TERF Reviews Ellen Page's Trans Movie

[FastLilacBeaker]

Ouch!

I do actually feel quite sorry for EP, as whiny and unsympathetic as she is. It's hard not to read her current identity as a maladaptive trauma response.

And I can't really imagine how she has an acting career going forward. She's a reasonably big name, but Hollywood casting has some (yes, unfair) standards, and someone whose CV is heavy on "cute girl" roles would always have trouble approaching 40 even without the gender identity stuff and the body modification. There's the character actor route, but I see no evidence she's a good enough actor to do that.

I actually watched that review. The clips from the film make it look as though it was filmed in the dark, and in the 'meet the old flame' scene there are seagulls in the background providing a rather loud 'meep meep meep' commentary, which was possibly meant to be plaintive and moving but which I found hilarious. They sounded as though they'd spotted a bag of chips.

Which suggests that in addition to the lack of a professional writer addressed by the reviewer there was also a lack of professional lighting technicians and sound engineers. Does that mean no-one wanted to work with EP or that EP is daft and thinks having a 'name' makes one omni-competent?

Also, I'd take issue with the reviewer describing EP as 'androgynous'. At all of 5 foot? Nah, obviously a small middle aged woman. Soon to be even smaller if oestrogen levels have been compromised.

Sounds like another movie that was made without considering the obvious question’why are people going to pay money to watch this?’

Agree about the sound engineering.

Sounds as if the improvisation involved patently insincere speech making. If ds came home after being estranged for so long and having transitioned I wouldn’t be telling him that he’s super brave. I’d be awkwardly trying to find connection and probably misgendering a lot given it was years since I’d seen him. It would be fairly odd if his year 10 girlfriend were into him as well.

I regret the ballsy presence and strong voice E Page had in Juno and Whip It. This croaky pale little person doesn’t feel like a star.

One of the most uncomfortable things is that EP has mentioned previously how her IRL mother had serious trouble accepting that she had a lesbian daughter, so the whole thing about the family accepting her unquestioningly post transition...

And, apart from the short scene where she gets to scold the BIL, a whole parade of tears and hugs with no conflict, certainly with no sense of her character having any flaws...

This feels to me like EP indulging in some expensive therapy and expecting other people to find it enlightening. Which to me just underlines EP's narcissism.

I don't know much about EP, but I remember going to see Hard Candy at the cinema, and it having quite an impact, and thinking this was someone with a promising career in front of her. Been some water under the bridge since then, obviously.

Is there an age identification thing going on too? There's a clip from the film with the mother calling EP 'my brave boy'. I'm not convinced many 38 year old men would be terribly keen on being described as a 'boy'.

Page seems to be very keen on that. Her memoir is called Pageboy, which I thought was a clever play on words, until you get into her history of trauma.

Leaving aside whether "living as" the opposite sex makes any sense, Page seems to have little interest in being seen as an adult man, and to be fixated on being seen as a boy. It's tempting to speculate that what she really wants is to turn the clock back to a time when she was happy.

This is my concern: in females identifying as trans is a trauma response, and wish to remain pre-pubescent. Similar in its presentation to anorexia, which is also suggested as having links to autism particularly in females.

In Hard Candy her character indulges in a bit of body modification iirc. Albeit on somebody else.

VERY similar to anorexia, similar desire to extend the effect of a deeply controlling personality beyond their own body and on to their nearest and dearest

Just as I was self-centered enough to lose patience with the anorexics of my own generation when I saw the way they disrupted their families, I have little interest in women projecting their own internalised misogyny on to the world at large.

We all have 'stuff'. Some of it is terrible. Adulthood is about learning to get on regardless.

BUT the seagull noises were VERY funny, I think any genderist with a heartbreaking sob story will be in danger of triggering that 'meep meep, chips!' sound track for me in future.