A Quiet Tragedy in Our County
You won't read about it in the Washington Post or The Gazette, or find an obituary in any newspaper, but a 17-year-old transgender boy was lost to suicide in Bethesda last week. Aiden Grimlock (Aiden Schaeff Rivera) sent his friends a final good bye and then killed himself in the middle of the night, April 22nd.
There will be a free grief counseling session Sunday at 4:00 PM at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville at 100 Welsh Park Drive in Rockville. Aiden's family has created a tribute web site at aidenriveraschaeff.com, and there is a Facebook page called RIP Aiden Grimlock (oddly, the first memorial page was deleted by Facebook for "terms of service violation").
I heard about the sad story of Aiden Grimlock several days ago, and it has hung over me like a cloud all week. Aiden's short life was unique in many ways, and universal in others. Please, let's stay on track toward the day when the cruelty of the world is not too much for a young person to bear.
I will not allow anyone in the comments section to politicize or trivialize this sad incident.
There will be a free grief counseling session Sunday at 4:00 PM at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville at 100 Welsh Park Drive in Rockville. Aiden's family has created a tribute web site at aidenriveraschaeff.com, and there is a Facebook page called RIP Aiden Grimlock (oddly, the first memorial page was deleted by Facebook for "terms of service violation").
I heard about the sad story of Aiden Grimlock several days ago, and it has hung over me like a cloud all week. Aiden's short life was unique in many ways, and universal in others. Please, let's stay on track toward the day when the cruelty of the world is not too much for a young person to bear.
I will not allow anyone in the comments section to politicize or trivialize this sad incident.
posted by JimK at 9:55 AM
19 Comments:
so Jim, why do you think Aidan did it ?
This person, born Caitlin, was with a lesbian couple from birth. So you would assume that couple would have been understanding and not ostracized Caitlin for becoming Aidan.
And of course, Aidan is in Montgomery County, with one of the most progressive health curriculums around. So did Caitlin decide to become Aidan before or after 10th grade health ?
What went wrong ? The kids were just not supportive enough, the most liberal county in America (just about) wasn't liberal enough ?....
Curious what you think happened here.
It is very sad. The statistics on suicides for homosexuals teens are 4x that for heterosexual kids. What are the statistics for kids who believe they are trans ?
And why, did this kid, with all the support an acceptance of a lesbian couple, do this ?
Anon, I am not going to speculate about this person's motives. I have sympathy for the family and will not try to guess what makes anyone do something like this.
JimK
but it calls into question the very premise of what you fight for, Jim.
You said that kids need to be accepted and not teased and parents should be understanding about being homosexual/trans. They are just that way, they were born that way.
We said kids are vulnerable during this age and shouldn't be encourated to have sex period, much less taught to think about whether they are "really" male or "really" female. That some kids who were naturally tomboys you are going to convince them they are trans.
Well, here you have a kid that apparently, at 17 (which would be the year after the health curriculum), determines they are trans.
And then commits suicide shortly afterwards.
I think your curriculum is extremely harmful to the kids in MC. What is the suicide rate amongs teens in MC anyway who participated in the MC health curriculum. Has it gone up or down since the "accept everyone and everything, you might just be homosexual or trans you know, let's spend a couple of class periods discussing it"....curriculum went into effect ?
You said you had a couple of rough days last week. Did this suicide make you question if what you have been fighting for is actually harmful to the kids ? And is the Citizens Advisory committee looking at the MC suicide rate and characteristics of those suicides at all ? And whether that rate is going up or down ?
First of all, I have to say that my heart aches for Aiden’s moms and the rest of his family and all of their friends. I grieve with you. This tragedy did not have to happen.
