Boldly Tackling a Tough Subject
When we talk about the risks of suicide among trans youth, it’s important to use care with our word choice. Still, that doesn’t mean the right wing press is helping by bludgeoning people over a bad turn of phrase.
by Evan Urquhart
The topic of suicide in trans youth is always difficult to write about ethically, because unlike gender dysphoria there’s robust evidence that suicide rates are influenced by a social contation effect. But one place you really don’t want to see talk about trans youth and suicide, however, is a transphobic far right website from Alabama, where we counted three thumbnails on the home page where the subjects seemed to have been captured in the moment of a pose reminiscent of a “Sieg Heil”. Unfortunately that’s what we get with a story by Craig Monger on 1819, a far right wing news site out of Alabama. Monger is taking issue with some of the language used by Doctor Morissa Ladinsky, also of Alabama, when discussing the tragic death of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen.
Dr. Ladinsky is a doctor, not a professional media figure or speech writer, and she clearly cares deeply for the future of patients with gender dysphoria who aren’t affirmed. The word choice of boldly, especially repeated twice, is not the best. It wouldn’t be the words a training on how to tackle this incredibly sensitive topic would suggest, and we wouldn’t refer to a young person who passed in that way on Assigned. That said, the crowing tone of the far right writer over a less-than-ideal word used in a passionate moment, rubs us even wronger than the word choice itself. By the end of the article they have misgendered Alcorn and suggested her suicide and depression was unconnected to the gender dysphoria she struggled against without help.
It does not seem clear from these choices that Monger feels invested in preventing suicides like Alcorn’s own, which the website also quoted at length, which is itself a practice generally avoided by those who try to follow guidelines on how to ethically discuss the topic with as little risk as possible of exacerbating the suicide contagion effect.
In closing, I feel it’s important for to note that while rates are elevated, the vast majority of transgender youth do not die from sucide, though thoughts of suicide are common, especially among youth unable to access gender-affirming care. Adults who access such care say they are able to live joyous, full lives. One such adult is writing these words now. So just, yaknow. Hang in there, kids.