August 5, 2026 • 31 mins
Margaret continues talking to you about the history of suicide prevention hotlines and the complications of state intervention in emergency mental health care
Original Air Date: 10.22.2025
Sources:
https://translifeline.org/about/history/
https://translifeline.org/response-to-988-cuts/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/10/27/359434925/bernard-mayes-nprs-first-chairman-founder-of-suicide-hotline-dies
https://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Bernard-Mayes-to-be-honored-as-lifeline-to-3516576.php
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11447250/Bernard-Mayes-priest-obituary.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20141026134947/http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/10/24/bernard-mayes-kqed-fms-first-general-manager-dies-at-85
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45106/sonnet-116-let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds
https://www.sfsuicide.org/about/
https://translifeline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/The-Problem-With-988-Report-November-2024-Text.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11733462/
https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6978712/
https://www.psychiatry.org/News-room/APA-Blogs/Marking-Two-Years-of-988-The-Suicide-and-Crisis-Li
https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/blog/suicide-mental-health-crisis-resources-not-police
https://www.them.us/story/rita-hester-trans-remembrance-visibility-memorial
https://translifeline.org/why-no-non-consensual-intervention/
https://www.them.us/story/trans-lifeline-report-988-police-interventions
https://madattheinternet.substack.com/p/online-censorships-institutional
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32121226
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to another part of
the same week as another episode that is a rewind
episode about hotlines and why they're actually really amazing and
why people had to fight to make them happen, and
I hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to Cool
(00:25):
People Who Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that billions
of us make the world better every day by trying
really fucking hard to make the world better in ways
big and small. By I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. This
is a show about cool people who did cool stuff
in history, and we always talk about these like big actions,
you know, this huge movement that had a revolution, or
(00:46):
this individual who accomplished all of these things. You know,
we talked about like the man who started suicide crisis hotlines, right,
but like there's so many, so many, so many people
more involved in that project. But even more than that,
there's so many more people involved in the basic project
of hearing your friends talk about how they're feeling without
(01:06):
prejudice and without calling the cops on them. You know,
Like that is a thing that we can give to
each other every single day and happens every single day
all around the world. Is that we help each other
because one of the things that I've learned by researching
history is that, look, I know that this sounds bad,
but I mean in a positive way. There's no bottom
(01:28):
to the amount of suffering that could be happening right now,
right like you just you read about times in history
where like things happened and that were really bad, and
then you read about other times in history or things
happened they were even worse, and you're like, there's just like,
actually no bottom, there is no floor, and so it
feels like we're not winning, when in fact we are.
It feels like we're not winning because we haven't achieved
(01:49):
our whatever your utopian dream is, right, but we instead
stopped an infinite amount of suffering. Even though we haven't
stopped all the suffering, we have to keep working. We'll
never fully win, right, But instead we prove that we
can have worthwhile and meaningful lives by the big and
(02:12):
small ways that we work to help each other. That's
my grand standing. Hopefully you're up for some grand standing,
because this is an episode about suicide prevention, and specifically
the crisis hotlines that are staffed by so many people
who do so much work to try to help people
every single day, and you know, so hopefully you knew
(02:35):
that getting into it, that I was going to be
pretty fucking earnest and talking about some sad shit like
suicide on this particular episode. Anyway, there's no guest, it's
just me and you, just a little private conversation between
the two of us, just two of us. You're the
(02:56):
only listener. Just kind of wild. Actually, if you think
about it, should really tell your friends about the show,
because it's kind of weird that I only have one
listener and it's you, dear listener. You think I would
know your name since you're the only listener, but I don't.
Last time on Monday, we talked about Bernard Mays, who
set up the first suicide prevention hotline in the United
(03:19):
States in either nineteen sixty one or nineteen sixty two
and the sources disagree, and we talked about how it
became nine to eight eight, the current crisis hotline that
is available to anyone in the United States that unfortunately
does call the cops. And where we left our cliffhanger
was that trans Lifeline, who does not do non consensual intervention,
(03:42):
had put out a report there's a lot of names
on this report. They put a lot of work into
it over the course of years. The report came out
in twenty twenty four. You can read it on their website.
I linked to it among the many sources in the
show notes, even more sources than usual this particular week.
Actually want to talk about that for a second. I
swear I'm going to get into my own script and
(04:02):
end the cliffhanger you're on, But I want to talk
about like my own nervousness around this episode, because this
is a topic I take very seriously, but I'm not
an expert in and the ways that we talk about
this kind of stuff does matter. I read a decent
number of stuff about like guidelines for journalists when talking
about suicide, you know, and how to try to handle
(04:23):
this kind of thing responsibly, and it's very hard. The
reason I want to talk about this part of it
is because I'm going to be critical of nine to
eight eight as an infrastructure right now, while I'm also
incredibly grateful for the work that it does right and
I'm not going to tell people not to call it
because a lot of the alternatives are too underfunded and
(04:44):
they're not as successful in certain ways like don't have
enough people to answer the phone, you know. And it's
good that we try to do this thing. It's just
the framework it's embedded within is very dangerous and there's
a lot of problems with it. And so I mean
this as a loving critique and it's not even necessarily
my critique. A lot of it's coming from trans Lifeline,
(05:05):
who also meet it as a loving critique. And I
was really impressed with the language that they constantly use
when they're critical of nine eight eight. They're not saying like, oh,
those people love cops in or boot liquors and we're
the best, you know. Instead they're like, hey, we got
to try, we got to try to be better. We
got to try to get the police out of our
communities to keep ourselves safe, and we've got to you know,
(05:28):
care for each other. But I don't know, I was
just I was pretty impressed with how they talk about it. Anyway.
