A post appearing to be made by Leelah Alcorn, the transgender teen who committed suicide recently, has surfaced on Reddit. The post seems to show that Leelah was seeking help over two months ago, asking whether others thought she was being abused, and whether there were authorities who could help her.
In the subreddit r/AskTransgender, Leelah posted a question on October 28, titled, “Is this considered abuse?”
In it, she outlines her complaints against her parents. Many of the complaints are already well-known from her Tumbler suicide note. She says her parents became angry when she came out as transgender, and took away her phone and computer privileges when she instead came out as a gay male, in an attempt to bridge the gap somehow.
She says that while her parents would allow her to make plans with friends, they would cancel the plans at the last minute, not allowing her to go after all. She says she asked for see a gender therapist, but her parents forbade it, and that she felt treated ‘subhuman.’
The teen talks about cutting herself, and about considering suicide. Her closing paragraph is heart-rending.
Please help me, I don’t know what I should do and I can’t take much more of this. I don’t know if my problem is serious enough that I can contact authorities for help and even if it is I don’t know how much that’ll damage or help my current situation. I’m stuck.
She also posted a comment on Christmas Day, responding to a ‘What did you get for Christmas?” post.
Some socks and some boy clothes. It sucks watching your sisters get dresses and having your family compliment how pretty they are when if I wore a dress I’d get kicked out of the house.
Leelah Alcorn’s suicide has inspired a petition, which already has over 200k signers, asking for ‘Leelah’s Law’ to be enacted, outlawing the use of ‘conversion therapies’ designed to ‘fix’ transgender individuals by teaching them to conform to cis-gender norms.
Her cry for help has also inspired a memorial fund from r/AskTransgender, with all money raised going directly to Free2Be, an advocacy organization to help LGBTQ youth.
Leelah’s post on Reddit netted her a great deal of advice, support, and encouragement, and as she responded to comments, she appears to have known she was not alone, and even speaks of being a legal adult and able to make her own choices in only a year. The great tragedy is that Leelah Alcorn didn’t make it through that year.