As culture critic Emily St. James once put it: “If you are a trans person, there is sort of this idea that you are living in a muffling cocoon that is keeping you from seeing the reality of yourself, and that cocoon, to some degree, is the idea of fixed gender identity, which is one that society is very built atop.” It’s easy to see how a trans person watching the first third of “The Matrix” would see their pre-transition self in Neo, a man who is unhappy with his seemingly normal, comfortable life but knows on some indefinable level that something is deeply wrong.
“And to be trans,” St. James explained further, “You have to sort of assail that idea, and in the process of doing so, you may question other things about reality, including whether you live in a computer simulation, which is robots using humans as a way to power their existence.” The rest of the first film revolves around Neo realizing his original life was a lie. He then struggles and eventually succeeds in finding his new identity outside the Matrix, finding a path for himself much more suitable for him than the path ordained on him inside the Matrix.
Perhaps the most blatant parallel to the trans experience is the movie’s incorporation of deadnaming. Neo changes his name when he leaves the Matrix, and the villain Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) keeps referring to him by his old name as a way of taunting him. This culminates in a scene where Agent Smith calls him Mr. Anderson as he’s choking Neo to death. Neo defiantly says, “My name is Neo,” before breaking free and forcing Smith into the path of a train. (A worthy fate for any deadnamer!)
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