Sam Taub

One of the best things Caitlyn Jenner did in her acceptance speech for the Arthur Ashe Award is to mention Sam Taub.

Until Caitlyn mentioned him, I'd never heard of him.  I would be that almost no one else had, either.

You see, she is one of those people who could have been another statistic--another transgender teenager who committed suicide--had Jenner not mentioned her.

The Detroit-area teen came from a troubled background:  His parents split up and his father got sole custody of him.  His father at least tried to support him when he said he was living in the wrong body. As an example, they went on shopping trips that resulted in a complete turnover of his wardrobe.  His mother, on the other hand, while saying that she had nothing against trans people, wants him to be remembered in death as a "happy little girl" named Samantha who "loved ice-skating and music and having her hair done and shopping".

Since I know neither Sam nor his mother, I will not blame her for his taking his own life.  Nor will I say that what the father did was "too little, too late".  More important than assigning blame to anyone--if indeed there is any to assign--is to understand how overwhelming it is for anyone, let alone a teenager--even with the most loving family and friends--to come to terms with, and negotiate a way of living in, the gender of her or his mind and spirit.

It's hard enough for any teenager to learn who she or is, even under the best of conditions. Even the most confident and resilient of young people don't have the emotional resources to deal with being what most of society still considers to be a freak--or the perspective to realize that it can get better, never mind that it does get better, as Dan Savage assures us.

Frankly, I don't know how I made it through that part of my life. Or my twenties.  Or my thirties.  Or the first few years of my forties.  There were good times, to be sure.  But sometimes it seems that the scars of rejection and alienation will never heal, especially to a teenager.

So, Caitlyn Jenner, thank you for another valuable service you've performed.  You couldn't save Sam Taub's life--or Leelah Alcorn's, or that of any other trans person who's committed suicide.  But at least there's less chance that their deaths will be in vain.  

Ash Haffner: Transgender Teen Commits Suicide

As if it wasn't bad enough that transgender women are being murdered simply for being who they are, transgender teenagers are taking their own lives for the same reason.

More precisely, they are killing themselves because of the bullying, harassment and other mistreatment they incur because others don't accept them.  And trans women are being murdered by people who hate them.  It's almost as if their killers are those schoolyard bullies, a bit older and with more brute strength and lethal weapons.

The difference is, of course, that the trans women I mentioned were killed by someone else, while the trans teens--including the one I'm going to tell you about--killed themselves.

Ash Haffner stepped into oncoming traffic near his North Carolina home this past Friday. That, of course, is the way Leelah Alcorn killed herself in Ohio.  Like her, 16-year-old Ash left a suicide note.

However, their messages were very different.  This is what Ash left on his iPad:

'Please be WHO YOU ARE... Do it for yourself. Do it for your happiness. That's what matters in YOUR life. You don't need approval on who you are. Don't let people or society change who you are just because they're not satisfied with your image.' 

I wish he could have continued to live by his own advice.  But, I have long reckoned that any human being can only take so much.  And, as we know, it's harder for a 16-year-old to believe "It Gets Better" --which, of course, is the reason why Dan Savage does everything he can to bring that message to young people.  The bullying, intense as it was, got worse after he cut his hair and asked to be referred to as "he".

According to the report I read, his mother supported his transition but continued to use the pronoun "she".  Some may say she didn't help his self-esteem.  But I know, from experience, that when someone has known you all of your life in the gender and by the names you were given at birth, it's difficult for that person to switch names and pronouns. Sometimes that person will "slip up" even long after the rest of the world sees you as being of the gender in which you're living.  Somehow I think Ash understood this and had no intention of implicating his mother or family.

But at least Ash's message is some attempt to give others the hope he lost.  That is in marked contrast to what Leelah, a year older, wrote in the last post of her blog, which her family deleted:


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

More than anything, her message reflects the lack of whatever support Ash had.  Leelah ends her message about what needs to be done in society, but has resigned herself to not seeing it. Still, her blog post, like Ash's note, is an example of what Miguel de Unamuno meant by "Hombre muere de frio, no de oscuridad" (Man dies of cold, not of darkness.)  Both teens killed themselves because they were left out in the cold.  All we can do is take them in, take in their spirits and take in those who are left.

What We Couldn't Share

By now, you've read of Leelah Alcorn's suicide--whether from me, another blogger, the media or some other source.

