On Life, Death, and One Broken Queer

[Sapphocrat]

A question was asked in another thread that, if I post to it, I will end up hijacking. I don't want to do that, so I will start fresh here.

In this thread --

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1108885

-- it was mentioned that gay people "contribute 30% of all suicides." I don't know if that statistic is accurate; I do know where the "30%" figure comes from, though.

Another poster asked for "confirmation," adding that this stat was "truly shocking."

This is my response:

The only thing that would shock me would be the revelation that there's a single gay person in the world who hasn't considered suicide, let alone attempted it. And I would be extremely suspicious of any queer who swore the thought had never seriously crossed his or her mind.

The only thing that kept me from slashing my wrists when I was 13 was the sure knowledge that I would go straight to hell. I was Catholic then, you see. What did I know? When I finally went to public high school, I was nervous about a new friend I made, because she was a Lutheran. We were always taught that all Protestants hated Catholics. Really hated us.

What caused so much self-loathing to make me want to obliterate my sorry self from the face of the earth? I knew I was a "homosexual." I always knew. I just didn't know there was a name for it, or that there were other people like me in the world.

I found out there were other people like me when I was about 10, by reading as many books on human sexuality as I could get my hands on -- found in the backs of dusty bookshelves, perused on the sly in bookstores and libraries...

What I learned was that I was sick. Mentally ill. A pervert. A freak. I was bad, wrong, disgusting, a sinner, an abomination in the sight of God and humankind. I could never hope to lead a normal life. The only future I could look forward to was becoming a prostitute, because -- didn't you know? -- ALL prostitutes were men-hating lesbians, and I would never be able to fit into a normal workplace. I would grow up to molest children, too -- they ALL did that.

I knew these were facts. I read them in books.

I also knew people would hate me. They might hurt me, or they might kill me -- if I didn't end up in prison, or in a psych ward, where I probably belonged. My family would be ashamed of having such a sick, evil child; my parents would beat their chests and cry out to God asking where they had gone wrong. The church would excommunicate me. God would hate me. God did hate me. Even if I went to confession every day for the rest of my life, there was no forgiving this sin -- not of what I might do, but the sin of what I was.

Of course I wanted to kill myself. Who wouldn't?

I was going to hell anyway -- why wait? Hell certainly couldn't be any worse than the torture of having to live this way... as a lesbian -- a word I couldn't even say aloud. It was a horrible, ugly word.

And I wanted to take my dirty little secret to the grave.

I never attempted suicide. But the thought haunted me. It was always there -- and it became a comforting thought; I always had an out.

As I wrote not long ago, in a thread about assisted suicide, to a DUer who was in such intense physical pain that suicide was an option: Some things hurt so much that you want to do anything to make the pain stop.

Not all pain, of course, is physical. Most abuse survivors will tell you the emotional pain was far worse than the physical pain.

That said, perhaps these statistics will make more sense to anyone "shocked" by off-the-scale suicide rates among gay people:

Suicide Statistics For Lesbian and Gay Youth: A Bibliography
Compiled by Micki Archuleta
May be copied with proper attribution

...

Gibson, P. (1989). "Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide." In M. Feinleib (Ed.), *Prevention and Intervention in Youth Suicide* (Report to the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide, Vol. 3, pp. 110-42). Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services.

According to this study, gay and lesbian youth are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than other youths, and 30 percent of all completed youth suicides are related to the issue of sexual identity.

Hershberger, Scott L., and Anthony R. D'Augelli. "The Impact of Victimization on the Mental Health and Suicidality of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youths." *Developmental Psychology* 31 (1995): 65-74.

This study tried to sift through the various stress factors involved in suicide. "According to the results of this study, the single largest predictor of mental health was self-acceptance." "A general sense of personal worth, coupled with a positive view of their sexual orientation, appears to be critical for the youths' mental health." "amily support moderated the effects of victimization on mental health, but only for relatively low levels of victimization."

Hunter, Joyce. "Violence Against Lesbian and Gay Male Youths." *Journal of Interpersonal Violence* 5 (1990): 295-300.

This study of minority, working class, and homosexual youths found that of those who had experienced physical assault, almost 1/2 of these cases reported that the assault was gay-related. Furthermore, of those who had experienced assault, 41% of the girls and 34% of the boys reporting had tried to kill themselves. This study mostly points to further research which should be undertaken in this area.

