’m kinda like switch from the matrix.”
Bruh. Think through the thought for a moment before you dismiss it as something that wasn’t thought through. People with gender dysphoria often question their existence. The robots don’t want people to do that, cause they’ll start finding the seams. So yeah, everyone meshed with their gender (assuming it could fit within the binary parameters of the 90s) because the matrix wants to be as stable as possible.
I think the comment is saying the actual analogy was open to interpretation. Maybe, they said it poorly. The lack of clarity is on purpose. Though I never read the pre-movie version. Maybe it’s more clear. Is Switch an assigned male at birth character in the real world happy being cis? or a trans-man finally able to be accepted for their identity?
I’d say they simply wanted to have Switch as a character with this trait and leave the interpretation up the the audience. In that universe it’s not even clear if the “real world” is actually organic reality. Switch could be interpreted as a trans man, trans women, or even a nonbinary person forced to conform to gender roles in both the Matrix and the “real world”.
I think leaving this for the viewer to interpret would have been really good if it made it into the movie.
Also, the machines absolutely wanted conflict. The first matrix failed because it was a utopia. They realized that the struggles of being human were important to simulate. So you’re not correct in that. At least from literally what agent Smith explains in the movie.
Also, an interpretation I have of the last movies is that the “real world” is just another level of the Matrix. It is a place for the minds of people to go that cannot be contained by the restraints of the lower level Matrix. It is a place that gives them purpose and struggle while maintaining order in the first level of the Matrix. So, yeah. Things can definitely be “thought through” in different ways. It’s why the movie was iconic. It’s not spoon feeding you exactly what the writers want you to interpret.
The robots don’t want conflict between humans, they want humans to accept their false reality without question. That allows them to keep as many humans as possible. A utopia (from a machines idea of utopia, mind) wouldn’t be the most seamless thing. If everyone around you gets whatever they want and there’s no interpersonal friction from that, it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. Putting thought into it would reveal that something must be putting its finger on the scale in order to cause this result. That would wake people up to the fact that this isn’t reality.
They even over corrected with the second matrix and made humans these cowering things to the monsters that went bump in the night. That’s where the maravangian and his pals come from. The issue with that one is humans in constant fight-or-flight are hard to control, so they eventually do things that cause them to awaken as well.
Someone who is trans has a built-in reason to question their reality if they’re kept in their biological body (“why do I feel like I should’ve been born a girl”, etc). So, by putting them in the body that matches their perception, the machines reduce conflict between the system and humans. Reduces the likelihood that any one person has any reason to question that their reality is real.
Smith is a character in the world. He’s explaining things as he understands them, but most importantly in order to break Morpheus and get him to give them the info they want. He’s trying to get him to buy into the idea that the machines are superior to humans.
I don’t mind the different interpretation but I don’t agree that machines would for some reason not have trans people exist in the matrix. Are we assuming they have the ability to assign someone’s “true” gender at birth? Trans women are trans women. Trans men are trans men. Simulating their genitals to be “correct” wouldn’t change that. What do they do with nonbinary people? Nonbinary people can’t be “tricked” to not conform to a set of binary gender identities.
Would trans or nonbinary people be more likely to question the Matrix? Sure, you could argue that. But so would neurodivergent people or anyone that’s feels they are not accepted by the social constructs of society. The reality that human beings accept and question the least is the reality that we live in. A reality where trans people exist. Humans (and especially trans/nonbinary humans) would be far LESS likely to accept a reality in which there are only two genders. It would make the matrix LESS believable not more.
I think you’re projecting the human history of attempting to erase trans people onto the machines. Which could be an interpretation. But I don’t see the machines as malicious or evil. I see them as logical in their methods of control.
The real world is messy, gritty, real. The matrix is what humans want for themselves. A reality that most of us can accept without issue. We see this time and again in the matrix movies.
Because as the wikipedia quote illustrates, the uncanny feeling of the matrix is a metaphor for gender dysphoria. Taking the red pill helps you transition to your true self.
So if we strictly apply that to Switch, the Matrix assigned them as female when their true identity is male.
Then the allegory wouldn’t make sense though, would it?
The main character would have less reason to want to stay in the real world if they received the “wrong” body. They lived their whole life in the “right” body in the simulation and then wake up just to feel gender dysphoria? It would just be confusing and uncomfortable as fuck for them.
Ah, you’re right. I was thinking too hard about it, reasoning that a non-human entity would be unaffected by human errors and cater to the being itself, its mind, rather than its body, and waking up to the reality of being in the wrong body is the issue. But then the point of the allegory, as you reminded me, is that exiting the Matrix is akin to exiting the lie, the false idea of you. I derped.
I guess the real moral is you can fabricate any story that suits you from source material, and ideas can go many ways. What matters is the Wachowskis’ vision, then, except in the idea that art is meant to be interpreted by the individual, in which case there will never be a singularity or wholly accepted conclusion…
It could be boiled down to what we can interpret from Switch, what’s canon. Then, knowing that she uses femme pronouns, and that her character was Lilly W’s internalised egg feelings, this seems the Matrix self is the true self.
She was a woman in the matrix because the robots wanted as little possibility for people to question their existence, so everyone identified with their own images. There was no gender dysphoria in the matrix unless you were nonbinary.
So was Switch supposed to be a woman in the Matrix because of a bug and in the real world he was his true self, or did the machines allow her to live her true gender in the Matrix?
Just because it’s a trans allegory doesn’t mean they figured it all the way out. I think it was mostly the broaching of the topic and putting the ideas into normal people’s head that something like that could happen. I can imagine a very different social experience if explaining trans in the early 2000s could have been boiled down to “I’m kinda like switch from the matrix.”
