This is probably going to be a jumble of thoughts but I’m still reeling over Ellen Page’s jarring coming out, the impossibility of calling her Elliot/he/they, the betrayal and cop-out that it feels like, and also the lack of responsibility and attention to detail in how she has expressed herself. She decries the lack of LGBTQ representation but in effect has contributed to that.

Relationship with HRC

I sought to figure out how this developed since I have not followed Page too closely over the years. And while I am partially to blame, the initial thread on her coming out got derailed. I always noted that she seemed quite close with the Human Rights Campaign. She did her public coming out as a lesbian at an event hosted by them and has continued to be involved with them over the years. She seems to have a lot of emotional capital tied up with HRC basically. Does anyone know the details of her relationship with them? Is there an individual there she’s particularly close with? Are there any other lesbians, gay men, or bisexuals that you are aware of that are particularly wrapped up with them?

The Intense Vagueness of her Language Compared to When She Came Out as a Lesbian

In terms of what Ellen has communicated, what jumps out in both this linked video from almost 2 years ago and also her coming out as transletter is the intense vagueness. Her tone and demeanor are completely different than her lesbian coming out speech where she seemed nervous but comfortable with and sure of herself. She talked about being comfortable with her gender non-conformity there. Her speech was full of raw emotion but more personal, full of love, and heartfelt.

In contrast, stuff may have been edited out of her 2019 interview, but even where there is no cutting, she acts as if every thought is limited by Twitter-level character limits. It just comes cross as frantic, but confused raw pain and anger, likes she’s upset but she doesn’t even know at what exactly and what she wants as a solution. The same characteristics in the 2019 video are present in her coming out as trans letter.

Now when analyzing the language she uses in the 2019 video, she does explain the why behind her demeanor as rampant homophobia and misogyny, which makes her now chosen solution of identifying out of womanhood even more sad. She still uses the word “gay” to describe herself. It’s the rest of the vague-oral-Tweeting that set off alarm bells in me:”

• ”what’s been happening in the world for a long time forever”

• “It’s life or death. These issues that we are talking about are life and death. And a lot of the issues we’re talking about seem to be debates in the media, and they’re not, you know.”

• “I’m fed up with the pain and we need to be talking about it more and the realities of what the impacts are on people’s life, on LGBTQ people’s life when we have so little representation whether it’s in film or television or like in news media. We’re not hearing about the things we should be hearing about; the stories, what’s going on in Chechnya, it’s upsetting.”

Chechnya is the most specific thing she mentions and it’s also an uncontroversial thing to mention in liberal circles circles because the perpetrator is Russia and Chechnyans are Muslims. <— Let me rephrase this as “Russia is seen as responsible and actively letting it happen” though the direct perpetrators are in reality the Chechnyan Muslims themselves, but the American left refuses to criticize or even discuss Islamic homophobia.

Ironically, the HRC is among the reasons homophobia around the world is not being discussed in America. As I’ve said before, LGBTTTQQQ orgs like HRC seem to want to cut off LGB people from our sense of homophobia and instead direct us to look inward and question our “genital preferences” aka homosexuality/bisexuality instead of embracing it. We are to focus on our identity and remember that we “cis gays” are the privileged ones. So of course Ellen doesn’t mention Iran as the HRC has avoided acknowledging the forced transition of gay men there as criminal punishment for homosexuality. HRC sang that Pakistan supported trans rights when they specifically required the transition of a gay man into a woman as a requirement to be in a relationship with another man.

She Quickly Went From Calling Herself a Gay Woman to Using Neither “Gay” nor “Woman” but “Trans” and “Queer”

The effect is that Ellen ends up sounding more like someone repeating what she remembers of HRC’s talking points than someone who has learned from her travels a lot about how the world mistreats gay people. I honestly don’t understand the thought process behind apparently witnessing and experiencing sex-based oppression at home and abroad and then choosing as your solution that sex is meaningless and words should be changed so that we cannot effectively discuss the problems you witnessed.

Ellen came out as “trans” and “queer” not non-binary or as a trans man specifically. So trans is the destination not the means to an end. She plays it fast and loose by saying she uses he/they pronouns (anything but “she”/womanhood).

She literally traded her sexual orientation in to adopt the last two letters of LGBTQ, you know, the only ones that have nothing to do with sexual orientation.

I feel beat down.