Comments on: Lana Wachowski on growing up transgender

By: deckela

deckela — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:20:00 +0000

You should watch My Transgender Summer on youtube. It’s from the UK. Great documentary and inspiring.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 04:23:00 +0000

I’m afraid that Xeni got to the cookie first.

By: jhavatar

jhavatar — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:02:00 +0000

wrote screenplay and produced

By: anansi133

anansi133 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:00:00 +0000

The honesty, clarity and courage of this piece has me gobsmacked. Choosing anonymity for that time has clearly been good for her and for her (our!) cause.

By: Ender Wiggin

Ender Wiggin — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:56:00 +0000

do i win a cookie for first report?

By: Tavie

Tavie — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:25:00 +0000

That part made me cry.

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:55:00 +0000

Well, they directed it and maybe wrote the screenplay but it's an adaptation of the graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd.

By: webjedi

webjedi — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:55:00 +0000

Yes, this was probably one of the most relaxed and “from the heart” discussions on being who you are, trans, and living your life. There’s a lot I and my friends have related to in this short video and thank her for being who she is.

I wished I could show this to a few folks (notably my dad) and let them know they are kind of like, on the wrong side of things.

By: MrWednesday7

MrWednesday7 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Yes they did!

By: imag

imag — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:31:00 +0000

This is a wonderful thing. I almost never watch 25-minute content online, but this was well worth it. Thank you Xeni for bringing it to us.

By: spacedoggy

spacedoggy — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:52:00 +0000

Eh, About that intro, Did the Wachowskis write V for Vendetta?

By: Noctilucent Studios

Noctilucent Studios — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:29:00 +0000

I have watched the trailer for Cloud Atlas about a million times now ( only slightly exaggerating) and cry like a baby everytime.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

By: zibuki

zibuki — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:15:00 +0000

I loved her speech. I’ve also found that this is a great video to help explain human sexuality, what the difference is between sex and gender…and between sexual orientation and sexual behavior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXAoG8vAyzI

By: Jovinia_L

Jovinia_L — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:52:00 +0000

That’s going to be the tricky bit I suspect. Even my gay friends are transphobic to put it lightly. But hearing this speech made me realise there are other options to the default of just hoping I’d magically wake up one day not feeling like this.

By: Kelly J

Kelly J — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:38:00 +0000

She’s awesome!

By: Miss Demeanor

Miss Demeanor — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:52:00 +0000

Lovely, best valedictorian speech ever

By: Nicky G

Nicky G — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:50:00 +0000

This was so great! I’ve loved the Wachowskis ever since seeing The Matrix in the theater and had it turn my head inside out (I remember thinking — what is this feeling? Is this some kind of MK Ultra trigger or something?!) She is sooooo funny, what a sweetheart. I CAN NOT WAIT FOR CLOUD ATLAS!!!

By: kmoser

kmoser — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:33:00 +0000

Valedictorian…of the entire Internet.

By: mark

mark — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:18:00 +0000

She is beautiful. And awesome.

By: mark

mark — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:16:00 +0000

Its a glitch in the Matrix. Be careful…

By: ookami

ookami — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 05:24:00 +0000

Make sure to surround yourself with an appropriate social support system. People who will accept you however you are. There are a lot of us out there.

Hope everything goes well.

By: picaflor

picaflor — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:36:00 +0000

She’s absolutely brilliant and the speech was inspiring.

By: Jovinia_L

Jovinia_L — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:13:00 +0000

I watched that and literally cannot breathe. I had some very similar experiences as a kid and I went the other way, basically pushing it down for the last 30 years. I don’t know what I’m going to do now but it has given me a sliver of hope that things will be OK if I do decide to be true to myself.

By: danimagoo

danimagoo — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:01:00 +0000

Apparently she broke down and cried for several minutes backstage after her speech.

By: giantasterisk

giantasterisk — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 03:35:00 +0000

Beautiful beautiful beautiful!! How did she keep from crying while giving her speech? I certainly did not.

By: J. Brad Hicks

J. Brad Hicks — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 02:51:00 +0000

I think my most important recent realization came when I suddenly understood, oh, I don’t remember, some time in the last couple of years, that there are a lot of people, a sizable plurality, who experience ambiguity, any ambiguity at all, as a kind of migraine-like pain. If you tell them that an item that they can’t see is either black, or white, but you won’t tell them which, and they can’t find out, it’s a source of distress. If you tell them that it’s black and white or color, they have to know which or else it actually hurts. If you tell them that something is good in some circumstances and bad in others, they freak out on you, accuse you of lying, and demand that you just tell them whether it’s good or it’s bad. And if you tell them that some sentence is true in some circumstances and false in other circumstances, they just stop listening to you altogether.

And, yeah, unsurprisingly, they turn out to also be gender essentialists who insist that everybody is born male, or born female, and nobody is ever one up until some point and then the other, or sometimes one and sometimes the other, or somewhere in between. You tell them that ambivalent gender exists, and/or that gender identity is socially constructed, and/or that transgender exists and has been documented in every human culture in history, they freak out and demand that you stop lying to them and just tell them: was that born a boy, or a girl? Boy? Then it’s a boy, dammit, stop making their heads hurt!

And as with many mental illnesses or learning disabilities, I just plain have no idea what to do for those people. Or with them. Or about them.

By: oasisob1

oasisob1 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:11:00 +0000

She just earned a red cape and goggles.

By: oasisob1

oasisob1 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:10:00 +0000

I always just reply to a moderator in the thread with nasty comments alongside my question. I usually get attention and a response pretty quick. Not the response I want, or the attention, but…

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:06:00 +0000

It’s a new type of post, and yes, it’s borked.

By: elix

elix — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:56:00 +0000

I can’t speak for the editors, of course. Maybe some of them originally did and then the person posting decided to reduce it to the more minimal posting style, I dunno. Suffice to say, that headlineless mini-posting format is normal.