Guest Post: On Suicide and the Transfeminine Expereince

This is a guest post. One of my very dear friends Elly posted this on her facebook wall yesterday in reaction to the coverage and tragedy of Leelah Alcorn's suicide. It was too beautiful and full of truth for me not to ask if I could share it. I'm deeply grateful that she agreed to let me post her story. As someone with lived experience as a trans woman and someone who's been consumed by suicidal thoughts she is far more equipped to write about these things than I am. I thank her for her honesty and bravery in sharing this with me and her community.

[TW: Suicide.]
If you need something to make these things more tangible and real to you, then I want to tell you something: Before my transition, I was going to kill myself. Not maybe. There was no real sliver of doubt left in me, although I was being patient. I'd worked out my plan (carefully optimizing for lethality and viability of organ donation) and I'd composed my note in my head. I thought about it nearly non-stop for years on end, refining the details, hungrily imagining the act itself. The instinctual allure of self-annihilation was indescribably intense: I wanted to die like a drowning woman wants to breathe. Sometimes I fantasized about flaying myself alive. Many of you -- some of my oldest friends and acquaintances -- have never seen me in person in any moment in which I wasn't actively wishing I was dead, although I worked as hard as I could to hide it from you: because it wasn't fit for polite conversation, and because I couldn't allow you to try to stop me.

I started seriously contemplating suicide when I was in seventh grade, and I stopped a little while after I started my transition. I don't know quite when I lost my will to die, or how; one day I just noticed it missing. There was a span of time in which it was so strange and new to actually want to live, I wasn't sure how to deal with it. Now I'm looking back from the far side and it's increasingly difficult for me to empathize with how I know I used to feel. It's an eerie thing to so clearly remember feeling something like that -- to be able to touch every scar I carved into myself down through all those years -- and feel like I only sort of understand. I can't imagine wanting to die anymore. That's why I can tell you all of this.

I was essentially suicidal for fully half my life, and I never even had to worry about most of the things Leelah Alcorn had hanging over her. I never had to deal with the violent condemnation of parents or church. By comparison to her, I consider myself quite weak: I would have died surrounded by would-be allies, having admitted nothing to anyone, done in by nothing much more than my own internalization of the ambient transphobia of this culture. All the Ace Venturas and Crying Games.

I want so badly to live now. I relish every breath I take with a kind of euphoric desperation that I can't describe any better than I can my lost death wishes, and I can't fathom that anything will ever change that now. Still, I'd trade my life in a second for a chance to speak to all the Leelah Alcorns of this world before they leave it: to say, you're not as alone as I know you feel. To tell them: holy shit do I ever worry that I'm always going to look like some kind of ugly-ass man in drag, but I've also lived to figure out that there are much worse ways to be -- and you were beautiful anyway. To say I've felt enough varieties of loneliness now to know that none of them are quite as sharp as being in the love and intimacy of someone who still only sees the facade you've constructed for them. I don't know if my words would make any difference.

There are so many ways in which 2014 was a staggering breakthrough year for transgender equality, but it wasn't nearly good enough. 2015 needs to be better. Every year needs to be better than the last, until there are no more stories like Leelah's. Until the world looks back and knows it can't even rightly imagine what it was like for us.

My Lumpy Bravery: on chest binders and trans superhero narratives

Last week I bought my first chest binder from a reputable online vendor. With vigor, glee, and a hunger for play I clicked the purchase button. It came on a Thursday night. When I had stomach cramps and vicious heartburn that dissuaded me from enacting the fantasy of tearing open the package just when it arrives and trying on its contents that very instant.

The next morning I was alone and had forgotten about the bulging envelope in favor of my morning piss, the laundry & various other mechanics of morning.

I only remembered it while loading up the washer. I realized that all of my sports bras (and by all I mean 3) were starting to exhibit a decent amount of sweat funk. So, with a song in my heart I topped off the washer with my current slightly rank bra before adding soap and letting her rip. Afterwards I thought giddily, 'Oh yeah, I could try it out for a bit'.

I went downstairs and opened the envelope. Immediately I didn't like the synthetic, rough fabric. It reminded me of the surface of a cast. Though less rigid. I slipped it up and over forearms and head, but it got stuck. Awkward on my shoulders. I had to slowly but stiffly tug it down my back bit by bit.

The experience didn't get any better.

I thought I might find a way to press my expectations through the discomfort. But the force of my fantasy didn't push me past the sixty minute mark. Sure I liked the way it made me look in some of my tighter shirts. But the pinch behind my armpits made me wince  and pushed my usually stout shoulders into a slouch. Besides it really didn't do much more than my tightest sports bra already does.

Wearing and taking off the binder just made my breasts feel absolutely massive. Having all of the pressure on my chest, just served to remind me every moment of each inch of flesh the binder touched. I could never not be thinking about my chest and it's size while wearing it. I'm sure I could adjust out of feeling this way but honestly I don't want to. That didn't stop me from wanting to want to and feeling guilty for not wanting to.

The worst part came when I took it off and I was hit in the chest with the realization that the only other garments I'm comfortable (com)pressing my chest were wet and swishingly unavailable. I just sat there with red stress marks in my armpits, my chest achingly huge and aware of itself.

My sports bras do more for me in terms of getting my breasts out of the way when it comes to moving though the world. But more than that, they get my breasts off of my mind, which is great. They enable me to think of my chest as just my chest. This ease and flexibility is an extraordinary tool in navigating my gender.

I mostly ordered a binder out of sartorial naiveté. Because I lust after the clean lines of menswear and want some of my looks to not include a lumpy chest. I have a vague desire for smaller breasts and a more muscular chest but for the most part I love my breasts and have no animosity toward them. (I recognize I am lucky in this regard).

