“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.” - Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Failing to immediately fund your kid’s transition isn’t refusing to love your kid. I honest to fuck don’t know why anyone would take a suicide note as gospel- they are by definition written in a state of extreme emotional distress. The parents said they never heard the name Leelah and their kid seriously brought it up one time.
Of course no responsibility is leveled at online communities that make suicide seem like the only logical alternative to immediate transition. It was also pretty clear that Alcorn feared being an ugly woman a lot more than waiting to transition. Fuck that misogynist nonsense.
this isn’t about whether or not transitioning should be funded by parents, this about the fact that Leelah’s parents forcibly admitted her to conversion therapy, which is barbaric and basically child abuse. sympathy for the lost life of an LGBT child does not mean there’s a personal attack on you.
Alcorn’s exact claim was that they were taken to christian therapists. They included an ambiguous statement about self acceptance said by one of the therapists (AGAIN, in their SUICIDE note, without any other context). Conversion therapy is not telling someone to accept themselves. It usually involves aversion therapy, which aims to pair negative stimuli with images that the patient finds to be ideal. There can be the opposite, where patients are encouraged to think of something specific before achieving orgasm during masturbation. There is also gender training where people are told not to accept themselves and to actively change to better fir their “role”. From all outward appearances Alcorn was counseled that transitioning would not solve all their problems, and since it was not currently an option (due to finances, according to the parents) embracing an attitude of self-acceptance would likely be beneficial. The statement they relayed has nothing to do with actual conversion “therapy”.
I’ve seen christian therapists, and they have explicitly told me it is unethical and a violation of their license to attempt to change the sexual preferences. The APA has multiple statements to this effect, and (being an american organization) it is safe to assume a large christian presence in the APA.
Abusive, hateful parents do not take their kid to counseling when they are sad, btw. They don’t give a fuck. People harassing the alcorns don’t know what abuse is. They think misgendering is violence.
“Of course no responsibility is leveled at online communities that make suicide seem like the only logical alternative to immediate transition.”
