This makes me so angry. She dishonors Leelah’s identify and memory even in death, pulls attention to herself as the grieving parent, and clearly still doesn’t get that it is her actions and treatments that pushed Leelah to take that step.
RIP Leelah Alcorn.
God dammit! OK, listen up, my dear trans babies. I know that you’re hurting. Probably hurting a lot like Leelah was, but I want you to see two things here.
Leelah committed suicide because she couldn’t see any way to escape. Her voice was actively silence and her story ignored in favor of a fantasy that her parents wrote. She felt powerless, alone and afraid. That’s because her parents WANTED that for her to make her feel like the only choice available to her was to conform to their narrative. She found a different choice, but one that ultimately gave her parents the final control over her story, her life, and now, her death.
She realized she couldn’t begin transition until she was at least 18 and legally responsible for her own medical care, and someone gave her the terrible, wrongheaded and dangerous belief that that was TOO LATE to transition and “pass” and find love.
She was wrong. I know many gorgeous and happy trans men women who transitioned in their 20s, 30s, 40s and later and have found the life they always wanted. Please don’t internalize that bullshit that your chances to transition end at 18 or 21 or 25 or 30 or whatever. It’s never too late. Never.
But the real lesson I want you to take from Leelah’s death here is that she’s gone, forever, and even though she did everything she could to make sure that her story was known and heard by queueing up that post, her mother is still ignoring all of that for this fucking bullshit narrative she made up about her darling SON accidentally being hit by a truck on a morning walk, instead of facing the fact that her daughter committed suicide because she saw no other way out.
If you’re feeling like Leelah, alone, afraid, powerless and like there’s a ticking clock counting down your chance to transition, please know that there is no peace in death.
There is no guarantee that your suicide will make anyone see anything they don’t want to.
This mother is still willfully and actively ignoring, denying and mythologizing her child’s life and death. Leelah has finally lost her voice forever. The news articles will fade, the tumblr posts will vanish, and this horrid person will be telling tales about the tragic accident that took her son from her until the day she dies. Her suicide solved nothing for her. She will never see the amazing woman she’d have grown up to be. And neither will her mother.
The only chance you have to be the narrator of your own story is to stay alive, get out, get away, find your power, find your voice, find your real family - the people who know you and see you for who you are, people who hear you when you tell your story, people who will defend and protect you at all costs. We are here, waiting for you with our arms and our hearts open. Please, I know you’re in a terrible and seemingly unbearable place and environment. The only comfort I can offer is that the world doesn’t stop turning, time doesn’t stop and this moment isn’t the last moment. Please find a way to bide your time, to hold on for one more day, one more hour, one more minute, though it seems eternal, this moment is temporary.
I can’t guarantee your future happiness or that your life will be easy, but none of us, trans or cis, get any such guarantee. The only guarantee you get is that if you kill yourself, you’ll NEVER have the chance to find and build a happy life.
Every storm passes, every rain cloud moves on, and nothing in this world is permanent. This pain of your present will become the aches of your past.
Please stay alive. Please hold on until you can escape from there and come home. Our light is on and our door is open.
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.
Leelah Alcorn was a 17 year old transgender woman artist. She grew up in a very religious Christian family. When she came out as trangender to her parents they told her it was a phase and sent her to therapy. The therapies they sent her to were religious ones that told her things like god makes no mistakes, told her she was selfish, and that the only way to cure depression was to follow gods path. She came out as “gay” at school so people wouldn’t be as shocked when she came out as trans. Her friends were accepting but her parents called her an embarrassment. They took away all electronics for 5 months and kicked her out of public school.
She was an artist. he drawing above was drawn by her.
She committed suicide on December 29th due to the transphobia caused by her family. Please remember her and the other transgender people how lose their lives to transphobia.
Link to her tumblr (warning that it contains her suicide note and sensitive materiel)
A transgender woman in Idaho died suddenly at work at age 32. Her friends say when they went to her funeral, she was in an open casket — hair cut short, dressed in a suit, presented as a man.
“No mention of the woman she knew she was and had lived as for several years. Just erosion of her identity and an old photograph of how the father perceived her to be,” said Meghan Stabler, a board member of Human Rights Campaign and member of HRC’s National Business Council.
“She had done what she needed to do legally to be seen as her authentic self. Her father erased her identity either though ignorance or arrogance,” Stabler said.
21 year old transgender female Islan Nettles died after being savagely beaten to death by her attacker Paris Wilson. According to witnesses, Wilson was shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs before being pulled off the victim by police. Wilson only received misdemeanor assault charges that were dropped after only spending 10 hours in jail… Today he is walking free in New York City. He has not been charged with murder. Islan was an aspiring fashion designer who’s dreams were cut short by the same type of hate crimes that have taken the lives of countless other lgbt youth. Spread the word about this injustice and raise awareness about savage hate crimes like this towards lgbt youth. #Regram #Justice4Islan
not enough people are talking about how a white american soldier stationed in the philippines drowned and murdered a filipina trans woman in a hotel room toilet this month and its goddamn important
her name is jennifer laude. she was 26. she was engaged. she was planning on getting married in march, going back to school for hotel management, going on to become a flight attendant. not that this matters necessarily, because even if she had been a sex worker, which a lot of media has assumed, she would obviously not have deserved to die — but not every media source is giving her an identity outside of “trans” “filipina” and i want people to know who she was.
she was out on october 11 with a friend, met a 19 year old US marine named joseph scott pemberton, and the two of them went to a motel together.
