Transgender Suicides: What to Do About Them

Public Discourse 27 July 2017
Family First Comment: Excellent commentary….
“I have personally experienced gender dysphoria, and I explored transition in my early twenties. I am aware of the emotional struggle, but I am also aware of the empowering realization that I alone control how I perceive the world….
…We cannot forget the real tragedy in all of this. People suffering from genuine mental anguish are being promised that with enough surgery, camouflage, social acceptance, legal protection, educational campaigns, and so on, they will finally feel whole as a person. Worse, they are told that the only reason they continue to suffer is due to the intolerance and hatred of those around them. The current method of addressing this concern is only making matters worse. Treatment needs to address the core problem.”
I have personally experienced gender dysphoria, and I explored transition in my early twenties. I am aware of the emotional struggle, but I am also aware of the empowering realization that I alone control how I perceive the world.
….In a recent discussion on Twitter, Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), pardoned by President Obama after being convicted of espionage, argued that transgender “treatment” is necessary for the health of trans individuals, “because,” Chelsea stated, “not getting medical attention for trans people is fatal.”…
…. The argument can be summarized as follows. Without medical treatment (expensive surgery and lifelong hormone therapy), social acceptance, correct pronoun use, and open bathroom access, trans people will never be comfortable in their bodies or in society. Consequently, they are at a high risk for suicide, and it’s an injustice not to make these “treatments” available; the crime of killingtrans people can even be laid at the feet of those who do not take these steps. This argument, made by Manning, Ford, and so many others, is supposed to halt any criticism—or even querying—of gender theory, but it raises more questions than it answers.
If It Needs Treatment, Isn’t It an Illness?
Further, if transgenderism requires medical treatment, how can it form the basis of anyone’s identity? Trans people and their allies have, of course, insisted with great indignation that their condition is not an illness, but it is hard to see how this conclusion is to be avoided, if it’s insisted that it must be treated or else will be fatal. Illnesses that require treatment do not constitute anyone’s identity. Being HIV-positive requires medical treatment. I do not identify as HIV-positive as though it made me an entirely new kind of person. It is a condition I need to treat in order to live and be healthy. How is being trans any different?
We Need a Real Cure
Some trans advocates would presumably reply that sex should change rather than gender because sex can change, whereas attempts to change one’s gender usually end badly, but this response is unnecessarily pessimistic.
I have personally experienced gender dysphoria, and I explored transition in my early twenties. I am aware of the emotional struggle, and I am sympathetic to the sense of frustration and hopelessness. But I am also aware of the empowering realization that I alone control how I perceive the world. Even if I would prefer to be female, I understand that my body is male, and therefore the most effective and healthiest plan of action is to align my sense of gender to that unchangeable state. I have largely been successful, as I feel fully integrated today and am not only comfortable in my male body but find myself enjoying the pursuit of masculine physical progress.
An uncomfortable truth is that many surveys, including a 2011 Swedish study, indicate that suicide rates remain high after sex-reassignment surgery (the Swedish study reports that people who have had sex-reassignment surgery are 19 times more likely to die by suicide than is the general population); and the National Center for Transgender Equality reported in 2015 that 40% of people who identify as transgender have attempted suicide. The LGBT community actively fights such studies and suppresses the voices of people who, like myself, have chosen natural alignment or who regret transitioning. The medical community is currently uninterested in recognizing the inherent dangers and long-term impact of transition therapy and is equally unwilling to pursue study that may result in finding a cure or a resolution to the underlying issue. To suggest this is a medical issue needing to be cured is to be accused of proposing genocide.
But medical issues do need to be cured. If gender dysphoria is indeed naturally fatal without treatment, the only ethical solution is to find a cure that exposes the body to the least amount of risk. Obviously, this would be to correct the biological problem and/or address the psychological distress behind the dysphoria itself.
The LGBT movement has built a civilization around the validation of being “who you are” despite all efforts of judgment or persecution. Trans individuals often tell me they are now their “true gender.” Advocates like Zack Ford and others routinely demand that extreme social bigotry prevents the trans individual from living a full and happy life. But in the center of this storm of indignation and boasting of perseverance is the steady and quiet realization that these people are extremely insecure.
We cannot forget the real tragedy in all of this. People suffering from genuine mental anguish are being promised that with enough surgery, camouflage, social acceptance, legal protection, educational campaigns, and so on, they will finally feel whole as a person. Worse, they are told that the only reason they continue to suffer is due to the intolerance and hatred of those around them. The current method of addressing this concern is only making matters worse. Treatment needs to address the core problem.
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