Why queer suicide?

Queer suicide... the phrase grates at the soul, doesn't it? Not everyone is comfortable with the Q-word even while growing numbers of lesbian, gay, transgendered, bisexual, intersexed, genderqueer, and other folks in the community find it helpful. And the S-word? It speaks both of violence from within and yet, all too often, bullying. It reminds us of vulnerability deep within our loved ones and ourselves coexisting with self-destructive urges.

But healing and progress in any community is often borne of owning our lives, our issues, our words. Poz. Trans. Genderqueer. My healing process calls me to own not just my status as a survivor of my loved one's suicide, but to own the role that suicide plays in shaping queer community. That starts with challenging myself to say the words that don't roll easily off my tongue.

Why not focus on activism?

A natural gut-level reaction, on hearing of a suicide attempt or a death, is to try to change someone or something else. The gentle version of that is asking, "Don't you see, legislators, school administrators, anti-gay religious leaders, and law enforcers, how real this problem is?" Too easily, that becomes outright blame.

As essential as it is to make the our communities safer for queer folks of all ages, though, external activism is different from internal healing. For those of us who have struggled with suicide or lost a loved one, changing our communities may help the healing process, but the healing often must begin internally before giving birth to external activism.

Why is queer suicide distinct?

As queer folk many of us grow up as ailens within our own culture. Having queer or queer-friendly parents doesn't always smooth the coming-out journey for queer teens. Families find themselves navigating unfamiliar paths in their ethnic, political, and faith-based communities when their loved ones come out.

Suicide, as well, is impacted distinctively when it intersects with queer issues. Families who are prone to keeping secrets about mental health issues may feel even deeper fear or shame about self-harm. Secrets about orientation and gender identity sometimes go to the grave just as HIV/AIDS has been masked by families.

Queer suicide isn't just impacted by cultural issues, though. Anti-queer and homophobic threads are often woven tightly into the tapestry of contributors to suicide attempts and deaths. Preventing queer suicide isn't just about fixing mental health care (although that is critical) it is about healing our culture.