A 17-year-old transgender teenage girl in Ohio has died by what appears to have been suicide, leaving behind a Tumblr note that blames her parents for not accepting her gender identity, isolating her, and forcing her to attend faith-based therapy. “There’s no winning,” the note reads, in part. “There’s no way out.”
Leelah Alcorn, born Joshua Ryan Alcorn, was walking along Interstate 71 when she was hit and killed by a semi-truck around 2:30 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, December 28. The local news accounts refer to Alcorn as male, but she blogged frequently on a Tumblr called “Lazer Princess” about living as a trans teen. Judging by the Tumblr, she was a fan of Sailor Moon, feminism, and stockings with cats on them; she regularly re-blogged inspirational photos of trans adults.
It’s also where she published a post titled “Suicide Note,” which she had pre-scheduled before her death. From the beginning of the note:
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.
Alcorn apparently believed she’d never be able to transition successfully. She concludes: