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The younger member of filmmaker siblings The Wachowskis has come out publicly as trans after being approached by The Daily Mail. The Wachowskis, formerly known as The Wachowski Brothers, became famous for their hit film The Matrix and its sequels. They also made V for Vendetta, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Rising.
Fearing exposure by the tabloid, Lilly Wachowski opted to join her sister Lana and speak out about being trans.
‘So yeah, I’m transgender,’ she wrote in the Chicago LGBT paper Windy City Times. ‘I’m out to my friends and family. Most people at work know, too. Everyone is cool with it.’
Wachowski said she had been surprised by a reporter from The Daily Mail who asked for an interview about her transition. She subsequently slammed the paper for its 2012 outing of transgender teacher Lucy Meadows.
‘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 . . . 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!”‘
She went on to say, ‘Being transgender is not easy. When you’re transgender you have to face the hard reality of living in a world that’s openly hostile to you.’
The Daily Mail, however, has said it, ‘DailyMail.com categorically denies that it in anyway tried to coerce Lilly Wachowski into revealing her gender transition.
‘As Ms. Wachowski herself says, we were not the first media organization to approach her and we made absolutely clear at several points in the conversation that we were only interested in reporting the story if and when she was happy for us to do so and with her cooperation’
Lilly’s older sister, Lana Wachowski, began living openly as a woman in 2000, although she first spoke about it to the media in 2012.
Nick Adams, GLAAD’s Director of Programs for Transgender Media, said, ‘GLAAD is thrilled that Lilly Wachowski is able to be her true and authentic self today, however, she should not have been forced to disclose her transgender identity before she was ready to do so. 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.’
Giving The Daily Mail and other tabloids a helping hand, GLAAD has created an online guide to journalists on how to report on trans issues and this story in particular.
