Wachowski also said that while she may not have actively been thinking about the trans themes of The Matrix, while creating it, her preference for sci-fi movies and books certainly did. That's both where our headspaces were,' she said. We had the character of Switch, who was like a character who would be, y'know, a man in the real world and then a woman in the Matrix. ' The Matrix stuff was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view. The director spoke about the character Switch and the original intentions for the character serving as a metaphor for what the sisters felt while making the film. While Wachowski does not speak about the red pill metaphor in the video, she does touch on other trans themes. When Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted the phrase, 'take the red pill,' and Ivanka Trump quote-tweeted it with 'Taken,' Wachowski responded, 'F**k both of you.' While Trump and Musk did not express which brand of red pill they subscribed to, Wachowski's denouncement is telling. Even Wachowski has denounced prominent people using the meme. Obviously, the hormone therapy subtext in The Matrix does some undermining of The Red Pill's beliefs. Each group's version of taking the red pill serves as a metaphor for being indoctrinated into whatever beliefs they hold.

The red pill has also been taken on by the alt-right, as well as conspiracy theorists and white supremacists, according to New York Magazine. Vulture reported that sexual frustration is also a driving force for red-pillers' vehement anti-feminism beliefs. To put it simply, the average Red-piller thinks, 'Feminism: bad.' The term was popular amongst men's rights activists and birthed the subreddit r/TheRedPill in 2012. According to The Guardian in 2016, the 'truth' that men's rights activists have supposedly been awakened to is a world dominated by women, where men can't express their issues without fear of retribution. The term was originally used to describe people who were aware of the 'unpleasant truths' of the world, but it has widely been used by conspiracy theorists and subsequently, the men's rights movement. It also speaks about the red pill/blue pill dichotomy serving as a metaphor for estrogen hormone therapy, which Chu points out was literally a red pill in the 1990's.ĭespite the narrative of the film being loaded with trans subtext, the 'red pill' has taken on a vastly different meaning online, especially in terms of men's rights activists. Netflix broke down so many of the allegorical references, including Keanu Reeves' character Neo taking on a new name and subsequently renounces his deadname. Not only is the pill literally Neo’s gateway to seeing the world as it is and the systems built to define and control his identity, but it’s also an apt metaphor for hormone therapy. And then there’s the whole red pill, blue pill connection.

Red pill men