Dear @BenShapiro RE: trans suicides
Hey Ben,
I tried to contact you a bunch already. I wrote a few Twitter threads with you tagged in and I think I sent four emails? Maybe? So I figured I should try an alternative method of trying to contact you. The direct methods don’t seem to be working so here’s an indirect attempt.
Do you remember that speech you gave where you talked about trans people? The one where you claimed our suicide rates were really high and we clearly have a mental illness? This one? Or any of the other ones you mentioned the same “fact” in?
The transgender suicide rate is 40%, 40%! According to the Anderson School of UCLA it makes no difference whether people recognise you as a transgender person or not. Which suggests there’s a very high comorbidity between transgenderism and suicidality that has nothing to do with how society treats you.
These are your words, though I paraphrased slightly to cut out a little bit of waffling. Also amongst your repertoire of famous phrases is this little doozy.
Facts don’t care about your feelings
and also as recently as last night’s Rubin Report where you discussed Blaire White
The narrative becomes more important than the truth
I imagine the rest of this article is going to be awfully embarrassing for you then. Get yourself a cloth, there’s about to be a whole lot of egg on your face.
The first “fact” you have misquoted is the school at which the study took place, the Anderson School is a management school and as far as I can see — has never posted anything about trans people’s suicides. The correct school is the Williams Institute. Yes I’m aware this is a very small correction but I’m just warming you up Ben.
Next thing you get wrong is the scope of the study. The phraseology you chose said “suicide rates” when in reality this study looks at suicide attempt rates. This is a huge and very important difference. One you should not have overlooked because its literally in the title of the study.
Next up is the “40%!” — the study doesn’t actually say trans people have a suicide attempt rate of 40%, it averages out the suicide rate of all respondents at 41%. Respondents were not solely trans people.
Next up you claim that the study states that it makes little to no impact on the suicide attempt rate if people recognise you as trans or not. However the study actually shows either being out or visible as trans increases the suicide attempt rate by up to 17% — that’s almost half of the average. I’m pretty sure that’s a significant impact.
Your conclusion? There is a high comorbidity between suicidality and trans people which has nothing to do with society. The study’s conclusion however seems to massively disagree with you. Which puts the anti-transgender discrimination at the forefront of what is impacting our suicide attempt rates.
This also aligns with most other studies in this area which notice a significant decrease in not only suicide attempts amongst trans people who are in more supportive environments, such as the Karolinska Institute study. But they also tend to show significant decreases in psychopathology linked with trans people too. All studies which study this area so far have put the blame for the negative lived experience of trans people around the world squarely in the court of those who reject and discriminate against us.
It seems this time fact do care about my feelings, and I’m feeling pretty ticked off that you believe your narrative matters more than the truth. Stop being a dick to trans people, and correct your horrible misinformation please. I’m getting sick of your fanboys using it against me and other trans people as a weapon — its straight up gaslighting.
Thanks Ben.
Lots of love,
Cursed. ❤
