this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix
The last detail about Switch is so cool—I wish they had kept it.
As ~~first time~~ relatively green directors, the studio had a lot of say over what they got to include. Often to the story's detriment. Humans were originally processors instead of batteries (which makes a fuck ton more sense)
I just mentally replaced "battery" with "processor" anyway.
They had directed Bound before this
Thank you for keeping me honest. I'll update
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.
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.
Also check out
"Begin Transmission" by Tilly Bridges
What the fuck? The matrix would have been 1000% better with Neo as a woman in the matrix, but a man irl.
Like, fuck. Fuck! I never thought I'd say this, but we need a reboot. WE NEED A REBOOT.