Proctor, Curtis D., and Victor K. Groze. "Risk Factors for Suicide among Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youths." *Social Work* 39 (1994): 504-13.

This study found that of the gay and lesbian youth participants in their study, 40.3% had attempted suicide, and 25.8% had seriously thought about it at least once.

Schneider, Stephen G., et al. "Suicidal Behavior in Adolescent and Young Adult Gay Men." *Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior* 19 (1989): 381-94.

...

Roesler, T., & Deisher, R.W. (1972). "Youthful Male Homosexuality." *Journal of The American Medical Association*, 219, 1018-23.

"Gay persons have been described as experiencing psychosocial difficulties because of (1) alienation and disenfranchisement from the resources and assistance society ordinarily provides in the face of life stressors

...

Source:

http://isd.usc.edu/~retter/suicstats.html

Suicide rates among gay adults are lower, but still considerably higher than hetero rates. Somebody else will have to dig for those statistics; they're buried somewhere among all the research on youth suicides. (At least someone finally got around to recognizing the problem over the past twenty-something years; I'm just sorry nobody cared enough to notice decades ago.)

We also have a higher rate of alcoholism, substance abuse, and domestic violence than the general population -- nothing to brag about, but when you pay serious attention to the unique brand of hatred and ostracization we experience from the day we figure ourselves out, is there really any wonder why some of us have trouble coping?

Eighty percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth report severe isolation problems. They experience social isolation (having no one to talk to), emotional isolation (feeling distanced from family and peers because of their sexual identity), and cognitive isolation (lack of access to good information about sexual orientation and homosexuality).

Source:

http://www.waltwhitmanschool.org/about/statistics.htm

That was me.

This, however -- thank God -- was not:

Twenty-six percent of gay youth are forced to leave home because of conflicts with their families over their sexual identities.

--Ibid.

So, 26% get kicked out of the house for being queer -- for being who they are. Why then does a 30% attempted-suicide rate seem so "shocking"?

I said the only thing that kept me from attempting suicide was knowing I would go to hell. That's not all of it -- I also couldn't do it to my family. At least I had that much sense. So I suffered through my teens without telling them, and my parents -- who I now know would have helped me through my own adjustment as they tried to deal with theirs -- saw nothing they didn't want to see.

I was nearly 20 when I began to stop hating myself. What changed? I left the church at 15, fell in love at 16, came out to my parents at 19 (my mother blamed herself and did indeed wonder, momentarily, where she had gone wrong, but there was no beating of chests and wailing to the sky), and finally forced myself to go out and find some gay people. (If you ever wondered why we have co-opted the word "family," I suppose because being amongst our own is the only place many of us really feel "home.")

It still took me another five or six years before I got over my first girlfriend -- a born-again, no less -- deciding, after a very secret but very happy two-year high-school affair, that I, the big, bad lesbian, had condemned both of us to hell. (Guess who was the initiator of that little affair? That's right -- not I.)

I liked myself, but I was still worried about eternal condemnation.

What fixed that? Simple: I stopped believing in hell. It may sound flippant to say I'd already been there and back -- but it will sound flippant only to those who have never experienced a deeply-entrenched self-loathing due to the whole goddamned world telling you that you were Satan incarnate -- and you being too young and misinformed to know any better.

Being gay doesn't make you suicidal; being brainwashed into believing you're evil does.

Like I keep saying: For anyone who just doesn't get it, gay rights is just another "issue" -- and an annoying nuisance.

Yeah, well, I'm sorry I'm such a nuisance to you. I'm sorry I keep reminding you that there's something more important than politics in this world. I'm sorry to keep reminding you that when you offer me a shit sandwich and tell me to like it because that's all I'm going to get, you are hurting a fellow human being, more deeply than you can ever imagine. More deeply than you are willing to imagine.

I'm sure a few of you reading this wish that all of us formerly suicidal gay youth had had the nerve to off ourselves, so we wouldn't be such a burden to you at election time.

But the one thing I won't apologize for is making the decision to live -- and demand that I sit at the head table, with you.

Maybe that's all I can hope for: to serve as a constant annoyance, to remind people that democratic politics is supposed to be about people -- not the other way around -- and to keep pointing out what is morally, ethically, sadly, wrong with any desire to keep pushing us away from the table, while throwing us a few scraps in the hope we don't bite back one day -- hard.