Trans Lifelines report, based on years of research, puts their
best guess that on average, cops are dispatched for three
point six percent of nine eight eight calls, which is
(05:49):
higher than the one point nine percent of calls that
lead to emergency medical services. Being called, which means you're
almost twice as likely to have the cops called on
you as an ambulance. The same report says that callers
who had non voluntary services dispatched on them included reports
of quote, police violence, discrimination, involuntary hospitalization, forced medication, and
(06:13):
physical and sexual assault. And at first glance, you might think, well,
what sort of makes sense to call an ambulance on
someone who's dying, whether they ask for it or not. Right, Like,
if I'm god, this happened once. I was like walking
down the street and like a bicyclists got hit by
a car in front of me. I just called the
fucking ambulance. I didn't be like, hey, buddy, you want
(06:35):
an ambulance? Yay, nay, how you feeling on that? I
was just like, fuck, I'm calling an ambulance. That man
just got hit by a car, you know, and that
makes sense to me. Right. I don't want to get
into the ethics of intervening in suicide because it's an
incredibly charged debate that people's personal, moral, philosophical, and theological
positions are deeply intertwined with. But there's obviously a reason
(06:58):
many people might want to call the ambulance if someone
is dying for whatever reason. But the thing is a
lifeline that can call the cops on you based on
what you say is just a fundamentally different thing than
a crisis line where you can be honest. Everyone I
know is used to lying to doctors and therapists in
order to navigate the strange bureaucracy that permeates our world. Right, Like,
(07:24):
I know people who don't go to therapy because therapists
are mandated reporters, and they're like, what's the point of
going to a therapist? I can't be honest to You
shouldn't have to do that when you're calling a lifeline.
You shouldn't have to play games around how you want
to answer specific questions based on what you're hoping the
outcome will be. I actually think that there's a way
(07:46):
from this to understand the fundamental problem with like law
as a framework with which to try to build a
positive society. But knowing that the police might be called
means that people who call, if they choose to call
it all, can't be honest. It's a fucking suicide hotline,
and if you call, they ask have you had any
suicidal thoughts? In the past few days, and if you
(08:09):
say yes, they have to run through the script to
figure out if you're an immediate threat, and if you are,
they call emergency services, usually the cops. Isn't this defeating
the whole point of a hotline, right? Like not everyone
who calls this is having suicidal thoughts, But that's like
it's purpose, you know. You also get asked have you
(08:31):
taken any action to harm yourself today? And this conflates
self harm with suicide, which is I think a fundamental
misunderstanding of the ways in which people hurt themselves. This
study that was put together by trans Lifeline has a
lot of interviews with people who have had these experiences.
One participant in the study about nine eight eight said quote,
(08:55):
of course I felt like hurting myself. Of course I
want to be honest and to be able to talk
about those I think it would be really helpful for
me to have acknowledged how I was actually feeling in
those moments. But I just know that if you say
yes to those questions about self harm, those questions aren't
to have a supportive conversation. It's like those questions are
to involuntarily hospitalize you or call the police on you,
(09:18):
or do something that isn't helpful and is really traumatizing
and harmful. Another participant wrote, it becomes about managing the
operator's emotions and their concerns. It also becomes about are
they going to flag me up the line to their supervisor?
Do I have to worry about someone coming to my location?
Do I have to worry about the cops being called?
(09:40):
Am I going to be able to stay in my
own home and keep my liberty? Also, between twenty nineteen
and twenty twenty one, the police killed at least one
hundred and seventy eight people in the United States during
wellness checks. These are not nine eight eight specific numbers.
That's just the number of people killed by police in
(10:00):
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one, and wellness check specifically.
It's good that there is an alternative to calling the cops.
I'm certain that separating out nine eight eight from nine
to one to one will overall reduce the number of
people killed by police during wellness checks. And I'm not
trying to say no one should ever call hotlines associated
with nine eight eight. It's just it's trickier than it
(10:23):
needs to be. Unfortunately, a lot of the alternatives are
underfunded and overwhelmed, and frankly, their staff is sometimes less
likely to be as consistently trained. It's just that nine
eight eight is not so detached from the police as
it presumably should be. This is a long way from
calling a nice BBC broadcaster who will listen to you
without judgment. But do you know what, it's not a
(10:45):
long way from. Actually it is a really long way from.
This is really a stretch. I'm just really stretching here
to try and try and find a glimmer of connection
between the script that I'm reading these advertisers, and I
really appreciate you all coming along with me on that
that glorious big stretch. Here's ads and Rebecca, I don't
(11:10):
work in suicide prevention. I am not a social worker.
To me, I can see the value in both evidence
based attempts to reduce the number of deaths by suicide
and also just creating platforms so that people who are
suffering can talk to people and be heard, not even
necessarily seen stopping them as the sole purpose, right, but
(11:34):
maybe listening to them. And I think that because I
think it'll reduce the number of suicides, I'm not a whatever.
I'm going to trank. Keep my own opinions out of
this as much as possible. Obviously I have strong opinions
about the way all this interacts with police. But yeah,
nine eight eight seems to me like a perfect example
of taking a really good idea and by relying on
the work of really good people, doing something kind of
(11:57):
sketchy by tying it into the government. As Lifelines report
says that nine eight eight quote represents an expansion of
location tracking capabilities and non consensual practices in social support services,
disregarding the voices of hotline users, psychiatric survivors, human rights organizations,
and crisis care experts who condemned the practice of non
(12:19):
consensual intervention. So these days, if you go to San
Francisco's Suicide Prevention's website and go to their fact and
click on anonymity, they say, quote, the only times we
lift confidentiality are in times of immediate physical danger, in
which case we will only contact emergency services. And that's
(12:41):
not anonymity. I don't want to say that no organization
should work with the government, because if there's one thing
that this administration has reminded us, it's that there are
good things that the government is the one doing. We
remember this because the government is currently systematic stripping all
of its own good qualities away, and so in July
(13:05):
twenty twenty five, the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis
Hotline dismantled it's LGBTQ plus services. They explain this with
perhaps the single most cursed sentence I have ever read,
and I'm so sorry I'm going to say it to
you now quote the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline will no longer silo LGB plus Youth Services also
(13:30):
known as the Press three option, to focus on serving
all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press
three option. Where do I begin, Well, it will no
longer silo US, as if we should be grateful that
we're no longer being kept away from everyone else, even
though obviously the purpose of that is so that we
can reach people who are specifically trained and or have
(13:52):
the similar experiences us. And no one literally no one
good says LGB or LGB plus, the T and the
Q have been purposefully removed because we literally don't exist
in this government's view. Now, of course, this language doesn't
(14:13):
filter down to members of nine eight eight. The fact
that nine eight eight is saying this doesn't mean that
its members share these opinions or will act in that way.
