For the past several years I have been working for a nonprofit company
that provides e-mail lists for gay youth. Despite having to deal with
the growing epidemic of people who think that “kewl” and
“l8terz” are acceptable forms of communication, I like the work. The
lists are, as one might imagine, fairly angsty, particularly the one
dedicated to youth between the ages of 13 to 17. Even on the best days,
reading the mail is like reading the bastard child of Dawson’s Creek
and All My Children. It’s very interesting how the Internet has
become, for those who can afford it, a place where minority groups can
converge. It’s perceived to be safe and anonymous and is made safer by
the relatively large number of parents whose computer knowledge is
limited to how to turn the thing on. This is a mixed blessing, as anyone
who has received “hot farm action” spam can attest. At any rate, the
internet has become a perfect stomping ground for those gay teenagers
who have yet to connect with a larger gay community. Many of the teens
on the list are closeted and do not know any other gay people. As
ridiculous as it may seem, I regularly get e-mails from teens who live
in New York City who are convinced that they are the only homos in a 100
mile radius, never mind the kids from small towns. Their quiet
desperation to find someone else who is going through the same thing is
evident; that the impersonality of e-mail serves as a support network
proves this.
Sometimes e-mail isn’t enough, though.
In my time on the lists there has never been a confirmed suicide—every
now and then someone will send in a suicide threat, but those who have
sent them in have not carried them out. Sending a suicide threat to 400
people is, by design, a cry for help, I suppose. It’s the ones whose
e-mail addresses stopped working that always worried me the most;
considering that gay teens are several times more likely to drink or
drug themselves into oblivion or just haul off and kill themselves, it
would be foolish to think that we didn’t lose people.
I would say that over the past few years
I’ve worked on approximately 40 suicide threats. We take every one of
them seriously, and, at this point, I’m fairly used to the standard
protocol. It’s not particularly mysterious—track down the person and
keep them talking for as long as possible, after which one can generally
step down from DEFCON 5. (The element of tracking them down is often
very simple; do a Google search of your name sometime for fun and
amusement.)
This last one was different. You know
it’s a bad night when you find yourself reminiscing for that good old
time that the girl from Alabama wanted to take a knife to herself
because she thought her parents might throw her out after finding a
letter from her girlfriend. (She didn’t and they didn’t.) In this
case there was the basic suicide threat, but this girl was writing about
taking everyone else out with her, or at least the homophobic jocks who
were making her life hell. The other staffers and I hit the phones the
minute she started posting gun prices and speculating as to how best to
acquire a shotgun.
So we tracked her. While another staffer
was talking to her, I found her ISP, home town, probable home address,
and probable high school. At which point the debate started—how
exactly do you handle a situation like this? Why does a girl in New
Hampshire and a guy in Ohio have the right to speak of calling the
authorities on yet another queer teen who harbors fantasies of getting
back at everyone making her life hell?
After excessive invoking of Columbine
(and every other school shooting where the shooters had been subjected
to homophobic comments), we realized that we couldn’t lightly toss
aside death threats. It was a bizarre phone call to the police (“So,
um, there might be this kid in your town...”). They found her and
she’s in counseling now, which was about the best ending to be
expected. But the incident still haunts me— going through my files, I
can read her description of her high school and find it familiar. The
anger is also familiar, and certainly the response of other listees was
akin to “Yeah, I wish that I could make all of the homophobes go away
too.” And I wonder if there are ways to push back that don’t involve
guns, ways to push back that don’t involve pushing inward.
If any of you ever need it, one of the
best resources for queer teens struggling with sexuality is the Trevor
Project Suicide Hotline, which can be reached at 1-866-4 U-TREVOR.
Kristen
Minor is a member of the class of 2004 at Dartmouth College, where she
has officially given up on that wacky thing called sleep. She would like
to thank all of her readers for another eventful season of Letters
(particularly her long-suffering parents) and can be reached at kristen@youth-guard.org.
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