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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Pretty sure there’s more than one way to be trans, but OK Finnegan7921!
Not only is Page married, but his wife has issued an official message of support.
I’ve been a big fan of his work since Hard Candy, and I’m interested in seeing what happens with his role in The Umbrella Academy. I like that Netflix has updated the descriptions to say “Elliot Page” and if you search for his former name, you’re redirected to his current name.
That’s funny, they keep saying that TERF is a slur. It’s almost like they’re lying…
I confess I didn’t know who Elliot Page was until he came out, but good for him nevertheless and I support him.
I originally read this as “Wookies” and since that sounds better I’ll think of it that way. Chewbacca says trans rights.
And that doesn’t sound at all like a dogwhistle.
This is just a weird thing to obsess over.
I know a lot of GNC women and no one is forcing them to be trans. Transphobes are too busy harassing them on the suspicion that they’re trans.
TERFs: “Trans people are ruining their bodies with hormones and surgery!”
Also TERFs: “Trans people aren’t getting enough hormones and surgery! Aah!”
I saw a lot of this on Twitter earlier and it stuck out to me as really gross. The level of entitlement cis TERFs have to trans peoples’ bodies is disgusting.
Also, IIRC Elliot’s wife is very supportive of him coming out.
Did anyone else notice that they are consistently misgendering Elliot Page, or at least gendering him with language they haven’t used for himself?
Page specifically says in the announcement that their pronouns are he/they, which is definitely more masculine-inclusive than she or she/they, but Elliot never says, “I am a man.” Instead they say: “I am trans.”
We don’t know what that means to Page, but he’s smart enough that if they wanted to say, “II am a man” he certainly could have done that.
Fuck them and the cissexism they rode in on.
For people who are interested, I’ve written a couple pieces on this already & will be writing more.
The first two are here & here. This is a much bigger deal than merely celebrity personal lives made news.
“Like everything about genderism, and cults in general, the motivations of the true believers and victims cannot truly be known.”
Too bad you can’t, you know, ask them or something…
As a total aside, does anyone else find this language deeply weird:
If you said you were “50% sure” that a coin would land tails up, should you really be using “sure” in your description at all?
I mean, I understand what they’re trying to express, I think, so I could stop worrying about the syntactic niceties, but it really is weirding me out.
The idea that this grown adult is being “groomed” by someone to be trans is really a take. This people are just showing themselves to be like misogynist who don’t think people with vaginas are able to be grown adults.
@Crip Dyke
They should try publishing in a scientific journal with a p-value of 0.5 and see where that gets them.
@Lainy
That stuck out to me as well. Transphobes always infantilize transmasculine people, and just can’t conceive of them as adults capable of make their own decisions. Meanwhile they view all transfeminine people, even young girls, as predatory. All while claiming that they’re feminists and against stereotypes.
Sort of ridiculous that an actor would come out as transmasc to get roles when there’s a lot more roles out there for cis women and purely in terms of getting work, it’d be a lot safer and easier for Elliot Page to continue to present as a cis women. Because his career was doing quite well as it was.
Seconding the love for Hard Candy. Considering that it’s about a predatory men being given his comeuppance by a teenage girl, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more whining from the manosphere and alt-right about it. Maybe now, there will be!
I kinda get the people who could be distressed at the idea of losing “an ambassador” of their particular sexual minority, but the transphobia is simply excessive.
@epronovost
I still think it’s wrong, though. They’re angry that he’s no longer in their dating pool that they have limited to cis women. Nevermind that he’s married, nevermind that he still is the same person, they still think they’re entitled to his body. That’s all it is, sexual entitlement.
@epronovost
There are a lot of other butch cis lesbians out in the world. They could just be happy for him that he’s living his truth and move on and keep any hurt feelings to themselves because it’s not about them. to me it sounds like “damn, i wish you stayed in the closet because it benefits me and that’s all i really care about”
Oh no, that interview with Bolsonaro must have been hell for him. It looked uncomfortable for a lesbian, for a trans man welp, I feel nauseous just thinking about it.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for these types (if they didn’t also engage in harassment etc) if they just said “discussions I was once the center of have now broadened in scope. I find the new language and ideas alienating and disorientating, my ideology no longer matches with the lived experience of people I feel should be my allies (and for some reason, also my “dating pool”). I don’t understand it, I find it frightening, but I’m gonna keep those thoughts to myself, stop telling people I know better than them, and refer to people as they have asked to be referred to like any other polite human being”.
