Queer Texas Youth Are Traumatized and Suicidal
Transgender teens hit especially hard
2021 will go down in U.S. history as a year of trauma and mental health crisis for LGBTQ people in Republican states. This year, red-state legislatures passed more laws targeting queer people than ever before in U.S. history. Most of the laws targeted transgender people — usually teenagers, their parents, and their healthcare professionals.
In March, Forbes Magazine reported that advocacy groups feared 2021 would “Become Record-Breaking Year For Anti-LGBTQ Laws.” Now, as October begins and most legislative sessions have ended, the reality turns out to be as bad or worse than predicted.
Texas is still pushing anti-LGBTQ laws hard
Most Americans know Texas Governor Greg Abbott called a special legislative session to push through racist voting restrictions. Fewer of us are aware the Texas legislature is in special session again, for the express purpose of passing laws to discriminate against transgender people. Among other things, Abbott is pushing to ban trans students from participating in sports unless they play as the gender assigned to them at birth.
His proposed law is nothing but fearmongering. No transgender girl athletes have dominated in their leagues in states like California where inclusion has been the norm for years. According to USA Today, trans girls in real-life high school sports are a non-controversy. Transgender boy athletes are another story. When they take testosterone as hormone replacement therapy and are forced to compete with girls anyway, they have an unfair advantage they didn’t ask for and don’t want. This has already happened in Texas, and Governor Abbott has to know that.
Worse, Abbot is again, after a failed attempt earlier this summer, trying to push through a measure that would classify parents and medical professionals as child abusers if they helped transgender teens access gender-affirming health care or even gender-affirming talk therapy.
Waves of anti-LGBTQ laws are taking a huge mental health toll
I cite Texas’s special legislative session to underline a disturbing phenomenon the pro-LGBTQ-youth Trevor Project just announced. If you didn’t know, Trevor Project provides a telephone hotline and online resources to support youth in crisis. They are the largest group in the U.S. supporting queer kids.
While they provide many other mental health services, their hotline, staffed by trained professionals and volunteers, frequently functions in a suicide-prevention capacity.
This year when the Texas legislature debated over 70 anti-LGBTQ bills, more than 40 of which targeted trans teenagers, Trevor Project’s hotline blew up. More than 10,000 LGBTQ youth in mental health crisis called, more than double than in any previous year. More than 3,900 of the so-called crisis contacts came from trans and nonbinary youth. The trans/nonbinary percentage might seem low at first glance, but it’s actually disproportionately high given the larger overall percentage of queer kids who identify as bisexual/gay/lesbian.
This tells us two things —
- Trans kids in Texas are suffering severely from the anti-LGBTQ sentiment permeating their air.
- So are lesbian, gay, and bisexual kids.
Over 10,000 LGBTQ youth called Trevor Project because they were feeling suicidal. This number ought to shock the conscience of any decent person. Organized political hatred of LGBTQ people has devastating mental health consequences even when laws fail to pass. The debates themselves are so bitter and so demonizing towards queer people that mental health trauma is inevitable.
Nationwide trauma from this ‘annus horribilis’ has not yet been quantified
Trevor Project does not normally release data this early. Annual reports usually get issued months after year-end. They’re releasing the Texas data now because of the crisis of demand they’re experiencing, particularly because Texas has such a large population.
Data from other states, however, is expected to be proportionally critical.
So far, data from organizations that support queer adults in crisis has not been released, and probably won’t be for some time. But advocates believe demand has skyrocketed and the numbers will track with Trevor Project. Anecdotally, LGBTQ adults in red states (and in general) are reporting about as much trauma as teenagers. My own inboxes are much more depressing these days than usually.
2021 has been — legislatively, politically in general, and socially — an annus horribilis for LGBTQ people in the U.S. We’ve seen our basic rights and humanity debated and often dismissed in ways that adults thought they’d never see again and that young people believed they would not ever see.
Early indications are that mental health consequences have been pervasive and severe, mostly in, but not limited to, Republican states.
If you want just one anecdote to SHOW you what I mean, please read my story about a transgender boy who was attacked in a high school restroom. After his school refused to hold his attackers accountable, his mother went to the press, not knowing what else to do.
Similar stories are being reported all over the United States. This is what an atmosphere of political anti-LGBTQ hatred gives us. Trevor Project data already show us teens are paying a steep mental health price. Data will eventually show us that adults are too.
It’s time to stop the hate. It’s time for people to get with the reality that you don’t have to understand a person’s identity to love and respect them.
When suicide hotlines are over-stressed, it’s long past time for people to face that truth.
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James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, a regular columnist for queer news outlets, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].
