SHE WAS BURIED IN A FREAKING SUIT. A SUIT. SHE WOULD HAVE WANTED A DRESS, BUT HER PARENTS DECIDED ON A GODDAMN SUIT.
HER name was Leelah. SHE was a beautiful girl. SHE was misgendered by the people who should have accepted HER for who SHE was. How is it that everyone else in the world could accept who she wanted to be apart from her parents, why couldn’t they have accepted her as a daughter at her funeral and buried her in a dress, nOT A FUCKING SUIT.
Dan Savage has extremely strong words for the parents and therapists of Leelah Alcorn, the trans teen who died by suicide after leaving a note on Tumblr.
“The suicide of Leelah Alcorn this week actually made headlines – something, sadly, that the mainstream news media too frequently ignores. Alcorn is the transgender teen who committed suicide by walking in front of a truck early Sunday morning. On her Tumblr page, she had scheduled a suicide note to post, which it did when she was no longer alive to unschedule – or postpone – it.
Alcorn also scheduled an apology post, which was published sometime after her suicide note. It was an apology to some, but not to her parents, who apparently had caused her great misery.
"Mom and Dad: Fuck you. You can’t just control other people like that. That’s messed up,” were her final words to her parents in the apology note.
Dan Savage on Twitter went on a bit of a rant, posting tweets saying Leelah’s parents should be prosecuted for her death.”
Trans Lifeline opened up in November to provide a resource for transgender people with suicidal thoughts. In the US, the organization can be reached by phone at 877-565-8860.
Although a lot of the notes are calling the poster’s bluff, (while I was writing this, I checked on the posts and saw that the last user I used for picture deleted their original post), I’m still afraid with Tumblr’s policy of let-hate-this-person-with-no-proof-what-so-ever, users will still blame him on something he couldn’t have possibly controlled.
That driver will feel guilty for the rest of his life that he killed someone, and I can guarantee doxing him or sending him death threats will only make things worse. We don’t need another person to lose their life over this.
Oh my God, no, out of all the people to blame! Please don’t think it’s the driver’s fault. He has to live with this for the rest of his life as it is.
Something I saw on facebook that I found interesting. A neighbor of Leelah Alcorn recounting the forced isolation that her parents inflicted on her, (isolation from the outside world is a common abuse tactic) consistent with what Leelah herself wrote in her suicide note. I can’t verify the accuracy of this person’s statements but I found it to be worth sharing. On their facebook page they also linked a video of their own son appearing in an interview about the suicide.
I like how this person made a point of saying Leelah’s name as many times as possible, like he’s trying to emphasize that her name was LEELAH, not “[name removed]”, the incorrect name her parents were referring to her by.
I just saw a post where someone was talking about donating to something which included the sentence “Please help me to ensure that Leelah didn’t die in vain.”
And you know what? Fuck you. I know the intention was good, but this just summarises exactly what seems off about the way a lot of poeople having been reacting to this.
Because it doesn’t matter how many charities you donate to, how much awareness is raised. She will always have died in vain. Because there is nothing honourable in dying. Because it should never have fucking happened in the first place.
Yes, maybe this is what it has taken to make you want to do something. But nothing will make her death “worthwhile”.
Do not use Leelah’s death as a tool - a means to achieve an end. Do not treat it like one. Treat it like the fucking tragedy it is.
When random strangers on the internet are more accepting of your daughter’s pronouns and her name then you fucked up. When news articles are more respectful of her pronouns and her name, you fucked up. When you try to claim she was just ‘on a walk’ after she posted a scuicide note online, you fucked up.
unfollow me if you support leelah alcorn’s parents. unfollow me if you think transgender teens are just going through a “phase”. unfollow me if you feel “neutral”. unfollow me right now if you feel anything other than disgust and rage at what’s happening.
frankly until people who are named in childrens’ suicide notes as being reasons for their wanting to end their own lives are charged with child neglect or familial abuse or SOMETHING i will not rest. leelah alcorn was 17, she was a teenager and still legally a child. she was still in high school. her own parents drove her to suicide and even after her death continue to pretend that leelah was a boy and that she didn’t commit suicide. her mother’s facebook post discusses the suicide like it was an accident — “out for an early morning walk”, “hit by a truck.” leelah was out several miles from her parents’ house walking along a busy expressway at TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. she wrote a suicide note and scheduled it to be posted if she didn’t return.
she was driven to suicide. her parents killed her.
do not let them lie about the circumstances of leelah’s death on facebook to save face among their friends
message all of their facebook friends if you have to to make sure that everyone knows what happened to leelah alcorn. i am sick and tired of this shit happening and I am not going to let carla and doug alcorn get away with what they put leelah through.
Carla Alcorn has deleted this post from her Facebook (or changed her privacy settings; either way it isn’t available):
Do not let this go unnoticed. Do not forget how she tried to hide the fact that she and her husband abused their daughter for being transgender. Plaster this screenshot everywhere.
