TW: Suicide and Graphic Language
Trans and gender non conforming folk have been pushed to the side for centuries and written out of history. No matter where they go it is difficult for them to get recognition, or even be treated with basic human decency, with many people believing that they should not even have basic rights. American Veteran, Elisa Rae Shupe, who in 2016 became the first person in America to be legally recognized as a non-binary person, died by suicide January 27, 2025.
Elisa Rae Shupe ended her life wrapped in a trangender flag less than a month ago, a week after Trump’s signing of an anti-trans policy, blocking gender-conforming care for minors, as well as housing for trans federal inmates.
Shupe emailed her suicide note to several big name media outlets in hopes that they would be heard, below is her note.
Fuck You America!
I don’t want your hatred.
I don’t want the military decorations and medals you awarded me.
I don’t want your pension money for my distinguished military service and service-connected disabilities.
I don’t want your health care to treat the mental illnesses you caused.
I don’t want more psychiatric ward commitments to keep me alive in a nation that I despise.
I don’t want to be buried in any of your state or national cemetery’s for veterans and military retirees.
I don’t want to be buried anywhere on American soil.
I don’t want any military honors or ceremonies to mark my death.
I don’t want my ashes to be stored on American soil.
I want my ashes or remains to be spread or buried in international waters.
I don’t want your flag anywhere near my body, remains, or ashes.
I don’t want any members of my family other than my spouse to be on the vessel that disposes of my ashes or remains.
My death is not a surrender.
My death as a member of the third gender and transgender population does not mean you won.
It solely marks the end of our association.
You are not the land of the free.
You are not a country getting made great again.
Too much demonstrated hatred throughout your existence extinguishes any claim to previous greatness.
You are a cesspool of zealots that worship a god that does not and has not ever existed
Enjoy your new royal family and third world dictator.
I refuse to participate any further.
Have that Nazi piece of shit Elon Musk and his DOGE henchmen deduct the savings from my $93,000 of federal pensions from your bankrupt coffers.
The white man decimated and massacred the indigenous populations of the third gender on the lands now called America. It was only fitting that a white person restored it.
You cannot erase non-binary and transgender people because you give birth to more of us each day.
Shupe was able to establish an important role in the trans community with many looking up to her. However, in 2019 she was pressured to denounce her trans identity and go back in the closet stating that it “was all a sham” and she wanted to “live as the man that I am,” causing conservatives to label her as, “America’s new hero.” But in 2022 she re-transitioned to a woman and renounced all her work in the right wing movement.
Though Shupe’s body is gone, her spirit lives on in her activism, and in the mind of her loved ones.
