Girls for Gender Equity's Kimberly Blair links affirming environments to lower suicide attempts
Kimberly Blair of Girls for Gender Equity says about 1 in 5 TGNCNBI youth report attempting suicide and nearly 50% seriously consider it. She says anti-trans laws increased suicide attempts by as much as 72% in restrictive states, and Intro 949 would relieve community organizations of updating resource lists; supports all three bills.
Good afternoon and thank you Chairs Caban, Farias, and Narcisse and members here today.
I am Kimberly Blair.
I'm the Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at Girls for Gender Equity, an organization that works intergenerationally through a black feminist lens to center the leadership of black girls and gender expansive youth of color.
At a time when trans and non-binary people are under nationwide attack, GGE stands firmly here today on behalf of our BIPOC, trans and gender expansive youth of color.
We stand also as a member of the NYC Trans and Queer Coalition to support Intro 949, Resos 208, and 547, which we see as stepping stones towards increasing access to life-saving care.
As someone who has spent the majority of her career at the intersections of reproductive justice and mental health policy, I'm here to tell you that an estimated 1 in 5 TNGC
NBI youth report attempting suicide, and that nearly 50% seriously consider attempting suicide within any given one-year period.
In past years, the increase in anti-trans laws in 19 restrictive states have significantly increased incidents of past year suicide attempts among these youth by as much as 72%.
While New Yorkers might think we're immune,
because we don't live in one of these restrictive states, our TGNC MBI youth consume this anti-trans rhetoric and experience bans right here from trusted healthcare facilities.
Conversely, the NIH reports TGNC MBI youth who have high social support and gender-affirming environments report suicide attempt rates at less than half the rate of those without.
We believe these bills are interventions that would help us increase the social support necessary to combat these negative mental health outcomes among our youth.
Intro 949 especially would help organizations like mine from spending a fair amount of staff time creating and updating our own internal resources annually to support gender expansive youth.
We don't see this as the complete responsibility of CBOs to do this while also navigating one-to-one case management,
supporting students'financial and immigration needs, and providing life-saving education and programming to aid TGNC-MBI youth's self-discovery and identity formation.
Due to time restrictions, we plan to submit the rest of our commentary via written, including suggested bill edits.
But I want to thank you again for taking the time today to listen to and stand up for as allies to our TGNCMBI.
We hope that you vote these bills favorably out of committee.