“Visibility is not only about celebration, but it is also about what remains invisible. There were no headlines about those three funerals. No national reckoning”
BY CYNTHIA ALISON FORTLAGE, IMAGE BY LINDSAY RYKLIEF VIA CANVA
Three in a week. That was the number shared in a recent conversation I was part of under the Chatham House Rule. Three funerals. Three transgender people. One week.
Today (31 March), on Trans Day of Visibility, we will see images of pride, resilience and joy. And we should. But increased visibility has also been followed by increased hostility. Visibility is not only about celebration, but it is also about what remains invisible. There were no headlines about those three funerals. No national reckoning. Just a quiet sentence from someone who had just returned from the third.
We are living in a time when transgender lives are debated daily. Courtrooms revisit definitions. Policies are revised. Services are paused or withdrawn. Waiting lists stretch into years. Youth pathways narrow. Language hardens.
And through it all, we are told this is a process. But funerals are not “process”.
Multiple studies have found that around half of transgender adults report having attempted suicide at some point in their lives. In the wider population, that figure sits between two and five per cent. The disparity is stark.
This is not inherent to being trans. It correlates strongly with rejection, discrimination, delayed access to care and sustained hostility.
The risk is not identity. The risk is the environment.
I attempted suicide once, as a teenager. At the time, adults called it attention seeking. What I did not yet understand was that I was grieving a self I did not have language for. Being close to the girl I wanted to be felt like proximity to something inside myself. When that connection disappeared, something deeper collapsed.
More than three decades later, access to hormone therapy brought almost immediate relief. Within 24 hours, the constant internal distress I had lived with for decades quietened. Weekly therapy over six and a half years brought stability.
The distinction matters. Access to care reduced my long-standing distress. I survived, and surviving gave me responsibility. That responsibility is why I cannot hear “three in a week” and move on.
When access to healthcare is reduced, when waiting lists stretch into years, and when public discourse frames trans lives as suspect, the outcome is not neutral. It is increased distress. It is preventable harm. And when harm accumulates, people die. Three in a week does not emerge from nowhere. It emerges from context. You will never read that in a headline.
Headlines track culture wars. They do not track cumulative strain. But strain accumulates. Visibility must include this, too.
Three in a week is not an anomaly. It sits inside numbers most of us never see.
I did not know the three people whose funerals were mentioned that day. But I know the landscape they were navigating.
Cynthia is an author and global leadership consultant helping organisations create workplaces where dignity, safety and belonging are not negotiable. Her work is grounded in her philosophy, Acceptance without Understanding™.
www.cynthiafortlage.com
cynthiafortlage@cynthiafortlage.com
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