On who else's headstone should they put that?
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Leelah Alcorn, transgender teen, commited suicide
- Thread starter patchbunny
- Start date
On who else's headstone should they put that?
Based solely on what a depressed 17 year old said on Tumblr?
What else but the evidence we have should we base our opinion on? I'm sure that if it turns out he was a liar (and I use he as we only have his comment that he was a she and I'm sure you wouldn't want to simply take his word on it) lionking will change his opinions. Based on what we currently know I'm happy to condem the parents.
No one's
Dangerous argument. If the only evidence we have of a UFO claim is that someone says he has a sore butt after seeing a mysterious light in the sky, do we conclude (on the evidence available) that he likely was probed by aliens, or just remain open on the issue until we have more data (like he had 8 pints and three doubles before leaving the pub that night).
As for accepting a teenager's statements about his / her own gender- I honestly don't know. We've all been teenagers. We knew things with 100% certainty about ourselves that our mothers laughed at- and sometimes our mothers were right.
This is a sad story from any point of view, but I think hearing both sides of the story is usually helpful in understanding it. Mutual misunderstandings seem to be the major problem in this case. It could all have been handled so differently.
Dangerous argument. If the only evidence we have of a UFO claim is that someone says he has a sore butt after seeing a mysterious light in the sky, do we conclude (on the evidence available) that he likely was probed by aliens, or just remain open on the issue until we have more data (like he had 8 pints and three doubles before leaving the pub that night).
As for accepting a teenager's statements about his / her own gender- I honestly don't know. We've all been teenagers. We knew things with 100% certainty about ourselves that our mothers laughed at- and sometimes our mothers were right.
This is a sad story from any point of view, but I think hearing both sides of the story is usually helpful in understanding it. Mutual misunderstandings seem to be the major problem in this case. It could all have been handled so differently.
Have you read the OP thoroughly, including the links?
angrysoba
Philosophile
Not sure where you are going with this, but it is a rule of thumb that you should proportion the amount of evidence needed according to the claim being made.
On the one hand someone claims to be abducted by aliens, and the evidence you would want to satisfy your belief in those claims will be considerable (or it would for me).
On the other hand, we have someone claiming that their parents did not accept their transgender identity. What evidence would we need to believe that story since we know that such things happen all the time?
Are you not simply falling back on an evidence-free prejudice in this case as in "you know what teenagers are like?" Actually, I think that in my experience a lot of teenagers do not blissfully float through their adolescence in some impenetrable bubble of complete certainty. Contrarily, I think a lot of teenagers find that time to be very uncertain indeed.
I've no idea why we need to condemn bereaved parents on so little evidence. Is there something that they've said that is so obviously terrible? They refer to their child as male, I suppose..?
did you not read the OP and all the links?
In case you didn't
Okay, within a family, these things can be said, argued and debated. But after her child suicided? To the press?
The parents deserved contempt, at the least.
Yes, the mother said:
She also said that they had told "him" that they didn't have the money to pay for the gender reassignment, to what extent that is true I have no way of knowing, but it's certainly not free.
Meadmaker
Unregistered
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2004
- Messages
- 29,033
When it comes to condemning the parents, I can feel sympathy for them in not accepting their child's self identification. It's a pretty big shock, and goes at some very deeply held beliefs. I've known a family who went through this. Fortunately, they chose a different path, and the kid is doing fine, and they are supportive of their son's (born daughter) new identity, but it wasn't easy. I can't condemn a family who refuses to just accept that everything they ever believed about sex and gender is a bunch of hooey.
However, this family did more than that. Not only did they not accept the kid's gender identification, they totally isolated the child from his/her friends, support network, and pretty much all social outlets. That's wrong, and the parents have paid a very heavy price for that decision.
I find it interesting that they believe their son is in Heaven. They probably haven't thought through all of the implications of that belief. Perhaps some day, they will realize that what they are actually saying is that God doesn't really have a problem with their child's transgender identification, and that if God doesn't have a problem with it, maybe they should have accepted it as well. Of course, logical consistency isn't exactly the defining characteristic of Christian belief.