And people wonder why having to vote for anyone complicit in my oppression is like a knife through my heart.

Some of you reading this need to get to know some gay people. I'm not talking about water-cooler chats with the happy homo down the hall. I mean, get to KNOW some gay people -- and you will find stories that make my pathetic little tale sound like a day at the beach.

Because, you know what? The more hysteria I see around here over how we queers are going to doom your party, the clearer it is to me that you don't know any of us at all. We're just objects to some of you -- not people.

No, wait, not "objects," but obstacles.

With that, I'm long overdue for a break. No, people, I'm not going to go off and kill myself -- I got past that more than 20 years ago. I mean that I'm long overdue for one of my periodic breaks from DU. Go look at a few of the gay-marriage threads posted over the past few days, and you'll see why I feel like I'm beating my head against many brick walls.

I just don't have any fight left in me right now. I need to do something else for a while.

I'm not going to respond to any replies, and I'm going to shut down my inbox for a while. DU is wonderful, and 99% of all DUers are terrific. It's that 1% that's succeeded in getting to me -- and when I feel genuine hatred start to well in my own heart, I know it's long past the time to get out of Dodge for a while.

Hugs to all my LGBT brothers and sisters -- and my deepest gratitude to all of our straight supporters. You are something special. I can't begin to tell you just how special.

Peace, and out.

[Dookus]

1. thank you sapphocrat...

I've tried to raise this issue for many years now. So many teen suicides are gay kids who just can't face life. It's so incredibly sad, and reading your post just broke my heart.

I, too, know what it's like. Most every gay person I know my age attempted or considered suicide when younger. It's a horrible horrible situation to be in - realizing in your teens that you're different from everyone else, different from everyone's expectations of you, and feeling so incredibly alone.

Thankfully, things are improving. Not fast enough, but it's a reason for hope.

Thanks so much for posting this.

[neoteric lefty]

2. wow

scary stuff. Thanks for bringing light to this issue.

[LeftCoast]

3. Dear Sapph,

Please recharge and come back soon! :hugs:

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. I despise the fundies who use that statistic

Not that it's an erroneous one, but the way they use it. They use it so as to say, "See what being gay gets you? It leads to suicide." instead of those assholes looking at the truth and realizing that what happens is that people aren't depressed and suicidal because they're gay and ipso facto hate themselves for their sin; they become depressed and suicidal becauze religious sinful zealots keep screaming hatred toward them.

Being gay doesn't lead to suicide.

Being constantly told that you are a worthless, miserable piece of excrement whom God hates, does.

[4morewars]

5. that's a powerful message

i wish good things for you !!!

[Solly Mack]

6. .....................................truth and then some...

Well said and then some..

thank you...and then some.

[Fight_n_back]

7. Anyone who is marginalized

anyone who is not allowed into the whole, anyone who is shunted aside must be able to see what is happening to a sizable protion of our population whose only "sin" is to love in a way some don't understand.

We are not defining gays because of suppossed avarice or criminality but because of who they LOVE. Their love itself is considered wrong.

In twenty or fourty years this whole question will be considered silly. The question of gay marriage will be seen as a nostalgic paen to yesteryear. Something we read about in history books like the covered wagon or the lynching. People will look back and try to make sense of the bigotry like we try to make sense of slavery or the Shoah.

Start now, change it now. As John Lennon once said to Brian Epstein, "Its all just lovin'".

Why are we attempting to legislate against LOVE? Why are we allowing people to demonize love?

How weird is that?

[pagerbear]

11. "Why are we attempting to legislate love?"

Actually we're not. The people who want to deny G/L/B/T rights only see G/L/B/T's sex lives--or what they _imagine_ those sex lives to be. They don't see love. If they do, they think it's some sad imitation of the one true model, the Father Knows Best model of heterosexual marriage.

Yes, I'm angry, too!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. Why I Am An Atheist, reason #109,872,658,231,694,375 (nt)

[ET Awful]

9. EXCELLENT POST!

Well said Sapphocrat, very well said.

And, being one of your straight supporters, I've got to say, I ain't all that special, I just have this crazy idea that all people are equal, and that they are endowed (by their creator or otherwise) with certain inalienable rights, and that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I have no idea where I got those crazy ideas, they must've just come to me somewhere along the line.

Don't stay gone too long!