There's a part of me that loves thinking about clothes and presentation as all fun and games, but the truth is, it's only on my best days that I get to feel that way. Many days result is me feeling that my clothes are confining me.

All of the 50 minutes I spent in, putting on, and taking off the binder were painful and unsettling. But I kept it on for that long because I wanted to show myself I was “tough”. Or because some part of my brain shamed me away from comfort by screaming 'Real trans people are willing to suffer to ease their dysphoria (and so you should too).'

The shame and self loathing I felt gave me flashbacks to trying on prom dresses in high school. Except this wasn't about not being thin enough participate in the concept of pretty (which I never got that hung up on anyhow). This time it I felt like I wasn't tough enough to be trans and that because my gender dysphoria isn't actively painful that I am incapable of bravery or sacrifice.



Oftentimes trans* people are laughingly and empoweringly referred to as superheros, badass mutants, or as having extraordinary powers of bravery, endurance, or chutzpah. These are important stories. But they are just that, single stories about individuals. The trans* community is so diverse.

I love the power in these superhero narratives. But the way they glorify, and mythologize trans people's choices oversimplifies the complex and individualized abilities and tactics trans people create to cope with the suffering and discomfort of gender dysphoria. Worst of all it offers very few models and resources for newly out/realized trans folks (like me).

We see these “strong trans characters” and assume that transition and trans lives must include certain activities and compromises to be considered socially acceptable or brave. In Sophia McDougall's piece I hate Strong Female Characters she states that “The Strong Female Character has something to prove. She’s on the defensive before she even starts.” I would a argue that superhero trans narratives have done the same. And while the thing we're on what defensive about is very real and very dangerous we are more than just our fights against our own dysphoria.

I have a trans friend who will brush off or object whenever someone calls her “brave” for expressing who she is. Part of what I read into that refusal is her acknowledgement that being willing to suffer or to choose different forms of suffering is not bravery. She defines her dysphoria as suffering; a constant ache which can spike randomly or in reaction to certain experiences. Whereas I identify my dysphoria as a discomfort I regularly find myself bumping up against. The conditions of our lives and dysphoria differ. So too must our metrics for bravery.

As someone who has to balance the discomfort of my dysphoria with the discomfort of chronic pain and social anxiety, I don't always have the willingness or resources to suffer in order to ease my gender dysphoria. Sometimes I have to choose to ease my dyspepsia or my social anxiety first.

But too often that choice leaves me wondering, am I a coward? Am I  a disgrace to trans superhero narratives every where because I chose not to suffer the discomfort of a chest binder?

Of course not. (says my logical brain)

My body is a multi-purpose space for working on feeling okay. My unique gender and gender dysphoria are only some parts of this work and are not confined just to my physical body.

Because I've got many long term bodily concerns not related directly to my gender, I often prioritize my short term physical discomfort. This runs counter to the superhero narratives of trans folks that I love and clung to in the past and that have become a beacon for young trans people today.

For me complication of this narrative means choosing (for now) to forgo the discomfort of a chest binder. And to continue building myself and my expressions sans a traditional trans narrative.

I've decided that bravery, like dysphoria, has many forms. My bravery is apparently lumpy and unbound.

This is a response to Roxanne Gay's

AMAZING piece about trigger warnings. Please read it before you read my response. I agree with the point that trigger warnings can provide false utopian senses of security which need to be challenged. But I still think they have incredible value.

Trigger warnings are vitally useful in the age of the internet where there is no actual physical space to catalogue information. The inverse of "everything is a trigger for someone" is that no one is able/available to engage in (potentially triggering) information on disparate topics at all times. Context matters. Especially physical context (which the internet can't account for). I'd like to know if an article might make me cry or rage before I read it in the bathroom at a family reunion. (true story)

On the internet pics of kittens can be tabbed right next to a post about rape/rape culture. Sometimes even in reverse as an effort offer relief. The transition between these two hunks of information is sometimes helped immensely by a few words (a trigger warning). In other words a trigger warning is courteous to your audience because it considers their possible context/history. It acknowledges that, based on cultural trends, certain topics will probably be more triggering to certain populations others. This is not coddling, this is using assumptions based on cultural trends to allow others to make space for how they are likely to receive certain info. It's internet polite, if you will. 

The information on the internet is very different from the information in a book/magazine/pamphlet. A book has a jacket/cover, a blurb, some imagery, a table of contents, and sometimes even an introduction or preface; a protestor or a promoter probably handed you a pamphlet at a specific location/event; magazines have tons of images and thoughtful layout. When it comes to analogue reading/viewing we're often much more primed for how to receive that content. Internet/digital content is usually sorely lacking in this sort of contextualizing information.

A trigger warning attempts to provide some of the same context-centering information. Maybe one day we won't need them, but while we're still transitioning from a print culture to a digital information one, they serve to make transitions between contexts smoother.

Trigger warnings provide a form of notation. They let folks know what sort of information they're about to access. If I think of the internet like a huge library of information I know there are sections of information/books I don't want to access at certain times (I would not go to the horror section in the middle of the night, or to the erotica section after being assaulted, or the sexual assault memoirs section at while trying to research marine biology).

I am a fan of trigger warnings as both a reader and a writer. They give me & my readers information that helps us decide when and where to read a text. As a writer I am always considering how an audience will receive a message. Trigger warnings help in this regard. They may be inelegant but they serve their function.

I don't think that trigger warnings make the internet (or any other space) "safer" but I do think they provide more information we can use to navigate tough information (like a map or table of contents). They're a tool for helping us switch contexts more smoothly.