LES FRERES WACHOWSKI CHANGENT DE GENRE (UN + UNE = UNES)

Craignant que la nouvelle ne soit révélée par un tabloïd, le (la) cinéaste de Matrix, Jupiter Ascending, Cloud Atlas et de la série Netflix Sense8 a préféré prendre les devants en révélant dans une lettre ouverte publiée par le Windy City Times, être devenue femme : "Oui, je suis transgenre". 

Avec une photo à l'appui, Lilly Wachowski y parle ouvertement de son changement de sexe et évoque "la dure réalité de vivre le reste de votre vie dans un monde qui est ouvertement hostile aux transgenres".
S'estimant "chanceuse" - grace au "soutien de ma famille et les moyens de se payer les médecins et les thérapeutes" - Lilly Wachowski dénonce les dangers auxquels font face les transgenres (le record du taux de transgenres assassinés ou encore la diabolisation des médias) et revient sur le parcours de sa "fabuleuse soeur qui l’a fait avant moi".

"Mes amis et ma famille savent à propos de mon changement de sexe. La plupart des gens au travail aussi. Tout le monde est cool avec ça. Oui, grâce à ma fabuleuse soeur qui l’a fait avant moi, mais aussi parce que ce sont des gens fantastiques. Sans l’amour et le soutien de ma femme, de mes amis et de ma famille, je ne serais certainement pas où j’en suis aujourd’hui", écrit-elle.

"Mais ces mots, transgenre et transition sont difficiles pour moi", poursuit Lilly. "Parce qu'ils ont tous deux perdu leur complexité. Il y a un manque de nuances de temps et d'espace", déplore-t-elle. "Etre transgenre est largement compris comme une finalité dogmatique, le sexe masculin ou féminin. Et le terme transition donne un sentiment d'immédiateté, un avant et après d'une extrémité à l'autre. Mais la réalité, ma réalité est que je suis en train de changer et je vais continuer à changer toute ma vie, à travers l'infini qui existe entre homme et femme. Nous devons élever le dialogue", conclut-elle.

Lana Wachowski, la sœur de Lilly Wachowski, avait rendu publique son changement de sexe en 2012.

The second sibling of the filmmaking duo known as The Wachowskis has come out as transgender.

Lilly Wachowski, 48, sibling of Lana, 50, came out in a statement to Windy City Times, after being threatened with outing by other media.

Here is her statement:

"SEX CHANGE SHOCKER—WACHOWSKI BROTHERS NOW SISTERS!!!"

There's the headline I've been waiting for this past year. Up until now with dread and/or eye rolling exasperation. The "news" has almost come out a couple of times. Each was preceded by an ominous email from my agent—reporters have been asking for statements regarding the "Andy Wachowski gender transition" story they were about to publish. In response to this threatened public outing against my will, I had a prepared a statement that was one part piss, one part vinegar and 12 parts gasoline.

It had a lot of politically relevant insights regarding the dangers of outing trans people, and the statistical horrors of transgender suicide and murder rates. Not to mention a slightly sarcastic wrap-up that "revealed" my father had injected praying mantis blood into his paternal ball-sac before conceiving each of his children to produce a brood of super women, hellbent on female domination. Okay, mega sarcastic.

But it didn't happen. The editors of these publications didn't print a story that was only salacious in substance and could possibly have a potentially fatal effect. And being the optimist that I am, I was happy to chalk it up to progress.

Then last night while getting ready to go out for dinner my doorbell rang. Standing on my front porch was a man I did not recognize.

"This might be a little awkward," he said in an English accent.

I remember sighing.

Sometimes it's really tough work to be an optimist.

He proceeded to explain he was a journalist from the Daily Mail, which was the largest news service in the UK and was most definitely not a tabloid. And that I really had to sit down with him tomorrow or the next day or next week so that I could have my picture taken and tell my story which was so inspirational! And that I really didn't want to have someone from the National Enquirer following me around, did I? BTW—The Daily Mail is so definitely not a tabloid.

My sister Lana and I have largely avoided the press. I find talking about my art frustratingly tedious and talking about myself a wholly mortifying experience. I knew at some point I would have to come out publicly. You know, when you're living as an out transgender person it's … kind of difficult to hide. I just wanted—needed some time to get my head right, to feel comfortable.

