In an upcoming interview with ABC News, Elliot Page opened up about the gender dysphoria he experienced growing up.
“My body started to change, and clothes sat on me differently, and all of that really was the beginning of really sort of disconnecting from myself and feeling a degree of discomfort that was very erosive and damaging,” he said in a clip shared by Good Morning America.
The Umbrella Academy actor said he hadn’t even heard the word transgender at that point. When it did come up in health class, it was mocked by fellow students.
“The experiences I had in regards to bullying only encourages the shame that literally makes you sick. The hiding, the self-disgust, the ‘I’m wrong, there’s something wrong with me,’ that narrative.”
Elliot was also candid about the way gender dysphoria affected his sense of self. “It’s being assigned a gender at birth, based on your genitalia, and that not being the reality of who you are. And the sort of incongruence and disconnect of that just continues to chip away at you and chip away at you and chip away at you.”
“It especially became complicated as an actor because people would just go, ‘You’re an actor, just put on the f*cking clothes.’ But needless to say, it was so much more than that.”
The interview, conducted by RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Colby, is part of ABC’s The Freedom to Exist – A Soul of a Nation Presentation. It airs on Tuesday, June 6 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC and will be available on Hulu June 7.
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