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Lilly Wachowski On ‘The Hard Reality Of Living In A World That Is Openly Hostile’

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 22:04 PST, Apr 9, 2016

Lilly Wachowski, previously known as Andy Wachowski, and best known as The Matrix series co-director, has made her first public appearance this week after coming out as transgender, according to Metro.

Lilly Wachowski, who co-directed The Matrix along with her sister Lana, also transgender and formerly known as Larry Wachowski, stunned everybody in her floor-length gown at last Saturday’s GLAAD Awards in LA.

Lilly Wachowski was awarded for her Netflix series Sense8 in the Outstanding Drama Series category beating ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder, and Fox’s Empire.

The main character on Sense8, directed by Lilly Wachowski, is a transgender portrayed by transgender actress Jamie Clayton. The series begins with the mother of Nomi Marks, played by Clayton, handing her daughter over to have a lobotomy.

Nomi then decides to unravel the origin of her uncanny connection to her fellow gifted “sensates” all around the world. And even though the series is a hit, Lilly Wachowski was very anxious about coming on the GLAAD stage as a transgender to accept the award.

In her recent interview shortly before the ceremony, the 48-year-old director told The Wrap that her “flight instinct is off the charts,” but she knew she had to fight against it. Last month, Lilly Wachowski issued a statement in which she announced she was a woman. She also outlined how hard it is to come out as a transgender nowadays.

“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.”

However, Lilly Wachowski considers herself “one of the lucky ones.” She said it was the support from her family as well as her ability to afford doctors and therapists that allowed her to “actually survive” coming out as a transgender. And she added that many of those who don’t have that kind of family support and finances don’t survive that process.

The GLAAD Awards is committed to honoring people for their “fair, accurate and inclusive representations” of the LGBT community. Lana, Lilly Wachowski’s sister, became the first-ever director to come out as a transgender back in 2012.

Ever since coming out, Lilly Wachowski’s sibling has openly expressed how hard it was for her for all those years before she came out. Lilly Wachowski coming out as a transgender was “thrilling because it was improbable,” as reported by The Daily Beast. It’s because the chances the two Matrix co-directors would become the Wachowski Sisters were “astronomically low.”

Samantha Allen, who wrote the article for The Daily Beast, claims “etiological explanations” as to why people come out as transgender are “unclear,” adding that less than 0.3 percent of the American population have come out as transgender. Allen also noted that Lilly Wachowski’s coming out announcement was like “winning the Powerball” for fans and members of the LGBT community.

But in her coming out statement, Lilly Wachowski revealed that she didn’t feel as if she won anything. And explaining her decision to keep a low profile, she wrote that she just needed time to “get my head right, to feel comfortable.”

“But apparently I don’t get to decide this.”

Lilly Wachowski was referring to the constant harassment by the media and tabloids, which blatantly violated her privacy for a few months before she came out. Wachowski also emphasized on “the dangers of outing trans people,” citing one very notable case of Lucy Meadows, a transgender who committed suicide after one of the British tabloids published an article saying the transgender school teacher was in the “wrong job.”

And apparently, Lilly Wachowski felt exactly like Meadows.

“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!'”

[Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]

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