Individual lifelines continue to describe themselves as they wish, but
they do all have to commit to nonconsensual intervention after
nine eight eight cut Queer specific care out of its services.
(14:37):
Trans Lifeline who are the people who wrote that critical
report of nine eight eight said quote Through our advocacy efforts,
we have recognized that the well meaning folks at nine
eight eight have made improvements to their work and become
more sensitive to the needs of our community. We are
deeply disappointed that they no longer have the opportunity to
continue growing their understanding and service to our community. She
(15:00):
knew what nine eight eight was doing to improve themselves
after that report, but of course any hard work they'd
done was destroyed by the new administration, who, in their
reverse mitas way, turn everything they touch into shit. But importantly,
there are lifelines that are not part of the nine
eight eight project that specifically do not call the police.
(15:20):
I'm going to focus on trans Lifeline, but just to
shout out some of the other ones, there's black Line
at one eight hundred, six oh four five eight four
to one, which prioritizes BIPOC and LGBTQ plus folks. There's
the Wildflower Alliance Peer Support Line at one eight eight
eight four oh seven four five one five, which is
(15:42):
a warm line for not as much crisis. There's the
Fireside Project at one six two three two five zero
seven three nine three, which is for people dealing with
mental health during and after psychedelic experiences. There's Strong Heart's
Native Helpline at one eight four four seven six y
two eight four eight three, which is for Indigenous folks
(16:04):
dealing with intimate partner or sexual violence. And there's trans Lifeline,
which grew out of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. More
like this, transgender remembers that she has to pivot to
ads and Rebecca and I feel as though I have
cursed myself with these ad transitions, because the trans Day
(16:28):
of Remembrance is not about remembering ads. It is about
remembering a thirty four year old black trans woman named
Rita Hester and all of the other trans people who've
had their lives ended by violence. Rita Hester died in
nineteen ninety eight. She was born in nineteen sixty three
in Hartford, Connecticut, and she was a girl from the jump.
(16:49):
She knew she was Rita pretty much right away, according
to her sister. Her family supported her, even if they
didn't always get her pronouns right, which is an experience
familiar to plenty of trans people. Rita moved to Boston
in her twenties and started hanging out in the rock scene,
going to drag bars, living life to the fullest. She
was also a sex worker, which is left out of
(17:11):
every almost every account of her life. A shout out
to Them magazine, who was actually willing to say what
Rita did for work. Because violence against trans people is ignored,
violence against black trans people is ignored, violence against sex workers,
and especially black trans sex workers is ignored. Someone could
not handle Rita living her life to the fullest and
(17:33):
stabbed her to death. She was dead, named and misgendered
an article after article after she died. Her killer was
never found, though two white men were seen leaving the
building that night, and her white boyfriend simply disappeared after
she died. No one heard from him ever. Again, the
most likely thing is that she took home a white
(17:54):
man or two from the bar and they killed her.
None of this, of course, none of this sort of
violence is new. I don't expect to have to explain
to my listeners, but trans people, especially trans women of color,
especially trans women of color who are sex workers, are
murdered at a terrifyingly disproportionate rate. People have refused to
(18:14):
let Rita Hester's name disappear from history. Her mother, Kathleen,
never stopped fighting, and a trans woman named Gwendolen Smith
soon put up a website called Remembering Are Dead that
within a year became the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which
is November twentieth every year. Murderers with knives aren't the
only folks who kill trans people. Sometimes, systemic poverty, discrimination,
(18:39):
lack of access to medical care, and all those compounding
factors work together to kill trans people through suicide. So
after the Trans Day of Remembrance in twenty fourteen, some
folks got together to start the trans Lifeline, a suicide
hotline for trans people staffed by trans people. They started
(18:59):
it based on three principles. One all operators must be trans.
Two peer support from shared lived experiences is vital, and
three they don't call emergency services without the caller requesting
that now to be very clear, or to be very specific,
there actually are, because I was like being like, oh,
(19:20):
these other people will call the emergency services. Trans Lifeline
can also call emergency services depending There are three reasons
why trans Lifeline might call someone. First is if you ask. Second,
if there's a credible threat to a third party, so
not like I'm going to kill myself, but I'm going
to kill this other guy, or as laws require, if
(19:42):
there's proof of child abuse. They've written a lot about
why they don't do non consensual intervention to quote them quote.
In October twenty fifteen, trans Lifeline surveyed about eight hundred
trans people across the United States about their experiences with
suicide hotline use. Approximately seventy percent of the respondent specified
(20:03):
that they felt unsafe calling a hotline while in crisis.
Approximately a quarter of respondents stated that they had interacted
with law enforcement or emergency personnel due to a crisis call.
One in five had been placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold.
Because lifelines don't work if people are afraid to call them.
(20:25):
They don't work if people don't trust the people they're
talking to. Trans people, in particular distrust the police, but
also all of the other various services that might be
called because we are routinely denied care or mistreated, like
just on a really really regular basis. Interacting with legal
(20:46):
frameworks is often really complicated for us because we don't
know who's a bigot. Our paperwork doesn't always match our
names and presentations, and it's not just like, oh it
hurts our feelings to be misgendered. No, they do violence
to you. Sometimes they deny you basic human shit. If
(21:06):
you're listening to the show, you probably kind of know
these things. And I don't need a grandstand. But also,
we are twice as likely to live below the poverty
line as the CIS population, and people sure don't want
to pay any ambulance bills. And finally, to quote trans
Lifeline again quote for many in our community, chronic suicidal
(21:30):
ideation is a response to trauma and can be managed.
So we want to talk to people who understand that, right,
which includes theoretically plenty of people who are SIS who
also have as a response to trauma, Like you know,
certain thoughts are just like ever all that far away
from them. And when we can't talk about that, I
(21:52):
don't want to wee this actually, because this is not
my experience as a transperson, but it is the experience
of so many people. I love when people can't talk
about the fact that those thoughts are just kind of
never that far away. It makes it harder for them
to like process them in functional and useful ways. And
(22:15):
I don't know, I don't have numbers of this, but
it sure seems like it puts them in more danger,
you know. And so trans Lifeline they set up and
they start doing their work and they're still around. They also,
within a couple of years, set up a microgrant project
which provides small grants for trans people to cover the
cost of name and ID paperwork, which is cool as hell.
(22:38):
It's very complicated, like whether or not it's a complicated
threat analysis, but people whether they should change their name
and ID. Some of it has to do with dysphoria
and euphoria round gender and presentation, and some of it
has to do just with safety. So some of it
has to do with like, it sure would be nice
if my passport looked like me, right, I don't know. Now,
(23:01):
the trans Lifeline isn't perfect either, but the things that
are messy about it are so messy to research. Oh
my lord, I like researching history. That's like history happened
in historical times. Ideally the number should start with a one,
(23:23):
or there should be before the twenty first century. That's
what I like. Current events are messier, they have more
moving parts, more raw data is usually available. But I'm
not a historian. I'm a pop historian. I don't do
the more than I have to the raw processing of
stuff to find out what the story is. If you
research trans Lifeline like I spent so much of this
(23:46):
week trying to do, you're going to see a lot
of people talking shit about it on the internet. Some
of this stuff is undoubtedly true. The two founders of
the trans Lifeline I'm not naming because I just their
names are dragged enough and I don't know if we'll
get to it. The two founders of the Translfeline were
asked to leave the project in twenty seventeen after more
(24:08):
than three hundred thousand dollars in funds was found to
be misappropriated. Trans Lifeline wrote quote, there had been significant
spending of trans Lifeline funds outside the scope of our
current budget. Since that time, the project has put a
large amount of effort into financial transparency. All of their
(24:28):
numbers and reports, their impact reports. All of these things
are publicly available. They're also five to one C three,
so a lot of things are publicly available no matter what.
I am not certain, however, what happened to that three
hundred thousand dollars. There are several accounts of what it
was online the Okham's raiser. The most likely thing is
(24:49):
they probably just fucking spent it. I don't know, but
most discussions about it say it was spent on projects
that just wouldn't qualify as five to one C three,
that were not approved by the board, possibly on bail
and legal protections for various trans people who are incarcerated.
That's like the thing I found hints of more information
(25:09):
might be available, but I tried. This is what I
came up with, and if they did that, I don't know. Man,
good trans prisoners need support. But then again, an early
major funder of the project of trans Lifeline said explicitly
that she was defrauded, So maybe they just spent it.
I don't know. Again, these are people who haven't been
(25:31):
involved in the project for eight years. The other thing
is the way that this misappropriation was discovered. Well, fucking
Kiwi Farms takes credit for it. This is probably the
first time I've said Kiwi Farms on this show, and
I'm sad I have to do it. If you don't
know what Kiwi farms is, I am glad and I
(25:52):
am sorry to do this too. Kiwi Farms is a
troll community that seeks to drive trans people to suicide
that brags of their kill count. They specifically weaponize the
Internet and trolling and all of these things to try
to kill us. Kiwi Farms is bad, and they are
(26:13):
the ones who take credit for discovering the misappropriation of funds.
That doesn't mean that the funds weren't misappropriated. It just
means that was brought to people's attention by people who
want to destroy trans Lifeline because they want us to
not have help, because they want us to die. When
(26:33):
I tried to research the current state of trans Lifeline,
I found a lot of people talking about it on
various forums like Reddit, and a lot of those people
didn't seem to be totally on the level. In fact,
a lot of them are saying phrases the same as
each other. They were saying these phrases basically saying like
trans Lifeline is a scam and a lot of the
(26:57):
specific phrasing I also found in various reports from Kiwi
Farms about how it is successfully exposed the embezzlement of
the funds. So there sure is an implication that at
least some of the people who are talking shit about
trans Lifeline on the internet in forums are terminally online
(27:18):
murderers who are trying to kill us by destroying trans Lifeline.
But just because people are against it, God, it's just
the waters are muddy as hell. There do seem to
be a lot of people saying that they're having trouble
getting through to trans Lifeline. Other people say, yeah, when
I did get through, I spent two and a half
(27:39):
hours talking to a counselor about our shared experiences and
it turned everything around for me. And I suspect the
most likely situation is this trans Lifeline does not have
a large budget. Now they get these like fairly big
name donations and like, you know, oh, twenty thousand dollars
was raised by this, like you know, a Twitch streamer,
(28:01):
or those protect the Dolls shirts that people were wearing,
including like Pedro Pascal and stuff, or like fundraisers for Translfeline,
and that rules and that money. When it's raised, it
goes a long way with like a scrappy thing. But
twenty thousand dollars here and there has nothing on the
one point five billion dollars available to nine eight eight services.
(28:24):
There are only so many volunteers, and of course they
only hire trans counselors, which limits their pool further. And unfortunately,
demand for services trans counseling it's skyrocketing, and it just
keeps skyrocketing. People are like, oh, it's skyrocketed in twenty
eighteen after this or that anti trans law, well, like
(28:45):
man twenty eighteen sounds like a little dream fairy land
compared to twenty twenty five in America, And there are
studies that show causality between anti trans legislation and transsuicidality.
Everyone I know is struggling one way or another right now.
And what's more, the anti trans and more broadly anti
(29:06):
LGBTQ plus language that nine eight eight has adopted is
likely pushing more people towards an already overwhelmed system. The
state has never been much of an ally to trans people,
but with the states capture by fascism, it's never been
more important for us to have resources that are independent,
even if it's messy again though nine eight eight is
(29:29):
also still around and trans people can use it. It
is complicated, but the people who work it do good things.
