Samaritans and sex calls

[ahumanfemale]

Not a TAAT but I saw elsewhere multiple mentions of the abundance of sex calls that The Samaritans receives.

I used to volunteer for a similar helpline. It was abroad and for English-speaking people. We too had regular sex callers. All - ALL - would only talk to female volunteers. I thought it was because we were a small-scale charity and it was cheaper to call us than any 0800 equivalent. It wasn't until just now that I realised our helpline wasn't unique in this. And the majority of ours were either wearing women's clothes - or fantasising about it. The underwear of underage teens was also a feature. Some clearly got off on trying to make us uncomfortable. They didn't realise we weren't uncomfortable, just bored.

And honestly, I'm fucking angry. This needs to be publicised. There are LITERALLY men out think their wank is more important than people in severe distress getting help. They LITERALLY put having a wank above someone not committing suicide. There are enough of them that The Samaritans includes their calls in its training, as our training did too.

And people - women - think these men won't go into mixed sex changing rooms and won't get thrills from making women uncomfortable and won't use their conversations to wank to either in situ or later?

The policy at my helpline changed and we were able to put the phone down on them after confirming they weren't in distress (as in they kept wanking and talking out their fantasy or whatever, rather than respond to us). This was done because someone pointed out it was abusive to expect female volunteers to be wank-fodder. I've no idea what their policy is now or what The Samaritans' policy is.

I'm disgusted that this is so common. And fwiw, we never had female sex callers.

My mum works as a Samaritan and has a rather deep voice naturally. She regularly gets called Mr xxxxx on the phone at home.
She obviously doesn't announce her sex on the phone and has had some callers assume she was male. It is a bit of an issue if later in the call they ask her name (Which is obviously a female name) and she's had a couple of people who flat out didn't believe her.
She does find some men will discuss very personal things thinking she is male which doesn't bother her. She has lied on occasions and given a more androgynous name so she doesn't make them feel uncomfortable.
It makes sense that for some issues a man would want to talk to a man ( and a women to a women).

The point about MRAs is that they tend to come along and look at a service provided for women and say "but what about the men?" You're saying, of this service for both sexes, "but it should only be provided for women". I can see that there's an excellent argument for a charity support line expressly for women, and only women, in distress - why not set one up? Samaritans is not it.

veryboredtoday, I agree that sometimes callers want to speak to someone the same sex as them, but we don't know who they are most of the time because they hang up. On the very rare occasion when a caller who wants to speak to a man doesn't hang up on me straight away, they ask if they can speak to a male volunteer - if I'm on shift with a man and he's free, I'll hand the call over to him. If I'm not, or he's on the phone, I'll say I'm the only volunteer available in the branch and suggest they ring off and call back if they'd rather not speak to me. A huge number of callers just want someone to listen to them and don't mind what sex the volunteer is.

I can't see how the calls threatening criminal acts (abuse of children etc) can't be reported since in every single other profession that relies on confidentiality, it is waived when someone is saying they are going to harm another person.

A huge number of callers just want someone to listen to them and don't mind what sex the volunteer is.

When I was very depressed and suicidal a few years ago, I poured my heart out to a male Sam because at that time, in that situation, I just needed to talk at/to someone. Earlier this year, when I was suicidal about my sexual assault specifically, I needed to talk to a woman of the bevulvaed type. A woman can provide both kinds of help to another woman, a man can only provide one kind.