Read Transgender Veteran Elisa Rae Shupe Suicide Note. She wanted you to.

Elisa Rae Shupe / zerodoesntsleep’s Substack

Elisa Rae Shupe ended her life wrapped in her transgender flag on January 27, 2025. Passerbys reported seeing her body hanging from the top floor of the Syracuse VA parking garage.

Ms. Shupe committed suicide just seven days after Trump began signing a raft of toxic anti-trans executive orders cumulating in an EO stating that a trans service member's sexuality “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness. It requires Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to issue a revised policy.

Elisa, the first person to legally identify as non-binary later detransitioned and was used as a pawn by the likes of Cathy Brennan, a TERF known for outing transgender minors, and other anti-transgender activists. In 2022, she published a statement reclaiming her trans identity and condemning the anti-trans movement due to her story being used to push conversion therapy.

Elisa emailed her suicide note to several mainstream media outlets hoping her story would be told. None of them did. As first reported on substack she wanted her note to be read.

This is the message from Elisa Rae Shupe, the first person to obtain a non-binary gender transition, to the Trump Administration:

Fuck You America!

I don’t want your hatred.

I don’t want the military decorations and medals you awarded me.

I don’t want your pension money for my distinguished military service and service-connected disabilities.

I don’t want your health care to treat the mental illnesses you caused.

I don’t want more psychiatric ward commitments to keep me alive in a nation that I despise.

I don’t want to be buried in any of your state or national cemetery’s for veterans and military retirees.

I don’t want to be buried anywhere on American soil.

I don’t want any military honors or ceremonies to mark my death.

I don’t want my ashes to be stored on American soil.

I want my ashes or remains to be spread or buried in international waters.

I don’t want your flag anywhere near my body, remains, or ashes.

I don’t want any members of my family other than my spouse to be on the vessel that disposes of my ashes or remains.

My death is not a surrender.

My death as a member of the third gender and transgender population does not mean you won.

It solely marks the end of our association.

You are not the land of the free.

You are not a country getting made great again.

Too much demonstrated hatred throughout your existence extinguishes any claim to previous greatness.

You are a cesspool of zealots that worship a god that does not and has not ever existed

Enjoy your new royal family and third world dictator.

I refuse to participate any further.

Have that Nazi piece of shit Elon Musk and his DOGE henchmen deduct the savings from my $93,000 of federal pensions from your bankrupt coffers.

The white man decimated and massacred the indigenous populations of the third gender on the lands now called America. It was only fitting that a white person restored it.

You cannot erase non-binary and transgender people because you give birth to more of us each day.

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I'm an Army vet who later participated in dozens of Military Funerals while serving in the National Guard. Presenting our flag to the next of kin was the hardest thing that I ever had the honor of doing. I cried while reading her note, and I hope you do too.

Rest in Peace Elisa Rae Shupe. August 10, 1963 – January 27, 2025