American transgender girl (1997–2014)
Leelah Alcorn (November 15, 1997 – December 28, 2014) was an American transgender girl whose suicide attracted international attention. Prior to her death, she had posted a suicide note to her Tumblr blog about societal standards affecting transgender people and expressing the hope that her death would create a dialogue about discrimination, abuse, and lack of support for transgender people.
Born and raised in Kings Mills, Ohio, Alcorn was assigned male at birth and grew up in a family affiliated with the Churches of Christ movement. At age 14, she came out as transgender to her parents, Carla and Doug Alcorn, who refused to accept her female gender identity. When she was 16, they denied her request to undergo transition treatment, instead sending her to Christian-based conversion therapy with the intention of convincing her to reject her gender identity and accept the gender that she was assigned at birth. After she revealed her attraction toward males to her classmates, her parents removed her from school and revoked her access to social media. In her suicide note, Alcorn cited loneliness and alienation as key reasons for her decision to end her life and blamed her parents for causing these feelings.
Alcorn used Tumblr's queue feature to publish her suicide note online several hours after her death, and it soon attracted international attention across mainstream and social media. LGBT rights activists called attention to the incident as evidence of the problems faced by transgender youth, while vigils were held in her memory in the United States and United Kingdom. Petitions were formed calling for the establishment of "Leelah's Law", a ban on conversion therapy in the United States, which received a supportive response from then-president Barack Obama. Within a year, the city of Cincinnati criminalized conversion therapy. Alcorn's parents were severely criticized for misgendering and deadnaming her in comments to the media, while LGBT rights activist Dan Savage held them responsible for their child's death, and social media users harassed them online. They defended their refusal to accept Alcorn's identity and their use of conversion therapy by reference to their Christian beliefs.
Life.
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"When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don't tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don't ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won't do anything but make them hate them self ["sic"]. That's exactly what it did to me."
— Alcorn's suicide note
Leelah Alcorn was born in Kings Mills, Ohio, on November 15, 1997. She described herself as one of several children being raised in a conservative Christian environment; she and her family attended the Northeast Church of Christ in Cincinnati, and she had been featured in a profile of that church published in a 2011 article in "The Christian Chronicle". As of 2014, the family lived in Kings Mills. According to her suicide note, Alcorn had felt "like a girl trapped in a boy's body" since she was four, and came to identify as a transgender girl from the age of 14, when she became aware of the term. She rejected the name she was given by her parents. When she signed her suicide letter, she first wrote her post-transition name between parentheses, then wrote her deadname, applying strikethrough to it, and lastly wrote her surname ordinarily. According to her note, she immediately informed her mother, who reacted "extremely negatively" by claiming that it was only a phase and that God had made her a male, so she could never be a woman. She stated that this made her hate herself, and that she developed a form of depression.
Alcorn's mother sent her to Christian conversion therapists, but Alcorn later related that there she only encountered "more Christians" telling her that she was "selfish and wrong" and "should look to God for help". Aged 16, she requested that she be allowed to undergo transition treatment, but was denied permission: in her words, "I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn't receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep." Alcorn publicly revealed her attraction to males when she was 16, as she believed that identifying as gay at that point would be a stepping stone to coming out as a transgender at a later date. According to a childhood friend, Alcorn received a positive reception from many at Kings High School, although her parents were appalled. In Alcorn's words, "They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight Christian boy, and that's obviously not what I wanted." They removed her from the school and enrolled her as an eleventh grader at the Ohio Virtual Academy online school.
According to Alcorn, her parents cut her off from the outside world for five months as they denied her access to social media and many forms of communication. She described this as a significant contributing factor towards her suicide. At the end of the school year, they returned her mobile phone to her and allowed her to regain contact with her friends, although by this time, according to Alcorn, her relationship with many of them had become strained, and she continued to feel isolated. Two months before her death, Alcorn sought out help on Reddit, asking users whether the treatment perpetrated by her parents constituted child abuse. There, she revealed that while her parents had never physically assaulted her, "they always talked to me in a very derogatory tone" and "would say things like 'You'll never be a real girl' or 'What're you going to do, fuck boys?' or 'God's going to send you straight to hell'. These all made me feel awful about myself, I was Christian at the time so I thought that God hated me and that I didn't deserve to be alive." Further, she explained, "I tried my absolute hardest to live up to their standards and be a straight male, but eventually I realized that I hated religion and my parents." On Reddit, Alcorn also disclosed that she was prescribed increasing dosages of the anti-depressant Prozac. In concluding her post, she wrote, "Please help me, I don't know what I should do and I can't take much more of this." Alcorn's computer was recovered near the site of her suicide. It contained conversations showing that she had planned to jump off the bridge that crosses Interstate 71 days before the incident, but then contacted a crisis hotline and, as told to a friend, "basically cried [her] eyes out for a couple of hours talking to a lady there".
