The transgender suicide epidemic: is accepting their confusion really the answer?
People who suffer from gender confusion are
encouraged by the current cultural climate to "be themselves," meaning
reject the gender they were born with.
"Transgender" teens are taught that what
they feel is who they are and that to be happy and fulfilled, they must become
the opposite sex. When Bruce Jenner decided to publicly look like a woman,
he was supported by the mass media. Even the president of the United States,
when Jenner decided to have castration surgery, applauded him as a
"courageous" hero.
But studies repeatedly show that
"transgender" people who seek to become the opposite sex are in fact
not happy or fulfilled. In fact, a life-or-death internal war is continually
going on within, to the degree that many, if not most, seek to end their lives.
That's what the American Foundation for Suicide
Prevention and the Williams Institute found when the foundation analyzed
results from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. The numbers
of suicide attempts are heartbreaking.
Over 41 percent of active "transgender"
people try to kill themselves. That's ten times the average 4.6 percent
suicide attempt rate.
And this study isn't the only one proving that
those who seek to live as if they were the opposite sex are, in fact, killing
themselves. Over a dozen other surveys worldwide have found the same alarmingly
high suicide rates.
A national survey of more than 6,500 transgender
people asked the question "Have you tried to commit suicide?"
Forty-one percent answered, "Yes."
"Chronically high stress levels,"
"anxiety," and "depression" are most commonly reported
among active transgender people. Self-harm by cutting is often reported as
well.
The suicide hotline for them, Trans Lifeline,
handled more than 20,000 calls in its first nine months of operation alone.
Greta Gustava Martela, a lesbian who founded the hotline, summarizes,
"With 41% attempting suicide, you have to assume something's just not
working for transgender folks."
The mainstream media attributes the exploding
transgender suicide rate to outside influences, such as peer and parental
rejection, but does not consider the transgender person's tragic internal
battle as intrinsic to living a psychological dichotomy.
The facts speak otherwise. The University of
Birmingham's Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility (ARIF) conducted a
medical review that found that there is no conclusive evidence that sex change
operations improve the lives of transsexuals. In fact, many transsexuals remain
severely internally distressed and suicidal after the operation.
Chris Hyde, the director of ARIF, explained,
"A large number of people who have [sex change] surgery remain traumatized
– often to the point of committing suicide."
And yet the effort to ignore the suicidal facts and
teach even grade school children that transgender people are fulfilling their
"true" selves continues. As Stella Morabito of The Federalist writes,
"The [transgender] guy isn't allowed to talk about his regret. Not
openly. The transgender lobby actively polices and suppresses discussion
of sex-change regret."
Some transgender patients have said they realized,
too late, that sex change operations did not live up to their promise. Alan
Finch explains, "You fundamentally can't change sex. ... The surgery
doesn't alter you genetically. It's genital mutilation[.] ... It's all
been a terrible misadventure[.] ... The analogy I use about giving surgery to
someone desperate to change sex is it's a bit like offering liposuction to an
anorexic."
Tennis champion Renée Richards, who went from male
to "female" in the '70s, wrote, "I would have been better off
staying the way I was – a totally intact person[.] ... I don't want anyone to
hold me out as an example to follow[.] ... I get a lot of letters from people
who are considering having this operation ... and I discourage them all."