You don’t always have to understand or empathize with something to be a lowest-bar level of decent person. You don’t even have to listen to people if you don’t want, and remain as ignorant between the own four walls of your head as you like. It’s not ideal, but like the granddad who’s a bit behind the times so simply just stops talking when he realises what he’s said might upset people, you don’t have to go out of your way to be a arsehole. Instead, people who were once apparently feminists have made prejudice their defining viewpoint and “activism”. It’s baffling.
Considering the man-LARPing: It isn’t a matter of being trans enough, it’s a matter of what solution fixes you specific brand of dysphoria. Not having the surgery or hormones is perfectly valid. I plan to do both because my dysphoria is very body-focused, and it’s very possible I’ll find more importance in the social aspect when that starts (pronouns, namechange etc. Something I already experiment with in trans spaces).
On that note, I came out to my employers yesterday, who were also very supportive and understanding, and who stressed that if there’s anything they can do to make things easier/better I just had to ask. It will be some time before I actually start the whole transitioning thing, since there’s a waiting list, but it’s good to know I have a strong support network.
I hope for the best for anyone else who is struggling. Hope you have at least half the luck I’ve had so far (though all of it would be preferred).
I don’t know a lot about TERFs, but don’t they usually hate people who don’t conform to gender roles?
Complaining about gender – or absence of – seems a constant nowadays.
It is not fully related but not fully unrelated too :
i bought Empire of Sin and it has been released about yesterday. Sure, there are bugs, and of course a lot of people complaining about it (at least on Steam). Nothing wrong with that (except the entitlement of randoms EXIGING vehemently that their bug be corrected IMMEDIATLY).
But outside the bugs, the louder complaints come from people judging that there are too many “woman” bosses, not enough cis men in the henchmen roster, that the top three henchmen being an a-gender (i think the term trans*man was not yet coined in 1920) and two women is an insult, because in their reality, prohibition and “gangs” were only a “man” thing, and so on. So, that is the usual “Go woke, go broke” stuff, and the “reality was different”, the director of the project being a woman, you guess there advice about that (but they bought the game anyway, do not ask for logic). It is a game. It was not meant to be realistic. Nowhere in the reality you enter a building, kill some people and claim it as yours, while it immediately fill itself with employees. Nowhere in reality Capone was an ace of the Tommygun. And their fucking “reality” is just the deformed image of the Prohibition and mafia they have from movies from The Godfather to Scarface.
And that is why you can hardly play a game without hearing the howling of the misogynist herd outside. Gamergate is not dead, alas.
Also, I’m ace, but…
Edit: How do you add a picture? Because I flubbed that big time.
@Amadaun
That is correct, they do hate people who don’t conform. They usually claim otherwise to try to look better, but they usually really hate people who don’t conform. Hence why, among other things, they often say that harassment of GNC women is acceptable collateral damage to keep trans women out.
As for images, you can embed an image from the web by pasting its URL. Make sure it ends with an image extension like .png or .jpg.
@occasional reader
I don’t get the fascination with historical shit anyway generally. I’ve seen it come up a lot very recently. I still want more games from the 2000s onwards or set in the future.
The point about fake lesbian reminded me of a couple of singers who had a lesbian persona on scene but each was in a stable heterosexual couple.
The thing being, even that’s not a proof of not being bisexual. AFAIK, plenty of bisexual peoples are monogamous for long period of time.
Apart from that, bleurgh at all thoses hateful fuckers. Especially here, anybody with half a brain would correctly guess that Page will hurt his career much more than help it going out of the closet. I applaud his courage.
@Ohlmann
Yes, most are in monogamous relationships. The stereotype of bisexual people as promiscuous isn’t accurate irl.
Oh, those poor FARTS! A celebrity they liked has let them down without considering their feelings. How rude! Perhaps someone should, oh I don’t know, do an interpretive dance or something to soothe those ruffled feathers? Or maybe they could grow up and realize that people in the public eye are still people and entitled to their own lives and don’t owe them anything besides the best work they can do?
I never have understood the popular fixation on celebrities. It never seems (to me) to go anywhere constructive.
@Naglfar
“Yes, most are in monogamous relationships. The stereotype of bisexual people as promiscuous isn’t accurate irl.”
The first time I heard that particular belief was when one of my sisters was trying to decide whether or not she should tell her boyfriend she was bi. My mother suddenly goes “But how do you think he is going to respond to finding out you’re cheating on him?!?!” The rest of us were all “Wait, what?”