I don’t know why Aiden committed suicide; there is no information I can find that has released any details. There will be many people who will jump to the naively simplistic conclusion that it was “because he was trans.” But that simply isn’t a reason for killing oneself – that can be taken care of with hormones and a few surgeries – it’s a strategy that, despite being considered by some as “bizarre,” “going against nature” or an “abomination,” has proven itself HIGHLY effective over the past SIXTY years. It is the sometimes insurmountable challenge of trying to fit into, work, keep a family and friends, and just live in a society that often goes out of its way to marginalize trans people at every turn that kills them.
I never met Aiden, but right now I’m wishing I had. Because I have reason to believe, if I had, he just might still be alive. Back in 2003 a friend of mine started an informal trans support group, and at our first meeting there were a total of 5 of us. In the beginning there were times when we were lucky to have 3 of us there. At our meeting last month, there were 17 people, mostly trans, along with a couple of allies, a few significant others, 3 young trans men, and 2 mothers – one them the mother of our youngest trans guy, who I think is Aiden’s age.
People have come and gone from our group over the years, and we’ve helped a number of people through difficult times, including divorces, child custody battles, job losses, being kicked out of parents’ homes, less than cordial teachers and school administrators, and helping folks find the medical help they need to transition.
The most humbling moment I’ve had at one of these groups came after the “formal” part of one of our meetings when I was chatting with a young 20-something transman. He said “You guys saved my life.” He didn’t even want to come to the group, but his girlfriend dragged him there. He’s not the only person that has expressed that sentiment. It’s why I keep going to those meetings religiously every month.
(continued below)
We don’t do anything particularly “special” at the group, we just talk. But for a young person (or anyone for that matter) facing the hurdles of transition, the mountains of out-of-pocket medical expenses, the treatment by peers and often family, or co-workers, meeting people who have managed to go through the process and come out finally comfortable in their own skin, it can be an eye-opening experience. The English language (and I suspect any other you can name) is woefully inadequate to describe the visceral ripping disconnect one feels when they’re imprisoned in a straight jacket in the wrong body. But for those of us who have dealt with it head on, no words are necessary – we KNOW what it feels like, and for the first time in these young people’s lives, THEY know there are people around them that actually understand the small corner of hell they’re trying to escape from, and can empathize with them.
Like my own first group meeting (with an entirely different group in another state), it gives them hope. For me, it was enough hope to carry me through the rest of my transition, and not end it the way Aiden did, or Christine Daniels, or all too many other trans men and women.
As regular readers of this blog are aware, I have been arguing for more tolerance and acceptance of trans folk for several years now. While I like to think that I may have enlightened a few peoples’ minds along the way, Aiden’s death has made it abundantly clear that my efforts have not been as effective as perhaps they could be, and that I also need to reach out further to help those in need.
No one WANTS to be trans, but for any trans, gender queer, or questioning student or their parents in Maryland and the surrounding states or D.C. that happens to find themselves reading this, if you are not already attending a support group, please find one as soon as possible. They may be few and far between, but they are out there if you look hard enough. Depending on where you live, you may even find my own group helpful. You can contact me privately through my YouTube channel which you will find by clicking on “svelte_brunette” above. You can leave me a short message there on my channel, or if you have a YouTube account, you can send me a private e-mail, to which I will reply privately to your YT account.
For the Anonymi, I will try to address your questions Sunday afternoon, after a busy morning at church.
Peace,
Cynthia
Cynthia -- thank you for your thoughtful comments.
Anone said "I think your curriculum is extremely harmful to the kids in MC...the "accept everyone and everything, you might just be homosexual or trans you know, let's spend a couple of class periods discussing it"....curriculum "
I don't know which part of the revised MCPS curriculum you think you're quoting there because that text you place in quotation marks is not in the curriculum anywhere. During these revised classes, which are scripted, teachers never tell students "you might just be homosexual or trans you know."
If you want to have a rational discussion about the MCPS curriculum, be honest about it. Do not make up quotes that are not in it. You now have a link to the fully scripted MCPS curriculum revisions so you can easily use real quotes instead of making up lies.
I am amazed to find a person who thinks it's harmful to offer two *optional* 90 minute classes that teach teenagers to show respect to other human beings. No MCPS student may take these classes without parental permission so if you think learning about respecting others will harm your teenager, then simply do not give your permission for him or her to take the optional classes. No student is forced to take these classes but well over 90% of MCPS parents give their students permission to take them. We embrace our diversity here in Montgomery County, well most of us do.
I think teaching the importance of having respect for individual differences is the equivalent of teaching the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. I'm grateful MCPS offers these classes.
Anone asked What is the suicide rate amongs teens in MC anyway who participated in the MC health curriculum. Has it gone up or down
That's a very good question. I think it would be interesting to collect and compare data about the suicide rates of teens who receive parental permission to take MCPS's optional sex ed classes to the suicide rates of LGBT teens forced by their parents into reparative therapy programs. I'd gladly pay more taxes to fund the collection and analysis of this data so we can compare whether optional lessons in respect for other human beings or the forced attempted conversion of teens' sexual orientation leads to higher teen suicide rates.
"Anonymous"
Do you reside in the 21st century or are you some holdover from the Age of Ignorance?
Where in the curriculum is it required to teach the children "whether they are "really" male or "really" female."?
Do you really believe that children are so empty-headed that they believe all sources of truth and information emanate from their parents, much as you would like it to be so, or from any other adult? Are they so stupid as to take anything that somebody tells them at face value? Not in this age of instant information.
Talking abut the existence of transgender people or others who are different from them ("That some kids who were naturally tomboys you are going to convince them they are trans.") is somehow going to transform them into being transgender people, or gay or lesbian, or for that matter, bigots? Children are intelligent individuals and your belittling of their abilities to think for themselves tells us a great deal about your own desire to control them.
I think I can tell you the answer to your question: "What is the suicide rate amongs teens in MC anyway who participated in the MC health curriculum. Has it gone up or down since the "accept everyone and everything, you might just be homosexual or trans you know, let's spend a couple of class periods discussing it"....curriculum went into effect ?" The answer is NONE!
It is possible that the suicide rate among teens in Montgomery County might have gone up (dubious) because some children, for example, have been subjected to the brain-washing of certain religious institutions, or even that the suicide rate has gone up because some children have been abused and live a threatening life in their own homes.
The inability to link teenage suicide rates to a course they have taken in school is nothing more than "pie-in-the-sky", wishful thinking on your part. It will be a cold day in Hell when we discover a suicide note from an unfortunate teenager that blames his/her desire to take his/her life on participation in the Family Life classes in Montgomery County Schools, despite your fervent desire to make that connection.
It is not the function of the Citizens Advisory Committee, despite the insidious influence of the bogus PFOX group on their fan club on that Committee and in the community, to investigate suicide rates as they apply to this curriculum, or any curriculum for that matter.
RT
I told a mother in Montgomery County about the horrible sex ed curriculum, and she was appalled. I She tried to opt her child out of the part of the health curriculum which talks about sexual orientation. I believe she said that there were two days of the three-week curriculum which she didn't want her child to be in.
You know what she was told? Her child had to either opt out of the entire three weeks OR take the entire three-week course.
So don't give us any horse crap about being able to opt out!
RT.
If you cared about the kids you teach, you would be concerned about the suicide rate.
All of us were told that the reason we HAD to have this curriculum, which talks in detail about a subject that the vast majority of parents would like left up to them, was because the gay/trans kids were being bullied terribly and this would help.
this kid committed suicide while the curriculum was in place.
why ?
I actually will accept that the danger of having all of the kids exposed to something I would rather they didn't hear about, pales in comparision to stopping the suicides... Unless of course, exposing them to this lifestyle gets more kids to think they are (your goal I know...) and the suicide rate goes up... Here we completely differ because I believe, like the psychiatrists do, that kids are prone to experiment at this age....to tell them that this experimentation means "well they were born that way"... is something else entirely.
why in the world would you be opposed to tracking the suicide rate ? I would think regardless of which side of the fence you are on OR whether or not it is the CACs job or someone else's, that you would not be opposed to this.
Unless, of course, since you work in the school system RT you know the rate HAS gone up and you are hiding something ????
If the whole purpose of this curriculum was to stop the bullying so that kids would not ostracize those who believe they are gay, but the effect was to convince more of these vulnerable kids that they might be gay (and by the way, it is not changeable)....AND the suicide rate has gone up since you implemented this... don't you think it is time to take another look ?
Or do you really care so little for the kids you teach that you want your viewpoint taught regardless of whether an extra 5 kids a year kill themselves ?
"Anynymous"
Your assumptions about who I am and what I do are, to say the least, inaccurate.("If you cared about the kids you teach, you would be concerned about the suicide rate.")
Once again, you project your particular bias to a whole population of people ("this curriculum, which talks in detail about a subject that the vast majority of parents would like left up to them,"). What evidence do you base this evaluation of what the "vast majority" of parents want? I do not recollect ever seeing a poll of the 90%+ of parents who obviously want their children to learn the entirety of the Family Life lessons. Are you a better judge of their decision than they themselves are?
If you want to teach your children about sex at home, do so. You should, under these pristine circumstances, have more confidence in your ability to shield them from what you see as something "I would rather they didn't hear about...". It would seem, in your case, that enrolling your child in the Family Life course is a waste of time.
"this kid committed suicide while the curriculum was in place." Once again...you have failed miserably to make a logical or sane connection between the child who took his own life and the curriculum which is in place in our schools. You simply do NOT KNOW why he took this unfortunate step and it doesn't help matters when you sanctimoniously make a judgment about the reason.
"exposing them to this lifestyle gets more kids to think they are (your goal I know...) and the suicide rate goes up..." the absence of any logic in this statement is breathtaking!
"why in the world would you be opposed to tracking the suicide rate?" Again...another incorrect assumption on your part. You are grossly mistaken if you think I am opposed to tracking suicide rates. I only want the tracking to be based on real reasons, not some fictitious reason that you seem fixated on.
"Unless, of course, since you work in the school system RT you know the rate HAS gone up and you are hiding something ????" Since I work in the school system?? You are a victim of paranoic rantings my dear (I suspect) lady. And...you are a liar.
Once again, ""Anonymous"...where do you come up with this idea? ("the suicide rate has gone up since you implemented this... don't you think it is time to take another look ?") What is your proof for making this statement?
And...just to correct your ridiculous statement that I implimented this (curriculum) I need to inform you that I had nothing to do with the curriculum and was not a member of the committee that approved the curriculum by an overwhelming majority vote.
There is no proven correlation between the curriculum and the alleged rise in the teenage suicide rate here in Montgomery County, despite your wishing it were so ("the suicide rate has gone up since you implemented this... don't you think it is time to take another look ?")
"Or do you really care so little for the kids you teach that you want your viewpoint taught..." For your information, I care a great deal about children and their preparation for the life that they will face once their formal schooling is finished. I have always believed that teaching accurate, factual, supportable information is far more desirable than keeping them in ignorance with the hope of extending their childish naivete...which is what you seem to be longing for.
RT
I thought I would be able to post earlier today, but it’s been a rough day for me. I lit a candle for Aiden, and since our Earth Day activities were delayed a week due to rain, we also planted a tree in his memory.
Anon asserted:
“This person, born Caitlin, was with a lesbian couple from birth. So you would assume that couple would have been understanding and not ostracized Caitlin for becoming Aidan.”
One would certainly like to *assume* that Anon, but not knowing any facts about his situation, I can only *hope* for that. Given the circumstances, I will presume that Aiden’s parents loved him dearly and did the best they knew how. They are probably second guessing every decision they ever made with him and wondering if things could have turned out differently. I wish there was some way I could console them. I suspect they would have been keenly aware of the difficulties he would face having come out as T, given that they probably faced plenty of hardships for their own minority status. Even assuming they did everything “right,” I doubt they could have prevented what happened.
