Sunday, June 28, 2009

Suicide: the dead and dying children murdered by negligence

UPDATE at end of post.

Think the title might be too dramatic? Nope. Personally I don't think there can be a collection of words in any human language that cann properly express enough what this blogpost is about.

First lets use an anology.

Your sitting by a swimming pool. A child is in trouble, drowning, shouting for help intermittently. You can swim well. Do you rescue the child or ignore them?

What kind of monster would ignore them you may ask? A stupid analogy because surely only serial killers and the worst dregs of humanity would ignore them you might say. Why? Because the person is making a clear choice between simple effort and a childs death. They are murdering by deliberate negligence, they are choosing that the child will die.

But its been a while since the figures of GLB youth suicide has been out with a criminally high almost 30% attempted suicide rate and what has the government done?

Nothing.. they have sat by the pool and ignored the drowning child.

But what about groups like Beyond Blue? Well days ago when I was bringing up the suicide rate in my posts on the human rights community consultation online discussion forum I had a look and found... Searching for Gay I got three results.. the pdf of the horrific figures on their research page, an article about a dog with an owner named Gay and a piece about a womens circus act that had performed previously at the gay games...

In other words they turned to look at the drowning child and mumbled quietly something about 'oh look a drowning child' under their breath so quietly no-one else noticed and went back to reading.

And what about the Transgender youth suicide rate in Australia?

At Beyond Blue the word came up not at all.

Oh well the studies haven't looked at that! Overseas there are figures as high as 53% which is as high above the gay rate as the gay rate is above the average.

Looks to me like there's a crowd sitting by the edge of the pool ignoring drowning children!

Some few are trying to speak up! http://www.theage.com.au/national/gays-ignored-by-beyondblue-20090627-d0lf.html (not much mention of TGs there though is there?)

Everyone who has seen these figures and had a possibility of acting and done nothing, they have chosen that children will die. Not just one but many! They have murdered-by-negligence. They have blood on their hands!

Every government official who saw these figures and did nothing has blood on thier hands. Every charity leader who has seen or heard of these figures and done nothing has blood on their hands. Every single group that has oppossed measures to stop these deaths or who have argued that the current system is adequate despite these figures is a bloody murderer pretending to themselves, lying to themselves with whatever justification they use to sleep at night that ignoring a drowning child is not murder or that somehow its just too hard to get your feet wet to save them or that its ok to let some kids die, just not others.

Well I for one am making this clear. If your making a choice between inaction-resulting-in-predicted-deaths and action-resulting-in-effort-but-less-deaths and you choose inaction then you are a bloody murderer. And there is no reason to play nice with lesser language about that, you instead need to accept the fact that your a bloody murderer.

And every one of those bloody murderers need to live their lives in shame and guilt and penance and save many lives for every one they allowed to die or they are no better than the people we lock up in jail and heap hatred upon for murdering and neglecting children. You may escape jail because the law doesn't cover your responsibility but you cannot escape truth.

And yes, I'm angry, and no Its not because of a personal loss. It's because i have enough brains to imagine the scope of loss to the world of each of these deaths. And honestly.. dead kids. Seriously dead kids! what language can possibly be severe enough to express the horror we should feel in the face of the figures of an epidemic of DEAD KIDS! and people sitting by and letting them die?

Some people have decided that if the kid is Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Undecided then its fine to let them die.. and if they are Transgender then it's fine to not even look to see if they are dying.

UPDATE: Some TG figures were past on to me. "...Professor of Psychiatry at Newcastle [NSW] university Steinbeck's estimation of 40% in the chapter he contributed to the founder's of the Monash Medical gender reassignment Centre book, 'Transsexualism and Gender Reassignment' by Prof Michael Walters and Dr Michael Ross last published by Oxford University Press in 1991."

Well an estimate of 40%... in stats over a decade old... I wonder how many TG kids succeeded in killing themselves in the last 18 years? While better than 53% can we at all consider that 40% is at all acceptable and not demanding immediate substantial attention?

Lets start washing the blood off our hands and start saving these kids.

13 comments:

Gaeilge said...

cool blog i am also goth tg
dead can dance are great.
have you seen s. darko?
i liked it alot.
best,
Gaeilge

Gaeilge said...

also wondered, are you wiccan?
i'm not any more, but it's interesting to me still...
ps
your comments on phb re/ the cis donnybrooke were right on.

Battybattybats said...

Hi Gaeilge!
Nice to meet you.
Do you mean by 's. darko' the special edition of the film donnie darko or something else?

As for wicca, no I don't belong to any faith but I have friends who are.

And thanks regarding the PHB thing, it's got rather messy over there with discussion shut-down which is a shame as it seems a very important subject.

