Every Gender Identity Is ‘Authentic’—Until It Isn’tFaddish forms of self-identification often reflect subjective feelings that shift over time. Let’s stop treating them as sacred truths.
David A. Nelson / Edwin E. Gantt
31 Jan 2023
In December 2020, the former Ellen Page publicly announced a new transgender identity. This announcement came after six-and-a-half years of living and celebrating an openly lesbian life, including nearly three years in a lesbian marriage. Ellen suddenly became Elliot. Overnight, both social and traditional media adapted to this new reality, as referential pronouns were quickly revised and the past was rewritten or redacted. The narrative of Page’s life was reworked to accommodate a new gender “truth.” Now, Page’s former lesbian life could be seen as the (unconscious) expression of a heterosexual identity, one that was punctuated with a heterosexual marriage, a sort of stepping-stone on the way to the most recent claim of authenticity.
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It’s easy (or convenient) to forget that when Page—then Ellen—came out as lesbian in 2014, she similarly presented it as a bold act of truth-telling, proudly proclaiming, “I am gay … I am tired of hiding … I suffered for years because I was scared to be out.” She stated that it was vital “to be authentic, to follow my heart.” She had seemingly found and embraced her true (lesbian) self.
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But apparently, that supposedly authentic truth was in fact counterfeit: In 2020, Page, now Elliot, stated, “I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self.” Elliot also reported in the interview with Time magazine, “I’m fully who I am.” Page has therefore managed to find an “authentic” self at least twice—not counting the actor’s pre-2014, pre-LGBTQ+ life, during which there was no public mention of being either L or T.
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Which all sounds very nice and uplifting. But it doesn’t actually make any sense: an “authentic” self that can be summarily abandoned in favor of some new (supposedly more authentic) self is, by definition, inauthentic. In Page’s case, how does anyone know that the actor’s replacement authentic truth won’t itself be renounced in favor of some more exotic (and, of course, more authentic) gender classification?
The question brings us to one of the odder aspects of what some call “gender ideology”—the system of beliefs that casts gender identity as a soul-like spirit marker lodged within every one of us, completely independent of biological markers of sex, and utterly unknowable to the world except through acts of self-identification.
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2023/01/31/every-gender-identity-is-authentic-until-it-isnt/