However, this family did more than that. Not only did they not accept the kid's gender identification, they totally isolated the child from his/her friends, support network, and pretty much all social outlets. That's wrong, and the parents have paid a very heavy price for that decision.
I find it interesting that they believe their son is in Heaven. They probably haven't thought through all of the implications of that belief. Perhaps some day, they will realize that what they are actually saying is that God doesn't really have a problem with their child's transgender identification, and that if God doesn't have a problem with it, maybe they should have accepted it as well. Of course, logical consistency isn't exactly the defining characteristic of Christian belief.
For a while, and then they relented:
I'm sure many of their actions were counterproductive, but given that this kid ended up committing suicide and assuming their claims of unconditional love are genuine, then plausibly they did this because they were desperate.
For myself, I just feel sorry for everybody involved.
commandlinegamer
Philosopher
/tangent
What gets me about religion is the preaching "you're going to hell if you do this" while someone's alive, then the automatic "they're in Heaven now" once they die.
LorenzoValla
Muse
Don't confuse the religion with the messenger.
I'm not disagreeing with anything you are saying but i just find the "they/i were born in the wrong body" meme to be ridiculous.
As far as I'm concerned nature makes no mistakes and being uncomfortable with their sex/gender and/or society trying to coerce them into behaving according to some standard template because they happen to be born with certain chromosomes is just one part of this wonderful thing they call nature.
Bikewer
Penultimate Amazing
My wife worked in a floral shop for years. It was known in the area as a gay-friendly place, so they did quite a lot of business with a variety of sexually-different folks. They even had a contingent of drag queens who competed in the local (and national) pageants.
Some of the stories these people told were heartbreaking. She had one kid, about 16, come in. He had "come out" to his mother who had promptly thrown him out on the street as being "posessed by the devil".
He'd been living homeless for a couple of weeks. She was able to put him in touch with some folks from child services.
This was not at all unusual.
Don't know why this sort of phobic behavior is so engrained into our culture.... In others it's not. There is an area in some South or Central American country (I confess I forget which one...) where there is a high incidence of a sort of odd sexual dimorphism. Babies present as female, and are raised female... Until they reach puberty when rather suddenly....They start to show male secondary sexual characteristics.
Everything.....
This is apparently accepted with equanimity by the folks there... "Oh, he's one of those!" Off with the dresses, buy some male clothes, and no one thinks twice about it.
Some of the stories these people told were heartbreaking. She had one kid, about 16, come in. He had "come out" to his mother who had promptly thrown him out on the street as being "posessed by the devil".
He'd been living homeless for a couple of weeks. She was able to put him in touch with some folks from child services.
This was not at all unusual.
Don't know why this sort of phobic behavior is so engrained into our culture.... In others it's not. There is an area in some South or Central American country (I confess I forget which one...) where there is a high incidence of a sort of odd sexual dimorphism. Babies present as female, and are raised female... Until they reach puberty when rather suddenly....They start to show male secondary sexual characteristics.
Everything.....
This is apparently accepted with equanimity by the folks there... "Oh, he's one of those!" Off with the dresses, buy some male clothes, and no one thinks twice about it.
Did you read that link I posted above, the one that said drive by posting ? It leads to a Reddit overview for Alcorn's account.
There's way more insight on that than on tumblr.
Prozac, previous suicide attempts, it's all there see this thread
I'm seeing a gender binarist who didn't get the gender is a social construct message and had to be the prom queen right here and right now
This is really more of a depression issue than a trans* one
Oh, I can get on board with that.
All of this sadness about stuff that is either fixable, not as bad as it seems when you're 17, or one can be happy despite.
I hadn't read that thread, I'm kind of impressed by the responses... they all seem pretty sensible, nice, well grounded people on that reddit.