I am not a social worker. I am a fiction
writer and a pop historian. I'm going to disclaim that
over and over and over again throughout this episode. I
don't know what to tell you if you're struggling. I
can tell you that you should reach out for help, though,
(29:51):
and that it's available. The trans Lifeline number in the
US is eight seven seven five six five eight eight
six zero. In Canada it's eight seven seven three three
zero six three six six and their hours are every
day from one pm to nine pm Eastern. Talk to
(30:11):
your friends and don't judge your friends. You talk to
you and I don't know. Remember that everything changes. The
way you're feeling right now is not how you always feel,
and it's not how you've always felt, even if it's
really hard to remember that in the moment. I want
all of us to win. I want all of us
(30:32):
to get to stand side by side together against this nightmare,
and yeah, good luck, take care of each other. Cool
People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool
Zone Media. A more podcasts in the cool Zone Media,
visit our website goolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
(30:54):
on the iHeartRadio app I'm a Podcast, or wherever you
get your podcasts. I don't know any
Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to another part of
the same week as another episode that is a rewind
episode about hotlines and why they're actually really amazing and
why people had to fight to make them happen, and
I hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to Cool
(00:25):
People Who Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that billions
of us make the world better every day by trying
really fucking hard to make the world better in ways
big and small. By I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. This
is a show about cool people who did cool stuff
in history, and we always talk about these like big actions,
you know, this huge movement that had a revolution, or
(00:46):
this individual who accomplished all of these things. You know,
we talked about like the man who started suicide crisis hotlines, right,
but like there's so many, so many, so many people
more involved in that project. But even more than that,
there's so many more people involved in the basic project
of hearing your friends talk about how they're feeling without
(01:06):
prejudice and without calling the cops on them. You know,
Like that is a thing that we can give to
each other every single day and happens every single day
all around the world. Is that we help each other
because one of the things that I've learned by researching
history is that, look, I know that this sounds bad,
but I mean in a positive way. There's no bottom
(01:28):
to the amount of suffering that could be happening right now,
right like you just you read about times in history
where like things happened and that were really bad, and
then you read about other times in history or things
happened they were even worse, and you're like, there's just like,
actually no bottom, there is no floor, and so it
feels like we're not winning, when in fact we are.
It feels like we're not winning because we haven't achieved
(01:49):
our whatever your utopian dream is, right, but we instead
stopped an infinite amount of suffering. Even though we haven't
stopped all the suffering, we have to keep working. We'll
never fully win, right, But instead we prove that we
can have worthwhile and meaningful lives by the big and
(02:12):
small ways that we work to help each other. That's
my grand standing. Hopefully you're up for some grand standing,
because this is an episode about suicide prevention, and specifically
the crisis hotlines that are staffed by so many people
who do so much work to try to help people
every single day, and you know, so hopefully you knew
(02:35):
that getting into it, that I was going to be
pretty fucking earnest and talking about some sad shit like
suicide on this particular episode. Anyway, there's no guest, it's
just me and you, just a little private conversation between
the two of us, just two of us. You're the
(02:56):
only listener. Just kind of wild. Actually, if you think
about it, should really tell your friends about the show,
because it's kind of weird that I only have one
listener and it's you, dear listener. You think I would
know your name since you're the only listener, but I don't.
Last time on Monday, we talked about Bernard Mays, who
set up the first suicide prevention hotline in the United
(03:19):
States in either nineteen sixty one or nineteen sixty two
and the sources disagree, and we talked about how it
became nine to eight eight, the current crisis hotline that
is available to anyone in the United States that unfortunately
does call the cops. And where we left our cliffhanger
was that trans Lifeline, who does not do non consensual intervention,
(03:42):
had put out a report there's a lot of names
on this report. They put a lot of work into
it over the course of years. The report came out
in twenty twenty four. You can read it on their website.
I linked to it among the many sources in the
show notes, even more sources than usual this particular week.
Actually want to talk about that for a second. I
swear I'm going to get into my own script and
(04:02):
end the cliffhanger you're on, But I want to talk
about like my own nervousness around this episode, because this
is a topic I take very seriously, but I'm not
an expert in and the ways that we talk about
this kind of stuff does matter. I read a decent
number of stuff about like guidelines for journalists when talking
about suicide, you know, and how to try to handle
(04:23):
this kind of thing responsibly, and it's very hard. The
reason I want to talk about this part of it
is because I'm going to be critical of nine to
eight eight as an infrastructure right now, while I'm also
incredibly grateful for the work that it does right and
I'm not going to tell people not to call it
because a lot of the alternatives are too underfunded and
(04:44):
they're not as successful in certain ways like don't have
enough people to answer the phone, you know. And it's
good that we try to do this thing. It's just
the framework it's embedded within is very dangerous and there's
a lot of problems with it. And so I mean
this as a loving critique and it's not even necessarily
my critique. A lot of it's coming from trans Lifeline,
(05:05):
who also meet it as a loving critique. And I
was really impressed with the language that they constantly use
when they're critical of nine eight eight. They're not saying like, oh,
those people love cops in or boot liquors and we're
the best, you know. Instead they're like, hey, we got
to try, we got to try to be better. We
got to try to get the police out of our
communities to keep ourselves safe, and we've got to you know,
(05:28):
care for each other. But I don't know, I was
just I was pretty impressed with how they talk about it. Anyway.
Trans Lifelines report, based on years of research, puts their
best guess that on average, cops are dispatched for three
point six percent of nine eight eight calls, which is
(05:49):
higher than the one point nine percent of calls that
lead to emergency medical services. Being called, which means you're
almost twice as likely to have the cops called on
you as an ambulance. The same report says that callers
who had non voluntary services dispatched on them included reports
of quote, police violence, discrimination, involuntary hospitalization, forced medication, and
(06:13):
physical and sexual assault. And at first glance, you might think, well,
what sort of makes sense to call an ambulance on
someone who's dying, whether they ask for it or not. Right, Like,
if I'm god, this happened once. I was like walking
down the street and like a bicyclists got hit by
a car in front of me. I just called the
fucking ambulance. I didn't be like, hey, buddy, you want
(06:35):
an ambulance? Yay, nay, how you feeling on that? I
was just like, fuck, I'm calling an ambulance. That man
just got hit by a car, you know, and that
makes sense to me. Right. I don't want to get
into the ethics of intervening in suicide because it's an
incredibly charged debate that people's personal, moral, philosophical, and theological
positions are deeply intertwined with. But there's obviously a reason
(06:58):
many people might want to call the ambulance if someone
is dying for whatever reason. But the thing is a
lifeline that can call the cops on you based on
what you say is just a fundamentally different thing than
a crisis line where you can be honest. Everyone I
know is used to lying to doctors and therapists in
order to navigate the strange bureaucracy that permeates our world. Right, Like,
(07:24):
I know people who don't go to therapy because therapists
are mandated reporters, and they're like, what's the point of
going to a therapist? I can't be honest to You
shouldn't have to do that when you're calling a lifeline.
You shouldn't have to play games around how you want
to answer specific questions based on what you're hoping the
outcome will be. I actually think that there's a way
(07:46):
from this to understand the fundamental problem with like law
as a framework with which to try to build a
positive society. But knowing that the police might be called
means that people who call, if they choose to call
it all, can't be honest. It's a fucking suicide hotline,
and if you call, they ask have you had any
suicidal thoughts? In the past few days, and if you
(08:09):
say yes, they have to run through the script to
figure out if you're an immediate threat, and if you are,
they call emergency services, usually the cops. Isn't this defeating
the whole point of a hotline, right? Like not everyone
who calls this is having suicidal thoughts, But that's like
it's purpose, you know. You also get asked have you
(08:31):
taken any action to harm yourself today? And this conflates
self harm with suicide, which is I think a fundamental
misunderstanding of the ways in which people hurt themselves. This
study that was put together by trans Lifeline has a
lot of interviews with people who have had these experiences.
One participant in the study about nine eight eight said quote,
(08:55):
of course I felt like hurting myself. Of course I
want to be honest and to be able to talk
about those I think it would be really helpful for
me to have acknowledged how I was actually feeling in
those moments. But I just know that if you say
yes to those questions about self harm, those questions aren't
to have a supportive conversation. It's like those questions are
to involuntarily hospitalize you or call the police on you,
(09:18):
or do something that isn't helpful and is really traumatizing
and harmful. Another participant wrote, it becomes about managing the
operator's emotions and their concerns. It also becomes about are
they going to flag me up the line to their supervisor?
Do I have to worry about someone coming to my location?
Do I have to worry about the cops being called?
(09:40):
Am I going to be able to stay in my
own home and keep my liberty? Also, between twenty nineteen
and twenty twenty one, the police killed at least one
hundred and seventy eight people in the United States during
wellness checks. These are not nine eight eight specific numbers.
That's just the number of people killed by police in
(10:00):
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one, and wellness check specifically.
It's good that there is an alternative to calling the cops.
I'm certain that separating out nine eight eight from nine
to one to one will overall reduce the number of
people killed by police during wellness checks. And I'm not
trying to say no one should ever call hotlines associated
with nine eight eight. It's just it's trickier than it
(10:23):
needs to be. Unfortunately, a lot of the alternatives are
underfunded and overwhelmed, and frankly, their staff is sometimes less
likely to be as consistently trained. It's just that nine
eight eight is not so detached from the police as
it presumably should be. This is a long way from
calling a nice BBC broadcaster who will listen to you
without judgment. But do you know what, it's not a
(10:45):
long way from. Actually it is a really long way from.
This is really a stretch. I'm just really stretching here
to try and try and find a glimmer of connection
between the script that I'm reading these advertisers, and I
really appreciate you all coming along with me on that
that glorious big stretch. Here's ads and Rebecca, I don't
(11:10):
work in suicide prevention. I am not a social worker.
To me, I can see the value in both evidence
based attempts to reduce the number of deaths by suicide
and also just creating platforms so that people who are
suffering can talk to people and be heard, not even
necessarily seen stopping them as the sole purpose, right, but
(11:34):
maybe listening to them. And I think that because I
think it'll reduce the number of suicides, I'm not a whatever.
I'm going to trank. Keep my own opinions out of
this as much as possible. Obviously I have strong opinions
about the way all this interacts with police. But yeah,
nine eight eight seems to me like a perfect example
of taking a really good idea and by relying on
the work of really good people, doing something kind of
(11:57):
sketchy by tying it into the government. As Lifelines report
says that nine eight eight quote represents an expansion of
location tracking capabilities and non consensual practices in social support services,
disregarding the voices of hotline users, psychiatric survivors, human rights organizations,
and crisis care experts who condemned the practice of non
(12:19):
consensual intervention. So these days, if you go to San
Francisco's Suicide Prevention's website and go to their fact and
click on anonymity, they say, quote, the only times we
lift confidentiality are in times of immediate physical danger, in
which case we will only contact emergency services. And that's
(12:41):
not anonymity. I don't want to say that no organization
should work with the government, because if there's one thing
that this administration has reminded us, it's that there are
good things that the government is the one doing. We
remember this because the government is currently systematic stripping all
of its own good qualities away, and so in July
(13:05):
twenty twenty five, the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis
Hotline dismantled it's LGBTQ plus services. They explain this with
perhaps the single most cursed sentence I have ever read,
and I'm so sorry I'm going to say it to
you now quote the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline will no longer silo LGB plus Youth Services also
(13:30):
known as the Press three option, to focus on serving
all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press
three option. Where do I begin, Well, it will no
longer silo US, as if we should be grateful that
we're no longer being kept away from everyone else, even
though obviously the purpose of that is so that we
can reach people who are specifically trained and or have
(13:52):
the similar experiences us. And no one literally no one
good says LGB or LGB plus, the T and the
Q have been purposefully removed because we literally don't exist
in this government's view. Now, of course, this language doesn't
(14:13):
filter down to members of nine eight eight. The fact
that nine eight eight is saying this doesn't mean that
its members share these opinions or will act in that way.
Individual lifelines continue to describe themselves as they wish, but
they do all have to commit to nonconsensual intervention after
nine eight eight cut Queer specific care out of its services.
