The reality is that 41% is a conservative number. In many cases, the number of suicide attempts is 51% or higher. And these are the rates of unsuccessful attempts. Those who have successfully attempted suicide are not recorded precisely because they didn’t survive to tell about it. If 41% are unsuccessfully attempting suicide, it is safe to assume that a large number of trans people have also successfully attempted suicide.
The following is from the first link above (“Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey”):
“A staggering 41% of respondents reported attempting
suicide compared to 1.6% of the general population,
with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias
(55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low
household income, or were the victim of physical assault
(61%) or sexual assault (64%).”
Structural and institutional cissexism is found in employment, education, income distribution, and rates of physical violence and sexual assault. This is often layered with other forms of structural and institutional violence like sexism, racism, classism, Orientalism, colonialism, and ableism.
More trans people take their own lives than are killed by random strangers on the street. While we are encouraged to remember the latter every year during Transgender Day of Remembrance, the deaths of the former go largely unacknowledged by the larger community.
Employment
While 55% of trans people who have lost a job due to bias and 51% of unemployed trans people have attempt suicide, that number rises to 60% for those who have worked in the informal, underground economy, particularly those involved in survival sex.
Educational Malpractice
The rates of suicide attempts in education starts at 51% for those who are bullied and harassed, but then rises to 79% for those who were assaulted by teachers or staff. Of those students who were sexually assaulted 68 to 69% attempted suicide.
Race/Racism
These numbers also rise by race. The 41% number given above is for the overall sample. But if we look at the different racial groups we see that White and Asian trans people have slightly lower rates of suicide attempts at 38% and 39% respectively. Obviously these numbers are still outragingly high. But the numbers rise above 41% for all other races. In acceding order, suicide attempts for trans people who are Latin@ is 44%, Black 45%, multiracial 54% and American Indian 56%.
Age
The report shows that 45% of trans people between the ages of 18-44 have attempted suicide. It would seem that suicide attempts start to taper off for trans people from 45 years on, falling to 39% for those 45-54, 33% for those 55-64 and 16% for those 65 years and over.
However, again, a survey can only record numbers for people who have survived a suicide attempt. Obviously those who succeeded in killing themselves are not going to be around report back. So not only can we assume the real percentage of suicide attempts would be much higher than 41% if it included all the successful attempts, but also that trans people who successfully attempt suicide will be removed from the population at younger ages.
This would help explain why the reported rates of suicide attempts start to taper off after trans people reach middle age. That is, it is likely that suicide attempts are preventing a significant portion of the trans population from living beyond 45 years of age.
Domestic Violence
Of those trans people who live in violent/abusive households 65% have attempted suicide. This is twice the rate of suicide attempts (32%) for those trans people who say they’re family is accepting.
Homelessness
For trans people who have experienced homelessness 69% had reported attempting suicide, compared to 38% for those trans people who have always experienced stable housing.
Trans People are Survivors
It’s not hard to see how all these things begin to add up. If a trans person is experiencing violence in the home they may runaway and become homeless, and if they experience violence in school they may drop out, if they are homeless and/or drop out of school they’ll have a harder time finding steady, formal employment, if they can’t find formal employment or they live on the street they may turn survival work in the sex and drug trades in exchange for food, shelter and healthcare. Anyone of these things by itself could increase one’s desire to end their own life, so think about how each of these factors feed into and reinforce the others.
With such high rates of suicide attempts in the face of large-scale systematic oppression, it is fair to say that, for many, to be a trans person in the United States is to be a survivor. This is especially true for those who are trans women, poor and low-income trans people, trans immigrants, indigenous trans people and other trans people of color.
