I don’t think we talk enough about how causal the relationship might be between suicidality and a trans identity, and not the other way around.
It seems to me that some suicidal people are attracted to transition as a method of symbolic suicide. The whole modern method is an exercise in throwing yourself away. Your old name is dead. You get to demand people eliminate or alter all photographic or documented evidence of your former life, from your parents to the government. You’re promised a different face, a different body. A new ID. New spaces. Your parents are abusing and rejecting you if they still think about the old you. Most importantly, your hatred of yourself is validated. You were right to hate yourself— of course you did when you were born wrong! Your self-hatred is now some strange new axis of activism, where what you hated was imposed upon you by people you now get to fight. The old self is hated and eliminated to be replaced by a shallow cutout of stereotyped whimsy. By believing that men and women are so deeply and fundamentally different, you are promised transition into something other than human. Hormone injections shall transform you into a different creature that doesn't even think the way you thought. Women are whimsical creatures that do nothing but shop and preen and it’s an asset to be brainless. Men are formless blobs where it’s normal not to care about anything or anyone, just sit around growing a beer gut all day, and that’s totally not a mutation created by patriarchy, it’s just normal and fulfilling when you’re a man. Nothing like the old you that had expectations, responsibilities, needs, and desires.
The very nature of today's terminally online trans identity scoops up the already suicidal. And it all becomes a great surprise that morale goes through the floor once the procedures are done and the dream of inhumanity vanishes.
I believe it’s very appealing to people who are mentally ill, abused, victims of assault, etc, yes. Especially with the increasing rhetoric of gender dysphoria being sold as a cure-all treatment. The whole concept is very easy to imagine a vulnerable person using as a way to scapegoat their issues. People who have been hurt in some way will do drastic things to feel like they have control of their body and how others see them again. New pronouns means you get to be on someone’s mind, and you feel some control over how they see you. The whole act of changing your name, finding a new wardrobe, cutting your hair, etc- this is all something you can do anytime, but a trans identity gives it new meaning and importance. Even the language around it is incredibly appealing and revealing- your dead name. Your gender journey. You’re gender diverse. Gender expansive. Of course that’s going to appeal to someone who wants to belong. Someone who’s looking for someone to care. I think it’s important to stress as well that this doesn’t mean the people caught up in it are idiotic or brainwashed. They’re human beings. A lot of the backlash against the idea that this is a social trend is because of the idea that if it is, that means that the people in it are easily tricked or fooled. Or that the suffering they’ve attached to the trans identity in some way is now illegitimate. But that’s not the case at all. Human psychology is complex. The suffering is real. The feelings are real. “Social trend” does not mean that the people caught up in it are all liars or their feelings are frivolous. “Attention seeking” does not mean manipulative or cruel. I wish the trans community could acknowledge this. I wish they could acknowledge how appealing their movement can seem, and how dangerous it can be.
