Trigger Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide.
The number of young transgender people known to have taken their lives this year has already climbed into the double digits. Social media and online communities have been key to spreading the news of their identities and raising awareness of the issues that surround these tragedies; but can they be harming as much as they are helping?
“Fix society. Please.”
These three words were the last sentiment expressed in
Leelah Alcorn’s suicide note, which was posted to her
blog on Tumblr after she
took her own life in the early hours of 28
th December, 2014. Leelah
was a young transgender woman whose gender identity was rejected by her
conservative Christian parents; she despaired of ever growing up into the adult
she wanted to be.
Her words acted as a rallying cry for thousands of activists,
supporters and onlookers. Her suicide note was reblogged over 200,000 times
before her Tumblr
account was deactivated at the request of her parents, and copies of it
were shared and quoted after the original disappeared. Her death was
widely reported on by international media and sparked off
vigils
and
marches,
celebrity
responses and
YouTube
videos; inspired
fanart
and a
game jam, and led users to make
and sell
accessories
and
T-shirts to raise
money for transgender rights organisations.
At the heart of it all was social media. Tumblr had allowed
Leelah to be her true self online; on her blog, she identified herself as a “transgender
queen of hell”. It gave her the chance to speak out after her death, and
allowed her words to be shared on a phenomenal scale. As one Twitter user wrote
in the days following Leelah’s death:
“[Leelah Alcorn’s death] was a bit of a cultural phenomenon
in that it got a lot of people talking about these issues that weren’t talking
about it before,” says Greta Martela, the founder of
Trans Lifeline, a
transgender crisis hotline.
“I think it’s pretty clear that it is the most
reported suicide of a young transgender person; I don’t think you can dispute
that.”
What was it about Leelah’s story that sparked such a
response? “I think it’s because… that family was kind of a typical American
family, right?” Greta replies. “I think that’s why it got so much attention, because it really
was the demographically typical family. Also I think it was probably a
good story, and Leelah’s writing was very powerful. So I think it’s a number of
things.”
Her words galvanised the online community, who were
determined to see her dying wish to “fix society” and for better treatment and
rights for transgender people be carried out. The hashtag #JusticeForLeelah
began gathering momentum on
Twitter
and
Tumblr. Other memorial and awareness campaigns included
#RIP Leelah and
#Pink for Leelah, which urged people to start a conversation about transgender issues by painting a fingernail pink. Transgender comedian
Red Durkin, responding to the despair Leelah had expressed in her suicide note over ever growing up into a happy, functioning trans adult, started the hashtag
#RealLiveTransAdult on Twitter, prompting other transgender adults to
share their stories and successes, however small. The hashtag has since inspired a
series of articles on Mic.com, profiling and interviewing "real live trans adults" in more depth.
Little by little, the movements have begun to see an impact. The most promising change has come from
Leelah's Law, a campaign to ban the psychologically harmful practice of "conversion therapy" on LGBTQ+ young people, which caused Leelah herself such distress. It elicited a response from the
Whitehouse, and has been drafted as a
resolution which could become a bill and pass into law with enough support. On a public awareness level, the media also seems to be improving its standards of reporting. Sarah Lewis, a volunteer for
The TranScience Project, says:
“We suspect, although haven’t crunched the numbers yet, that
the number of transphobic slurs in general media went down after Leelah's
suicide. The media has a huge influence [on society’s treatment of transgender
people] – the way they portray a story or identify a subject is crucial to the
public's perception; “If the BBC misgenders Manning then so can I” type stuff.”
A double-edged sword
In spite of these positive changes, the situation for transgender young people is still dire. A study conducted by
Pace, a mental health charity for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,
revealed that in England, 48 per cent of transgender people under the age of 26 had attempted suicide, and 59 per cent had at least considered it. Rates in countries such as the
United States and
Canada are similarly high.
On 15th February 2015, seven weeks after Leelah
Alcorn took her life, a 15-year-old transgender boy by the name of Zander
Mahaffey committed suicide, and published his suicide note on Tumblr in the same fashion as Leelah.
Coming so soon on the heels of Leelah’s death, Zander’s death was also met with
an outpouring of support from the online community. As with Leelah, the
determination to commemorate Zander as he would have wished to be remembered
stemmed partly from his family misgendering him after his death and refusing to
use his preferred name and pronouns. However, for his friends online, the tide
of activism and defiant memorials could be bewildering and unsettling.
Lenasai, an internet friend of Zander’s who set up a
memorial blog for her friend after his death, recalls,
“I was impressed to see how the community responded on Tumblr
(and the message even spread to my college campus, even though I live many
miles away from where Zander lived!) Seeing renewed support for other trans
victims of suicide like Leelah was also reassuring.
“The only problem I had was with Tumblr’s reaction to trans
suicides in general. There is a sense of glorification of these suicide victims
after they died (which was not our intent when we asked people to spread the
word about Zander.) … There’s definitely a fine line between respectfully
honoring a person and glorification of their death. We got a lot of
fanart drawn of Zander, sometimes alongside Leelah. I think most people
did a good job of honoring their deaths respectfully, but then there were the
people that started to call Zander a “space prince/king” and stuff like
that. It made me uncomfortable because nobody said stuff like that about
Zander while he was still alive.
“When people react to a person’s death by portraying them as
royalty or as a martyr ... that’s when things get a little iffy.”
