This day last year I was wrapping up my holiday by visiting my girlfriend. This day last year Leelah Alcorn was wrapping up her short 17 years on this earth by stepping into traffic. When I read Leelah’s suicide note, I realized I couldn’t just move on and not speak up. We all have that moment when the injustices of the world make us so sick we can’t slide by anymore. Leelah was calling out to us from the beyond with this message:
‘The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say ‘that’s fucked up’ and fix it. Fix society. Please.’
Her last plea, “Fix society. Please,” I took very personally. I felt like I had something to say, something that might change those that I could reach with my words. Change my piece of society. With the hope that trans people, especially trans youth, would find a society that was willing and wanting to embrace them. So, I started writing. I wrote my first column about Leelah, as so many others were as well. We all took her up in our arms and spread her story. I think we all recognized that desperate cry, that desperate want for a society we could survive. With 41% of us attempting suicide, it’s clear she was not alone. Got that? Not thinking about suicide but actually attempting it.
After the outpouring for Leelah, we watched in horror as the number of murdered trans women of color grew. The demand for justice grew louder.
I started researching structuration theory and boundary control. I began to see how vital it was to my trans sisters of color that our society change. In a radical way. The violence and discrimination trans people face are based on boundaries created by a gender social structure that is limited to a binary. If we can shift the way we view gender away from a binary, I believe we can help end some of this violence.
My mission for 2016 is to continue to breakdown the gender binary myth… because I’d like to one day live in a society where “transgender people are treated like humans.”
For Papi, Lamia, Ty, Michelle, Taja, Penny, Bri, Kristina, Keyshia, London, Mercedes, Jasmine, Ashton, India, K.C., Shade, Amber, Kandis, Elisha, Tamara, Keisha, Zella and Leelah.
“Gender likewise figures as a precondition for the production and maintenance of legible humanity.” – Judith Butler
I, too, was struck VERY hard by her message, for some reason, and when I finally heard the news, I immediately broke down crying, playing for her, on the guitar, the only song I knew at the time, Iris by Goo Goo Dolls.
“And I don’t want the world to see me, because I don’t think that they will understand.”
That line gets me every time.
Maybe it was because I /we can’t take this anymore!
Maybe it is because Leelah’s chosen name, is very similar to my given name, “Teela”.
Or maybe it’s because, we’re still made to feel like pariahs, even at work, there’s almost no escaping it, and I’m trying to do my part to kindly fix society.