Posted on
Advocate.com November 17, 2010
In Honor of Trans Kids
By Riki Wilchins
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/11/17/In_Honor_of_Trans_Kids/COMMENTARY: The nine recently reported suicides of boys savagely bullied at school have been rightly deemed tragedies — the outpouring of sympathy, outrage, and empathy from the LGBT and mainstream press, community, and leadership has brought the issue of teen suicide to national attention.
But in reading the blogs and watching the news reports, I couldn't help but think about the untimely deaths of LGBT kids whose stories haven't been heard. Imagine if those nine young people had been killed, violently, by their peers. It's unthinkable. Then push further: Imagine the outrage and sadness if it had been not nine but a dozen. Not a dozen but two dozen. Not two dozen but three or four or five or six dozen dead kids.
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Just two years later, there were 17 new victims — bringing the grand total to 71, many of them just teenagers and almost all of them transgender. That's about six dozen total.
