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.” ]
How is the Matrix pro-trans? Looks it up
TIL it is now the Wachowski sisters who made the Matrix films.
Also in the 90s estrogen pills that were used by trans people were red.
Also the animatrix had a scene where a robot is being murdered as she asserts that she’s a woman.
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
Iirc it was going to be the “not like this” girl
Her name: Switch
Name checks out.
The Matrix is a full on trans allegory. I can recommend Tilly Bridgers “Begin Transmission” book if you want to know more.
There’s a lot of other things going on in The Matrix, but I agree that trans allegories are one of them. They really should have been allowed their original concept for the character Switch.
Their TV show Sense8 is also really great progressive sci-fi.
Sense8 is the best thing they’ve made since The Matrix.
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!
Agreed. I recognized that we needed a neutral term for non-trans people, and since we weren’t champing at the bit to present one, it was done for us. I see it so often now that it’s strange to think it ever seemed unpleasant to me.
the queer community
There’s a great example of a word that’s been completely reclaimed that still makes me wince a bit because of how it was used when I was growing up. I’m glad it’s been fully defanged now!
Not fully defanged yet. Queer can still be used as a pejorative just like if someone said “That’s so gay!” in the 90’s schoolyard usage to synonym for dumb, uncool or bad… We did however make it kind of harder to pull off as a lot of the time unless you make your tone or context explicitly negative it just comes across as using it in a neutral way.
Also the story, while mostly being a christ allegory, has very very strong themes about self Identity, and being unaware of your true self.
Oh it’s both of them now? I remember when it was just the one. Or did I Mandela effect that?
Looks like it was first one, then the other from a google search.
The what? (Not sure if you‘re joking, good for them if true)
Is true.
I just googled it. Crazy I didnt hear about this. Glad they went for it.
I know, I don’t follow entertainment news that closely or anything, but you’d think I would have heard about it sometime in the last 14 years.
Cue my conspiracy prone mind: Why would anyone not want us to know that great artists and personalities were trans, hmmmm? Wont have anything to do with pushing traditional family values, right? RIGHT?
It was fairly well reported then the first one transitioned, but their relevancy peaked during The Matrix. Also, some people like to maintain some level of private lives.
Good argument. Thanks for sharing.
If anything, the media usually pushes this stuff for engagement. I certainly knew all about Caitlyn Jenner’s transition despite having no clue who she was before that.
Hmmm… I dunno. The media does keep a lot of things under wraps evidently. Could be incompetence though.
makepkg -csito make you feel like a detective who’s installing the newly developed tool that’ll crack the case.-sci because I enjoy SciFi
And -sic because I want it as is!
as well as -isc since it’s written in c
Enhance!
Assigned Arch at birth
(Btw)
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.
It’s what the founding fathers wore when writing the Declaration of Independence!
(snarky comment valid only in US)
Very much agree, I feel like everyone should at least give them a try, they’re very comfy.
yay -cisyum -cis
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ill intents
I’d say it’s good intent!
-sic
Huh, I thought you were supposed to use -sri. I hate dealing with the AUR, that stuff doesn’t work half the time. I’m sure there are reasons for making it annoying like that but I haven’t really put much thought into it before. I’d like to think making the AUR a pain in the ass makes things less likely to break, and hopefully that’s not just because you’re less likely to install AUR packages.
I’m a gay man who is happily embracing his cis-genderness but I would not shun trans people as the top figure in this graphic is doing. It seems like he’s totally averse to even thinking about the concept.
Yet there’s a lot of hostility toward cis people being happy about being cis, though we are kind of expected to fully support trans people embracing being trans. And I do - I just want the same sort of respect for being happily cis-gendered. For me, my gayness is about embracing the masculine (in every sense) and loving being born male. I know that gender and sexuality are unique for everyone - so my philosophy is, whatever you wish to be, embrace it fully and love it.
Hi, I ask this in good faith: what are some examples of how cis people face hostility for being happily cis?
Well a couple of times previously I’ve posted about being happy to be cis, and was immediately downvoted and pounced on by people saying I was bigoted and disrespectful to others. Yet all i was trying to say is, I’m gay and a cis person and I think that should be respected the same as it’s expected for me to respect whatever someone else chooses to be.
Yeah, that’s whack when it happens. I think most trans people actually like hearing cis people talk positively about their own gender.
