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Elliot Page details abuse, dysphoria, coming out in memoir ‘Pageboy’: ‘The closet was grueling’


Davie

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Elliot Page details abuse, dysphoria, coming out in memoir ‘Pageboy’: ‘The closet was grueling’

Elliot Page is done begging us to hear him. Now it’s time for everyone to listen.“As a trans person and a public one, the sensation is that I’m always pleading for people to believe me,” Page writes in his new memoir, “Pageboy” (Flatiron, 288 pp., out now), a vulnerable, sometimes wrenching but ultimately hopeful account of his life so far. At only 36, he still has (hopefully) quite a way to go, now as his authentic self: trans and “happier than ever,” a vibe that radiates from the book’s cover on which Page, his tattooed arms hanging out of a tight white tank top, a chain dangling around his neck, looks confident in a suave James Dean slouch.

Such autonomy and self-actualization was hard won for Page. For decades, the Oscar-nominated star of the 2007 film “Juno” and Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” tried to fold himself to fit within a set of socially acceptable gendered parameters, wearing feminine clothing that chafed and trying to force romantic feelings for boys. Before he came out as a trans man in 2020, those parameters were closing in. “The closet was grueling, it suffocated me,” he writes.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2023/06/06/elliot-page-pageboy-what-we-learned-reading-actors-memoir/70291703007/

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  • Admin

Thank you for posting this link, @Davie.  Writing this book must have been incredibly painful, but also cathartic.  We need more stories from trans men.  They are far more invisible to the population than trans women, and face issues even in "safe" trans spaces.  I've seen it here in the past.

 

Carolyn Marie

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2 hours ago, Carolyn Marie said:

Writing this book must have been incredibly painful, but also cathartic.  We need more stories from trans men.  They are far more invisible to the population than trans women, and face issues even in "safe" trans spaces.  I've seen it here in the past.

True @Carolyn MarieStories contain all the colors, the personal viewpoints, the histories, and the emotions that transmit a culture to others. I'll soon enough add to that number of stories with my own book later this year. Stay tuned for The Pixie Notebooks

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1 hour ago, Davie said:

T I'll soon enough add to that number of stories with my own book later this year. Stay tuned for The Pixie Notebooks

 

Best of luck, Davie.  I look forward to it.

 

Carolyn Marie

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He was interviewed on NPR this morning.  Hope his book does well and helps.  Looking forward to your book as well Davie.

 

Hugs,

 

Charlize

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Just finished reading "Page Boy" today. Read it over four days. I related to a lot of his experiences. He is vulnerable in his story telling. His writing style is nonlinear and tangential in such a way that he allows the reader to know him more deeply by the way in which he reminisces to give deeper insight into what he's relaying. I appreciate his letting us in. I hope he'll some day write a sequel to share more of his journey. 

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Books by Trans Men are coming out, I will do a separate topic about a book written by and about some men who are in the community that I am part of. 

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