Open Letter to Actress Ellen Page on Her Coming Out as ‘Eliot’

Forgive my boldness for addressing you on your public ‘trans’ declaration; I don’t know you at all, so I am reduced to a virtual response. I write because I admire your smarts and enjoy your beauty as an actress. You bring something like feminine genius to your roles--an emotional intelligence that has touched me deeply. Thank you.

Forgive me for my inability to call you ‘Eliot.’ I simply cannot. Please know that I am not dismissing your feelings, in your words, ‘how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self.’ It’s just that I believe one’s authentic self has to answer to One greater than you or me. We don’t design ourselves. And I believe that authentic human integrity and happiness hinges on making peace with who this Designer made us to become. We fool ourselves and others by constructing a self in opposition to how we have been created as male or female.

Out of concern for your ultimate happiness, I cannot call you “Eliot.’ I’m sure that is painful to you; forgive me for injuring your feelings.

To me, ‘Eliot’ violates your integrity as a woman. And also the integrity of women everywhere who have fought hard to shape history in courageous expression of their genius. I saw you as one such woman. Now I wonder if you are dishonoring women in pretending to be a man. Does a masculine persona give you power that womanhood does not? Isn’t opting out of womanhood a slap in the face of every woman who stands on the uneven ground of misogyny and works as woman to create a level playing field for future sons and daughters? Empowered, gifted women like you who ‘trans’-identify take a step backward for all woman. Your coming out as ‘Eliot’ communicates to me that ‘men are better.’

Doubtless my inability to call you ‘Eliot’ will be viewed by you and the ‘trans’ community as hatred. I assume that’s why you describe your new trans ‘joy’ as ‘fragile.’ Maybe the primary reason for the protracted suffering of the ‘trans’ community is based on something other than persons like me who disagree with you. Perhaps it is the goal of becoming the opposite sex. I urge you to consider the futility of pretending to become what you can never become. In that way, the ‘trans’ quest is a journey to nowhere, an adolescence without end. Yet unlike a teen who can emerge out of awkwardness and into a mature man or woman, a ‘trans’ person will suffer affliction without end due to the futility of the path itself. The hard truth: we cannot change what is written on every cell of our being.

Ellen, ‘Eliot’ is an imposter. You are using your celebrity to invite vulnerable souls onto your futile path. Out of love for you, and them, I urge you to re-embrace your feminine genius.

Sincerely,

Andrew Comiskey