On her Instagram page, Ellen “Elliot” Page regularly posts photographs of her new life as a male. She’s smiling in almost all of them, but the smiles never seem to reach her eyes — and no matter how many celebratory emojis and supportive comments are posted, there is something heartbreaking and tragic about the shirtless photos that display her red, jagged chest scars and mangled nipples where the surgeon removed her breasts. As I noted several years ago when TIME published a photo essay and feature article on her “gender transition,” lauding her transformation and her “joy,” she still looked desperately sad — as if she had endured a tragedy.
As Page’s new memoir Pageboy reveals, she has endured many — and I suspect that the predation Page has suffered at the hands of Hollywood abusers has much to do with the confusion she has lived through for years.
According to Page’s new memoir, the film industry was a minefield for a young girl starting out in the business. An unnamed filmmaker stroked her thigh under the table at a fancy dinner at a French diner in downtown Toronto and groomed her with “frequent texts [that] made me feel special, as did the books he gifted me.” At one point he told her, “You have to make the move, I can’t.” In a chapter titled “Leeches,” Page related that a crew member had done the same thing, at one point grabbing her and pulling her to himself. That man, who is now a director, followed her into her department, pushed her down, and performed a sex act. She told him to get out. He slept on the couch anyway.
“Leeches,” you might remember, are bloodsucking parasites.
On another film set, Page — who previous to identifying as “transgender” in December 2020 came out as a lesbian in 2014 — was allegedly assaulted repeatedly by a female crew member. Feeling isolated, insecure, and alone, Page wrote that she was “a perfect target for sexual predators.” The film industry made her more vulnerable. “In new cities, with no friends, alone in hotel rooms, it was not hard for someone to prey,” she wrote. “I’m sure they sense that.” Many of Page’s descriptions are too graphic to bear repeating, but the picture she paints is clear.
It is bewildering to me that, considering the irreversible and life-changing results of sex-change surgeries and cross-sex hormones, that there is so little interest by progressives in examining how life experiences — particularly traumatic sexual experiences and abuse — impacts one’s view of se x, gender, and orientation. Many researchers, including Abigail Shrier (author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters) and Mary Harrington (author of Feminism Against Progress) have noted the connection between how ubiquitous violent pornography has transformed the sexual landscape and the exploding trend of girls and young women deciding to reject femininity entirely.
I never looked at things from this perspective but this makes sooo much sense. As a woman who is by nature a guys girl, athlete, I crave being treated feminine and can’t understand this sort of thing, but it’s because of my nature predators don’t target me. You have opened my eyes to the other side of the coin. It’s a tuff world out there for Women and let’s face it, the world would be a better place if we ran things rather then ran from them.
You act like only men are evil. Wow. The world is as good as humanity can be in this day and age, not because girls would be better, but because government don’t have the necessary ressources to treat all problems, and acknowledge them. Girls running would be better for girls, not for men. That’s why parity in key places is a better solution. Making this a battle of the sexes is the definition of an argumentative fallacy and a strawman, to avoid facing real issues. Predators probably don’t target you because you are high on the social ladder (social ease, popularity) and they can’t use their social ease to sell you that you are artificially gaining social ease by hanging with them. A ressource you probably don’t lack. With your discourse, I wouldn’t be surprised you are a predator, to some extent. Lying, deceiving and manipulating people with lower social ease that you envy open-mindedness-wise or mentality-wise, comes to mind. Your comment is somewhat predatory. Also, this article only hints at abuse as Elliot Page’s reason for transitionning, when her other life complexes, that have nothing to do with sexual abuse, could also strongly affect why she changed sex. “Being born in the wrong body” could be an excuse to not face feelings of inadequacy that could be completely unrelated.
While I agree that hormonal sex transition makes no sense, there is no mention of gender fluidity, gender forced conformism or heteronormy as reasons that can influence that choice, albeit not necessarily a good one. And no hint that recognition from society of gender fluidity, biological homosexuality and dangers of gender conformism could actually be good solutions to stop this plastic surgery madness. I strongly believe this article is intended for propaganda and is posing itself, in bad faith, as an honest assessment.
Sorry, but this is sad. You can be a masculine female. Society and social media and the left pushes this on people.
I never looked at things from this perspective but this makes sooo much sense. As a woman who is by nature a guys girl, athlete, I crave being treated feminine and can’t understand this sort of thing, but it’s because of my nature predators don’t target me. You have opened my eyes to the other side of the coin. It’s a tuff world out there for Women and let’s face it, the world would be a better place if we ran things rather then ran from them.
You act like only men are evil. Wow. The world is as good as humanity can be in this day and age, not because girls would be better, but because government don’t have the necessary ressources to treat all problems, and acknowledge them. Girls running would be better for girls, not for men. That’s why parity in key places is a better solution. Making this a battle of the sexes is the definition of an argumentative fallacy and a strawman, to avoid facing real issues. Predators probably don’t target you because you are high on the social ladder (social ease, popularity) and they can’t use their social ease to sell you that you are artificially gaining social ease by hanging with them. A ressource you probably don’t lack. With your discourse, I wouldn’t be surprised you are a predator, to some extent. Lying, deceiving and manipulating people with lower social ease that you envy open-mindedness-wise or mentality-wise, comes to mind. Your comment is somewhat predatory. Also, this article only hints at abuse as Elliot Page’s reason for transitionning, when her other life complexes, that have nothing to do with sexual abuse, could also strongly affect why she changed sex. “Being born in the wrong body” could be an excuse to not face feelings of inadequacy that could be completely unrelated.
She’ll always be Ellen Page. Calling herself Elliott doesn’t mean she’s a man now. Having her breasts removed doesn’t make that a man’s chest.
While I agree that hormonal sex transition makes no sense, there is no mention of gender fluidity, gender forced conformism or heteronormy as reasons that can influence that choice, albeit not necessarily a good one. And no hint that recognition from society of gender fluidity, biological homosexuality and dangers of gender conformism could actually be good solutions to stop this plastic surgery madness. I strongly believe this article is intended for propaganda and is posing itself, in bad faith, as an honest assessment.