I’ve already posted about this on Facebook, but I’ve been mulling
it over for a few days and feel that it needs a longer post to truly
express how I feel about it…I apologise for the length of this post, but there's a lot which needs to be said...
I’m going out on a limb here and assuming most people have by now
heard about the tragic suicide of Leelah Alcorn? For the
uninitiated, Leelah was a 17 year old from Ohio who committed suicide
on 28th December 2014 by walking out in front of a truck.
I daresay her death, tragic though it was, would have gone pretty
much unnoticed by the rest of the world were it not for one thing:
Leelah was a transgender girl whose Tumblr posthumously published her
suicide note which, in devastating simplicity, laid bare her soul and
told the world how unsupported she felt by her family, thus (in her
eyes) rendering suicide her only option. If you haven’t read
Leelah’s suicide note I am going to post it here, in its entirety,
because it is one of the most powerfully moving and deeply
disquieting things I have ever read and, in accordance with her plea
for people to look at the high rate of suicide amongst transgender
people and say “that’s fucked up”, I think it needs to be
shared:
“If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide
and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue.
Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve
lived isn’t worth living in… because I’m transgender. I could
go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is
probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I
feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way
ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling,
nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told
anyone and I just continued to do traditionally “boyish” things
to try to fit in.
When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of
happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I
was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively,
telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl,
that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading
this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are
Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to
someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them
hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.
My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to
christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually
got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more
christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should
look to God for help.
When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around,
and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of
transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer
you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was
just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my
16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to
start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.
I formed a sort of a “fuck you” attitude towards my parents
and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into
coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the
reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They
felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an
embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little
straight christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.
So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and
phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media,
completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part
of my life when I was the most depressed, and I’m surprised I
didn’t kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No
friends, no support, no love. Just my parent’s disappointment and
the cruelty of loneliness.
At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and
gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I
finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me
and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they
didn’t actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than
I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because
they saw me five times a week.
After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of
having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my
grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone
there is against everything I live for, I have decided I’ve had
enough. I’m never going to transition successfully, even when I
move out. I’m never going to be happy with the way I look or sound.
I’m never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I’m never
going to have enough love to satisfy me. I’m never going to find a
man who loves me. I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the
rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live
my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There’s no winning.
There’s no way out. I’m sad enough already, I don’t need my
life to get any worse. People say “it gets better” but that isn’t
true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse.
That’s the gist of it, that’s why I feel like killing myself.
Sorry if that’s not a good enough reason for you, it’s good
enough for me. As for my will, I want 100% of the things that I
legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to
be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don’t
give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one
day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re
treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender
needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death
needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number
of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to
look at that number and say “that’s fucked up” and fix it. Fix
society. Please.
Goodbye,
(Leelah) Josh Alcorn"
Now clearly we're only getting one side of the story here, but is that not one of the most gut-wrenching, soul-destroying things you
have ever read? I’m not even a parent and yet I sobbed my heart
out reading this for the first time; even now, seeing it for the
third or fourth time, it brings tears to my eyes. Leelah’s
eloquence and passion are clear; what a terrible, tragic waste of all
her potential this whole thing is.
In the wake of her passing, of course, the internet erupted. Firstly
there were Leelah’s own words explaining her situation, which
struck a chord with many and provoked outrage for various different
reasons (believe me, I have read and digested opinions on both sides
of the fence); secondly, there was the reaction from Leelah’s
mother, both on Facebook and in a TV interview. The no-doubt
grieving Mrs Alcorn told CNN that she and her husband “don’t
support that, religiously” (meaning people being transgender) but
that they “loved their son unconditionally”. She categorically
refused to refer to “Leelah”, instead making reference to her
“son”, to “Joshua” and using the pronouns he, him etc
throughout. Cue web-based fury and a media frenzy…
Now. Now. Firstly I want to point out the glaringly-obvious here
and say that this whole thing is tragic all round. Parents have lost
a child. Brothers and sisters have lost a sibling. An entirely
innocent truck driver, who just so happened to be driving along that
particular stretch of road at that particular time, will probably
never get over what happened; what he saw. A young life full of
potential and promise has been snuffed out. The entire thing is one
big messed-up tragedy which breaks my heart in several ways. That
much is clear, right?
That being said – and without going on a witch-hunt like some
members of the press and sections of the internet – I want to
express my solidarity for Leelah and my horror at what she had to
endure. I will try and do this as respectfully as I can, because no
matter what, two parents have lost a child and that is something so
horrendous I can’t even begin to imagine the pain they must be
feeling. It would be disrespectful of me to even try, and I feel
desperately sorry for them and for their other children. However.
Ohhhhh, however…
Mrs Alcorn said, and I quote: “We don’t support that,
religiously. But we told him that we loved him unconditionally. We
loved him no matter what.”
And herein lies my problem; my “sympathy limiter”, if you will.
Now I am not, and have no intention of ever becoming, a parent, so
the intricacies and mysteries of this weird and wonderful state
remain somewhat elusive to me. However I’m not an idiot. A quick
glance at my dictionary confirms my belief that the meaning of
“unconditional” is “without conditions or limitations;
absolute”. And this is where I think my definition of
“unconditional” and the Alcorn’s definition of it are entirely
at odds.
Now I can’t even begin to comprehend what a shock and a struggle it
must be to discover that the child you’ve raised for
x-number-of-years isn’t actually the son you thought you had
because he identifies as a girl and tells you she wishes to
transition. I watched a documentary a few years ago about teenagers
in America who were at various stages of the transition process and
something one of the mothers said stuck with me: you have to mourn
the child you had before you can come to terms with the child you
have. When I thought about it, it made sense. After all, the
daughter she thought she was raising was, in a sense, dead and she
was now the (very proud, as it turned out) mother of a teenage boy,
but in her head she must have had thoughts about how her daughter’s
life would pan out. Helping her choose her prom dress, her wedding
dress. Being there to support her in childbirth. Just doing all the
little things mothers and daughters do together every single day.
