Eliot Page; a positive example of masculinity?

[juoist]

I shared this news story in a group whatsapp and my year 8 daughter just told me that the same thing happened in her assembly recently.

I mean, this is batshit insanity and totally goes against what the Cass review states.

It’s out and out grooming. Clearly Page is an example of something other than positivity, whenever I see them being interviewed , they seem deeply depressed and miserable.

Are any of the boys in her school going to see Page as a man? Are any of the girls going to see it and wonder if their clothes choices and hairstyle mean they’re also a man? Why are schools still pumping out this unhealthy rhetoric for young teens? It’s insane.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14924669/Primary-school-trans-actor-Elliot-Page-lesson-masculinity.html

100%. Harry embodies being comfortable in your own skin and not having to fit in with gender stereotypes. Which seems the polar opposite of Elliot.

Page looks chronically depressed in every single image since the mastectomy. And appears to have been a very vulnerable person throughout all stages of life.

Very offensive to men, in the same way that it would be offensive to list Munroe Bergdorf, or Debbie Hayton, or any other male as a "positive example of femininity".

Don't take this badly, but you do in fact sound quite terfy because all of that is what we tend to say, too, including the live and let live bit, until it starts to negatively affect women and young people.

Not as bad as Kae Tempest. Their new track is hugely fucked up and they seem so utterly depressed all the time

Wow you're so cool.

But why should men be made to embrace transmen? Maybe no one should be forced to embrace anyone they don't want to.

Harry also wears completely stereotypical male clothing when he's out and about in the wild.
The playing with gender seems to be very much a work thing, and I say that as a fan.

There are laws about what people can do with their genitals. Do you think they should all be repealed? (Rape, indecent exposure etc.)

So schools think that the best way to combat "toxic masculinity" is to provide a role model in the form of a biological female who has taken some testosterone?

All boys should aspire to be a biological woman like Ellen Page?

And the schools will start wondering why they've got even more of a backlash from boys.

I do too, she was a marvellous actress but the one role she does not convince in is a man

What has Page even done to be regarded as positive example of masculinity ?

Apart from just say she is a man

Society should stop using celebrities and rich people as moral examples. They're just celebrities and rich people and their lives are no more valuable than anyone else's.

She’s a biological female, xx chromosomes aka a woman.

Celebs are the worst, parading around their transitioned child like a badge of honour.

"Positive example of masculinity" well Page isn't a threat to women the way many men can be, maybe that's what they mean?

"Are any of the boys in her school going to see Page as a man? "

at best, Page looks like a schoolboy

Agree 100% Tom Pinch. Well, maybe 90%. It can be interesting to talk about some figures. My school liked to pretend it was a private school so we had houses, named after famous people, men and women. I still remember [some of] what I learned about Gladys Aylward and Lord Shaftesbury. But luckily nobody suggested we should learn about them for anything as boring as their femininity or masculinity, but what they did and/or wrote.

The examples of houses is quite useful. At the schools where I live they're also named after famous people: Scott, Batten, Hillary, Sheppard: people who achieved something or whose lives are an instructive example. Not just because they were fashionable.

Yep.

There is / was also clearly disordered eating at play too.

this is just not the image of a healthy or happy role model in fact it screams "im desperately unhappy" which isnt really role model material whatever the sex IMO.

A transwoman would be a far more positive example of masculinity. It would show boys that they can grow up to be anything they wanted to be. Boys can grow up to be transwomen. A boy is never going to grow up to be a transman.

E Page is an interesting example of transing away the gay

Tbf though we still don't really understand homosexuality any better than transexuality if I'm not mistaken. It wasn't long ago it was also considered a mental illness and gay people were subject to conversion therapy.

I couldn’t see anything in the article that says that the school had actually told the kids that Page is a man tho. I agree that a transwoman would have been a much less confusing example to use in a list of men displaying a range of types of masculinities, to make the point that men live their lives as men in lots of different ways.

I’m making a distinction here that a lot of adults miss though, that ‘gender’ (sex stereotypes which we describe as masculinity or femininity), isn’t connected with what sex you are. If the school missed out or glossed over that absolutely fundamental distinction, then the whole lesson would have just been a confusing and and gaslighting mess.

Its not very interesting to celebrate male celebs who wear colours or sparkle because kids should already have been taught from a young age that soft or bright colours/lcertain games/clothes etc are for anyone female or male who likes them. OK bHarry Styles likes wearing sequins as part of a costume on stage. Pretty sure he doesn’t wear those doing whatever he does every day.

To better explain the bullshit of gender to kids the school they could have used some much more everyday examples, maybe talking about men doing what used to be thought of as ‘women’s’ jobs and women doing what used to be thought of as ‘men’s jobs’ for example. Or by making a comparison across cultures or history to see the variations in how ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’ have been defined by culture and by how much those definitions vary in different societies across the world, or different historical periods.

Even if he was a biological male, I’m not really clear what Eliot Page has ever done to be a role model of masculinity. Moderately successful actor? There are lots of those around.

I think lots of boys and men really do not like the way other men behave and feel very tainted by that behaviour. Putting forward a trans man as a role model will just discourage those boys and men, won't it? Ie, even the good men are biologically female.