thirty minutes after checking in, he left, and she was found naked with her head in the toilet, dead. there were two condoms found which are currently undergoing investigation.
tensions are rising because the US naval&military presence in the philippines has already been highly contested, many citizens want US soldiers out of their homes, and this isn’t the first potential hate crime, potential rape, or murder committed by US soldiers in the philippines (or, obviously, anywhere). the US is currently ensuring that US guards protect joseph scott pemberton even though potentially the philippines should have jurisdiction given the fact that it’s fairly definite that he murdered a philippine citizen.
her boyfriend and sister have even literally climbed into the military base demanding justice, and her mother has also voiced protests. they have not been answered.
guys, this is important for so many reasons.
it’s important because we need to talk about how trans people are still murdered every day.
we need to talk about how being nonwhite and trans in the presence of whiteness and cisness is still dangerous — literally, just existing.
we need to change the way we talk about nonwhite queerness, nonwhite trans people. they are not inherently exotic, erotic, or “other.” they are human people. their genitalia is not your business. their gender is not a reason or excuse for their murder.
we need to change the way the media talks about being trans. “chicks with dicks,” the “used to be a dude,” the “surgery” question — media must stop dehumanizing trans lives, reducing them to an absurdity or a joke. media coverage still uses jennifer’s “birth” name or mentions “formerly a man,” or shit like that, and it physically pains me to see these microaggressions, because they are a reminder of the exact transphobia that cost her her life. they participate in the same violence, they reinforce that otherness, and microaggressions will not necessarily kill a trans person but the attitudes they inspire clearly often do.
we need to talk about masculinity and the military and what leads 19 year old boys to commit murder in the face of what they’ve been told is the “other.” because articles are surfacing arguing that pemberton didn’t know she was trans, but she was naked and she was killed and so i’m pretty sure that’s not a fucking useful defense.
i don’t actually care whether or not she was cheating on her fiancé (which i doubt). i wouldn’t care if she was planning on having sex with pemberton for money (she was also robbed this night, by the way, though it’s not clear by who) (though i’ve got a guess). she did not deserve to die.
we need to acknowledge that trans lives are worth saving. we need to acknowledge that they are being stolen. we need to acknowledge that we are losing trans lives because misinformation and prejudices present transgender people as less than important, as other, as separate, as disgusting, and not only are their murders altogether too common, but so is the poisonous rhetoric that follows, that she deserved it for being a monstrosity, or for “tricking him,” and this is rhetoric that we cannot abide.
no one is asking for it.
jennifer laude has faced more oppression, discrimination, and prejudice in her life than most people could bear. her strength and courage to be herself every day is praised by her friends and family. she has inspired filipina and filipino queer and trans youth. she worked so hard to become who she is and create a life that allows her to be true to herself, and to recognize that that life was cut so brutally, needlessly short — it makes me furious. and it should make you furious too.
jennifer laude’s only crime was being a human, who happened to be trans, filipina, and female, and her murder needs to be acknowledged and met with justice.
a personal note: this story is particularly devastating to me because i am a cis female bisexual half-filipina, and i’ve been struggling coming out to my family in the philippines because the pervasive culture is very catholic and conservative, and moving very slowly towards an acceptance of queer identity. jennifer laude is and was an inspiration — and so was her mother, pictured below, who came to accept, love, and protect her.
it is not easy for people who were raised largely ignorant about being trans to come around, and so to know that jennifer’s mother made the journey to accept and support her daughter only to have that journey cut so brutally, horrifically short — i can’t stand it. i cannot.
here are some links for further news and reading (trigger warnings for some transphobic language, obviously, unfortunately), and if any word surfaces on protests or petitions for her murderer to find justice i will let you know, but before i leave you guys let me quote what the commission on human rights (CHR) chairperson loretta ann rosales said at jennifer’s wake:
Ang pinakamahalagang usapin dito human being siya. Hindi siya dapat pinatay.
The most important issue here is that she is a human being. She shouldn’t have been killed.
On Oct. 15, Jennifer Laude, a transgender Filipina woman was found dead in a motel in Olongapo City, with her head resting against the side of a toilet bowl.Source
She had multiple injuries around her neck and according to her autopsy, died of drowning. She was drowned in a toilet bowl. Source
The main suspect is US Marine PFC Scott Pemberton.
Jennifer Laude was killed brutally and mercilessly. What happened to her is sick and she deserves justice. But what do people say? People say this:
People are actually siding with a murder who DROWNED A WOMAN HELPLESSLY IN A TOILET BOWL. They are justifying murder with the transphobic set of my mind that “she deserved what was coming because she wasn’t upfront about her original gender”
I hope, I so fucking hope, that the Philippine government takes this case seriously and doesnt make a military alliance with America more relevant than the this blatant act of transphobia
This is a simple text based game where you play as a young trans person trying to buy some underwear. I made it with the intention of showing cis people what it’s like to be trans. You can play as a trans girl, trans boy, or a nonbinary person. It’s short, so you can play it multiple times for different paths. There are several paths, some better, some worse; if you’re easily triggered by dysphoria or transphobia, you may want to avoid this game. Some paths are safer than others, depending on how well you pass (surprise, surprise). TW for homophobic/transphobic slurs, transphobia/transmisogyny, slurs, misgendering, and possible violence.
i think some people on this website are forgetting that there is actually not that much visibility for trans* people and that sometimes when someone makes a comment that can be see and transphobic or excluding trans* people, it’s not because they’re actively and maliciously transphobic, but because they literally didn’t think of it because they are ignorant.
