Los Angeles, Feb 26 (IANS): Actress Ellen Page says it's time to "step up" to support transgender people.

"We need to realise that a lot of the most marginalised people in our community have been left behind. We need to step up for trans people because they are under attack," Page, who is married to Canadian dancer Emma Portner, told Gay Times magazine.

The "Juno" star decided to speak out after lesbian tennis player Martina Navratilova was fired from a Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ) charity last week for making transphobic comments against transgender female athletes, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

"A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies," Navratilova said.

Responding to those comments, Page slammed the sporting star for letting history repeat itself, as she branded Navratilova's words as "demonising and dehumanising".

"It's not like people didn't use the same arguments for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, but people are also using that rhetoric to make trans people seem like predators. It's demonising and dehumanising. It's deplorable. In regards to those conversations in the UK, and the treatment and attack on trans rights in the US, it's utterly cruel," she said.