ETA

[foreigncorrespondent]

12. And that, my friend...

...is exactly why you and every straight person who supports the queer plight are so special.

[11 Bravo]

10. If you ever need a hug, cyber or otherwise, from an old, straight, guy

I'm available. (And your post should be required reading for every member of the Massachusetts State Legislature.)

[David__77]

13. luckily things are changing!

Coming of age gay in the 90's, my perspective is different than those who came before. I am so happy that things are changing for the better. I know so many who are oppressed for being lesbian or gay. But I also see so many young teenagers today who seem so confident in their sexual orientation--it's wonderful! I was lucky to have had an easy time compared with most--I was raised pretty liberally and never questioned my orientation.

[foreigncorrespondent]

14. David...

...how is it changing? With the introduction of the federal marriage amendment in both Congress and the Senate. With Bush*s SoTU address this year. Nothing is changing for the better.

Right now the queer community is in limbo. Things look like we will get marriage rights in Mass. The San Francisco Mayor ordered they SF begins issuing marriage licences to queers, this is all wonderful, but if we (the collective we, meaning the left), continue to let the GOP control the situation, then we will begin losing already won rights.

[David__77]

16. The culture is changing, no?

You don't think that more and more people are becoming accepting of lesbian and gay people? Maybe it's just where I live. I mean, when SF first proposed domestic partnership benefits, there was a collective freakout, and the vote on it was kind of close. Today, you have little towns in Michigan that are upholding these benefits. I know the danger of the amendment, but I do think we've come a long way in the last ten-fifteen years or so. Remember the AIDS quarantine danger? It seems that the discourse has to some extent shifted. We're still being oppressed by a discriminatory culture and legal system, but it does seem that advances are occurring in both areas.

That said, it's still unacceptable, and in many parts of the country we've seen no improvement and every day people lose jobs and families because of this bigotry. We do have a long hard fight ahead, together with our allies.

[adamblast]

18. For what it's worth, David...

...I think things are changing fast, changing alot, and changing for the better.

That's not to say that the whole thing doesn't get me down from time to time as well.

I'm feeling seriously demoralized by the fact that our likely Democratic nominee opposes gay marriage. I'm supposed to support someone who has decided he "can't afford" my civil rights?? Civil rights are *never* convenient.

But sometimes you need to take a break, and that's fine. In fact, that's great if it helps. The fight will still be here when you get back.

[geniph]

15. Sapphocrat...

I understand. I've been there (for different reasons, but with the same result - knowing I was worthless and flawed). I hope someday we'll become a civilized people, but we still have a long way to go.

Love and hugs to you. Peace, sister.

[Breezy du Nord]

17. Guess what Sapphocrat?

You've just inspired me to change my sig line. It seems quite true to me after reading your post and the rest of the thread.

Peace out and good luck!
Breezy

[moof]

19. seems more than good enough to say again.

B.U.M.P.

[camero]

20. Don't be sorry. Remind us some more.

My brother is gay and his talking to me about it helped him to come out. I'll say it again. We need to let people be the way they are.

[Gung_Fu]

21. Courage comes in many forms.

I bow to your stead fast courage Sapphocrat, and it's terrible that people would make others feel they need to be ashamed because who they are. I'm glad you are still with us, the world needs all the steady headed decent people it can get.

[silverlib]

22. Thank you again, Sapphocrat!

What insight! I was very fortunate to have been raised by a liberated man with spirit and love - one of those Christians who doesn't label the love of God, whose God was all encompassing and inclusive and not made in the image of man. His God didn't hate the things that mortal men and women hate.

One of my best friends is gay. I watch the struggles she and her partner undergo with their relationship and with their teenage son. Not much different than the struggles of my relationship with my husband (she and her partner have been together ten years longer than I have been "married") and teenage daughter, other than the subtle nuances in her work place and the subtle nuances in our political atmosphere and the subtle nuances of many of our churches. I'm being sarcastic, as these only seem subtle to outsiders. To her family, these things are not so subtle. We've managed to come up with some "hate" laws, but ultimately, I feel it is the responsibility of the religious institutions to help remove the "hate" of the heart, as I hand them most of the blame for its origin.

Thanks, again for your post.

[Bertha Venation]

23. Sappho:

:hug: FC has my email addy. Feel free to use it. Mrs. V. and I will keep you both in our prayers.

FC, please pass this on to Sappho for me.