The meme isn’t really referencing the actor, but rather the character. Eliot might not be a woman, but the character is. When cis guys play female characters, we still refer to the character as female. I don’t see why it should be any different when a trans guy plays a female character.
Actually the character is canonically a trans man named Victor… This is from Umbrella Academy but before the character came out. You are correct in general respects just this example particularly is both of two men both canonically and non canonically so its actually kind of not super cool to use this particular image for this gag but largely forgivable if someone honestly was completely unaware of that context when making this meme which if you peaced out before the next season would be a very understandable mistake.
Oh, I didn’t even realize it was from umbrella academy, or that that show had any trans characters. Yeah, that context definitely changes things.
It was actually super cool, when Elliot came out he went to the showrunners to let them know they had nothing to fear, he wouldn’t change his appearance or anything because he was signed on for the show length.
And the show runners in an industry first established a new gold standard by telling him “Nah, how about we just make Vanya into Victor and make it canonical.” So they worked with Page giving him a lot of creative control over the character’s personal journey and showed probably the best depiction of early transition on tv.
