REPORT: James 'Elisa Rae' Shupe Has Joined The Transgender Jonestown
Did his recent 'life-saving' vaginoplasty fail to prevent su*c*de?
James Clifford Shupe, aka Elisa Rae, who became the world’s first “legally nonbinary” person in 2016, reportedly hanged himself from the parking deck of the Syracuse, New York Veterans Affairs hospital last month. He was 61 years old.
Shupe is survived by a wife and a daughter. Shupe had been released from inpatient mental health treatment at the facility on 21 January after undergoing vaginoplasty just before the Christmas holiday.
During a brief period of sanity in 2021, Shupe criticized ‘gender identity’ ideology, calling himself a “transvestite” while disclosing his mental condition, autogynephilia, in Substack posts that he later deleted. He also appeared on two episodes of Benjamin Boyce’s podcast.
Shupe frequently revised his image through social media deletion. Now he has allegedly died the way he lived — “allegedly,” because confirmation of the identity of the body is still pending due to the political sensitivities involved.
Shupe explained autogynephilia, a man’s desire for the woman he sees inside himself, in his second appearance on Boyce’s podcast. Controversy ensued. Dismayed by radical feminists who rejected his allyship, Shupe then rejected ‘gender critical’ politics in 2022 and went further than before, adopting the identity of Elisa Rae and pursuing medical transition services from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Shupe posted a note to Substack on or about Christmas Eve 2024 announcing his orchiectomy, the removal of his testicles. Shupe also intended to undergo penectomy and vaginoplasty in the new year, deeming them “life-saving” interventions. It is worth noting that half of men who regret this procedure do so instantly.
Shupe seems to have deleted his entire “Elisa Rae Shupe” Substack in early to mid-January. This deletion occurred at about the same time Shupe was transferred to the inpatient psychiatry unit. Shupe has described his mental health issues and frequently noted that the VA knew he was “crazy.”
Then Shupe was discharged 21 January, the day after Inauguration Day. He reportedly hanged himself six days later, about one month after his “life-saving” orchiectomy. However, Shupe was not identified in the scant local and national press coverage.
Instead, news website Syracuse.com referred to a “transgender veteran” who had “hanged themselves” while “wrapped in a body-length transgender pride flag.” Shupe’s body was reported to police “at about 11:15 a.m.”
Posted Wednesday, the report was a follow-up to Greta Stucky’s coverage of the discovery of Shupe’s body on Monday. On 6 February, one week later, Stuckey and Rylee Kirk reported at Military.com that government officials had received a “notification” about the body.
However, VA officials declined to identify the body, “citing respect to the veteran’s family and an ongoing investigation.” No official source has confirmed the identity of the body as Shupe, yet.
Instead, transgender activists identified the Syracuse suicide as Shupe via social media. One “queer veteran” has even posted Shupe’s alleged suicide note on Substack. (Credit to Exulansic for spotting it and sharing it with us.) It is a spasmodic, radicalized disavowal of America, the military, God, and Elon Musk, opening with: “Fuck You America!”
“The white man decimated and massacred the indigenous populations of the third gender on the lands now called America,” Shupe allegedly declared. “It was only fitting that a white person restored it.”
Borrowed from radical queer revisionism, this racist pseudo-history of Native Americans supposedly being clueless about who the women were, or how to make babies, is supposed to be Shupe’s answer to Donald Trump’s executive order barring VA from doing any more “gender affirming” orchiectomies.
For as Shupe has allegedly shown us, transgender psychosurgeries do not in fact save lives. Indeed, medicalization clearly played an important role in Shupe’s mental decline — and his alleged suicide.
Shupe had wanted to be a “real woman” for years, but he waited until after Trump was elected before he had his testicles removed. Then he was admitted to the psychiatric unit for another mental breakdown, possibly from the clarity of regret. After he was released, Trump executive orders apparently justified Shupe acting out on his dysregulated rage against himself as well as the VA system.
“I don’t want your health care to treat the mental illnesses you caused,” Shupe supposedly wrote. “I don’t want more psychiatric ward commitments to keep me alive in a nation that I despise.” Demanding that his ashes be spread in international waters without an American flag in sight, Shupe’s purported suicide note refuses “any military honors or ceremonies to mark my death.”
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 cannot erase non-binary and transgender people because you give birth to more of us each day,” Shupe concludes before allegedly erasing himself. “ZERO,” the transgender Substack author who published the note on 4 February, wanted to “honor Elisa’s wishes” by sharing it.
“Maybe it was because nobody gives a fuck about trans people right now or maybe it’s because big news stations don’t want us to,” ZERO wrote, sanctifying the alleged suicide. After all, the beatification of Saint Elisa Rae must begin with saying “her” name instead of his ‘deadname.’
Because Shupe sacrificed only himself, rather than shoot up a Christian school, his suicide note must be published instantly. It cannot be held in secret for over a year, or wait until officials or next of kin confirm the identity of the body found hanged at the Syracuse VA hospital parking deck. Transgender activism demands to read it now, so that their priors can be confirmed.
We have seen this urge to create martyrs for the cause of transgenderism play out before in the disturbing case of “nonbinary” high school student Dagny Benedict. Benedict took her own life almost exactly one year ago using at least one medication that was likely provided for her “gender affirmation.”
That conclusion by the Oklahoma State Medical Examiner’s Office followed weeks of sensational headlines and public agitation by the transgender lobby based on false rumors that Benedict had died after a “transphobic” attack at school.
Activists tout dubious lists and numbers of supposed transphobic murder victims. The creation of false martyrs has been a very important project to the “queer community.”
Just like the Dagny Benedict case, childhood sexual abuse played a role in the transgender ideation and identification of James Shupe. But the issue was buried under a mountain of hype about nonexistent nonbinaryphobia. If confirmed, transgender activism wants his death by suicide to count as a noble sacrifice of self rather than a deranged act of passive-aggressive violence.
The alternative, after all, is to admit that the magic isn’t real, that the spell of gender identity doesn’t work, and the medicalized Skoptsy cult of self-castration does not belong in taxpayer-provided services to American veterans. It would mean that Trump is right, which would be a moral catastrophe for too many people.
We expect to see more of this. Activists will attempt to dress it up as Trump’s fault. They will never accept responsibility for their endless, irresponsible hype linking transgenderism with suicide, extorting parents, communities, and societies with suicide threats.
At The Distance, we have warned readers for years now of the potential for a slow-motion transgender Jonestown as the cognitive dissonances of transgender ideology eventually resolve in self-harm and harm to others. Now James Shupe has allegedly swallowed the poisoned Flavor-Ade™, committing the suicide that the psychosurgery was supposed to avert, blaming Donald Trump and the mean, nasty racist cisheteropatriarchy that supposedly wanted him dead. ‘See what you made me do?’
We will continue to monitor this story.
This raises a few questions:
1. Are there any trans people who are not mentally ill?
2. Is adopting a trans identity an indicator of mental illness in and of itself?
3. Are any of the men who claim to identify as women not autogynephiles?
Why is the note dated 12/25/25 ... ?