It's great to see more positive representation for my community, although can news outlets please stop referring to him using his deadname in the literal headlines? Like, I get it makes it a little less confusing, but it doesn't make it right.
huh I thought "Elliot Page" was this new actor, possibly with a family relation to Ellen.
Unlike actress Ruby Rose, who I know identifies as genderfluid and who at least publicly contemplated the possibility that she might undergo transition to male at some point in the future, yesterday's news about Elliot Page came as a bit of a surprise to me. (Case in point: If you go to Elliot Page's own newly renamed Instagram account you'll still find a posting from November 2 there, advertising an Instagram live event with "real life superheroes Ellen Page and Edafe Okporo".)
Insofar I find it totally okay, even necessary, to make some sort of reference to his deadname in news articles because that's the name he had made movies und TV shows under for the past 20 years. Otherwise people will certainly start to ask "huh, who is this??? what the hell is going on?". One could debate whether this reference should be made right in the headline or at some point in the article (I saw one news article in Germany which tried to somehow circumvent the issue by using the headline "Hollywood star Page comes out as transgender", omitting any first name). And obviously, it would weird, even inappropriate, if media news outlets still refer to him as "Elliot Page, the actor formerly known as Ellen Page" six months from now. The reference is only necessary as long as the fact that a gender/name change happened constitutes actual "news" in itself.
Anyway, I wish him well and all the best. Certainly also some form of milestone for the trans community to have a representative of such prominence in public life now.
especially for FtM who are far less represented in popular culture.
Well, it's good that Netflix does that, and it certainly wouldn't be okay to insist calling Elliot Page by her deadname as a means to ignore and deny her status as a transgenderd person (because this is why the practice of deadnaming is ultimately considered harmful or disrespectful). But as I tried to point out there exist certain... limitations... in totally avoiding "deadnaming" trans people, at least when it comes to previously known celebrities.
Case in point: IMDb. It's standard policy on IMDb to list not only one's birth name, but all previous/alternate names and aliases an actor has been credited with in movies at any point of his career. This is why Charlie Sheen's birth name is given as "Carlos Irwin Estevez" and his alternate names as "Carlos Estevez" and "Charles Sheen" (he was credited as "Carlos Estevez" in
Machete Kills and for some reason as "Charles Sheen" in a couple of movies he did in the late 90s).
This practice has so far been also extended to transgendered people, since
Matrix director Lana Wachowski's birth name is given as "Laurence Wachowski" and her alternate names as "Lana & Andy", "The Wachowski Brothers", "Larry Wachowski", "The Wachowskis", and "the Wachowskis" (same thing also applies to her sibling Lilly Wachowski, obviously).
It is therefore not surprising that IMDb uses the same practice with Elliot Page. Birth name: "Ellen Grace Philpotts-Page", alternate names: "Ellen Philpotts Page", "Ellen Page", "Ellen Philpotts-Page". In fact, as it is also happens to be standard practice on IMDb, Elliot Page's deadname is listed behind every individual movie credit of his (e.g. "Juno: Juno MacGuff (as Ellen Page)"). This does in fact look a bit weird, since Elliot Page's deadname now appears way more often on that page than his new name, but it is IMDb's standard procedure for processing an actor's bio and career information.