Normal stuff. All of that, all of those little thoughts and dreams
and hopes, were gone and she had to suddenly reassess and reappraise
her life. She mourned for the daughter she’d lost, much as parents
whose children die must mourn, but then she got on with the business
of celebrating and supporting her son, and it was wonderful. From
reading Leelah Alcorn’s blog, however, and listening to what her
mother had to say, it became clear to me that this was not
“unconditional” love.
Unconditional love is about loving and supporting your child without
putting restrictions on that love. Not the son you thought you had
but your child nonetheless; a child you carried for nine months;
nurtured; watched grow. A child you taught and loved; a child you
would have – should have – been prepared to lie down in
front of a train for if the occasion demanded it. You might not
always agree with them and you might not always like their choices,
their haircut, their attitude, but you don’t stop loving them for
it. They might do something so unspeakably awful you can't even begin to comprehend what went wrong, but that doesn't stop them being your child (a fact pointed out with extraordinary eloquence by Dylan Klebold's mother Judy in "Far from the Tree" by Andrew Solomon, a must-read book on understanding the unconditional love of a parent).
Unconditional love doesn’t prioritise your religion above the
safety, happiness and wellbeing of your child, forcing them to attend
“conversion therapy” (which is tantamount to child abuse and
should be banned everywhere immediately for the harm it causes
people), or sending to them to purely religious therapists who
perhaps didn’t have the expertise but certainly didn’t appear to
have the inclination to understand what your child was struggling
with. And god knows it must be a struggle. To face that alone…I
can’t even begin to imagine it. To consider your religious
beliefs, strong though they may be, as more sacrosanct than the
wellbeing of your own child…I can’t understand that. I can’t
even begin to get my head around it. Maybe it’s because I’m not
religious as well as not being a parent, but I fail to see how
anything could be more important than the welfare of your child.
I can appreciate it must be a shock when your 14 year old son says,
“actually Mum, I was meant to be a girl and I want you to treat me
like one from now on”. I can appreciate that you would struggle to
comprehend and digest such news. But what I cannot comprehend is
why, if you love that child as unconditionally as you claim, you
would put them through something as soul-destroying as “conversion
therapy” or tell them they were “wrong”. (Also, “God doesn’t
make mistakes”? The Biblical story of the Etch-a-Sketch end of the
world, aka Noah’s Ark, when God apparently went “bugger!” and
tried to destroy everything would say otherwise. Just a by-the by…)
How could you do such a thing? In the heat of the moment, maybe,
while struggling to get your head around it all, you might say
something like “oh, don’t be daft!” but to keep that up
forever? Everything the Alcorn’s have said and done since Leelah’s
passing – their insistence on referring to her as “he”,
removing the suicide note and another post which was critical of
their attitude from her blog – indicates to me that they are
placing conditions on that love, and that saddens me.
What makes this even sadder to me is that there have been incidents
in the media recently where parents have received the exact same news
about their children and reacted in completely the opposite manner to
the Alcorn’s; celebrating their children publically instead of
denying their true self. Earlier in December a birth announcement
appeared in Brisbane’s “Courier Mail” which read: “A
Retraction — Bogert: In 1995 we announced the arrival of our child,
Elizabeth Anne, as a daughter. He informs us that we were mistaken.
Oops! Our bad. We would now like to present our wonderful son —
Kai Bogert. Loving you is the easiest thing in the world. Tidy your
room.”
The first time I saw the ad, I laughed for about ten minutes and
then, I’m not ashamed to say, welled up a little. That is
unconditional love, and Kai’s parents Yolanda Bogert and Guy
Kershaw are clearly not only accepting but openly proud of their
child. They too will have been shocked, even if, as a subsequent
interview revealed, there had been “little signs along the way when
he was little” that their daughter was actually their son, but what
a joyful, wonderful way to show their love and acceptance of their
child once they got their heads around it all.
I didn’t know Leelah Alcorn but from what I can read between the
lines in her blog posts she seemed like a bright, intelligent,
thoughtful young person who had a great capacity for love and was
brimming with potential; it saddens me her parents couldn’t accept
her and will now never know just what great things their child might
have been capable of. My heart goes out to her siblings, who must be
incredibly bewildered and confused by the whole thing. I feel
dreadful for the poor truck driver. And, most of all, I feel
desperately, desperately sad for Leelah and all the other children
trapped in a similar position. A study published in the US last year
highlighted terrifyingly-high rates of suicide and attempted suicide
among transgender people, particularly if they were openly rejected
or felt unaccepted by their families.
At the end of her blog post Leelah Alcorn wrote: My death needs to
be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide
this year. I want someone to look at that number and say “that’s
fucked up” and fix it. Fix society. Please. I don’t have the
answers. I don’t have any particularly brilliant or radical
suggestions. What I do have is empathy and compassion by the
bucketload, and that is something anyone can tap into if they
need it. All you have to do is ask me...
If you or someone you know has been affected by this topic, there
are places you can go for help. You are not alone. In the UK, The
Gender Trust has a wealth of information and resources which are
useful: http://gendertrust.org.uk/directory/support-organisations
In the US, the National Centre for Transgender Equality can help:
http://transequality.org/ and
there are plenty of LGBTQ organisations in both countries who can
offer support and advice. Google is your friend…
Also in the UK, for teens and young people specifically, the Albert Kennedy Trust and Mermaids are both useful contacts to have. There are of course other organisations as well, but these are perhaps the most specific...
No comments:
Post a Comment