2017 Jun 1
Like her sister, Lana Wachowski, who came out as a transgender back in 2012, Lilly Wachowski broke the news with, “So yeah, I’m transgender.”
Although today’s society is much more accepting and welcoming of people being who they truly want to be and who they are comfortable being, there are still the countless numbers of people who are disrespectful and narrow minded.
When speaking of her transition to The Washington Post, Lilly said that she was stalked by tabloids, desperate to spread the word the director’s transition to another gender. She also added that it didn’t matter that outing trans people before they are ready to re-introduce themselves to the world can lead to suicide.
“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,” she continued.
Lilly also spoke of the obstacles trans-genders face when she said, “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.”
She also went onto mention the case of a school teacher, Lucy Meadows, who committed suicide in 2013 after the Daily Mail scorned her in an editorial in an allegedly insensitive manner. The article went on to say that the teacher was “not only trapped in the wrong body”, but also “in the wrong job” because apparently children “aren’t equipped to compute this kind of information.”
Lilly added this distressing piece of information in her statement because journalist claiming to be from the Daily Mail appeared on her doorstep, wanting to publish her story.
“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. 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!’”
GLAAD, the LGBT advocacy organization, also added that reporters covering transgender people must be more responsible. Nick Adams, GLAAD’s Director of Programs for Transgender Media, said in a statement. “Journalists must learn that it is unacceptable to out a transgender person, in the same way it is unacceptable to out a person who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual.”
Ending her statement, Lilly quoted “ ‘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.”
Read her full statement here
Source: The Washington Post
