TOUGH LOVE OR TOUGH LUCK

It seems that people who post trans blogs and commentaries…me included… are always writing about discrimination, hate crimes, health care and bathrooms. Granted, each is critically important and potentially life altering. Only after the tragedy of someone taking their own life, however, do we usually write about suicide and what drives trans people to take their own lives. Many of us have contemplated this drastic act. More than a few of us have attempted it. Generally, a person must reach the depths of despair to want to escape from a life which has become so burdensome, so unbearable, that to live simply becomes unacceptable. And it usually takes a trigger.

So…imagine you lost your job for no specific reason other than discrimination and there is no legal state remedy. There are still no federal ENDA protections. And, for a myriad of reasons, no one wants to hire you. You’ve been scrounging to make ends meet, but you’re running out of options. If you were fortunate to have collected unemployment, it doesn’t last forever…the same thing goes for food stamps. Maybe you own your own home, maybe you’re renting. Either way, the day finally comes when all options have been depleted and you are staring down homelessness. You still have a car…maybe…and you’re living in it and/or on friends’ couches (if there are any friends left). Your only access to the internet is the library, and support groups are sadly the only, albeit tenuous, lifeline you have left.

Or, perhaps you’re feeling alienated because your family and friends have rejected you. Your spouse sued for divorce. Your sense of being alone is more than ponderous…it’s overwhelming and seemingly endless. You are unconnected. You literally have no one to whom you can turn. Maybe your crisis is related to your religious upbringing and an inability to reconcile being trans with religious precepts with which you were raised and/or indoctrinated. In many situations, depression stems from a combination of many ancillary factors. More often than not, however, it’s the pressures from without which drive us to the brink of extinction, not the fact that we are trans. Many, if not most, of us have no problems dealing with being trans…it’s how we fare at the hands of others who are steeped in cultural bigotry which causes distress. In each of these scenarios, it is often the internet connection and the support groups that keep us going.

You write to a few of those groups about your problems, your concerns, your fears and several persons in those groups lay into you for having a so called “pity party”. Is this tough love or is it really just another way of saying tough luck? For some living on the edge, it is, sadly, the latter. I fear it may also be the trigger.

We have become a self centered and uncompassionate culture and most of us don’t know how to act when we hear of others’ misfortunes. It’s almost as though there is something infectious and we don’t want to catch it, so we compartmentalize ourselves and phase out. It’s the same kind of treatment often given to persons with disabilities. And trans persons. It’s dismissive, insensitive and shows a total lack of understanding about what’s at stake.

Why are we so callous? For starters, any kind of sense of community we might have once had seems to be disappearing. Our myopia and narcissism as a culture is astounding. Perhaps we don’t want to be perceived as enablers or maybe it’s that we comfort ourselves in others’ misery, knowing that it’s them, not us. Why someone would dump on a person in their direst hours eludes me and I have to wonder about their ability to empathize. It’s possible that some kind of psychic numbing is behind our inability to relate to each other. We treat each other as objects which are in some sense unreal and detach ourselves from any consequences which might ensue.

This behavior is more common in online groups than in situations like in-person support groups. Not that it doesn’t happen there, or in one on one encounters, but it seems to be rampant online… and diabolical. Anonymity allows us to pile on with complete disdain for compassion and with a smugness that is astonishing and bewildering.

I have always liked the “walk a mile in the other person’s shoes” metaphor and think that it’s one of the keys to a sense of higher consciousness. We seem to be less and less able to comprehend a concept which should really be self evident. We are often called upon to evoke this kind of higher consciousness throughout our lives; it’s even more critical when we consider that a human life may be in the balance. After being subjected to the kind of rejection which undeniably happens to so many trans persons, one’s mental landscape can be terribly fragile.


It is often said that when persons talk about suicide, they are crying out to someone for a life line. Most persons are looking for support and validation and they really don’t want to take their lives. Alienating and isolating any human being is the quickest and easiest way to convince them that no one really cares…and to remove any reason to cry out. That’s usually when a suicide which has merely been entertained crosses the threshold of reality. And that’s when we most need to be there for each other and not dump on our sisters and brothers for having an alleged pity party.

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To contact Robbi Cohn, email robbi_cohn108@yahoo.com