Gaeilge said...

hi again,
s. darko is the sequel to donnie darko it's on video only never released- but really cool.
if you have netflix for instance search "s. darko"
i have been reading the comments here and there re/ the cis issue-
(at questioning transphobia)
phb was a website i read alot- but there are so many things messed up there that it will be hard for me to be too interested in future..
bilerico seems boring lately, and they are not wild about discussion either.
i mean,i realize that some tg people hate gay people,(hbser's) but alot of gay people seem to hate us- it's pretty screwed up. so sad.

also i actually had a "pet" bat for awhile- nat-he was in my attic in winter and my cats grabbed him, so i couldn't put him back or let him go, it was really cold out.
i kept him in a birdcage in a really really cold room with heat shut off, but he didn't make it.
i've let them go before- they are so cool.really small and pretty, actually.
i guess they are having problems due to global warming-white nose it's called.
scary- many Earth changes....
-g

Battybattybats said...

I'll have to look S. Darko up. I mostly enjoyed the first one.

As for PHB and Bilerico.. well they have their flaws but retreating into TG-only spaces loses the educational opportunity of public visibility.

And yep there's transphobia in parts of the GLB community but in all marginalised groups there are always strong trends of bias against other marginalised groups.. like bullied kids often picking on other kids.

For example the hetero-crossdresser community so hated by the worst of the HBS-crowd (there's some good amongst HBS, but i've only met a couple) has it's share of homophobia.. but thats somethign quite a few are working on changing.

But these are things that can be fixed... but first they must be acknowledged, owned, examined, challenged and dealt with.

And there will always be some so wounded they respond with unconstructive levels of anger.. justified often yes but constructive sometimes no. What else would anyone aware of the oppression people have been through expect? And the biased/adantaged when ignorant of their bias/advantage and faced with it react with defensive anger and feelling offended.

These are not new patterns but have occured throughout the civil rights movements of the world for generations. I don't understand why folks get caught in surprise by them still.

As for your bat I'm sad they didn't make it :( But good on you for trying! My family managed to help an orphaned bat and its burned into my memory.. so cute!

And yes the white-nose fungus in the USA is very serious, I hope the authorities can deal with it or mosquito-borne diseases and insect-based crop-losses will skyrocket!

Few people realise how important Bats are to the ecosystem, to farming and to their own health.

Gaeilge said...

hi, you made me feel better re the community-
hopefully most people are allies not haters. hopefully...^*^
^*^
^*^ ^*^
^*^

(DID YOU EVER "BAT" W/THE KEYBOARD?LOL
(SHIFTKEY 6 8 6)
take care!

g

Battybattybats said...

I'm glad I helped you feel better about the community. They just need some help to grok it.

What helped me about the local cis-het community was being asked in Sportsgirl if I wanted to try something on. No foundation, clear beardshadow and very Goth and the nice friendly assistant suggested to me that I try something on. In a rural town.

And today I learn that a poll says 85% of Australians support federal anti-discrimination protections for sexuality and gender identity!

So I'm feelling better about the entire country! Now the tricky bit is getting the politicians to stop listening to the minority hate-groups who dont want those protections and who will at the least try and cut many people out of them with a narrow definition of gender identity and instead properly act on this!

Darn good morning this morning :)

Battybattybats said...

Oh and as for keyboard bats stuff on MSN :[ gives you a cute animated bat emoticon, v-v makes a nice 'vampire smile' and in several forums i have an asci-bat in my sig.. not sure if it'll work here though..

/|\ (\_/) /|\
/ | \(*.*)/ | \
/- |- ( " ) -| -\
\--\-V--V-/--/

Gaeilge said...

wow your big bat was better then my little swarm of bats lol

i still have nat- in a jar- i wanted him so i kept him dried.
poor little guy.(or maybe he was a gender bat who knows (natalie)?

that's great that your GOV. over there is getting it's shit together.
the u.s is moving pretty slow,
but i am proud to have an african american prez.(hope he does his thing re/ us glbt!)
...also the commonity is rallying re the phb issue- maybe we needed the wakeup call?
anyway glad i found your blog-
i have lots of cool new ones from links on qt.
best!
-g ^*^

Battybattybats said...

Thanks Gailge.

And cool that you've preserved the poor little bats remains.

As for change... well the Asutralian government is dragging it's heels too. But the more who call for change the faster we get it.

But there is a lot of work to do... things like the suicide rate must be changed!

And glad you like my little blog. My posts are slow but hopefully worth keeping an eye on :)

Gaeilge said...

hey batty,
ya know,you are really well spoken-
(am reading comments on the phb cis thread )why not cross post or occasionally do columns at bilerico?
http://www.bilerico.com/
they are always looking for new voices.they are more controversy comfortable in some ways then phb too, they are a collective. you are diff enough from anyone writing there at this time to fill a niche' lol
take care!
g

Battybattybats said...

Not a bad idea, I've commented there a few times, doing a piece or two might be in order, once I've caught up on some of my sleep-debt.

Gaeilge said...

write to alex blaze,
i had tried to find the link to the column where bil asks for contributers, but i couldn't find it-it's in his posts history somewhere...
they want a diverse group so i'm sure you'd be perfect.
^*^