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Americans found themselves divided into two camps this week — the mildly skeptical and the fervently disinterested — when the actress formally known as Ellen Page announced she was a boy called Elliot and, in fact, always has been a boy.
In the proclamation, posted to Instagram, Page not only came out as transgender — meaning she was born one sex but identifies as the other — but also as non-binary — which means she actually has no sex. Yes, it makes no sense. But try not to think too much about, she clearly hasn’t either.
You’re forgiven if you might be hesitant to rewrite the science textbooks for a 33-year-old actress so gullible she wept on national television over the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax. (A word of advice going forward to the newest member of my gender: there’s nothing manly about crying on TV). For many, Page seems to embody a sort of boutique transgenderism we’re all now accustomed to seeing, a prêt-à-porter queer identity that is so mired with inconsistency and highfalutin gender theory as to be rendered utterly meaningless.
Still, following Page’s big reveal, yucksters on social media squawked with the usual tongue-in-cheek observations: as a white male does this mean Page now has privilege? Did Page steal dozens of parts from female actors? Is her wife now heterosexual? Does her Best Actress nomination now render the Academy transphobic? And that breakout role as a pregnant teenager in the film Juno just got very avant-garde.
This is no longer an effective strategy against the agents of liberalism. Transgender ideology has become so muddled the left threw in the towel on the Sisyphean effort to explain and defend all its inherent contradictions. Cheer, hit the ‘like’ button, don’t think too much about it, the marching orders go.
And leave it to Big Tech to immediately correct the historical record in Elleniot’s service. There was never someone named Ellen and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Google inserted the name ‘Elliot’ into all search results and Wikipedia was wiped clean. Even the official account of Instagram commented on Page’s announcement, writing, ‘hello Eliot and thank you for using your voice and sharing your story.’
Of course Instagram would chime in: the platform is nothing more than a galaxy of manufactured identities. From another perfect day on the Grecian islands, to the feigned naïveté of a thirsty gym selfie, to eradicating basic biology by throwing on a baseball cap and baggy t-shirt — Instagram’s model isn’t the twee, one-dimensional veneer of human contentment displayed across the platform, but the crippling loneliness and desperate search for validation that festers just below the surface.
In 2014, Page made a splash when she came out as a lesbian in the most high-profile way possible. Which begs another question: did she know she was a man at the time? If so, why the two-tiered approach? Or, as most people suspect, did Page simply miss seeing her name in the headlines and, like many millennial endorphin-junkies, capitalize a chance to cook up a hot needle of false, detached, insincere digital validation?
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No one is more quietly peeved at Elleniot than America’s beleaguered lesbians. Lesbian culture is going extinct and Page is only the most recent death knell. There are only 15 lesbian bars remaining in the entire United States. Many LGBs quietly wonder if the transgender wave, particularly where children are concerned, is a massive and sinister gay conversion therapy program. Maybe that’s among the reasons Democrats like Iran so much — the Islamic fiefdom performs more gender reassignment surgeries than any nation on earth, funded by the government as a perceived cure for homosexuality.
All of this only works to discredit the entire thing. Elleniot comes off looking like a spoiled teenager. Even if most Americans don’t understand gender dysphoria they tend to be compassionate and default to a live-and-let-live attitude toward transgender individuals.
For decades, transsexualism, as it was formally known, was a private affair. For those struggling, the preservation of human dignity would have been paramount in the confines of a doctor-patient relationship. But today the trans movement isn’t concerned with tolerance or civil rights or quiet dignity, but seeks to push the boundaries on how far activists can fundamentally alter reality. Transgenderism has become a circus and a political weapon — as well as perhaps the most destructive and contradictory pseudo-philosophy of our time. And that does real damage to actual transgender individuals who’ve watched their private struggle get co-opted by teeny-boppers, social Marxists and/or perhaps developmentally-stunted Hollywood actors.