Bruh. Think through the thought for a moment before you dismiss it as something that wasn’t thought through. People with gender dysphoria often question their existence. The robots don’t want people to do that, cause they’ll start finding the seams. So yeah, everyone meshed with their gender (assuming it could fit within the binary parameters of the 90s) because the matrix wants to be as stable as possible.
I think the comment is saying the actual analogy was open to interpretation. Maybe, they said it poorly. The lack of clarity is on purpose. Though I never read the pre-movie version. Maybe it’s more clear. Is Switch an assigned male at birth character in the real world happy being cis? or a trans-man finally able to be accepted for their identity?
I’d say they simply wanted to have Switch as a character with this trait and leave the interpretation up the the audience. In that universe it’s not even clear if the “real world” is actually organic reality. Switch could be interpreted as a trans man, trans women, or even a nonbinary person forced to conform to gender roles in both the Matrix and the “real world”.
I think leaving this for the viewer to interpret would have been really good if it made it into the movie.
Also, the machines absolutely wanted conflict. The first matrix failed because it was a utopia. They realized that the struggles of being human were important to simulate. So you’re not correct in that. At least from literally what agent Smith explains in the movie.
https://youtu.be/9Qs3GlNZMhY
Also, an interpretation I have of the last movies is that the “real world” is just another level of the Matrix. It is a place for the minds of people to go that cannot be contained by the restraints of the lower level Matrix. It is a place that gives them purpose and struggle while maintaining order in the first level of the Matrix. So, yeah. Things can definitely be “thought through” in different ways. It’s why the movie was iconic. It’s not spoon feeding you exactly what the writers want you to interpret.
The robots don’t want conflict between humans, they want humans to accept their false reality without question. That allows them to keep as many humans as possible. A utopia (from a machines idea of utopia, mind) wouldn’t be the most seamless thing. If everyone around you gets whatever they want and there’s no interpersonal friction from that, it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. Putting thought into it would reveal that something must be putting its finger on the scale in order to cause this result. That would wake people up to the fact that this isn’t reality.
They even over corrected with the second matrix and made humans these cowering things to the monsters that went bump in the night. That’s where the maravangian and his pals come from. The issue with that one is humans in constant fight-or-flight are hard to control, so they eventually do things that cause them to awaken as well.
Someone who is trans has a built-in reason to question their reality if they’re kept in their biological body (“why do I feel like I should’ve been born a girl”, etc). So, by putting them in the body that matches their perception, the machines reduce conflict between the system and humans. Reduces the likelihood that any one person has any reason to question that their reality is real.
Smith is a character in the world. He’s explaining things as he understands them, but most importantly in order to break Morpheus and get him to give them the info they want. He’s trying to get him to buy into the idea that the machines are superior to humans.
I don’t mind the different interpretation but I don’t agree that machines would for some reason not have trans people exist in the matrix. Are we assuming they have the ability to assign someone’s “true” gender at birth? Trans women are trans women. Trans men are trans men. Simulating their genitals to be “correct” wouldn’t change that. What do they do with nonbinary people? Nonbinary people can’t be “tricked” to not conform to a set of binary gender identities.
Would trans or nonbinary people be more likely to question the Matrix? Sure, you could argue that. But so would neurodivergent people or anyone that’s feels they are not accepted by the social constructs of society. The reality that human beings accept and question the least is the reality that we live in. A reality where trans people exist. Humans (and especially trans/nonbinary humans) would be far LESS likely to accept a reality in which there are only two genders. It would make the matrix LESS believable not more.
I think you’re projecting the human history of attempting to erase trans people onto the machines. Which could be an interpretation. But I don’t see the machines as malicious or evil. I see them as logical in their methods of control.
That kind of runs counter to the idea that the rest of the metaphor though.
The real world is messy, gritty, real. The matrix is what humans want for themselves. A reality that most of us can accept without issue. We see this time and again in the matrix movies.
How does what I said run counter to the metaphor?
Because as the wikipedia quote illustrates, the uncanny feeling of the matrix is a metaphor for gender dysphoria. Taking the red pill helps you transition to your true self.
So if we strictly apply that to Switch, the Matrix assigned them as female when their true identity is male.
I’d wager Matrix was true expression.
Then the allegory wouldn’t make sense though, would it?
The main character would have less reason to want to stay in the real world if they received the “wrong” body. They lived their whole life in the “right” body in the simulation and then wake up just to feel gender dysphoria? It would just be confusing and uncomfortable as fuck for them.
Ah, you’re right. I was thinking too hard about it, reasoning that a non-human entity would be unaffected by human errors and cater to the being itself, its mind, rather than its body, and waking up to the reality of being in the wrong body is the issue. But then the point of the allegory, as you reminded me, is that exiting the Matrix is akin to exiting the lie, the false idea of you. I derped.
I guess the real moral is you can fabricate any story that suits you from source material, and ideas can go many ways. What matters is the Wachowskis’ vision, then, except in the idea that art is meant to be interpreted by the individual, in which case there will never be a singularity or wholly accepted conclusion…
It could be boiled down to what we can interpret from Switch, what’s canon. Then, knowing that she uses femme pronouns, and that her character was Lilly W’s internalised egg feelings, this seems the Matrix self is the true self.
https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Self_image
She was a woman in the matrix because the robots wanted as little possibility for people to question their existence, so everyone identified with their own images. There was no gender dysphoria in the matrix unless you were nonbinary.