18- year old Blake Brockington made national news when he became the first out trans teen to win homecoming king in a North Carolina high school. Brockington won after he raised the most money out of 12 other contestants, which was donated to charity. It was a feature that brought Brockington a platform to tell his story in order to motivate other transgender teens, but it also brought about a lot of hate from people both in and outside of Charlotte.
Unfortunately, while he went out of his way to fight for trans teens in general, Brockington’s own struggles weighed very heavily on him to the point where the beloved student took his own life earlier this week. The Time Out Youth Center, the Charlotte LGBT youth service agency where he found a great deal of support, confirmed his death on Monday. A lot of local and national LGBT communities are in great shock about the news of his passing.
Brockington did a great deal of activist work, not only for LGBT rights, but in efforts to raise awareness about police brutality through the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The teen was also the subject of a documentary that started filming last year called Brockington.
National surveys show that 41 percent of transgender or gender nonconforming adults have self-reported a suicide attempt, compared with 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population. Transgender men have the highest rate, with 46 percent reporting suicide attempts.
Cyberbullying is also being addressed at the wake of his death. "Keyboard Warriors" are what bullies that hide behind fake profile names and pictures are being called. They create profiles to make someone else's life miserable and the victim will never know it is them. Others do not waste time to create fake pages, just say vicious things from their own page and unfortunately, there are no consequences.
A GoFundMe page has been made in his honor and all proceeds will go to the Time Out Youth Center.
GoFundMe Link:www.gofundme.com/blakebrockington
