When the hell are we going to say enough is enough? Day after day, we read about another fascist proposing yet another law making it illegal to use public facilities without legal documents verifying your gender.
A cisgender friend asked me ‘why now, what’s different’? She was asking why the sudden proliferation of anti-transgender bills.
The people who hate anyone different from them realized gay marriage was a lost battle. They now making war on our children. And they are doing so with a vengeance. They know that studies show acceptance and treatment of gender dysphoria is proven to save lives.
They are telling our children that that they can not transition. They are telling our children they are unwanted. They are telling our children they have no hope.
They are KILLING OUR CHILDREN and they know it. The haters are attempting to make the last genderation of transgender children THE LAST ONES to be given a chance to live.
One might wonder how it is that we now know about transgender suicide when before it was virtually unheard of?
First, the TDOR does not list trans suicides in what I see as victim blaming. And secondly, the mainstream media doesn’t as a rule report a trans youth suicide as such, instead deferring to police reports for information.
A legislator in Missouri has proposed the latest such laws. Florida moves there anti-transgender law forward. Another child takes their life.
Emma Todd, Deputy Executive Director of Trans Lifeline wrote on Facebook.
A young trans boy, Taylor Wells, who lived in the same town that I’ve lived in most of my life, Springfield, Illinois, took his own life 2 days ago due to transphobia, depression, and bullying.
I didn’t know him personally, but he had similar experiences to what I had growing up here. He went to the same LGBT youth group that I went to growing up, but that can’t change how hard depression can be when you feel like you can’t talk to anyone else. It also can’t change how people react to you when you’re out of that little bubble of support, or the hate directed at you.
It hurts knowing that someone who was so close felt so alone in his life. I wish that he would have reached out to us and to other resources in the area, and in a way it does feel like a failure. But I know how alienating it can feel to grow up in Central Illinois feeling like it will never get better and society will never accept you. I love my local community, but we do not have the kinds of inclusive resources that trans people need that you can find in cities like Chicago or St. Louis. While we do not have the statistics to measure it, I would estimate that more than half of our callers are from more rural areas and smaller cities without any major resources. I hope that in the Trans community we will strive to improve access to resources and support in smaller areas. As an organization we are committed to providing information about resources to those areas.
When we have a community as small as ours we know how painful and how common it can be to lose some of the most beautiful and courageous voices, whether it be from physical violence or emotional violence. We owe it to those we have lost to share their stories and to not focus solely on their deaths, but on the courage they had to be themselves, and who they were as their authentic selves. Rest in peace and power Taylor, and I hope that others will remember your courage to live as your authentic self.
-Emma Todd
Source: planettransgender
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