Leelah Alcorn 1997-2014

rest in power #leelahalcorn #leelah

https://www.change.org/p/president-of-the-united-states-enact-leelah-s-law-to-ban-transgender-conversion-therapy

http://www.transviolencetracker.org/index.php/press-releases/116-leelah-acorn-suicide-a-call-to-end-conversion-therapy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Leelah_Alcorn

"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. That's exactly what it did to me."

— Leelah Alcorn, 2014^[3]

Prior to her death on December 28, 2014, Alcorn had scheduled for her suicide note to be automatically posted on her Tumblr account at 5.30pm.^[8] In the note, she stated her intention to end her life, commenting:

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.^[3]

She expressed her wish that all of her possessions and money be donated to a trans advocacy charity,^[3] and called for gender issues to be taught in schools.^[3][14] 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."^[3][14][15] 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."^[3][16][17]