“If you leave me, I will kill myself.”
The National Domestic Abuse Hotline says “if your partner regularly threatens suicide, particularly whenever you’re not doing something he or she wants you to do,” this is a form of emotional abuse typical of Borderline Personality Disorder.
We see this manipulation tactic in trans activism frequently. “If you don’t implement healthcare policy exactly the way we demand, we’ll kill ourselves and it’ll be your fault.”
In the pediatric transition debate, Montana State Rep Zooey Zephyr pulled this same tactic by saying lawmakers would have “blood on their hands,” if they restricted pediatric transition.
The empirical literature, however, shows that actual trans suicide is incredibly rare and most suicide attempts are not serious attempts at ending one’s life but rather cries for help.
The “41% of trans people attempt suicide” statistic comes from an incredibly flawed survey of just 27 trans people.
And yet this “fact” is trotted out over and over, which is incredibly irresponsible because it supports the narrative that suicide is a “normal” response to “transphobia.”
We know young people are susceptible to Social Learning and that suicidal ideation itself can function as a social contagion, making this emotional manipulation tactic even more irresponsible.
0:31