Tumblr artwork depicting Zander and Leelah together
The mass mobilisation of supporters via social media can
be a double-edged sword when it comes to transgender suicides. Debates have
raged on the topic of honouring the memories of transgender suicide victims, with
detractors arguing that it
leads
to copycat suicides, and supporters arguing it is
crucial
not to erase them in death as well as life. The argument has been
complicated by incidents such as Damien Shrum’s attempted suicide: four days
after Zander Mahaffey’s death, Damien uploaded a suicide note to Instagram, and
tried to kill himself. He had previously posted an homage to Leelah and Zander
on his Instagram account, pronouncing Zander’s thoughts about gender and
suicide “identical to mine”.
The note prompted an anonymous call to the police, who
reached Damien in time, and he was placed into psychiatric care. However, the
damage on social media had already been done, with thousands of over-eager
supporters already
memorialising Damien as if he had died. For his family, this
was an additional stress in an already harrowing time. Damien’s sister
took
to Tumblr to set the record straight about what had happened, writing of
her “sickness and disgust” at the “proportions the internet has blown this to.”
“I would say in general, spreading a person’s suicide note is not a good thing to do. When you share suicide notes, you’re sharing something often written in a very troubling time in a person’s life. I think that’s what can lead to the glorification of these suicides,” Lenasai says. “If a suicide victim left a message they wanted to be shared, a good alternative would be to share the general message that person wanted to have shared instead of sharing the actual suicide note.”
Safe spaces online
The safety of an online space can be crucial for transgender people, particularly young transgender people, who often turn to the internet to access advice, information and resources that they wouldn’t find offline, and to connect with a community of others like them.
“I think trans people are generally more technically savvy than the general population,” says Greta Martela, noting that Trans Lifeline was conceived of and put together through social media, mostly Facebook. “[It’s] how people are finding resources, how people are staying connected.”
Recognising this, Lenasai set out to create the
#MyNameIs Project. In the wake of the death of a trans person, it has become customary to use the hashtag “#hisnamewas” or “#hernamewas” in order to reiterate the person’s chosen name and pronouns. It can often be an act of defiance and solidarity in the face of family and media misgendering them. Lenasai was one of the people who started the hashtag #HisNameWasZander following the death of her friend; but she wanted to see the trend replaced with something more positive, something to help transgender young people before they reached the point of suicide.
“The goal was to create a safe, positive space for transgender youth,” says Lenasai. “The project was intended to be viewer-driven, with individuals submitting stories and messages of encouragement. At first, there were a ton of people willing to contribute! Unfortunately, that number died down quickly, and now the project is mostly run by myself. I think perhaps the idea didn’t quite work out the way I had originally planned it to, so I changed the focus to reblogging positive posts, which is pretty much what I wanted to have on the blog, anyway.”
She says that there is “definitely” a need for more safe,
positive spaces for transgender youth online. “There are so many trans kids who
face harassment just for being transgender, both online and offline. As
long as this kind of harassment exists, we need to increase efforts to create
safe spaces for these kids. At the very least, if they know there are
other people who support them, their lives can be made just a little bit
easier.”
Unfortunately, a desire to be seen as helping in the midst of a crisis can lead some well-intentioned people to overlook the seriousness of mental health and suicide, in the same way that memorial posts can cross the line into glorification. A
well-meaning young person, inspired by the support being offered on Tumblr by
transgender people willing to lend an ear to anyone who was contemplating
suicide, set up a blog called ‘
Trans
Youth Support’ which aimed to match up transgender “mentors” with young
people in distress.
However, the idea of trusting vulnerable young people’s
mental states to untrained, unknown and randomly chosen volunteers drew
widespread criticism, and the creator hastily cancelled the project with
profuse apologies. “I apologise. I’m young (that doesn’t excuse me) and I
rushed into this headfirst,” they wrote. The blog is currently on hiatus with
the prospect of being revived by a new moderator who identifies as
non-binary and has experience
with transgender activism and mental health issues.
The danger that social media can pose to young transgender people is never more evident than in stories like that of
Cameron Langrell, who skipped school to avoid bullying only to be bullied on social media, and committed suicide just days after changing her gender on Facebook; or
Kyler Prescott, who was bullied on the social app Kik. Recently, transgender users on Twitter also found themselves the target of transphobic tweets after Twitter's Promoted Tweets system
allowed several highly abusive messages to be broadcast from an account imitating a prominent feminist.
However, there is hope yet, as social networks like Tumblr are acknowledging their responsibility to the vulnerable and marginalised users who congregate there, and working to make their online spaces safer ones. Tumblr recently launched
#PostItForward, an initiative which encourages those with mental and emotional health issues
to share their stories and share positivity in an attempt to reduce stigma
around these problems and promote well-being. It was launched with the support
of major celebrities like
Pete
Wentz,
Elizabeth
Banks and the Vice President of the United States,
Joe
Biden, who raised issues such as bullying and sexual assault in their
videos. Tumblr has also used the project to reiterate the supportive services it already provides, and connect users with advice and positivity blogs.
Liba Rubenstein, Tumblr’s director of outreach, causes,
politics and advocacy referred to Leelah Alcorn’s story when speaking about the
new
initiative, suggesting that Tumblr is not ignoring the fact that it has
been the epicentre of a number of recent tragedies, and is making efforts to improve the situation. Greta Martela, although not a Tumblr user herself,
also acknowledged its extreme importance to the transgender community and
credited it for a lot of the progress made in transgender awareness in recent
years.
“Tumblr is important for trans people; I don’t even
have a Tumblr account, I’m not a Tumblr user, but I’m aware of so many people
from Tumblr, and I’ve seen so much stuff from Tumblr that has been reblogged or
reposted to other social media.
“Without that community, I don’t think there would be the
level of awareness that there is now, among younger people – the millennial
generation, and younger; I think we have to give credit to a lot of youngsters
for forcing some social progress on trans issues.”
