The actor formerly known as Ellen Page

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.