HEY ELLENIOT, AREN’T YOU A BIT TOO OLD FOR THIS?
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.’
Sure enough, “Eliot’s” IMDB page now lists “him” as “actor” and for the first time that I’ve seen on IMDB, refers to an “actor” as “they” in “his,” err, “their?” bio. The 21st century is not only stranger than we can imagine, it is stranger than even George Orwell could have imagined.