Death.
Prior to her death on December 28, 2014, Alcorn scheduled for her suicide note to be automatically posted on her Tumblr account at 5:30 pm. In the note, she stated her intention to end her life, commenting:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;I have decided I've had enough. I'm never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I'm never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I'm never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I'm never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I'm never going to find a man who loves me. I'm never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There's no winning. There's no way out. I'm sad enough already, I don't need my life to get any worse. People say "it gets better" but that isn't true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse. That's the gist of it, that's why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that's not a good enough reason for you, it's good enough for me.
She expressed her wish that all of her possessions and money be donated to a transgender advocacy charity, and called for issues surrounding gender identity to be taught in schools.
The note ended with the statement: "My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say 'that's fucked up' and fix it. Fix society. Please." A second post appeared shortly after; titled "Sorry", it featured an apology to her close friends and siblings for the trauma that her suicide would put them through, but also contained a message to her parents: "Fuck you. You can't just control other people like that. That's messed up." An additional, handwritten suicide note reading "I've had enough" was found on her bed, but then thrown away by Alcorn's mother after police made a copy.
According to police, on December 28 Alcorn was walking along Interstate 71 near Union Township when she was struck by a semi-trailer just before 2:30 am near the South Lebanon exit. She died at the scene. It is believed that Alcorn walked from her parents' Kings Mills house before being struck.
By the morning of December 31, her suicide note had been reposted on Tumblr 200,000 times. Writing for "The Boston Globe", reporter Maura Johnston described it as a "passionate post". The suicide note was later deleted after Alcorn's parents asked for it to be removed, and the blog was made inaccessible to the public. According to the family minister, the Alcorn family decided to hold the funeral privately after receiving threats. Alcorn's body was reportedly cremated. On April 30, 2015, the Ohio State Patrol ruled Alcorn's death a suicide.
Reaction.
Alcorn's parents.
On December 28 at 2:56 p.m., Alcorn's mother, Carla Wood Alcorn, posted a public message on the social media website Facebook, stating: "My sweet 16-year-old [daughter], [Leelah] Alcorn, went home to Heaven this morning. [She] was out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck. Thank you for the messages and kindness and concern you have sent our way. Please continue to keep us in your prayers." Carla Alcorn's post was subsequently deleted. The Alcorn family publicly requested that they be given privacy to grieve in a statement issued by the Kings Local School District. In that statement, staff from Alcorn's former school, Kings High School, declared that "[Leelah] Alcorn was a sweet, talented, tender-hearted 17-year-old", adding that counselors would be made available to students affected by the incident. A moment of silence was held in Alcorn's memory before a Kings High basketball game on December 30.
Some of Alcorn's supporters publicly criticized the teen's mother, Carla Alcorn, for misgendering and deadnaming her daughter in the Facebook post announcing the teenager's death. Some individuals—termed "the Internet's self-appointed vigilantes" in "The Washington Post"—subsequently doxed and harassed Carla via her Facebook account "in revenge" for Leelah's death. On Twitter, American LGBT rights activist Dan Savage argued that Alcorn's parents should be prosecuted for their role in bringing about their daughter's death, commenting that through their actions they "threw her in front of that truck". He cited the successful prosecution of Dharun Ravi following the suicide of Tyler Clementi as a legal precedent for such an action. He added that legal action should also be brought against the conversion therapists who had counseled Leelah, and suggested that the Alcorns should lose custody of their other children.
Carla Alcorn responded to such criticism in an interview with CNN, stating "we loved [her] unconditionally. We loved [her] no matter what. I loved my [daughter]. People need to know that I loved [her]. [She] was a good kid, a good [girl]." Although acknowledging that Leelah had requested transition surgery, Carla stated that she had never heard her child use the name "Leelah", before reiterating her refusal to accept her child's gender identity, adding "We don't support that, religiously." She expressed concern that users of social media thought her to be a "horrible person", but