'I, too, was living a double life': Why trans fans connect to 'The Matrix'

Erin Reed was thirteen when she watched The Matrix for the first time.

In the mornings, she would log into internet chat rooms with a feminine screen name and talk to her online friends. Then she would return to school and her real life, where everyone knew her as male.

"There's a quote in the original Matrix movie where basically Agent Smith sits down and says, 'Mr. Anderson, it seems that you've been living two lives,'" Reed explains, referencing a scene where the protagonist's hacker persona Neo is uncovered. "I remember that line stuck with me as a teenager because I, too, was living a double life."

At the time, Reed was just beginning to understand that she was transgender. When she got back from school, the first thing she would do was run to her computer, where she was allowed to be herself again. This was back when you had to compete with a landline to load a web page, and her mom eventually bought a separate phone line because she was online so often.

follows computer hacker Neo, who discovers the shocking truth that the life he knows is really a complex computer simulation designed by intelligent machines to enslave humanity. He has always questioned his reality, but now he must choose whether or not to embrace his