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The actor formerly known as Ellen Page

By Tim O'Hare - posted Tuesday, 8 December 2020


Headlines throughout the world said the same 'Ellen Page has come out as transgender.'

'Who's Elliot Page?' You may ask.

Be careful.

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Other organisations said 'the former Juno star'.

'Hey, wait, wasn't it Ellen Page who was in Juno? Not Elliot.'

Hate speech!

Elliot Page has always been Elliot Page, so the media narrative goes. It was on December 1st, 2020 that Elliot Page 'came out' as a transgender man but he has always been a man trapped in a female body.

That was the attitude with 'Caitlyn Jenner', that 'she' had always been 'has always been a woman' and that is the attitude with Elliot Page.

As the Sydney Morning Herald put it, 'Juno Star Elliot Page announces he is transgender.' Just like that, without puberty or any medical procedure, Page has gone from female to male and we have to adjust to believe that it was Elliot Page, not Ellen who was in Juno. That is the new truth, as decided on the 1st of December, 2020, and all points to the contrary have to be erased.

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A quick Google search shows all major news outlets saying 'Elliot Page', a person who did not exist until a few days ago, and 'Ellen Page' has been erased.

Websites would not even dare relay the information logically and linearly with a headline like 'Actor Ellen Page now identifies as a man and prefers to be called Elliot Page'

It is 'Elliot Page' who 'came out', 'Elliot Page' who introduced 'himself' and Elliot Page who wants to be known as 'he/him' .

To a casual reader, this would be confusing. Who is Elliot Page? Is this a male actor who wants to be called he/him? Well, of course, men should have male pronouns and women have female pronouns. Why is this a discussion? Oh, you mean that 'he' was born a 'she' and is now a 'he' but the media is reporting it that 'he' is a 'he' who wants to be a 'he'?

There was a whiff of Moscow about how swiftly websites such as IMDB and Wikipedia fell over themselves to edit their webpages on Page. Page is now 'Elliot Page' and their preferred pronouns are 'he/him' and 'they/them'. There is the brackets saying 'as Ellen Page' after each of Page's past IMDB credits but even that could be erased.

If you were an older person who was not online and did not access celebrity news, in time, you might come to wonder just what happened to that promising young actress that had a breakout performance in 'Hard Candy' in 2005 and became a household name in 2007 with 'Juno'. That identity has been erased and what is displayed is a new identity that is unfamiliar to most of those who have followed Page's career.

'What does Elliot Page's gender identity have to do with you?' Asked a stranger to me in an online forum.

Nothing. I don't know Page and we will likely never meet. I believe people can self-identify however they want.

What I am interested in, is the implications of this change in identity which, in some ways, is uncharted waters.

True, Bruce Jenner became 'Caitlyn Jenner' and the Wachowski Brothers are now credited as 'the Wachowski Sisters'. But, for those figures, there wasn't hours of popularly-viewed celluloid of them in their biological gender.

For a 33-year-old, Page has amassed a decent body of work, appearing in 27 feature films since 2002 and playing a woman in all of them.

What about Page's nomination for Best Actress for 'Juno' in 2008?

If Page has always been a man, does that make him the first man to be nominated for a Best Actress Award?

So, what happens now? Does Page keep playing female roles while living as a man? Will Page still be eligible to be nominated for awards for Best Actress?

Or maybe Page will now take male roles.

Fair play, I'm a firm believer that an actor is qualified to take whatever roles a producer is willing to cast them in. However, I can understand if producers are reluctant to cast the 5"1, 100-pound, feminine-featured Page in male roles.

A few years ago, there was controversy with Scarlett Johansson resigning from playing a transgender character after online backlash. As absurd as that is (acting, as the verb suggests, involves pretending to be someone you're not) what hasn't been discussed is whether that works the other way. Should transgender people be limited to playing transgender roles? As I said, I disagree with the reasoning, but, if you follow the Woke logic that a cis-gendered actor is incapable of playing a transgender character because they are without the lived experience of being transgender, then isn't the reverse true? A transgender actor does not have the lived experience of a cisgender person.

Curiously, IMDB and Wikipedia do not follow the same example for celebrities who have changed their names and identities for other reasons. The pages for Cat Stevens (who goes by Yousaf Islam since converting to Islam in 1977) are still named 'Cat Stevens' as that is the identity where he is most recognised (born Steven Georgiou but performed as 'Cat Stevens') . The same is the case for Sinead O'Connor, who now goes by Shuhada' Sadaqat

And so, they should. It was the free-loving, liberal humanist, Cat Stevens who wrote and performed 'Peace Train', not the uptight Islamist, Yusuf Islam who once endorsed the killing of Salmun Rushdie .

Page can identify as a male but the unavoidable fact is that Page was a female when she came into public attention playing the 14-year-old girl who attempts to expose Patrick Wilson's character as a paedophile in 'Hard Candy', she was a female when she played a teenager who mistakenly fell pregnant in 'Juno' and she was a teenager when she rebelled against gender stereotypes and chose roller derby over beauty pageants in 'Whip It'. For the bulk of her career, Page was a female and it is for those roles that Page is recognised.

To rename Page's IMDB page to 'Elliot Page' and to change Page's pronouns from 'she/her' to 'he/him' is rewriting history.

If Page was always a male, does that mean that the Academy should retrospectively erase the 'Best Actress' nomination from 2008 and nominate her for Best Actor.

Should posters of movies that Page previously starred in which credit her as 'Ellen Page' be confiscated and 'updated' to say Elliot Page?

Should they also change the labels of photos of Page with her new name even if it may be confusing to viewers who know her as 'Ellen'?

Does that mean that teenage boys who fantasized about Page in her role as Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat in 'X-Men: The Last Stand' (2006) and 'X-Men: Days of the Future Past' (2014) were fantasizing about a man?

Does that mean that Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who kissed Page in 'Inception' (2010), kissed a man?

Regardless of what some will admit, there are implications to the boundless inclusivity that is pushed in contemporary society where an individual's self-esteem trumps freedom of expression.

I work on the belief that people have the right to freedom until that freedom interferes with the freedom of others. A person can identify how they please but, when that person prescribes which pronouns they wish to be addressed as and, when websites rename the said celebrity and edit their page to reflect their new pronouns and, when people are chastised for 'deadnaming' trans people, that crosses the line and compromises the freedom of others.

Some would say that it's about kindness to refer to Page by her preferred pronouns. But, when you are dictating how people should think and speak, it's not kindness, it's authoritarianism.

Most people know Page as a woman. That view of her does not change because Page held a press conference where she announced she was a man or because Woke websites now insist that she be called 'he'. Moreover, arguably Page's most famous role was as a pregnant teenage girl. There she was channelling her lived experience (she was 20 at the time playing a 16-year-old) as a young woman who was coming into maturity and dealing with sex and relationships for the first time. Audiences know Page for playing a pregnant woman and that exists in the minds of every audience member. To say that Page and the Wokists on IMDB and Wikipedia have ownership over the image of Page that exists in the audience's collective minds, is the height of totalitarianism.

Maybe Page wants to eschew Hollywood and live a quiet life as a man and, if so, whatever. But, to pretend that Page has always been a man, and, to alter each and every pronoun, is to indulge in authoritarian delusion.

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About the Author

Tim O’Hare is a Sydney-based, freelance commentator, originally from Brisbane. He has written about a range of subjects and particularly enjoys commenting on the culture wars and the intersection between politics, culture, sport, and the arts.

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