‘The Story of My Untangling’ Through Gender Transition
‘Pageboy’ by Elliot Page
In 2008, a friend and I saw the film Juno in a theater. It’s about a 16-year-old girl who has sex once with her friend out of curiosity, gets pregnant, and wants to place the baby for adoption. At the time, my friend thought the movie leaned “feel-good” since Juno’s parents didn’t seem especially perturbed. I paid more attention to the character of Juno, who made sense to me, so I wasn’t surprised when the actor came out as a trans man 12 years later. My friend and I—both trans men ourselves—had already transitioned when we saw the movie together, and it feels right to me that we’d been watching a trans man actor without realizing it.
Today I read the actor’s book. In an author’s note, Elliot Page acknowledges that “in my life, gender and sexuality have been in constant conversation,” yet “coming out as queer was a wholly different experience from coming out as trans.” The “nonlinear narrative” of his new memoir, Pageboy, is “the story of my untangling.”