However, just because one is L, G, or B, doesn’t necessarily mean that one is supportive of T folks. A few months ago a famous gay activist wrote a scathingly anti-trans column that would make our Anonymi proud. It was quickly removed from the site it was originally post on, but you can still read it here, re-posted by another gay activist with a penchant for “free speech” and I suspect holds similar attitudes as the original author:
http://dyneslines.blogspot.com/2009/12/ordeal-of-ronald-gold.html
My hospital roommate for my GRS surgery was a lovely young (25) Latina tranwoman with a personality that was both bubbly and magnetic. A room would invariably liven up as soon as she walked in. She had lived her life as a particularly effeminate gay man up to that point, and frequently went out as a woman. Two interesting things to note: her family accepted her being both gay and effeminate, probably because they had already had experience with another gay person in her family – her uncle. She did not suffer from the suicidal ideations that many trans youth do as they try to force themselves into the “straight male” or “straight female” mold. The other fascinating piece to her story was that the only person that voice an objection to her transition from male to female, was her gay uncle. While there is support in some quarters of the GLB community for trans folk, it is by no means universal. The 2007 ENDA battle (where gender identity was dropped in favor of trying to get through a sexual orientation only bill) is another recent example.
Anon asked:
“And of course, Aidan is in Montgomery County, with one of the most progressive health curriculums around. So did Caitlin decide to become Aidan before or after 10th grade health ?”
Children with trans identities often present them at a very early age – 5, 4, or even 3 years old in some cases – for many trans kids, it is one of their earliest memories. For myself, I don’t have many memories at all of that age. But I do know for a fact that I was sick and tired of trying to live as a boy by the time I was 9. Aiden would have been dealing with symptoms of Gender Incongruity LONG before 10th grade health class. I don’t know when he started actually trying to live his life as a male, but I’m pretty sure that decision would have been based entirely on his own determination of the best way he needed to move forward, not some class schedule. Way to go trying to use his death to promote your agenda against the curriculum though.
“What went wrong ? The kids were just not supportive enough, the most liberal county in America (just about) wasn't liberal enough ?....”
Let me first point out that we still have no details on the reason he committed suicide. For all we know he could have had a bad grade on a calculus test or been recently dumped by his girlfriend. We can make all sorts of conjectures, but we have to keep in mind that they are just that – conjecture.
The second point is, I used to think “tolerance” and “acceptance” were American values, not just liberal ones. Without it, we have no claim to the phrase “Great American Melting Pot.” Come to think of it though, I don’t seem to hear that phrase anywhere near as much as I did, say 15 years ago. If a teenager decided to commit suicide because a county wasn’t “liberal” or “conservative” enough, I think it would be a unique case study for the annals of psychiatric medicine.
So far the closest thing we have to that is the case of Andrew Joseph Stack III, who flew his plane into an IRS building in Texas. Was Texas not conservative enough for him? Of course, this isn’t really a fair comparison, as Mr. Stack was both an adult and a heterosexual: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19crash.html
Perhaps Montgomery County’s reputation as being “liberal” partly explains why we haven’t seen cases like that of 18 year old Constance McMillen, who, while old enough to go off to Iraq or Afghanistan and kill people in Bush’s War of Terror, was not allowed to bring her date to the prom: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-10-noprom_N.htm . (Well, actually, she did end up going to a fake prom they had set up for her and the challenged students. Not exactly nice though.)
Perhaps Montgomery County’s liberal attitude explains why we haven’t seen students like the three Kentuckians who attacked their lesbian classmate and tried to throw her over a cliff on the Day of Silence:
http://www.kentucky.com/2010/04/22/1233842/jackson-county-mother-it-is-a.html
And given all the concern about “bathroom” issues around here in the last few years, I’m very glad no trans students have found themselves in a men’s room and had the word “IT” carved into his chest:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/04/transgender-student-says-attacker-motived-by-hate-carved-it-onto-his-chest.html
Can we thank Montgomery County’s “liberal” bias for that?
