about Elliot Page

I'm on record saying "trans" people are not mentally ill. My general stance regarding trans folk has been out there for some time; if you need a refresher, read this post from 2018.

Now, however, I may have to admit, grudgingly, that some trans folks haz teh krayzee.  Perky, cute, and petite lesbian actress Ellen Page recently outed herself as trans, and she renamed herself Elliot Page while requesting/demanding that she be referred to as "he/him/sir" from now on.  Page is (was? if Ellen no longer exists?) a very talented actress, but I have to wonder whether she's got all her marbles.  You can just declare yourself to be of the opposite sex?

Titania McGrath, for those who don't know, is a fictional personality on Twitter whose job is to humorously skewer leftists and their often self-contradictory, hypocritical positions.  The shtick is that McGrath is herself a rabid feminist, but the things she says totally undermine her avowed stance.  Here's a case in point (seen on Instapundit):

McGrath's hilarious tweet does, in fact, spark certain thoughts.  If white-male privilege is so awful, why on earth would Ellen Page ever want to transition into white maleness?  (Or will she declare herself black next?  White women have done this before.  Oh, wait—scratch that.  Page is a man now, so it's totally not the same thing.)  Is this a move designed to call attention to herself—something that many actors do as a way of ginning up publicity and/or stroking their own massive egos?  Is this a sincere thing?  If yes, why hasn't Page had any surgery?

See, I admire the trans folks who go through with surgical alterations:  they, at least, have the courage of their deep convictions, and they bravely embark upon a permanent physical change despite knowing that they might suffer varying degrees of rejection and ostracism from their families, friends, and others close to them, as well as from strangers.  There's real courage there.  But all Elliot Page did was declare, as if by divine fiat, "I am henceforth a man."  Having looked at the Wikipedia definition for the concept of transgender, I know that being trans can be a state of mind and little else.  One doesn't have to undergo surgery to be considered trans; it's enough for a woman to fancy herself a man in order for the label to apply.  As a linguistic conservative, I find the looseness of this definition discomfiting, given that it lumps together people with actual courage and people who, like Elliot Page, don't do anything more than make a public declaration and undergo a legal name change.  Is Page brave?  I lean toward no.  She'll catch flak from plenty of people who think the way I do, but she won't have made any sort of personal, physical commitment that fully incarnates her convictions.

I kind of hope that, one day, maybe centuries from now, humanity will go back to recognizing that humans fall into two chromosomal camps—XX and XY—but that the social roles they assign themselves are infinitely fluid.  And for those among us who have been blessed or cursed with the bone-deep conviction that they don't belong in the bodies they have, well, they have my sympathy and my encouragement to go and do whatever it takes to establish or to restore a sense of rightness about themselves, and may they be content with their decision once they've made it and acted upon it.

UPDATE: further trans insanity: