Over the last week or so, the blogosphere has seen a lot of comment about the tragic (and it is tragic) story of Leelah Alcorn. According to most of the Internet versions, this is a story of a child born as a boy and named Josh, who felt that her identity was as a girl, called Leelah. As a result of the pressures she found herself under through not having her gender identity acknowledged, and especially as a result of her religiously conservative family’s denial of that gender identity, she felt impelled to take her own life. Earlier this month, she stepped out in front of a vehicle on Interstate 71 in Ohio. She left a note, explaining “Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in … because I’m transgender.”

I want to say, very clearly, that in progressive, twenty-first century societies we should really have no issue with the fact (and it is a fact) that people can come in diverse gender packages, not all of which conform to their biological appearance or how some of us might like them to be. As a society we should be developing a level of sensitivity and empirically grounded matter-of-factness towards the complexities of gender identity, sexuality and sexual orientation, and the knowledge that those things don’t always align neatly in the way our societies traditionally expect. As bioethicists, I think we need to be equally sensitive and empirically alert, and moreover we have a professional duty to highlight instances where we spot that social practices and policy are falling short of this not unreasonable goal.

What has bothered me about this and similar stories, especially as they circulate around the internet, is that this level of – well, tolerance and awareness, often seems to be applied only to some aspects and not others. This is especially troublesome when, as is usually the case with stories that go viral through social media, we know a tiny fraction of the truth, and so much of the debate rides on selected facets of it.

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Much of the progressive commentary on Leelah’s suicide, for example, has focused on the putative failings of her parents. In this link for example, the blogger states bluntly (without giving supporting evidence) that “Leelah Alcorn’s parents drove her to suicide,” “Leelah Alcorn’s parents, however, did not love their daughter,” and our sympathies should not be given to “two bigots who drove their child to suicide, refuse to acknowledge the existence of the child who died, the manner of her death, and who feel no shame, guilt, or wrongdoing for their part.” It’s a nice bit of rousing polemic. But the question I think we should be asking is, do we know all of this, for a fact? Do we really – really – know enough about this young woman’s situation, her gender identity, her personality, her fears, her hopes, her health, her psychic state, her loves, her enthusiasms, her relationship with her siblings and her peers as well as her parents – to be able to make these statements about cause and effect (and blame) with such total confidence?

Commentary like this is not generally written by bioethicists, or at least not bioethicists writing in a professional capacity, and so you might argue that they’re irrelevant to bioethical discourse about transgender in general or responding to young transgender people in particular. But I’d suggest that’s not the case, and here’s why. The reality is that human lives are complicated and rarely fit neatly into the narratives we construct around them – whether progressive or conservative — without a great deal of pruning of the facts. What we, as bioethicists, have generally been terrible at is taking full account of this untidy reality of human life while at the same time staying analytically rigorous that we can say something marginally more helpful than “Well, it’s complicated.” The temptation instead is to reach for the neat(er) narratives —again, progressive or conservative — that simplify our analyses. But in doing so, they tend to demonise some and valorize other participants in the story. And by allowing them to do that, whatever other consequences there are for those involved, we do a disservice to the people who turn to us as bioethicists to say something relevant and meaningful about real bioethical issues in the real world of human interactions.