Journalists, politicians, and celebrities have gone about embracing the insanity of transgender orthodoxy to various degrees. The more rational among them, like J.K. Rowling, have rightly warned about the dangers of remaking society to kowtow to the demands of people who insist their “real” gender identity conflicts with their biological sex. Yet many in key positions of power have bought the madness hook, line, and sinker. They seem all too willing to rewrite history when a celebrity like actress Ellen Page announces she is “now a man” and will go by “Elliot Page.”
While it seems quite reasonable to accept a person’s name change and to refer to Ellen Page as “Elliot,” it would be absurd to go back through Ellen Page’s actress credits and change her name to “Elliot.” After all, Ellen Page played female roles and identified as “Ellen” at the time. Perhaps future acting credits should name her as “Elliot Page,” but past credits should not be changed.
Yet many websites edited their entries for movies and television shows that featured Ellen Page, referring to her as “Elliot Page.”
Take the movie Juno, for example. In the 2007 film, Ellen Page played the titular role of Juno MacGuff, a pregnant teenage girl who decides to carry her baby boy to term and give him up for adoption. A man would never have to face this difficult situation and Page — a woman — portrayed a very convincing teenage girl facing such a dilemma. Yet many websites for Juno now list the actress as “Elliot Page.”
Here’s IMDb, which credits “Elliot Page” for Ellen Page’s role in Juno. To be fair, IMDb notes that Page considered herself to be “Ellen Page” at the time.
The Wikipedia entry for Juno also credits Ellen Page as “Elliot,” although it includes an asterisk near the star’s name.
Amazon Prime Video credits “Elliot Page” as the star of Juno.
Also VIP: Why I Call J.K. Rowling a Moderate on Transgender Issues
The popular film rating website Rotten Tomatoes preserved the 2007 summary of Juno which credits Ellen Page for the role, but it changed Ellen Page’s name to “Elliot Page” when it comes to crediting the actress on its website.
Fox Searchlight Pictures, the film’s distributor, is one of the very few websites to credit “Ellen Page” as the actress, with no mention of her later identity as “Elliot.”
Netflix also changed the listing of Ellen Page on its website for The Umbrella Academy (2019-), in which Page plays a woman.
Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted an interesting feature of The New York Times article reporting Ellen Page’s decision to “come out” as transgender. Times reporter Maya Salam used the male pronoun “he” to refer to Page when recounting Page’s decision to come out as lesbian in 2014.
Mohler notes that “back in 2014, when Ellen Page came out of the closet as gay, Ellen Page was a woman, and still is by the way, but was identifying as a woman and was using the female pronouns in such a way that if you go back to that program of the Human Rights Campaign conference in Las Vegas in 2014, you will not find ‘Elliot Page.'”
If transgender ideology mandates that the Times refer to 2014 Ellen Page as a “he,” then in what sense could “Elliot Page” have been a lesbian? Doesn’t this transgender revision of history imply that “Elliot Page” was never lesbian at all?
In fact, many lesbian feminists object to transgenderism, arguing that it often works out to a form of gay-to-straight “conversion therapy” in cases like this one.
Of course, even if “Elliot Page” takes testosterone and undergoes surgery to physically remove her female organs, she will still be female in important respects. The sex-based developmental differences between men and women begin in the womb, and every non-egg cell in her body has two X chromosomes, marking her as female at the cellular level. Her body will react differently to some drugs based on the fact that she is female, no matter how much she protests. Her hips are wider, her shoulders are narrower, and even her hands and feet are different than they would be if she was a male.
It is considered “transphobic” to point out these facts, but that does not make them any less true. The actress formerly known as Ellen Page can go by whatever name she likes, but she will never be a male. Many of her fellow lesbians are ashamed that she would ever want to be one.
Of course, Ellen Page is not the only celebrity that transgender activists insist must be retroactively misgendered. As Mohler also pointed out, the journalist and author James Morris later “came out” as transgender, going by the name “Jan.” When the Associated Press reported the death of James Morris last month, the paper used the female pronoun “she” to refer to Morris when he accompanied Edmund Hillary on an expedition to Mount Everest in 1953. For what it’s worth, Morris identified as male at the time — and his body remained male throughout his life.
In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh Akhenaten briefly established a form of monotheism. This greatly angered the priestly class, and when Akhenaten died, pharaohs abolished his religion and ordered his name chiseled off of national monuments. This could not erase the truth of what Akhenaten had done, however.
Similarly, transgender activists wish to rewrite history, striking each figure’s true biological sex from the record as if some nebulous gender identity were the real truth. It does not matter that no director would have cast a man for the role of Juno, transgender orthodoxy dictates that the manly male “Elliot Page” played the role of the pregnant teenage girl. It does not matter that James Morris would have been aghast if newspapers called him female in 1953.
For this radical movement, the transgender identity is the real identity, and history must be rewritten to honor the “real” identity of figures like Page and Morris.
What fresh insanity will these radicals think of next, and how long will it be before any departure from that will be considered high heresy?
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