The pain she expressed in her blog--which was deleted at the request of her mother--is all too familiar.  The tragedy is, of course, that she was so young and couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel.  But what angered me, and many other people, is the way her family, especially her mother, denied who and what she was in death as they did during her life.

As terrible and familiar as her story is, there are many other trans people who've killed themselves, not because their families and friends wouldn't accept them, but because they couldn't "come out", sometimes even to themselves.

"Calie" returned from a long absence from blogging to relate such a story about someone she knows:  "He was a good boy and had become a good man." 

So why did Calie use male pronouns in referring to her now-departed friend?  Well, the person in question never revealed her gender identity to anyone--not even to her family or to Calie--in life.  Only the note she so carefully left behind (It wasn't spattered with her blood) told of the conflict and pain he was ending with the bullet in his head.

But one thing makes this story even worse than any other I've heard before:  The young person who committed suicide was the child of a transgender parent.  A macho-guy father, to be exact.  Of course, you know why he was such a macho guy:  the same reason I trained and played sports as hard as I did for so many years, or why other would-be trans women become cops and soldiers or get involved in any number of other "manly" undertakings.

Of course, a day may come when he realizes he can't keep up the facade anymore.  Then, he will have two choices:  transition or die.  I am not exaggerating:  I had such a moment thirteen years ago.  I knew that in transitioning,  I could lose my life as I knew it and I had absolutely no idea of what could be in store for me were I to transition.  But I also knew that I would not live for very much longer if I didn't transition.  

I had that moment at age 43.  I don't know how old Calie's friend or his (I'm using the male pronoun in the same way Calie used it) father were and are.  I suspect the father is close to the age I was when I had my moment of truth.  If he is, I don't know how he's gone on for as long as he has.  I don't know how I lived as long as I did with my conflict.  When I came out to my mother, she said the same thing.

And now, again, I'm remembering Corey.  I spent what would be the last night of his life with him.  We were both in our mid-20s at the time; when he called me, I knew he was in a very bad way.  Even though we were good friends, I didn't know what I could possibly offer him that someone else could have.  But he insisted that he simply had to talk to me.

You might say that night is the one thing for which I haven't forgiven myself, and probably never will.  Of course, at that time, I wasn't "out" to anybody, including myself.  But he wasn't waiting for me to come out:  He just knew.

From what Callie says, her friend never knew that his father is trans.  Corey knew I am, just as he was.  I didn't know how to acknowledge, much less do anything, about it.  Or perhaps I was just too much of a coward.  Whatever the explanation, I think of what Corey and I could have shared with each other, and how he might be alive--as a she, of course--and I might have spared myself decades of frustration and pain.

All I can do now is to hope that the father of Calie's friend will end his pain and frustration, though not in the way his child did.  And I hope Calie and all of the other people who can't, for whatever reasons, be who and what they truly are will one day be free.

The Truth She Owes Leelah

On doit des egards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la verite.

Voltaire wrote that to the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe nothing but the truth.

His message, however crudely I've translated it, is one that hasn't reached the family of Leelah Alcorn.

You see, they contacted Tumblr and requested that Leelah's blog--which ended with the suicide note I reproduced in one of my posts last week--be removed.  And those fucking cowards at Tumlr went along with it.

I didn't read the entire blog, but I read parts of it--including some that ranted and railed against her family, particularly her mother, who wouldn't recognize her as the girl she was.  

It's one thing to say that your trans kid is "going through a phase."  It's still another to deny your kid's identity and create a fiction about her suicide.  That is what Mrs. Alcorn did in this note:

"My sweet 16 year old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went home to Heaven this morning.  He went out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck."

You fucking clueless bitch, your daughter Leelah walked in front of truck barreling down the interstate.  She wasn't the victim of some random unfortunate incident; you killed her with your unwillingness to listen to her.  

I mean, if you don't want to acknowledge her as the person she was, why can't you at least admit the truth about her death?  Maybe you can't give her all of the truth you--and we--owe her, but at least it would be a start.

Instead, you've chosen, in essence, to eliminate all traces of the existence of your daughter.

It looks like you were born a few decades too late to pursue your true calling:  You should have been an information or propoganda or some such minister for Hitler or Mao.  After all, they wanted to erase the existence of certain people from history.  

Since you can't follow that line of work--and look at where it left them in history!--why don't you just honor the love you claim to have had for your child with the only thing it, and she, deserve--the truth.