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reddersPerhaps not a perfect post, but reading little light's clamavi ad te on Questioning Transphobia has made me want to link it all over. There's a million little lines that are perfect, especially with the It Gets Better-verse that's going on, like:
If you or the people around you are using words that make you feel like a thing; if you are frightened to have basic bodily functions in public; if you talk about yourself like a disease, not a person; if you see nothing ahead in your old age but the bleakness of despair, isolation, and abuse; if your youth is a neverending desperation to get out and away to somewhere you cannot trust exists... (emphasis mine here).
The opening's statistic is so ridiculously large (and, though I'll concede that statistics on transfolk are usually a bit crap due to small sample sizes and largely inept researchers, I think this is a conservative figure) that I think it gets forgotten: over half of living trans folks have attempted suicide. Youth anti-suicide campaigns hardly target trans youth, by and large. Some extent, I think they'd find it difficult to know quite what to say. How can you guarantee things'll improve? How could you promise--even best-case-scenario in today's terms (for many: hormones, therapy, surgery)--that life will be perfect, that families will be accepting, that a kid will figure out how to let go of that core of guilt they've built so meticulously?
It pisses me off, sometimes, because (as the author says) this isn't some self-help, you-need-therapy, here's-a-help-line issue--though of course, these resources are necessary for many. This is a social issue, a you-need-a-sea-change issue.
If you or the people around you are using words that make you feel like a thing; if you are frightened to have basic bodily functions in public; if you talk about yourself like a disease, not a person; if you see nothing ahead in your old age but the bleakness of despair, isolation, and abuse; if your youth is a neverending desperation to get out and away to somewhere you cannot trust exists... (emphasis mine here).
The opening's statistic is so ridiculously large (and, though I'll concede that statistics on transfolk are usually a bit crap due to small sample sizes and largely inept researchers, I think this is a conservative figure) that I think it gets forgotten: over half of living trans folks have attempted suicide. Youth anti-suicide campaigns hardly target trans youth, by and large. Some extent, I think they'd find it difficult to know quite what to say. How can you guarantee things'll improve? How could you promise--even best-case-scenario in today's terms (for many: hormones, therapy, surgery)--that life will be perfect, that families will be accepting, that a kid will figure out how to let go of that core of guilt they've built so meticulously?
It pisses me off, sometimes, because (as the author says) this isn't some self-help, you-need-therapy, here's-a-help-line issue--though of course, these resources are necessary for many. This is a social issue, a you-need-a-sea-change issue.