There Are No Girls on the Internet - How The Matrix Explains a Trans Experience

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Vox’s Emily VanDerWerff talks about the 1999 film The Matrix as an allegory for the trans experience. Donate to House of Tulip: https://www.gofundme.com/f/housing-for-tgnc-people-experiencing-homelessnessRead Emily’s piece on The Matrix: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/30/18286436/[e-mail] Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. The Matrix first premiered in 1999, and when it did, it was groundbreaking. In it, many trans folks 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 Vox.com. Emily's piece, How the Matrix Universalized a 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 in 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 on to the letter works with Emily at Fox. Pretty understandably, finding out that one of her coworkers also signed on to 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 toward anti-trans positions, as it does, ideally wouldn't be signed by anybody at Vox, much less one of the most prominent people at our publication. She writes, and while her colleague's 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 used some of that free speech that let her claim 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 co-worker 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 live, 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 is 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 identity

without having any clue that's what was happening. I just knew that when I went online and pretended to be a girl, that felt really good in some way, pretended. Air quotes are around that for all. my trans friends listening. Yeah, 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's not just about trans identities. It's anti-capitalist.

It's extremely, you know, diverse and multicultural, you know. Certainly the Wachowski's didn't make all the right steps there, but they were sure trying for the early 2000s, late 90s. 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 summary. Kiana 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, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with 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 Ann Moss, and Morpheus, played by Lawrence Fishburn, 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 there, 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 it.

So in terms of the character of Switch, there is this rumor that the Wachowski's 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 there is, I believe that Morpheus says at some point early in the moment, early in the film that like who you are in the matrix is like your your brain's 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. The rumor is that Warner Brothers wouldn't allow the Wachowski's to include it.

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 Wachowski's now, which is I think, which is I think why it 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 have.

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 a cheerleader. So she created the name Chiron Chick.

And I accidentally logged in as that one day. And it was immediately a barrage of people with mail-coded screen names, being like, hey, ASL, 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 Chick, do you cheerlead? ASL, I'm, you know, 22, 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 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 that was the truest thing I ever did was pretending to be a girl online because it was, it was so easy. In The Matrix, Neo's journey is accepting that he is the one, the figure who's 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 Emily. 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 it's there. And you're going to unlock it and you're suddenly going to be like, oh, yeah, okay, this makes sense. Talking to women makes so much more sense than trying to do the male bonding thing. like going clothes 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 reductive stereotype.

But really, I didn't like going clothes shopping because I didn't like wearing men's clothes. Now if one of my friends wants to go shopping, that's great. It's fun. 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. 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 got it. I think I'm remembering 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 of how crazy it is to be logged into this chat room, 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 would describe this girl that wasn't real, but felt real. And I was just kind of me myself. It was the late 90s. So I had this super strong attachment to Reese Witherspoon. Who did it? Yeah, 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 be, Trayette.

Flic is who I would have been. That's that, that girl I was always describing in 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. And I think the universe saw how potent that energy was within me and was like, we got to tie one hand behind her back. So I think that's, I think that's what happened. And my joke was, you know, it's just like how the Wachowski's cast Keanu Reeves and Carrie Ann Moss's trans women. because 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 journey towards self-acceptance is exactly what you're describing. And so, honestly, so is the whole thing that Trinity's on. Like Trinity is like a trans woman in 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 going to do. I'm so scared. And then Trinity is like, no, we're going to fucking run. run up some walls, we're going to bring helicopters down. You have no idea how much power you have inside of you. And yeah, it's a movie about what we in the trans community call 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 and 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 Wachowski 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 watch it now. And I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. Lana Wachowski came out sometime in the early 2000s. Came out to herself. She came out publicly in, I think, 2008, 2009. Somewhere in there. No, she came out publicly. She came out publicly

around the release of Cloud Atlas, which was 2012. There were rumors about her for like the entirety of the 2000s. And they were pretty cruel and nasty rumors, and I don't recommend going to look up those 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 2012, Lana 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 of 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 in trans woman circles that's like, it's the galaxy brain meme. So it starts, I wish I was a girl. 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. 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.

totally removed from the spectrum of gender or whatever your experience is. And you're suddenly like, wait, all systems are kind of 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 you're 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 that's kind of what the Matrix trilogy is about.

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the Matrix is about someone 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 is a means for men to open their eyes to all the ways that women and 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 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 did not give him a language for who he was. So yeah, 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 are being lied to.

Your life is a program. You do not have free will. You need to develop free will by any means necessary, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that is such a beautiful idea and a beautiful realization. of trans identities that is simultaneously something that apparently spoke to the alt-right. Which is so funny. I mean, you point this out in your piece that the alt-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 we're so oppressed. But it's like, actually, you're latching on to 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. 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 range of movies from the 90s that are sort of about the ways in which the quote-unquote victory of capitalism over communism. And sort of the end of history, as 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, I think an early example of that is Groundhog Day. Groundhog 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, 1999, 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. American Beauty.

