the butterfly conservatory

castration movie two

March 3, 2026

as compared to the first, i spend the five hours of the second castration movie in much more comfortable conditions: on the floor of my apartment with unlimited diet coke, popcorn, and a cheese-less anchovy and hot pepper pizza (extra crispy) with friends. much more amenable to such a long viewing.

the second movie primarily runs around circle (played by lex walton) getting tortured by and joining a cult composed of various other trans women who have been up to some amount of antics in their prior lives, an ai(?) named polygon which provides niche internet trans content amounting to self harm to the cult members, and a possible leader-youtuber who records the process. after further alienation, circle chooses to leave the cult, first picking up her things from her former friend’s house (during this process, said former friend attempts to have sex with her), then meeting a woman at a party who insists that circle’d be very pretty as a boy. already disturbed by the earlier events and likely lacking a stable identity due to the general circumstances of her life, circle begins to consider detransitioning while talking with her new friend.

expectedly, circle gets kidnapped and thrown in a dog cage while retrieving her mug from the cult bushwick basement apartment, then tortured while doused in various hormonal slimes. keller saves her; circle proceeds to detransition.

the movie itself continues with the drawn-out scenes which struck me in the first; it requires the viewer’s attention and makes every instance of social dis-concordance incredibly excruciating. a particularly well-shot scene is the double-cut party scene with circle wallflowering on the couch as a simultaneous conversation occurs on the other side. not only is this scene personally relatable on both sides, the composition does a stellar job at making clear circle’s distance from the world; it seems as if she simply does not want to exist anymore, unmoored from everything.

drawing from prior movies, some of the worst traits of the characters are demonstrated via their connection to the online world, printing our 4chan posts to rehash their worst thoughts against each other. forums such as these – and possibly the internet at-large – reinforce peoples’ worst behaviors by trapping them in bubbles of belief which elevate the most narcissistic traits (example: everyone is watching you all the time to clock you –> you are thinking too much about yourself) and simultaneously casting everyone else as an outgroup which seeks to harm them. that the cast is physically in the basement as a way to isolate themselves is a manifestation of these beliefs.

community doesn’t exist in the sense that these people believe in; rather it is an idol which the isolated elevate and naively seek. try having friends first. those in abject groups often seek community after being isolated from them their entire lives. while a human reaction, reifying the end goal neglects the process by which it forms. by common belief and shared assistance, not to mention the sacrifices it takes. occasionally, one has to deal with those they dislike. at the extremes, any community has the drunk mom, the pervy uncle, and such. just as there is a world outside one’s actual family, any all-consuming community – whether that be in belief or demand – is highly suspect. isolated groups are often drawn toward these as they answer the need many of us have! this does not make them good, especially when said groups’ members are not capable of the social mores that many of the socially isolated lack.

the new component of this anthology is detransition; to generalize this, call it the fluidity of identity. circle first encounters keller, who at one point in her life identified as non-binary and became increasingly uncomfortable with this. there is nothing wrong with a forage such as this; let everyone be free and loose with their self-conception, though it ought to be remembered that any isolated case does not speak for the whole. in keller’s case, this adventure convinces her of the illusory sense of identification (good) while also informing her that all such explorations lack substance (bad).

meanwhile, circle is incredibly isolated and unhappy. much of the cult’s torture revolves around gender identity; furthermore she ultimately wants to matter to others. external/mental gender as it relates to circle and the truth does not matter in this discussion; we can only debate whether she ends up happy. the movie does not provide an answer. trans viewers, drawing off their own experiences, are likely to understand her as deeply suffering. other audiences may applaud her for her choice, and so on. personally, i didn’t see it as clear cut either way aside from her situational pain.

“is detransition socially acceptable?” and “is there an internal sense of gender?” naturally fall out of this movie with no answer from the source. the rest of this review will attempt to discuss these questions.

to answer the first – absolutely. if one can conceive of the ability to change one’s gender, such a process may work in both directions. one who has ventured across such set lines must be possessed with a respected confidence. this is only controversial because others may use this as an example to portray all who defy these lines as fickle or insubstantial (such as keller). understandably, there is a reaction to protect oneself against these painful claims as transition comes with significant social, monetary, and physical costs.

this brings us to question #2 - what foundation does a claim of gender stand on? there are many works which attempt to answer this and i will not write a book on the topic. a suggested reading list includes:

• the second sex, simone de beauvoir¹
• impro, keith johnstone²
• orlando, virginia woolf³
• the straight mind, monique wittig⁴
• on becoming a person, carl rodgers⁵
• xenofeminist manifesto, labronia cuboniks⁶
• writing a woman’s life, caroline heilbrun⁷
• gender trouble, judith butler⁸
• the portable feminist reader, roxanne gay⁹
• anti-oedipus, deleuze and guatarri¹⁰

these books have informed my personal view of identity in a variety of ways which are wildly inconsistent when interrogated at length, but largely i find the following:

material\social\biological gender is real in that women are expected to perform certain roles determined by how society (primarily men) see them regardless of the capability to actually perform the expectations put upon them. furthermore, this perception is primarily informed by one’s presentation or performance of this role; this performance being modifiable by affiliation with both biological and non-biological factors. whether one’s chooses to do so stems from the degree of satisfaction they get by living in this role; some are so discordant between their satisfaction with their current and ideal role that they choose to undergo this process (though it must be said that ideals do not always live up to reality and thus detransitioners exist). what the material basis of this discongruence in role satisfaction is not mine to say; i am not a mind reader, doubly so given the commodification of identity under the current economic system. thus, i leave it up to those who are able to accurately reflect upon and describe their mental states¹¹

in keller’s case, she idealized a more androgynous perception but became uncomfortable with it and ceased. brody enjoyed his femininity, but the lack of solid philosophical foundation as to why he did caused him distress. for circle, though she was happy, her performance led her into less-than-ideal circumstances which decreased her net happiness such that her detransition may have improved her life while making her feel worse in the gendered aspect of that calculation.

in the real world i have many friends who have transgressed these identities bidirectionally to seek happiness; it is only my place to receive their newfound happiness as any other blessing. truthfully, the only internal sense which matters is the actors’ satisfaction at the results. in this castration movie two leaves us on a much higher note than the other parts of the anthology.