Troubling Gender Norms: Gender Non-Conforming Youth

Abstract

Research on gender non-conforming, or transgender, youth and suicide and self-harm has been relatively sparse until very recently. Most research on youth suicide and self-harm does not mention transgender youth at all. When suicide and self-harm research takes gender as its focus, gender is usually treated as a binary, allowing researchers to report, for instance, that young women self-harm at higher rates than young men (Zahl and Hawton, 2004; O’Loughlin and Sherwood, 2005; Hawton and Harriss, 2008). Such research does not address gender identity as a more complex issue, nor does it address gender diversity. Some research on self-harm, suicidality and attitudes towards suicidal behaviour considers gender roles or gendered attitudes, but does not include mention of transgender identities (Canetto, 1997; Dahlen and Canetto, 2002; Fitzpatrick et al, 2005). While the topic of youth suicide and self-harm and the topic of transgenderism have both attracted substantial research attention for some years, it is only recently that researchers have begun focusing in detail on both self-harm and transgender, or gender non-conforming, youth.