However, context is everything. If a trans person is lamenting about a bad day for dysphoria, they probably don’t want to hear about how great it is being cis.
I hope people are OK with cis people being OK with themselves. I fully support trans people. I recently had a letter published in our local paper about how if trans people ever do act out, (this was in regard to a shooter who had identified as a trans person) it will be because of all the bigotry and hateful legislation driving them (and many others of us LGBTQ) to do something extreme.
You get put down for being LGBTQ, and then you get put down for defending yourself whatever your gender or orientation. It’s a no-win situation.
One example I can think of is how cis people (usually cis males) who choose to crossdress are often misgendered, made fun of, and told they must not be cis because of how they dress.
Though I’m not really sure if this actually counts because these issues I described also affect trans people who are gender Non-Conforming, in very similar ways.
What’s more likely is that their comment is just a funny joke, where they swapped the roles of cis and trans in the passage and the joke part is that it sounds absurd and isn’t supposed to make sense.
That’s true also. And what’s weird is, I’m gay but I’ve known a couple guys who were cis and dressed up as females because, it felt empowering to them. And they were both straight in terms of their orientation, one had a girlfriend, the other guy was married.
So it’s kind of strange to be a gay person who is friendly (which I am), people open up to me about all kinds of things and, it’s just assumed I will be OK with anything (because I’m gay? I guess) so, I’ve seen all kinds of things.
For the most part I accept others no matter what, because we all need validation and we all need to feel that. But i do get push back when I post that I’m cis and happy to be cis, like that’s somehow unacceptable or disrespectful to others. It isn’t meant to be at all.
As a happy cis person I’ll tell you.
Corporations are making some ads aimed at not me.
Some media programs are being made where I’m not the only target audience.
Also some cis writers and performers found they can’t hate on trans people without being told some people dont want to hear it and wont give them money or attention anymore.
If I have a child that says they are trans I can’t beat them without the potential consequences that come with beating your child for any reason.
It’s rough out there /s
Thanks for sharing your experience, I just wanted to convey the declarative cisgenderness of the character in a visual and comical way and this is what came to mind. The whole point of the comic is the makepkg punchline tho, I wasn’t trying to make a point of anything…
Well of course I get that. I wasn’t trying to sound accusatory so much as just my impression of what it looked like. Which is fine because it gave me a feeling of wanting to share, and so - it’s not a bad thing! The comic itself is quite good and you have a real talent for it.
Thank you!
I hope you’ll continue drawing, it’s a talent that I envy. There’s so much power in it.
What is it called when you don’t really care what gender you are? I’m not sure it’s binary, because I don’t really fully identify with either one and just do whatever I want whenever I want.
The word for not feeling a strong connection to your gender like that would be “cassgender”.
Depends on the granularity you want.
This sounds like you could fit under the “non-binary” umbrella, but there are many subcategories. Maybe genderfluid .
Or maybe you’re cis but just don’t see a use in following gender-stereotypes.
But in the end, getting lost in labeling is not needed. Just be you. -
Just to point out another label that might fit, “agendered” folks are a subset of nonbinary people who report having a neutral gender identity or even none at all.
Could be Cassgender, Agender, or Apagender (gender apathetic) .
Oh also Absgender and Isogender, those could also fit, though these are [gender modalities]((https://mogai.miraheze.org/wiki/Gender_Modality), not necessarily gender identities (you would be a gender identity that is under these modalities i.e. Someone may identify as Agender, under the Absgender modality).
Frankly I call it being a human. I love the masculine parts I was born with, but most often, I feel like i’m just a person, bopping along doing whatever I want and not worrying about if I’m being masculine or feminine. I’m just a human absorbing the experience of being alive. I’m a homo-sapiens sexual.
I now have the urge to make
cissome sort of required argument for building a project, and make it so deeply embedded in the build pipeline that removing it would require a refactor. Just because I know there is a (hopefully) tiny percentage of people out there that may get offended by it, and I don’t have any desire to work with people who get that worked up.I already intentionally include f-bombs in some of my code comments (to myself) in preparation for the day that someone complains about cursing. My code is meant for reasonable adults, not delicate babies (and I don’t expect any Einstein babies to be submitting PRs, though they’d probably have a higher chance of merge than others…)
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Ayo chillax homie
Are you mad because this meme makes you think about trans people and that makes you uncomfortable?