(14:37):
Trans Lifeline who are the people who wrote that critical
report of nine eight eight said quote Through our advocacy efforts,
we have recognized that the well meaning folks at nine
eight eight have made improvements to their work and become
more sensitive to the needs of our community. We are
deeply disappointed that they no longer have the opportunity to
continue growing their understanding and service to our community. She
(15:00):
knew what nine eight eight was doing to improve themselves
after that report, but of course any hard work they'd
done was destroyed by the new administration, who, in their
reverse mitas way, turn everything they touch into shit. But importantly,
there are lifelines that are not part of the nine
eight eight project that specifically do not call the police.
(15:20):
I'm going to focus on trans Lifeline, but just to
shout out some of the other ones, there's black Line
at one eight hundred, six oh four five eight four
to one, which prioritizes BIPOC and LGBTQ plus folks. There's
the Wildflower Alliance Peer Support Line at one eight eight
eight four oh seven four five one five, which is
(15:42):
a warm line for not as much crisis. There's the
Fireside Project at one six two three two five zero
seven three nine three, which is for people dealing with
mental health during and after psychedelic experiences. There's Strong Heart's
Native Helpline at one eight four four seven six y
two eight four eight three, which is for Indigenous folks
(16:04):
dealing with intimate partner or sexual violence. And there's trans Lifeline,
which grew out of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. More
like this, transgender remembers that she has to pivot to
ads and Rebecca and I feel as though I have
cursed myself with these ad transitions, because the trans Day
(16:28):
of Remembrance is not about remembering ads. It is about
remembering a thirty four year old black trans woman named
Rita Hester and all of the other trans people who've
had their lives ended by violence. Rita Hester died in
nineteen ninety eight. She was born in nineteen sixty three
in Hartford, Connecticut, and she was a girl from the jump.
(16:49):
She knew she was Rita pretty much right away, according
to her sister. Her family supported her, even if they
didn't always get her pronouns right, which is an experience
familiar to plenty of trans people. Rita moved to Boston
in her twenties and started hanging out in the rock scene,
going to drag bars, living life to the fullest. She
was also a sex worker, which is left out of
(17:11):
every almost every account of her life. A shout out
to Them magazine, who was actually willing to say what
Rita did for work. Because violence against trans people is ignored,
violence against black trans people is ignored, violence against sex workers,
and especially black trans sex workers is ignored. Someone could
not handle Rita living her life to the fullest and
(17:33):
stabbed her to death. She was dead, named and misgendered
an article after article after she died. Her killer was
never found, though two white men were seen leaving the
building that night, and her white boyfriend simply disappeared after
she died. No one heard from him ever. Again, the
most likely thing is that she took home a white
(17:54):
man or two from the bar and they killed her.
None of this, of course, none of this sort of
violence is new. I don't expect to have to explain
to my listeners, but trans people, especially trans women of color,
especially trans women of color who are sex workers, are
murdered at a terrifyingly disproportionate rate. People have refused to
(18:14):
let Rita Hester's name disappear from history. Her mother, Kathleen,
never stopped fighting, and a trans woman named Gwendolen Smith
soon put up a website called Remembering Are Dead that
within a year became the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which
is November twentieth every year. Murderers with knives aren't the
only folks who kill trans people. Sometimes, systemic poverty, discrimination,
(18:39):
lack of access to medical care, and all those compounding
factors work together to kill trans people through suicide. So
after the Trans Day of Remembrance in twenty fourteen, some
folks got together to start the trans Lifeline, a suicide
hotline for trans people staffed by trans people. They started
(18:59):
it based on three principles. One all operators must be trans.
Two peer support from shared lived experiences is vital, and
three they don't call emergency services without the caller requesting
that now to be very clear, or to be very specific,
there actually are, because I was like being like, oh,
(19:20):
these other people will call the emergency services. Trans Lifeline
can also call emergency services depending There are three reasons
why trans Lifeline might call someone. First is if you ask. Second,
if there's a credible threat to a third party, so
not like I'm going to kill myself, but I'm going
to kill this other guy, or as laws require, if
(19:42):
there's proof of child abuse. They've written a lot about
why they don't do non consensual intervention to quote them quote.
In October twenty fifteen, trans Lifeline surveyed about eight hundred
trans people across the United States about their experiences with
suicide hotline use. Approximately seventy percent of the respondent specified
(20:03):
that they felt unsafe calling a hotline while in crisis.
Approximately a quarter of respondents stated that they had interacted
with law enforcement or emergency personnel due to a crisis call.
One in five had been placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold.
Because lifelines don't work if people are afraid to call them.
(20:25):
They don't work if people don't trust the people they're
talking to. Trans people, in particular distrust the police, but
also all of the other various services that might be
called because we are routinely denied care or mistreated, like
just on a really really regular basis. Interacting with legal
(20:46):
frameworks is often really complicated for us because we don't
know who's a bigot. Our paperwork doesn't always match our
names and presentations, and it's not just like, oh it
hurts our feelings to be misgendered. No, they do violence
to you. Sometimes they deny you basic human shit. If
(21:06):
you're listening to the show, you probably kind of know
these things. And I don't need a grandstand. But also,
we are twice as likely to live below the poverty
line as the CIS population, and people sure don't want
to pay any ambulance bills. And finally, to quote trans
Lifeline again quote for many in our community, chronic suicidal
(21:30):
ideation is a response to trauma and can be managed.
So we want to talk to people who understand that, right,
which includes theoretically plenty of people who are SIS who
also have as a response to trauma, Like you know,
certain thoughts are just like ever all that far away
from them. And when we can't talk about that, I
(21:52):
don't want to wee this actually, because this is not
my experience as a transperson, but it is the experience
of so many people. I love when people can't talk
about the fact that those thoughts are just kind of
never that far away. It makes it harder for them
to like process them in functional and useful ways. And
(22:15):
I don't know, I don't have numbers of this, but
it sure seems like it puts them in more danger,
you know. And so trans Lifeline they set up and
they start doing their work and they're still around. They also,
within a couple of years, set up a microgrant project
which provides small grants for trans people to cover the
cost of name and ID paperwork, which is cool as hell.