Let's not talk about that. It's like kind of a fucked up movie when you think about it. Yeah, Fight Club. Fight Club is good, but so many people have taken the wrong message from it, that 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 and 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 in 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, swerve, but every time I talk about this movie and I talk about it as an allegory for trans identities, you know, like Vox or someone posts it 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 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

consideration 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 Reid, another trans woman, posted on Twitter, you know, The Matrix was directed by two trans women and there's a metaphor for coming out, something that simple. And like 50,000 people liked it and were like, like this blew my mind. And the cis, I just don't know what we're going to do with. Why do you think the idea that the Matrix is a metaphor for the trans experience kind of goes overlooked so often?

I mean, it's metaphor. Let's take a look at Star Wars. You know, Star Wars is probably the movie before the Matrix. Yeah, it's definitely the movie before the Matrix that changed the film industry the most. And the Matrix lives in Star Wars shadow in the way that everything after the Matrix lives in the Matrix's shadow. So you look back at Star Wars. is a movie that George Lucas, when he started writing it, was like, okay, America's the

empire, the Viet 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 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, and even other people who weren't slave owners had 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 move it into metaphor, there'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 culture directed by two trans women. When I got to interview Lily Wachowski, 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 left my body. I went up to heaven for a little bit. I came back down. I was like, yes. If you haven't already guessed, stories have been immensely gratified.

for Emily's understanding of herself. When she publicly came out as trans, she'd already made a career out of writing publicly online. In a piece for Vox, 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 the societal privileges afforded to white people in America. I am upper middle class, and I work for a company that covers my health expenses. And I live in California, which is a state that has a state that has. few structural barriers to transition. If you're an adult and you want to take hormones, California's like, great, go for it. Those are three things I have that a lot of trans women in the world. The vast 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 grow up seeming to the world like a white straight cis man, You don't encounter a lot of structural oppression. One of the ways that film and television helps us understand ourselves better is exposes us to the stories of other people. For instance, I am never going to have the experience of growing up that Perry 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 that film and television are such potent, powerful, 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. like, this feels good. 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 girls, these teenage girls, When I was a teenager, these teenage girls, they just speak to me on some fundamental level. Similarly, Peggy Olson on Mad Men, 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 out 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 Olson faced to get my writing noticed, 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 I kind of like now I look back on it, kind of blows my mind. Like my qualification was I was a good right. and I don't want to besmirch that. 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 Olson, 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 getting 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 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, in the back of my brain, an outlet where she can keep writing and she can keep leaving me 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 2013. Let's put that on hold for a while. So, yeah, 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's 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

us the authority of her own experience. But for all the bad experiences she faces online, it's also where she builds community with other trans women. Every day, I wake up to two or three Twitter DMs. 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 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 DMs 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 a 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 get inured 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 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 feed.

There are just as many people who, and these are trickier to find usually, they're people who fetishize trans identities. There's people, there are, you know, men who love trans women and like, want to, but have turned it into kind of a fetishize trans identities. and have turned my identity into kind of a fetish. And in the community, we call them chasers. I don't know if I'm like breaking a law saying that among the cis. 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 is knocking at that door. And like them saying, you're a great way to go. Like, I remember when Laura Jane Grace, the singer from Against Me, came out. I posted a comment on my website, the AV 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, eh. But at the time, I just was like, yay, 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, 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 toward transition. I had that account for over a year before I came out publicly. And I still have it. It's 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 2018 and read all the way through.

but my best friend reached out to me in DMs there and was like, listen, I really love the stuff you've written because I was writing a newsletter under the name Emily Sandalwood 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. I will take one million harassing tweets

for that one DM for that she is my hearts 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 in so many communities with other trans people that are closed. You know, they're slacks or discords or Facebook groups or whatever. And those people have found each other over the internet, usually over Reddit 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, both on a hugely large scale and on a 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 4chan, doctored up an article supposedly written by me about how white babies are white supremacy. I had supposedly written this, and it was obviously fake. It didn't use any of Voxus typefaces. It was written, published under my old name, and then the last name, Van Wurf, which is the name I've never used. What I'm so lazy.

It's so lazy. 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. Right. But, yeah, 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. My friends used to call me the milkman when I was familiar.

I'm going to get corn-fed Captain America Midwestern shocks. And so many people have approached me about, is this you? Did you do this? And there's so many people who are online and are just like, yep, this is yet another trans woman who just thinks, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And 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 the world are phantoms people hear us they see us but they don't really they have conjured 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. It'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 outlets wrote about the harassment, Emily, faced after speaking up when our co-worker 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 her

actual lived experience as a trans woman. Gender is hard-coded into us in a way that I think is hard for cis 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 a way it never had, that having that my body increasingly feels like my body. And before it was just kind of like this abstraction 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 Keanu Reeves for a day. He's very handsome. He's very handsome. I don't know if you've noticed. More after this quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because you,

Your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged.

One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's IHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano and our podcast Point Game is about defining the odds.

Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in

lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He run up the court,

licking his fingers, why he got the ball. Like, you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Gap. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Ryder Strong and Will Ferdell from PodMeets World. And now the PodMeets Twirled podcast.

