LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Student CAMP: Perceptions of Solitude |
by Kristen Minor |
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 suicideevery 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 mysterioustrack 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 startedhow 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. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 15, November 27, 2002. |