(22:38):
It's very complicated, like whether or not it's a complicated
threat analysis, but people whether they should change their name
and ID. Some of it has to do with dysphoria
and euphoria round gender and presentation, and some of it
has to do just with safety. So some of it
has to do with like, it sure would be nice
if my passport looked like me, right, I don't know. Now,
(23:01):
the trans Lifeline isn't perfect either, but the things that
are messy about it are so messy to research. Oh
my lord, I like researching history. That's like history happened
in historical times. Ideally the number should start with a one,
(23:23):
or there should be before the twenty first century. That's
what I like. Current events are messier, they have more
moving parts, more raw data is usually available. But I'm
not a historian. I'm a pop historian. I don't do
the more than I have to the raw processing of
stuff to find out what the story is. If you
research trans Lifeline like I spent so much of this
(23:46):
week trying to do, you're going to see a lot
of people talking shit about it on the internet. Some
of this stuff is undoubtedly true. The two founders of
the trans Lifeline I'm not naming because I just their
names are dragged enough and I don't know if we'll
get to it. The two founders of the Translfeline were
asked to leave the project in twenty seventeen after more
(24:08):
than three hundred thousand dollars in funds was found to
be misappropriated. Trans Lifeline wrote quote, there had been significant
spending of trans Lifeline funds outside the scope of our
current budget. Since that time, the project has put a
large amount of effort into financial transparency. All of their
(24:28):
numbers and reports, their impact reports. All of these things
are publicly available. They're also five to one C three,
so a lot of things are publicly available no matter what.
I am not certain, however, what happened to that three
hundred thousand dollars. There are several accounts of what it
was online the Okham's raiser. The most likely thing is
(24:49):
they probably just fucking spent it. I don't know, but
most discussions about it say it was spent on projects
that just wouldn't qualify as five to one C three,
that were not approved by the board, possibly on bail
and legal protections for various trans people who are incarcerated.
That's like the thing I found hints of more information
(25:09):
might be available, but I tried. This is what I
came up with, and if they did that, I don't know. Man,
good trans prisoners need support. But then again, an early
major funder of the project of trans Lifeline said explicitly
that she was defrauded, So maybe they just spent it.
I don't know. Again, these are people who haven't been
(25:31):
involved in the project for eight years. The other thing
is the way that this misappropriation was discovered. Well, fucking
Kiwi Farms takes credit for it. This is probably the
first time I've said Kiwi Farms on this show, and
I'm sad I have to do it. If you don't
know what Kiwi farms is, I am glad and I
(25:52):
am sorry to do this too. Kiwi Farms is a
troll community that seeks to drive trans people to suicide
that brags of their kill count. They specifically weaponize the
Internet and trolling and all of these things to try
to kill us. Kiwi Farms is bad, and they are
(26:13):
the ones who take credit for discovering the misappropriation of funds.
That doesn't mean that the funds weren't misappropriated. It just
means that was brought to people's attention by people who
want to destroy trans Lifeline because they want us to
not have help, because they want us to die. When
(26:33):
I tried to research the current state of trans Lifeline,
I found a lot of people talking about it on
various forums like Reddit, and a lot of those people
didn't seem to be totally on the level. In fact,
a lot of them are saying phrases the same as
each other. They were saying these phrases basically saying like
trans Lifeline is a scam and a lot of the
(26:57):
specific phrasing I also found in various reports from Kiwi
Farms about how it is successfully exposed the embezzlement of
the funds. So there sure is an implication that at
least some of the people who are talking shit about
trans Lifeline on the internet in forums are terminally online
(27:18):
murderers who are trying to kill us by destroying trans Lifeline.
But just because people are against it, God, it's just
the waters are muddy as hell. There do seem to
be a lot of people saying that they're having trouble
getting through to trans Lifeline. Other people say, yeah, when
I did get through, I spent two and a half
(27:39):
hours talking to a counselor about our shared experiences and
it turned everything around for me. And I suspect the
most likely situation is this trans Lifeline does not have
a large budget. Now they get these like fairly big
name donations and like, you know, oh, twenty thousand dollars
was raised by this, like you know, a Twitch streamer,
(28:01):
or those protect the Dolls shirts that people were wearing,
including like Pedro Pascal and stuff, or like fundraisers for Translfeline,
and that rules and that money. When it's raised, it
goes a long way with like a scrappy thing. But
twenty thousand dollars here and there has nothing on the
one point five billion dollars available to nine eight eight services.
(28:24):
There are only so many volunteers, and of course they
only hire trans counselors, which limits their pool further. And unfortunately,
demand for services trans counseling it's skyrocketing, and it just
keeps skyrocketing. People are like, oh, it's skyrocketed in twenty
eighteen after this or that anti trans law, well, like
(28:45):
man twenty eighteen sounds like a little dream fairy land
compared to twenty twenty five in America, And there are
studies that show causality between anti trans legislation and transsuicidality.
Everyone I know is struggling one way or another right now.
And what's more, the anti trans and more broadly anti
(29:06):
LGBTQ plus language that nine eight eight has adopted is
likely pushing more people towards an already overwhelmed system. The
state has never been much of an ally to trans people,
but with the states capture by fascism, it's never been
more important for us to have resources that are independent,
even if it's messy again though nine eight eight is
(29:29):
also still around and trans people can use it. It
is complicated, but the people who work it do good things.
I am not a social worker. I am a fiction
writer and a pop historian. I'm going to disclaim that
over and over and over again throughout this episode. I
don't know what to tell you if you're struggling. I
can tell you that you should reach out for help, though,
(29:51):
and that it's available. The trans Lifeline number in the
US is eight seven seven five six five eight eight
six zero. In Canada it's eight seven seven three three
zero six three six six and their hours are every
day from one pm to nine pm Eastern. Talk to
(30:11):
your friends and don't judge your friends. You talk to
you and I don't know. Remember that everything changes. The
way you're feeling right now is not how you always feel,
and it's not how you've always felt, even if it's
really hard to remember that in the moment. I want
all of us to win. I want all of us
(30:32):
to get to stand side by side together against this nightmare,
and yeah, good luck, take care of each other. Cool
People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool
Zone Media. A more podcasts in the cool Zone Media,
visit our website goolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
(30:54):
on the iHeartRadio app I'm a Podcast, or wherever you
get your podcasts. I don't know any
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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