Anon mused:
“Curious what you think happened here.”
As I said before, without more information about what actually happened, we can only take guesses.
But since you asked, I’ll take a guess.
I suspect what happened here is not unlike what happened to Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, the 11 year old boy who hung himself after school bullies repeatedly called him “gay.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7328091 Carl is described as a nice young man who went to church with his mother. As Carl was only 11, I find it hard to believe that he was actually involved in any “gay” behavior, or any sexual behavior for that matter. With any luck, it would have been a number of years before he was involved in sex of any kind. But that didn’t stop his classmates from instigating what eventually became a slow form a psychological torture where he thought his only escape was to hang himself.
I would not be surprised at all to hear that there were students at Aiden’s school that went out of their way to make his life miserable. They may not have physically attacked him, tried to throw him off a cliff, or carve epithets into his chest, but with enough verbal abuse they don’t have to – the child will kill themselves, and they don’t even have to be trans or gay. They could be a regular straight teenage guy like Jeffrey Johnston, who got targeted by a class bully – interestingly the bully even turned his girlfriend against him by spreading rumors that he was gay:
http://www.polk-fl.net/parents/generalinformation/documents/bullying_JeffreyJohnstonStory.pdf
So even if your child isn’t gay or trans, the class bullies may well accuse them of being so just to humiliate and harass them. Let’s hope they can take all the crap.
“It is very sad. The statistics on suicides for homosexuals teens are 4x that for heterosexual kids. What are the statistics for kids who believe they are trans ?”
Statistics would be nice, and perhaps even useful. Good luck getting the government to fund them though. For some reason every time I hear about someone proposing money to study transexuals, I also hear a huge outcry which can be summed up as “Why the h311 are you spending money on TRANSEXUALS?! Don’t we have something useful to spend our tax money on?”
Anon asked:
“And why, did this kid, with all the support an acceptance of a lesbian couple, do this ?”
Why do trans kids with support and acceptance of their heterosexual parents do this?
Because parents can’t control their child’s entire environment. They can’t always keep them away from the class bullies and all their cohorts intent on improving their social status at the expense of others. Teenagers are in the midst of breaking away from their parents and starting their own life on their own terms, and they look to their peers for their self-worth, social status, and their relationships. If these relationships are toxic, there may be little if anything any parent (gay or straight) can do.
The Anons will argue that everyone gets bullied as a teenager, and this may well be correct. Most of us survive. Some are permanently scarred with post traumatic stress disorder. Some decide to end their suffering once and for all.
The Anons here delight in calling members of the LGBT community “sexual deviants,” “perverts,” “promiscuous,” and a host of other names. They like to call people like me “mentally ill,” a “confused man in a dress,” and “delusional,” among other things.
That’s fine with me. I’m a big girl, I can take it. I’ve seen enough of this world to know that all of this puerile name calling thrown in my general direction is caused by:
1: fear
2: ignorance
3: a religious or political agenda
4: a conviction that “converting” gays / trans or marginalizing them as much as possible will lead to extra bonus points for entry into heaven
5: an irrational fear that acceptance of gays / trans will lead to destruction of the earth not unlike that of Sodom and Gomorrah
6: an irrational fear that acceptance of gays / trans will lead to the rise of the Fourth Reich
7: an irrational fear that gays are all out to convert everyone’s children to gaydom
8: all of the above
I also have seen enough of this world to know none of these things have anything to do with me. I am a kind, caring, and compassionate person, a doting aunt, and helpful sister, loving daughter, and a decent friend. The anons can call me names all day, and it will only prove my contention that trans people are persistently marginalized.
