It was a bad day for transphobes. Yesterday, Elliot Page — famous for Juno and his current role in the Umbrella Academy — came out as trans. “I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self,” he wrote in a statement.
While trans folks and their allies celebrated the news, so-called “gender critical” transphobes groused, complaining that they’d lost a lesbian to the “trans cult.” On the Gender Critical forum on Saidit, the regulars did their best to explain away Page’s announcement. (CW: Transphobia, biphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, general stupidity.)
“This smells a lot like a well planned publicity move,” complained hfxB0oyA.
“I’m 50% sure this is a publicist imposed idea,” agreed LeaveAmsgAfterBeep,
kind of like how a lot of female musicians claim to be bi and are not because their publishers told them it’d make male fans find them more interesting and make female fans think they have a chance or something.
I don’t think that’s a thing, but whatever.
“I wouldn’t doubt for a second that this is a calculated move from the talent agency and publicist,” added bopomofodojo.
“Come out as trans now, you’ll go up 8% in approval ratings among wokies and that will sell your next role”. … [M]aybe Ellen cough sorry Elliot, just wants to play a transman in an upcoming movie and is concerned about the woke backlash. What better way around it than to just claim she’s a man?
I’m sure there could be personal aspects to it as well. Maybe the Hollywood woke scene finally convinced her that she must really be a man since she doesn’t like dick, who knows. Like everything about genderism, and cults in general, the motivations of the true believers and victims cannot truly be known.
When this shit falls out of fashion – either genderism or Page’s career, whichever is first, I bet she’ll be right back to boring lesbian Ellen Page.
I’ll take the other side of that bet.
“This pathetic jockeying for the limelight has gotten to the point that celebrities should start getting annual awards for the most attention-seeking ways of making use of gender identity idiocy,” wrote someone called MarkTwainiac.
A commenter called yousaythosethings suggested that Elliot — a 33-year-old adult — had been “groomed” into transness by the Human Rights Campaign. “Obviously she’s a grown woman (or was lol), but I’m sure it has been difficult for her to be a tomboyish lesbian in Hollywood,” yousaythosethings added.
Some claimed to have been vaguely traumatized by Page’s announcement.
“I feel like a pit has opened up in my stomach,” wrote Sistersovermisters.
I really loved how she was contributing to gender non-forming expression and just so many different aspects of her, including her lesbian status, made me respect her so much. We were the same height, too!
Now I feel even more alone … .
“[Y]eah I came here to see if anyone else felt this way,” responded Fedup31.
Always related a lot to her. Now feel even more like there’s no place for gender-non-conforming women my age without being expected to be trans.
Others agreed that this was somehow discriminatory against women — at least those of the gender-nonconforming type. Wrote MinisterofTerfery:
What is going on is that people have realized they will get more support and love if they are trans than if they are a gay gender non conforming woman. Netflix is already saying they will incorporate this in The Umbrella Academy. When has [Hollywood] ever bended itself backwards for women like that?
However twisted the logic, this commenter at least sort of recognizes Page as a “he,” not a “she.”
Others questioned Page’s commitment to transness. “W]atch her do nothing more than dress a little more butch, cut the hair, ditch any and all makeup and LARP as a man,” sneered Finnegan7921. “Probably wont do hormones or surgery, but will get cast in trans roles.”
One commenter even complained that Page’s transition will make dating harder for lesbians.
“We’re losing our already tiny pool of lesbians to the trans cult, that’s what’s going on,” wrote Liz-B-Ann.
Those who don’t marry men now feel the need to BECOME them. Does anyone know how fucking depressing it is to be lesbian in 2020? Do they care? No, because we’re just seen as a goddamn fetish for the world. At least gay men generally are secure in their identities as males who love males. Women are so vulnerable to this type of shit. Ugh.
Hope she enjoys having an even tinier dating pool than me tho. Good luck with that.
Page is married.
