A little over a year ago, I had a brief online conversation with a young trans girl named Leelah Alcorn. Leelah had been suffering from intense depression and suicidal ideation due to her gender dysphoria and was reaching out for help. Unfortunately, she was still living with her abusive parents who did not give her consent to start her transition procedures. And because she was under 18, she could not start without her parents' consent.
A few weeks later, I found out that Leelah had killed herself. In her suicide note, she mentioned that she felt like she simply couldn't wait until she was 18 to start hormones.
Admittedly, I didn't know Leelah that well but her death hit me hard. After I heard the news, I read through her Tumblr and Reddit accounts. What I saw was that Leelah was kind, fiercely intelligent and immensely creative. It pained me to know that the world lost such an amazing person.
Unfortunately, Leelah's case is not an isolated one. Over 50 percent of trans youth attempt suicide before their 20th birthday. This is about 10 times higher than the national average. Part of this is due to external factors, such as an unsupportive home environment, harassment at school and simply the general awful way society treats trans people. But a lot of it is due to gender dysphoria that goes untreated.
Not every trans person suffers from dysphoria, which is important to note. But many of us do. For me, gender dysphoria felt like this constant, overbearing sense of intense wrongness. I often felt like my entire existence was a nightmare I just couldn't wake up from.
Gender dysphoria also tends to get really intense around puberty, as this stage highlights features that may make trans people dysphoric. When I was going through puberty, I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror.
This is why it's so important to ensure that trans youth are able to access treatment for gender dysphoria if they wish to. Denying treatment to trans people, trans youth in particular, can be extremely damaging to their mental health. Unfortunately, some people refuse to look past their own transphobia to accept this truth. Cis people make claims about trans kids being too young to make "irreversible" decisions.
Worse yet, many cis people tend to view this conversation as some cute political debate they can engage in at their leisure. I remember two years ago, one of my classes had a "class debate" on whether or not trans teenagers should even be allowed to access treatment. The professor assigned us a reading that advocated for conversation therapy for trans kids as "preparation." During the debate, I listened to cis people, who had never experienced dysphoria in their life, talk about why trans teens are too young to be allowed to transition. I was still closeted at the time, so I sat in silence for most of the discussion.
The problem with this "debate" is that it reeks of cis privilege. Cis people who have never once experienced dysphoria don't get to say that trans kids can just wait until they're 18 to transition. They don't know what it's like to have your entire life be an endless nightmare.
Many cis people make the argument that transitioning can be dangerous, so trans teenagers should not be able to make these decisions. First of all, this simply isn't true. Transition procedures are actually pretty safe, as patients are usually monitored very carefully. Second, according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), denying treatment to a trans teenager that wishes it can be incredibly harmful to their mental well-being. Telling a trans teenager that they can't transition because of potential risks is like telling a cancer patient they can't go on chemotherapy because it might have potential risks. Plus, medical transition has an extremely high satisfaction rate.
Finally, the argument that transition is irreversible is not necessarily true. Many trans teenagers choose to go on puberty blockers, medication which, as the name implies, holds back puberty. They are helpful because they are completely reversible and have been shown to be effective in reducing dysphoria.
Thus, it is essential to not deny treatment to trans youth suffering from dysphoria. I would even advocate for a system in which trans youth under 18 can still access treatment, as many parents are unsupportive.
This is not "PC culture" run amok as so many conservatives claim. This is simply necessary work to ensure the safety of trans youth. Trans youth suffering from dysphoria oftentimes cannot simply just wait as so many cis people want them to do. Leelah Alcorn died because she was forced to wait. If you want to argue that trans youth are too young to transition, you should remember that there is blood on your hands.
