There’s a little scene right at the very, very end of The Matrix just before the credits where Neo is talking. Monologuing. He talks about a world the listener doesn’t want to let be see. A world where there are no borders or rules. A world where anything is possible. For the first time in the movie, it feels like he’s breaking the fourth wall. But Neo is not talking to us, the audience - he’s talking about us.
Then we see him step out of a phone booth, looks around, puts his sunglasses on and looks up. The camera steps up and back and up and back… And then we see Neo has taken off flying like Superman.
This is a powerful metaphor and one the franchise revisits a couple of times, most obviously in the second film where it is Neo’s signature “power” in the matrix. It’s even lampshaded by the other characters. But there’s a deeper meaning, as explained by Tilly Bridges: in the trans imagery in those movies. Flying is a mark of gender euphoria.
But what is gender euphoria? In a nutshell, it is the happiness and joy when you do something to affirm your gender or you are affirmed in your gender. Both cisgender and transgender people can have gender euphoria. For transgender people, figuring this out is often an important event in figuring out they even are transgender. To put it in jargon, it can be linked to their egg cracking.
It certainly was for me.
The common trope of un-cracked transgender people is that they are unhappy as their born gender. This is the opposite of gender euphoria: it is gender dysphoria and it is true that some have it. But it is estimated less than half of all transgender people have such strong dysphoria. I didn’t. Instead, whenever I attempted to present female, this gave me joy. And I’d known about this for years. What I learnt a year ago is that that is what gender euphoria is.
So was I already flying? Maybe. Partially.
In a lot of ways, and with good reason, transitioning is giving yourself permission to be your real self - either the one you are, or the one you want to be1. This is often a complex journey of figuring out what this is, too, because there is frequently a gap between what you know how to do (which is often what gives you gender euphoria in the first place) and what you really want to do. And then what you can actually do2.
I’m still learning how to map these gaps out and where I can bridge them and how to bridge them. I’ve alluded to this in previous posts, where I described how cis teen girls learn a whole lot (usually) in their adolescence. But trans women transitioning later in life (me!) have to figure out how to go through all this when life is very different and these events frequently have to be re-constructed to make it all happen.
That’s where I am.
So am I flying?
I’ve been saying that I’m still learning to fly. It’s even in my Mastodon bio, put there months ago for reasons I don’t actually remember. Some days I do better than others, but I’m still learning. Always learning in the ups and downs. The stab of dysphoria at a random “sir” in a shop but one of euphoria when a colleague uses your new name. A down when you think you can see beard shadow at 4 in the afternoon, but an up that morning when you gaze at yourself in the mirror after finishing your makeup and hair and see a woman. The battle to re-shape your body the way you want and not wholly succeeding versus being able to see what the gender-affirming hormones have already accomplished. The struggle to dress to emphasise the curves you don’t really have and then finding a beautiful dress that does that way better than it has any right to (and it fits).
The temptation to get focus on what isn’t working and what you’re afraid might never change the way you want it to… and then the reminder to look at how far I’ve come and what I couldn’t and wouldn’t do twelve months ago.
Maybe I am, in fact, flying more often now than I think I am.
I’m in a new world, kind of. One with different borders and rules - better ones. It’s a place that shows me I can change my borders and rules and in a lot of ways set my own.
Once I figure out where I want them to be.
And that’s a learning process.
Like learning to fly.
I think this is rather a bit too complex to explain in this post. Sorry.
Also complex.