On January 6, 2015 many painted their ring finger pink in honor of Leelah Alcorn. “”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,” Leelah Alcorn said in her suicide note posted on her Tumblr blog.
By LOUISE PLATTER – Print Editor-in-Chief
It’s no secret that teenagers and young adults who experience Gender Dysphoria, more commonly known as transgenderism, don’t have it easy. In a report done by npr.org, psychologist and trans advocate Graciela Balestra states that the transgender population has an average life expectancy of 32 years.
In Balestra’s own words, “They don’t live any longer; I think that statistic alone says so much.”
The reason for the startlingly low number is clear — suicide.
According the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 41 percent of people who experience Gender Dysphoria have attempted suicide. Bullying from both peers and family members, combined with what many trans youth see as an internal ticking clock before transitioning becomes impossible, contribute to this disturbing statistic.
Both of these factors have recently been thrown into tragic relief by the suicide of 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn. Leelah, born Joshua Ryan Alcorn, threw herself in front of a semi-truck in the early hours of Dec. 28, 2014. She was walking down Interstate 71 in her home state of Ohio with the intention of ending her life.
The teen left a suicide note on the blogging site Tumblr prior to her death. The note, which can be found in its entirety here, had a clear point: In Leelah’s mind, there was no way out. She believed that by the time she was 18 it would be too difficult for her to transition, not to mention the crippling depression that she was fighting a losing battle against.
Leelah’s parents disapproved of her identity, and refused to allow her to transition or even refer to her with her desired pronouns. Additionally, they enrolled her in a type of therapy known as “conversion therapy,” with the intention of “fixing” her.
Even after her death, her mother made a Facebook post that read, “My sweet 16 year old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went home to heaven this morning. He was out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck.”
This post highlights the true extent of Leelah’s parent’s emotional neglect: she was 17, not 16, and she wasn’t male.
The real tragedy of Leelah’s death lies in how avoidable it was. Washington, D.C., California and New Jersey have passed laws banning conversion therapy and many psychologists and experts in the field describe the practice as child abuse.
The Real L-Word star Whitney Mixter describes conversion therapy as equivalent to “taking an African-American kid, putting them in a camp and telling them they need to become white by the time they leave. It can’t be done, and so therefore it is torture.”
Support from family is critical for teenagers in the best of circumstances, and Leelah’s death could have been avoided if she had received accurate information about transitioning, which by no means is capped off at 18, and had been met with support and real therapeutic treatment. It didn’t have to be this way.
Leelah is not an anomaly. Statistics show that all trans youth are in danger, and if things don’t change, Leelah’s name will be lost in a string of suicides just like hers.
A petition to ban conversion therapy can be found here and hotlines for at risk trans youth are located here.