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@.45
Yeah, that stereotype is pretty pervasive, to the point that the bisexual manifesto has a whole section tearing it down. It’s also probably the main reason I’ve never been out as bi IRL.
@.45 & Naglfar
That stereotype is why the premiere US magazine for bi/pan folks was called Anything That Moves. I used to buy every issue there for a long time. Started collecting them in 91 or 92, I think, buying them in the first feminist sex shop Portland ever had. Later I picked them up at a feminist bookstore that was closer to where I live. I only have a couple issues left after the number of moves I’ve had in the last 20 years, but it was well worth the reading.
A lot of it (not all of it) was topical, of course, so maybe a good portion of the content wouldn’t stand up today when we no longer care about Clinton being a jerk with “don’t ask don’t tell”, but even those things would at least be useful to someone looking at queer history. I should try to find a collection in a library somewhere.
OT, but the entire Jordan Owen thread has apparently disappeared from this site. Reloading it to check for new comments produced a 404! Presumably a malfunction, but a severe one causing a loss of publicly-visible data.
The “incels wonder…” thread is still misrendering, as well.
@Crip Dyke (and anyone else who wants it)
Some dedicated enthusiasts have digitized the entire back catalog:
https://anythingthatmovesarchive.carrd.co/#scans
I haven’t read most of it, but it’s there.
I saw this on Tuesday evening! I was tutoring a high school student and had to look up something in the Canadian Encyclopedia online. I saw that Elliot Page come out as trans and ALSO the encyclopedia updated his name right away, a few hours after he’d made the announcement. So that was sort of heartwarming in this bad-news climate.
Re bi stereotypes: aaaugh, don’t get me started. (I get started…)
This reminds me of something my dad wrote. He’s been trying to mediate between what amounts to pro & anti queer inclusion in a particular church denomination here. Anyway, I don’t know why he showed this file to me, but in one part he wrote that there were legitimate concerns trying to accommodate all sexual minorities, e.g. if someone says they’re bisexual and wants to live with a man and a woman (shocking, shocking).
This made me mad and I was like, “You think there are no monogamous bisexuals? Hello, I am HERE. Look into my EYES” and so on.
Yeah, I was silly and over-the-top. But I think maybe I helped change his mind a bit. To my friend later I said, “I’m not coordinated enough for threesomes” – jokey statement I’d be embarrassed to make to parents – but it’s more of a personality thing, not being that outgoing and all.
But I don’t mean to demean poly folks at the same time! A writer I follow on Twitter talks about being proudly bi and poly (and also trans, which the people quoted above wouldn’t like so much) and it wouldn’t be fair to say “OK, you have to be dating only one person at a time now, because combating stereotypes.”
And I’m lucky. Parents aside, I’m not really frowned on for my orientation – though again, I don’t know gobs of people, so maybe the isolation helps 😛
A lot of people expect a bisexual, or an homosexual for that matter, to regulary have sex corresponding to his/her orientation, so with at least two partner for a bisexual. Because else why define as a bisexual ?
@ ohlmann
If that’s the case then thank goodness this lockdown ended before my heterosexuality wore off! 😀
@Battering Lamb
Am very glad that you have supportive employers in this dumpster fire of a year. I wish more people had them, but I’m overjoyed that you’ve got them when you need them most.
I’ve always found the assumption that bi people will cheat to be bizarre. I mean, the wprld is ful of attractive people who aren’t my husband and I manage to keep my promises. If I were bu, then presumably there’d be twice as many attrative people who weren’t my husband, but I expect I’d still keep my promises
Welp. That was a thing. Personally if this makes him feel better about himself to come out then I’m all for it; don’t know much about his personal life/opinions about anything so gonna assume he’s a decent person.
