Filmmaker Lilly Wachowski, Formerly Andy, Comes Out as Transgender

Filmmaker Lilly Wachowski, formerly Andy, has come out as a transgender woman in a periodically funny, often moving note published viaChicagos LGBTQ paper,Windy City Times.

The statement recounts the events that prompted herdecision to come out, and also touchesonthe numerousissues facing many inthe transgender community, including a lack of support networks and rampant violence.

Wachowski opened her postwith a cheeky faux-tabloid headline, Sex Change Shocker Wachowski Brothers Now Sisters, referring to her sister Lana Wachowski, who came out as a transgender woman in 2012. But Lilly went on to note that prior to her decision, shed long been dogged by tabloid reporters and publishers threatening to out her against her will.

I find talking about my art frustratingly tedious and talking about myself a wholly mortifying experience, Wachowski wrote. I knew at some point I would have to come out publicly. You know, when youre living as an out transgender person its kind of difficult to hide. I just wanted needed some time to get my head right, to feel comfortable.

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While those aforementioned stories never came to fruition, Wachowski said a reporter from the U.K. tabloid, The Daily Mail, recently showed up at her door and insisted she tell him herstory. The encounter spurred her to come out on her own, as she recalledtheDaily Mails significant role in the public outing of a British teacher, Lucy Meadows, who went on to commit suicideafter the British rag dragged her through the mud.

Being transgender is not easy, Wachowski wrote. We live in a majority-enforced gender binary world. This means when youre transgender you have to face the hard reality of living the rest of your life in a world that is openly hostile to you In 2015, the transgender murder rate hit an all-time highin this country. A horrifying disproportionate number of the victims were trans women of color. These are only the recorded homicides so, since trans people do not all fit in the tidy gender binary statistics of murder rates, it means the actual numbers are higher.

Wachowski closed her note with a meditationon queer theory and the terms transgender and transitioned, especially as both continue to enter the mainstream lexicon. While she noted such terms are understood within the dogmatic terminus of binaries like male or female, and before and after, Wachowski wrote, But the reality, my reality is that Ive 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.

Lana and Lilly Wachowski have worked extensively together throughout their careers, breaking through with their hitMatrixtrilogy. The pairs most recent film was last years Jupiter Ascending, while theyre also behind theNetflix sci-fi drama, Sense8.