The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors and the Trump administration’s decision to end funding for the specialized suicide hotline for L.G.B.T.Q.+ callers are not coincidental. They both speak to a fundamental failure to acknowledge the day-to-day reality of trans people in America.
As part of my research for a book about suicide prevention, I spent about a year working weekends on a hotline. I couldn’t acquire a serious understanding of what it meant to talk someone out of attempting suicide just by interviewing therapists or even sitting next to the people taking hotline calls. I wanted to feel the weight of caring for suicidal people and experience what it was like to help them through a crisis.
What the Trump administration fails to understand is that a common thread running through these calls is the desperate search for just one trusted adult. If the callers had one, there is a good chance they might not have had the need to reach us. One trusted adult could help them figure out how to open up to their families and friends. One trusted adult could get them through a tough night when they feel utterly hopeless.
The national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on which I worked is the nation’s main suicide prevention effort. In many areas of the country, it may be the only therapy the callers will ever get. On any given night, I was taking calls from all over America.
Most of my calls came from rural, isolated communities that lacked public transportation. After my standard greeting, calls could quickly get intimate. We had our share of regulars: quiet ladies in nursing home beds, college students alone in their dorms. People would call from their cars after their shifts stocking shelves and dressing window displays or from hallways of a noisy homeless shelter.
Some were unsure if they could trust me. I never could predict how a call would go. I would try at least to stay with the caller as long as they wanted, which could be when their cellphone ran out of juice. Next to my computer, I wrote on a scrap of paper, “Be humble.”