But apparently I don't get to decide this.

After he had given me his card, and I closed the door it began to dawn on me where I had heard of the Daily Mail. It was the "news" organization that had played a huge part in the national public outing of Lucy Meadows, an elementary school teacher and trans woman in the UK. An editorial in the "not-a-tabloid" demonized her as a damaging influence on the children's delicate innocence and summarized "he's not only trapped in the wrong body, he's in the wrong job." The reason I knew about her wasn't because she was transgender it was because three months after the Daily Mail article came out, Lucy committed suicide.

And now here they were, at my front door, almost as if to say—

"There's another one! Let's drag 'em out in the open so we can all have a look!"

Being transgender is not easy. We live in a majority-enforced gender binary world. This means when you're transgender you have to face the hard reality of living the rest of your life in a world that is openly hostile to you.

I am one of the lucky ones. Having the support of my family and the means to afford doctors and therapists has given me the chance to actually survive this process. Transgender people without support, means and privilege do not have this luxury. And many do not survive. In 2015, the transgender murder rate hit an all-time high in 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.

And though we have come a long way since Silence of the Lambs, we continue to be demonized and vilified in the media where attack ads portray us as potential predators to keep us from even using the goddamn bathroom. The so-called bathroom bills that are popping up all over this country do not keep children safe, they force trans people into using bathrooms where they can be beaten and or murdered. We are not predators, we are prey.

So yeah, I'm transgender.

And yeah, I've transitioned.

I'm out to my friends and family. Most people at work know too. Everyone is cool with it. Yes, thanks to my fabulous sister they've done it before, but also because they're fantastic people. Without the love and support of my wife and friends and family I would not be where I am today.

But these words, "transgender" and "transitioned" are hard for me because they both have lost their complexity in their assimilation into the mainstream. There is a lack of nuance of time and space. To be transgender is something largely understood as existing within the dogmatic terminus of male or female. And to "transition" imparts a sense of immediacy, a before and after from one terminus to another. But the reality, my reality is that I've 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.

Now, gender theory and queer theory hurt my tiny brain. The combinations of words, like freeform jazz, clang disjointed and discordant in my ears. I long for understanding of queer and gender theory but it's a struggle as is the struggle for understanding of my own identity. I have a quote in my office though by José Muñoz given to me by a good friend. I stare at it in contemplation sometimes trying to decipher its meaning but the last sentence resonates:

"Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world."

So I will continue to be an optimist adding my shoulder to the Sisyphean struggle of progress and in my very being, be an example of the potentiality of another world.

Lilly Wachowski

GLAAD and other LGBT organizations strongly condemn the outing of a transgender person before they are ready to tell their own story.

The Chicago-born Wachowskis are among cinema's most prolific filmmaking duos. Lilly is a film and TV director and producer, plus screenwriter, comic book writer, video game director and writer. She has been married to Alisa Blasingame since 1991.

The Wachowskis first film together as directors was 1996's Bound, still known as a lesbian film classic. They are perhaps best known for their three-film Matrix series. Among their other films are V for Vendetta, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending and the beautiful sci-fi series Sense8.

The siblings attended Kellogg Elementary School in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood, on the Far South Side, and graduated from Whitney Young High School in the city's West Loop.

After Lana Wachowski came out as a trans woman, she received the 2012 Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award, and in 2014 she received the Equality Illinois Freedom Award. Lana said about her HRC award: "there are some things we do for ourselves, but there are some things we do for others. 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 like my dreams were foreclosed simply because my gender was less typical than others. If I can be that person for someone else, then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value," as quoted in The Hollywood Reporter.

At the 2014 EI gala Lana said, "Fear is not something I let rule my life, but gratitude is."

See Lana's EI speech here: www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Equality-Illinois-gala-celebrates-2013-looks-to-future/46153.html .

See the GLAAD Media Reference Guide on Transgender Issues here: www.glaad.org/reference/transgender .

Also see www.glaad.org/releases/tip-sheet-transgender-terminology-and-tips-covering-lilly-wachowski .