Suicide and trans women: Beyond systems of oppression

Sadly, this past Friday it was reported that sportswriter Mike Penner had died in an apparent suicide. Penner came out as a trans woman in 2007 and undergone a very public transition as Christine Daniels. In the past year, however, he had reverted to using the Mike Penner byline. There has been some thoughtful writing about Penner’s death, and some genuine and touching effort to respect the complexities of Mike/Christine’s life. It is a sad time for friends and colleagues, and refreshing to see that for the most part the story is people trying to get it right.

News of Penner’s death came while I was working on a piece about the suicides of trans women, and sadly the story seemed too familiar. Transition is an effort many of us expect to ‘fail’ at, not because there is anything inherently flawed about trans women, but because our culture actively works to keep us from existing. The narratives we have forced on us from our earliest age tell us repeatedly that to transition is to lose all – friends, jobs, lovers, relationships, and most of all our hopes for a life in the way we want to live it – and we have those narratives repeated to us our entire lives. My own decision to transition came with a handful of pills in one hand, having decided that if it all went as horrible as I had been told it would then I could go back to the option of those pills. I’ve heard similar stories from many other trans women.

Although many will mourn the loss of a trans woman to suicide, this is clear from the commentary on Penner’s death, it isn’t enough. While it is systems and institutions that maintain oppression, and while individuals are not inherently transmisogynist for existing in or benefitting from a transmisogynist culture, I do not believe in models which remove personal culpability. They offer too many outs, too many shrugged shoulders, and too much wringing of hands without any change.

For allies to fully engage the oppressions we benefit from we must accept active responsibility in the structure of that oppression. As a white woman my anti-racism work is fuelled not by a passive sense that, gee, it sucks that our culture is systemically oppressive for people who aren’t white, it comes from acceptance that I am part of that system and that I actively benefit from that system. I don’t like that I am part of that system and that I do benefit from it, but it keeps my focus clear when I feel a direct and personal responsibility. I can’t hide behind a faceless system of oppression.

In this active view, then, we cannot discuss the suicides of trans women as merely being a result of the transmisogynist culture we live in, but also as the personal responsibility of anyone who benefits from that culture (and if you are not a trans woman you do benefit from that culture). We cannot change cultures or systems comprised entirely of unnamed others, so we must be willing to count ourselves.

Now, my suggestions here might frustrate or anger you as an ally, but I’d suggest that is a good thing. If it motivates you to do more than just shrug your shoulders at how unfortunate it all is, and if you instead feel that guilt and as a result act to make positive changes for trans women, then it is a worthwhile lens to view your allyship through. Feel the sting of the implications of your privilege. Does your community include trans women? If you answer is anything but “yes, trans women are fully engaged and accepted in my community as equals, it is not uncommon to have trans women as friends or partners,” then you’ve got work to do. Existing in communities where that isn’t the case adds to the social ostracizing that for some trans women leads to suicide. Remember that.

Even if we never know why Mike Penner died, it is a disturbing erasure to assume his transition and subsequent detransition had nothing to do with it. To ignore the intense cultural hatred one must face to transition, especially in such a public way, is willful ignorance. The truth is trans women die often at our own hands, not because we are trans but because living in a culture that hates us and tries to erase us for being trans is sometimes too much to bear. That will not change until the culture and communities we live in change, and part of the responsibility to make that change lies with you – the vast majority who are not trans women.