In 2014, a trans teenager named Leelah Alcorn posted a suicide letter to her public Tumblr account. Almost a decade later, in 2023, Eden Knight, another young trans woman, posted a suicide letter to her public Twitter account. Both suicide letters went viral and inspired memorial hashtags on the platforms where they initially circulated. In this article, I identify similarities between the cases, conceptualizing both as rituals of commemoration aimed toward restoring value to trans lives lost too soon. My analysis shows how ordinary users leverage the connective affordances embedded within popular social media platforms to sustain structured, value-laden acts of remembrance and mourning. In doing so, I elucidate four stages of the ritual process: (1) sharing suicide letters, (2) enshrining selfies, (3) modulating memories, and (4) casting blame. Ultimately, I argue that trans-led rituals of commemoration can function as justice-oriented tactics of resistance against engrained systems of oppression that perpetuate disproportionally high rates of early death within trans communities.

中文翻译：

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重视自杀后的跨性别生命：数字社交媒体文化中的纪念仪式


2014 年，一位名叫 Leelah Alcorn 的跨性别青少年在她的 Tumblr 公共账户上发布了一封自杀信。大约十年后，即 2023 年，另一位年轻的跨性别女性伊登·奈特 (Eden Knight) 在她的公共 Twitter 帐户上发布了一封自杀信。这两封自杀信都在病毒中疯传，并在它们最初传播的平台上引发了纪念主题标签。在这篇文章中，我指出了这些案例之间的相似之处，将两者概念化为纪念仪式，旨在恢复过早失去的跨性别生命的价值。我的分析显示了普通用户如何利用流行社交媒体平台中嵌入的连接功能来维持结构化的、充满价值的纪念和哀悼行为。在此过程中，我阐明了仪式过程的四个阶段：（1）分享自杀信，（2）珍藏自拍照，（3）调节记忆，以及（4）责备他人。最终，我认为，跨性别者主导的纪念仪式可以作为以正义为导向的策略，抵抗根深蒂固的压迫制度，这种压迫制度使跨性别社区内的过早死亡率长期维持在不成比例的高水平。