However, when the epithets so carelessly thrown around here find their way into the ears of our youth, unfortunately they get incorporated into their self-image and their self-worth. They begin to actually see themselves as the lowlife scum our anons so happily like to portray them. They no longer see themselves as the wonderful young people they are with a bright future ahead of them. They see themselves as a perpetual outcast destined for a lifetime of harassment and marginalization. Is it any wonder some of them decide to hang themselves?
Cynthia
To the people who are blaming the health curriculum, here are my personal thoughts on that (copy-and-pasted from a comment I wrote on the R.I.P. Aiden Grimlock Facebook group):
"...I don't remember ever being taught about any specific GLBT issues, beyond "homosexuality is not a disorder". GLBT-targeted bullying, transexualism, trans- and homophobia, varying degrees of sexual orientation and gender identity, even safe sex practices for non-heterosexual couples...these are all topics from which students aren't receiving any sort of exposure, and essentially being shielded- despite their validity, and relevance to students' lives. Now more than ever, this needs to be accepted, and these things need to be taught. The reason there is such stigma around these issues is because students aren't given any guidance to grasp an understanding; there is no dialogue. To end hatred [which can often be a result of misunderstanding/misinformation] immediately, that too needs to change immediately."
So, yes, to the parent who mentioned "the horrible sex ed curriculum," in regards to that, I agree with you entirely. (In addition, I don't see the benefit in permitting your child to take sex ed, yet shielding him or her from learning about sexual orientation in particular.)
Anonymous, you don't seem to be an MCPS student, so with that in mind, I'm assuming you haven't witnessed homophobia firsthand within an MCPS school, let alone B-CC. As a B-CC student, I can attest to the fact that there is still a lot that needs to be done, no matter how liberal you or anyone else labels Montgomery County or MCPS or any of its particular schools.
As a community, regardless of who you are or what you believe, we should all agree that it's our responsibility to keep our students feeling safe and comfortable, especially in school.
Also, please get your facts straight before you start unfoundedly theorizing about the curriculum's supposed influence on Aiden's identity. If you read this article, http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2560826 , you'll find that Aiden came out in ninth grade. MCPS high school students don't take Health until tenth grade. Though county students take it in eighth grade, Aiden wasn't an MCPS student then.
My condolences to Aiden’s family and friends. I’m keeping him in my thoughts.
I know this is months old but I read it and had to say something. Aiden was one of my best friends, I met him my freshman year. I'm now a junior at BCC highschool.
Aiden always knew he was different. He started identifying as male his freshman year, before he took health (a course which, by the way, spends little to no time on transgender issues so I have no idea where you got that from. I took it last year.) You do not have to opt out of the entire course, you can opt out of the gay part and you can opt out of the AIDS part or the entire thing.
Health class had nothing to do with his suicide so honestly, anonymous, fuck you for taking this boys death to push your bullshit health class issues. High school is hard for normal kids. For Aiden, it was hell because kids are vicious and ignorant.
To everyone else, he was great. And thank you for kind words, I wish more than anything he could hear them.
I was Aiden's Aunt, I am not going to trivialize his death by publishing details but I do want to take this opportunity to express my astonishment that someone can think that a couple of classes at school could have led to his suicide. This poor child was tortured by people whom should have been his buddies, people frightened of anything different to the point of bullying, taunting... where did they learn these things?!? Should we be looking at what courses these school bullies took? No, we need to look at our society, the spoken and unspoken messages that out kids pick-up and carry with them. Aiden was a wonderful soul, loving, playful and trying to just be himself. Now honestly, why would anyone have a problem with that? He wasn't out to hurt anyone he just wanted to be happy and be loved, like we all do. His suicide is a tragedy that will haunt many of us for the rest of our lives. I hope that those who treated him poorly have stopped and thought about their actions. And really - give up on this idea that a sex ed class caused my nephew's death. What killed him was fear and intolerance.
Just a another small note... Of course there were obituaries, why would ther not have been?
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