On Steven Crowder and Trans Suicide

Alleged comedian Steven Crowder, host of the eponymously-named podcast Louder with Crowder on YouTube, where he is known for his hateful and bilious remarks about seemingly everyone in America who isn't a straight, white, cisgender man, recently used his considerable platform to raise awareness of the ghastly suicide rate among transgender persons, with all of the sensitivity you'd expect from a grown man who makes his living as a professional schoolyard bully. The frightened-eyed Crowder, who radiates sexual inadequacy with his characteristic underarm holster, asserted that 42% of trans people attempt suicide, and claimed this demonstrates a "mental proclivity towards extreme behavior." The 42% figure and similar statistics are often cited by conservative commentators to imply that trans people are mentally ill and shouldn't be "enabled."

"I don't think it's helping people to simply enable it," he remarked. After insisting that "I don't want nearly half of all transgender people to attempt suicide," Crowder, who, suffice to say, isn't exactly known as a wellspring of empathy for the trans community, confidently declared: "Guess what doesn't work? You saying 'You're all good, you're a woman.' It doesn't help. It makes it worse."

While Crowder claims to be referring to "multiple studies," while citing none of them, we may charitably assume that he's talking about the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, or NTDS—frequently misrepresented by conservatives—which found that 41.8% of transgender and gender non-conforming people in the U.S. had attempted suicide. But rather than being the result of some "mental proclivity towards extreme behavior," the NTDS findings clearly show that a constellation of social factors—rejection by family, harassment and bullying, physical or sexual assault, and discrimination in health care and housing—were the primary drivers of suicidal behavior among transgender individuals.

"I pass as a woman more than Crowder's mean-spirited rants pass as comedy."

It is widely-understood, and has been repeatedly, empirically, and incontrovertibly demonstrated, that acceptance and social support of transgender people results in better mental health outcomes, especially for transgender youth. Crowder's assertion that "it doesn't work" and "it makes it worse" is contradicted by findings in such authoritative journals as The Lancet and The Journal of the American Medical Association. (Far be it from me to impugn Dr. Crowder's medical credentials, however.)

For someone with a well-known penchant for crossdressing, Crowder seems to feel unusually strongly that male-to-female transgender identity in particular must not be indulged. I sense that "the lady doth protest too much."

I hope the reader will permit me to go beyond the statistics and speak a little from personal experience.

I'm one of the 42%. I consider 2010 to 2020 to be a "lost decade" of my life, as I suffered with major depression, self-harm, and ten years of often daily suicidal ideation. I was too steeped in denial to realize that much of this could be attributed to gender dysphoria. Even now, when enjoying the company of friends as an openly transgender woman, I sometimes become suddenly and acutely aware of all the sharp objects in the room that could be put to self-destructive use. I no longer act on these intrusive suicidal thoughts, however. Through the practice of meditation—and a stiff cocktail of antidepressants—I've learned how to simply observe these thoughts dispassionately and wait patiently for them to pass. Now, on most days, I am happy.

But I'm one of the lucky ones. I have a network of supportive friends and family, and I've been fortunate to have thus far encountered no overt discrimination or hostility. I have a stable job that pays for my therapy and transition, and modest, but comfortable housing in a state where gender identity is a protected class. I am privileged in ways that many other trans folks in America are not.

Yet even in these fairly ideal circumstances, there is fear—fear of scorn, mockery or even violence; fear of employment or housing discrimination under some false pretense; fear of reactionary politicians undoing the fragile progress we've made. (There is also a lesser, but nonetheless ever-present fear of not "passing"—that is, not meeting society's expectation of what a woman should look like.) These fears, which inhibited me from embracing my true self for so many miserable years, are not irrational. They are not the result of some "mental proclivity." Rather, they are what happens when our society rejects transgender identity. But less acceptance is exactly the prescription that Dr. Crowder insists is best for the mental health of transgender people, in defiance of empirical evidence and common sense. In Crowder's world, everyone must be as repressed as he presumably is.