Personal opinion here: Given how misandrist a lot of the responses seem to be, I’m assuming a lot of these TERFs are actually feminist, mostly because I don’t see any ideology/opinion making you automatically a decent person even if some ideologies/opinions do automatically make you an asshole (i.e. if someone is a fascist, they’re automatically an asshole; if someone is anti-fascist, they’re not automatically decent). While I’m fully aware that the vast majority of feminists aren’t misandrists, there is a small minority that undoubtedly is, especially amidst the more hardcore fringes like woman/lesbian separatists; as such, like other hateful people, they put their hatred above everything else, which likely fuels a hatred of trans people (trans women are actually crossdressing predators, trans men are either confused, self-hating or gender traitors). I think that makes them susceptible to TERF rhetoric, and easy to recruit as fellow travellers/deflector shields by the more right-wing TERFs.
If more knowledgeable people here wish to correct me/elaborate, please do so; I prefer knowledge to opinions any day.
@Paireon
Summed up by Niven’s Law: No cause is ever so pure and noble that it won’t attract fuckheads.
@Paireon
Some may be, but I would be hesitant to say a lot. For one, there’s a big difference between hating men and being a feminist, much as hating white people is not the same as being an anti-racist. For two, they don’t appear to hate men as a whole, they appear to specifically hate trans men. Then, there’s the fact that presumably if they believe (incorrectly) that Elliot is a woman and are feminists, presumably they still wouldn’t have this sense of entitlement to his body because that would be antifeminist.
TL;DR, although it’s impossible for me to say for sure given the information here, I would not consider any of the views expressed by the OPs to be feminist.
@Dalillama – Ain’t that the truth. Goes hand-in-hand with an observation of mine (that someone else I’m unaware of has surely made and recorded for posterity, probably in better words): for every person, there’s an asshole.
@Naglfar – Thanks for your thoughts on this; gotta say I tend to be wary of anything even remotely related/resembling a “no true Scotsman” argument though, and having people overall following an ideology while simultaneously betraying it/holding some tenets contrary to it (for good or ill) is a very common human trait.
I’m just wary of people in general (myself included).
@Paireon : I didn’t have seen much misandrist being feminist TBH. Hating male isn’t the same as doing jack shit for women, and the people you describe are AFAIK a lot more concerned with making people suffer than doing anything for anyone.
Similarly, MTGOW and the like aren’t in favor of men right.
I’m finding their “oh, no, we can’t hit it anymore” attitude every bit as gross and objectifying as those sites with the countdown clocks for when a young woman celebrity becomes “legal” ?
“plenty of bisexual peoples are monogamous for long period of time.”
Yep. I was monogamous with my late wife for the 17 years we had together. I remember when we first got together, she cautioned me that people were going to think I was a lesbian now (I was dating a guy before I met her). I asked her if she thought being out as a bisexual was going to be viewed any better, and she admitted it wasn’t.
As a gal who’s never been super “gender conforming” I am always VERY confused at this idea that trans guys are somehow…making things harder for us? Like, Elliot Page in no way effected my sense of dress before or after transitioning. So how is he hurting me? I’ve still got my boots, jeans, and short hair (well, the latter only after my mother finally cut it for me, coronavirus sux and I am NOT going in a salon right now).
He’s not, of course. It’s just a variant on the old fundie fear that someone, somewhere is having fun/being happy.
Also, side note: stop adding to the rightwing noise machine that is trying to amplify the divide of rad fems/lesbians vs. trans people. I suspect, when the dust settles, we’ll find that there is some serious false flagging fanning the flames (alliteration!) and religious conservatism infiltrating trans rights activism. The infighting is gross and a lot of people — including lesbians and people who legitimately call themselves feminists — are being assholes. But Progressives need to let it play out, let the good people figure out that they’re being assholes, and focus on the solidarity, laws, and support that we can create together. Making a thing out of the transphobia coming from an INCREDIBLY marginalized group (especially justifying your outrage by playing Oppression Olympics, not that you’ve evoked that, but it comes up often enough) is doing the job of the misogynistic alt-right for them. Your platform is better than that.