Emma Dumont, who you might have spotted in Oppenheimer or the Marvel TV show The Gifted, recently came out as transmasculine and nonbinary. The reactions to her news have not been kind.
Transmasculine is different than being transgender, as it refers to a person who was assigned female at birth but identifies more with masculinity. Non-binary means that a person doesn’t feel they fit into the male-female gender binary.
Dumont has changed their pronouns on Instagram to “they/them” and has also updated their name, changing it to “Nick.” However, they will still go by the name Emma in their professional life. A spokesperson for the actor told TMZ, “They identify as a trans masculine non-binary person. Their work name is still going to be Emma Dumont, but they will go by Nick with friends and family.”
This affects absolutely no one except Emma and the aforementioned friends and family. Yet, when the New York Post posted the news on X, there was an expected but still incredibly disheartening fire of angry posts from right-wingers. One user posted a cruel, extremely threatening-sounding meme that read, “Your parents will use your real name when they bury you.” Others whined about Emma wanting attention or being “mentally ill.”
And the word “woke” was, of course, involved, as it usually is in these situations. “Someone wasn’t getting calls, so they had to go to the next woke level, wanting to remain relevant in their world,” said one verified user who was paying for X.
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Another person brought up a famous trans actor, Elliot Page, who is a trans man. Before coming out, Page starred as a pregnant teen in Juno. “Another young girl that feels like she’s not getting enough attention… very sad. All it will do is limit her roles, Juno hasn’t been working much,” wrote another bigot. In actual fact, Elliot Page starred in the hugely anticipated final series of The Umbrella Academy this year.
The incident was horrible to witness, but this is par for the course on Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk is anti-trans despite being a father to a trans daughter, and transphobia on X goes largely unpunished. People feel like they can say whatever disgusting things they wish and that certainly seems to be the case here.
While there are certainly more non-binary actors in Hollywood now than there were a decade ago, they still face prejudice. Take House of the Dragon star Emma D’Arcy, who still gets called by the wrong pronouns. And then there’s Emma Corrin, who starred as Princess Diana in The Crown and as Cassandra Nova in Deadpool and Wolverine. Earlier this year, they opened up about how difficult it was living as a out LGBTQ+ person.
“The vitriol is worse than I anticipated,” they told Harper’s Bazaar. “Even though we like to think we’re in a progressive society, a lot of what we’re seeing is increasingly a step back.” At the time, the magazine pointed out that Corrin was constantly getting hatred and trolling on their Instagram, too. Corrin followed on, “I will never understand why. Who are you hurting by being yourself? Why am I controversial? I think it’s fear. Absolute fear.”
What happened to them wasn’t okay, and what’s happening to Emma Dumont now isn’t okay, either. Corrin said in their Harper’s Bazaar interview that they avoid looking at internet comments, and hopefully, Dumont does the same thing.
Published: Dec 6, 2024 12:43 pm