Steven Crowder is the same age as me. In my formative years, I was tormented by neanderthalic bullies very much like him, and I can attest that it did no favors for my mental health. Yet somehow, I turned out more well-adjusted than Crowder, who appears never to have matured beyond the mental age of 16. I would be tempted to pity him were he not such a relentlessly loathsome character. And for a self-purported comedian, the man is painfully unfunny. I pass as a woman more than Crowder's mean-spirited rants pass as comedy. At least Dave Chappelle's transphobia is funny.

"I'm not Tinkerbell. I don't need everyone to clap for me and believe in me or I disappear." I came upon a comment to this effect in a transgender support group on Facebook during a recent discussion of Chappelle's controversial Netflix special, The Closer. I can relate to this somewhat, insofar as I don't care what Chappelle or Crowder think of me. I'm a grown woman. I've had more than thirty years to get to know myself, and I'm very comfortable with the choices I've made. Whether Steven Crowder accepts me or not makes exactly no difference to me. I don't need his permission to be who I am.

But transgender youth are far more vulnerable to Crowder's style of bullying. A horrifying 2018 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that nearly 30% of male-to-female transgender adolescents had attempted suicide, and over half of female-to-male transgender adolescents had done so, a figure significantly higher than the adult trans population. The reasons for this disparity are complex and require further study, but the remedy is clear: a supportive home and school environment reduces suicidal ideation among trans youth. This is a consistent finding of every reputable study I've seen on the subject.

Even supposing that you're opposed to gender-affirming care for minors (such as puberty-blockers and hormones), we should hopefully be able to agree that children who exhibit a persistent pattern of gender non-conforming behavior should receive the counseling they need to explore and better-understand their gender identity. And surely we should agree that bullying is bad for all children, not just "the transgenders," as Crowder dehumanizingly refers to us. Saying that Crowder is a poor example to children would be a laughable understatement. His overt animosity and shameless denigration of trans people—with a weird, single-minded fixation on trans women—hardens the hearts of his 5.5 million subscribers and promotes a culture and politics of hostility towards a very small, harmless minority that is already disproportionately at-risk of suicide.

And by deflecting blame away from external, societal causes and instead pointing the finger at an innate "mental proclivity towards extreme behavior," Crowder conveniently absolves himself of any responsibility for the deleterious effect that his own words have on the mental health of the trans community. It's a textbook case of blaming the victim. Gross.

Still, I hesitate to blame Crowder directly for the trans suicide rate (though he clearly exacerbates the situation.) I take responsibility for myself and certainly don't blame him for my own suicidal ideation. But minors are understood by society to have less agency than adults. They are impressionable and more likely to act impulsively under social duress. This is undoubtedly why the attempted suicide rate among trans youth is so much higher than the adult population. This underscores how important it is to set a positive example for children and not "enable" bullying, as Crowder does.

"Education is almost always preferable to 'cancellation,' in my view."

Many trans activists will argue for the deplatforming of Crowder because of the real-world harm attributable to his words. However well-intentioned, I think this goes too far. Crowder, I presume, sees me as a man with a wish-fulfillment delusion and a "mental proclivity towards extreme behavior," such as suicide or even sexual assault. Crowder has a right to be wrong—even aggressively wrong. Of course, I welcome warmth and encouragement; even small gestures—for instance, simply making an effort to gender us correctly—have been shown to yield demonstrably better mental health outcomes. But I don't believe that society owes me warmth or encouragement, as long as my rights are protected. Indeed, I'm not Tinkerbell.

Fairly or unfairly, the trans community has a reputation for censoriousness. Demands to "cancel" Crowder—or Chappelle, for that matter—only reinforce this perception in the eyes of many Americans. Recent and looming electoral setbacks strongly suggest that this approach may be counter-productive. Education is almost always preferable to "cancellation," in my view. We should explain with patience, confidence, and humor why Crowder is wrong. That's what I've attempted to do in this article, and I believe that's how we'll create a more tolerant society in the long-run.

At the same time, however, it's critical that we provide children with the resources and the safe, nurturing spaces they need to understand and accept themselves for who they are. Try as we should, we won't always be able to prevent bullying, but we can equip trans youth with the self-confidence and pride to withstand the hateful derision of bullies like Crowder, at least until such time as they inevitably go the way of the cro-magnon and other bygone species of primitive man.