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Key points
- Adolescents bullied over gender nonconformity are told to change; many ask only to be left alone.
- Being disbelieved about your own inner experience is a distinct, documented form of harm.
- Research links stigma and rejection to elevated distress among gender-diverse young people.
- Having at least one accepting adult is associated with markedly lower risk among LGBTQ youth.
Over the years, I have sat with many bullied adolescents. What follows is a composite drawn from those hours; no single patient is depicted, and identifying details do not belong to any individual. But the question at the center of this article was asked, essentially in these words, and I have never stopped thinking about it
Picture a 15-year-old whose tears fall faster than she can speak. She has endured years of teasing, degradation, and profound loneliness—not because she has done anything to anyone, but because she will not perform a role that does not fit her. She was assigned male at birth; she knows herself to be a girl. The world around her keeps issuing the same instruction: Change. Become a real man
She has never asked anyone else to change. Her request, when you listen closely, is startlingly small: “I am not asking them to talk to me. I am asking them not to talk to me. Not to insult me on my way to class.” She is asking for negative space—to be left alone
And then, voice breaking, the question: “There are so many ‘real men’ out there. Why can she not choose not to be one? Whom is she harming?“
Notice the pronoun. This is how she experiences herself. And notice the question, because I have yet to hear an adult answer it well
The Harm of Being Disbelieved
Philosophy has a name for one part of what this adolescent experiences. Miranda Fricker (2007) calls it testimonial injustice: being wronged specifically in one’s capacity as a knower—having your account of your own experience discounted before it is even considered
Whatever position an adult holds on wider questions, something distinct happens to a young person who is told, daily, that the person she experiences herself as is not real. She is not merely being teased about something. She is being told that her account of her own inner experience does not deserve to be heard as evidence at all
The predicament is a genuine double bind. If she performs the role demanded of her, she purchases social safety at the cost of her inner life. If she declines, she pays in daily degradation and isolation. Neither door leads anywhere good, and she did not build the corridor
What the Research Shows About Social Belonging
The need to belong is not a preference; it is one of the most fundamental human motivations, and its frustration carries serious psychological costs (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Neuroimaging research has found that social exclusion engages some of the same brain regions involved in the distress of physical pain, although shared activation does not imply identical experiences (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003). The finding nevertheless fits what excluded people report: Rejection hurts
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For young people like the one in this composite, the research points to a crucial distinction. Meyer’s (2003) minority-stress framework originally described how prejudice, rejection, concealment, and other stigma-related stressors contribute to mental-health disparities among sexual minorities; subsequent research has extended the framework to transgender and gender-diverse people (Hendricks & Testa, 2012). And the protective findings mirror the harmful ones: Family acceptance in adolescence is associated with better mental health in young adulthood (Ryan et al., 2010), and transgender youth who could use their chosen name in more contexts reported fewer depressive symptoms and less suicidal ideation (Russell et al., 2018).
These are associations, not guarantees. But they all point the same direction: The environment is not merely the backdrop to their suffering. It can be one of its important
On Her Withdrawal
Her loneliness deserves careful reading. Withdrawing from people who hurt you is understandable self-protection, and adults should resist pathologizing a child for avoiding her tormentors. At the same time, isolation in a bullied adolescent is never something to romanticize; disconnection is among the conditions under which despair grows, and a young person’s retreat is a signal that the adults around her have work to do
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The goal is not to demand she be more resilient—resilience-talk too often serves to relocate the problem to the victim—but to make connection safe enough that she no longer needs the fortress. Even one accepting adult is not a small thing: in a large national survey, LGBTQ youth who reported having at least one accepting adult were 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year (The Trevor Project, 2019)
The Question, Answered
Adults disagree, sometimes fiercely, about clinical and policy questions involving transgender youth, and those debates will continue. But her question is not about any of that, and it does not need to wait for those debates to resolve. She is not asking anyone to change their beliefs. She is asking to walk to class without being degraded
So let me answer her question as plainly as I can, because she deserves a plain answer. In the situation she is describing—existing as herself and asking not to be insulted—whom is she harming? No one. And whatever an adult believes about anything else, no belief licenses the daily tormenting of a child. On that, there is nothing left to debate
Her question deserves to be turned around, gently, toward the rest of us: What is the harm in leaving her in peace? What, exactly, would it cost us to let her be?
I have never heard a good answer to that one, either
If you are a young person in distress, or an adult worried about one: in the U.S., call or text 988, or reach the Trevor Project (for LGBTQ youth) at 1-866-488-7386 or thetrevorproject.org; outside the U.S., findahelpline.com lists local services
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089134
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press
Hendricks, M. L., & Testa, R. J. (2012). A conceptual framework for clinical work with transgender and gender nonconforming clients: An adaptation of the Minority Stress Model. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 43(5), 460–467. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029597
Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 674–697. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.674
Russell, S. T., Pollitt, A. M., Li, G., & Grossman, A. H. (2018). Chosen name use is linked to reduced depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and suicidal behavior among transgender youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 63(4), 503–505. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.02.003
Ryan, C., Russell, S. T., Huebner, D., Diaz, R., & Sanchez, J. (2010). Family acceptance in adolescence and the health of LGBT young adults. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 23(4), 205–213. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6171.2010.00246.x
The Trevor Project. (2019). Accepting adults reduce suicide attempts among LGBTQ youth (Research Brief). The Trevor Project. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/accepting-adults-reduc…