We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV, who now have covered dancing with the stars, traitors, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just going to remind you. I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough.

Did people not like it? Yeah. Just because we... Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion in the 50th season from the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate pleas of finalists

to a bunch of... Ha, ooh. Ha ha, ooh. Again, we are experts. So make sure to tune at a Pod Meets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to PodMeets Twirled

on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Let's get right back to it. Just like Neo used the internet to help understand the true nature of identity, Emily is heartened to see 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.com, and 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 cis 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 in the opposite direction of how I was raised.

But I like it. I like wearing dresses and I like, you know, going out for brunch with my girlfriends when we can leave the house. I like all those things that you associate with an extremely basic white lady because I'm an extremely basic white lady, but like that feels good. That feels like home. I want everybody's gender to feel like home to them. And I think for many cis 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 cis guy, but this thing where we all sit around and, you know, compare notes about women we've had sex with, it doesn't feel good to me. It doesn't feel right to me. I don't like this aspect of my gender. Then you can 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 were 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 the other's side behaved. And I didn't understand that when I was in high school. and all my friends were like, yeah, I had sex with her. I didn't understand why that made me uncomfortable. At the time, I thought it was because I was a good Christian, and I didn't like to think about sexuality at all.

I didn't like hearing other women referred to that way. Like, it is worth examining your gender. If you think you're cis, you're probably just going to 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 is the 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 the 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 where, 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, 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 pan, because that door is open. And I think it'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 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 the lines that there's, I don't know, I think it's eight billion people. There's eight billion people on the planets. There are eight billion genders. And like that seems like a lot. But yeah, Gender is a 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 U.S., especially, there is a dawning awareness of the ways in which trans identities are real and intersect with other identities, be that womanhood, be that racial identities. 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. 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 raises up to a level where, you know, 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 U.S., where it's far worse as the U.K. The U.K. has become just a disaster area for trans people, the structural barriers they face, the degree to which folks with very large platforms like J.K. Rowling are making it harder for people to exist there. I live in a country, the United States, where there's an extremely conservative,

Supreme Court that is making the country demonstrably a worse place for equality, and yet they enshrined trans rights, basically, like the very baseline level of trans rights. Let's not go crazy. Like the least they could do. The 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 the piece was like, you know what? I don't want to do this, but I kind of have to. So thank you. Thank you, Neil Corsuch, for that. 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. That's going to be a fight 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, especially now that the UK is no longer in the EU and they can't just decamp for Germany

or a country that's better for trans rights. You know, I'm going to have to marry all of them so they can move to the U.S. Where we have the, you know what, I don't want to do this, but I have to. While 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 48 hours been like for you? The thing I found so interesting is when I was harassed, it was about 48 hours of the worst I've ever been online. And I posted a thread about how hard it had been and just like how I couldn't sleep and how I faced death threats and how 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 find a way to take care of this. Instantly, the harassment dropped by probably 90%. 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 hidden 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 bullhorn, 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 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 500 people.

Sometimes literally, sometimes they set up 500 accounts. And sometimes it's just like they shout loud enough that other people start shouting what they're shouting. Other people start shouting what they're 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 who maybe have a couple of questions about trans identities 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 have you heard about racism? Here are some of the other things you can do to make the world the worst place. And that person's like, thank you. I didn't know, but now I'm going to try. This doesn't happen with everybody, you know?

I don't think J.K. Rowling is suddenly going to, you know, start, I don't think J.K. Rowling is suddenly going to start, like, hurling racist slurs on Twitter. But this is much 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, that's just, that's the, prevalence of social media makes it so easy to not self-examine, 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 Twitter is, if I say a thing and 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 tried to make amends or edit the article that they're, you know, not happy with or whatever. And it always feels kind of shitty. You know, you're always like, oh, 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 coming 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 lies about you. And then you start to be like, well, what are other lies 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. I 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 wasn't in tremendous pain about, 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 test I had to pass. If I was like a PSAT for transning. It would get me 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. Wow. And then I published my essay,

and everyone was like, oh, cool, your name's 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 testing it. I've forgotten your dead name. And like, I'm sure they have. 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 there.

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 lies 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, a 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, so it's because we're the flavor du jour, which will pass in time. I mean, never entirely. Structural inequality never goes away. Yay! You get it. But some of it. is also, we symbolize a 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? What 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 creepy. Leave it to Emily to send us off with a Matrix joke.

To donate to House of Tulip, the nonprofit creating housing solutions for trans and gender nonconforms, people in Louisiana. Check the link in the episode description. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. Special thanks to Matt Bowen. If you want to help us grow,

Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was hungry. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to. He's like, you know I love you, dog.

You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva. And on my new podcast, How Hard Can It Be? I call on my Gen X squad from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. Unfiltered conversations from night sweats to futas to scheduling sacks.

Wait, what sex? Is it just me? Or does every woman my age want to look at Pinterest instead of? having sex sometimes. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips.

This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHart podcast.

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