“We want to be inclusive of all female identified people, to make sure trans women feel included, for non binary that prefer female spaces, sometimes that includes people that have female bodies who don’t necessarily identify as female but who might need access to female services, like sexual health. So our purpose is to provide support for the community in whatever way that they want.” So says the coordinator of Dublin Lesbian Line, Laura Louise Condell. Because of the need for confidentiality the names of the volunteers who answer the phones will be changed for this article.
The DLL started in 1974 as part of Tel-A-Friend, which is the second oldest LGBT helpline in the world. Around the time of the beginning of the HIV crisis, Tel-A-Friend split into the Dublin Lesbian Line and Gay Switchboard in order to best deal with the needs of the community. It was a different time back then, as Condell details: “Back in the day lots of people didn’t have house phones or didn’t want us calling their house so they would ring and leave a message on an answering machine and say they would be at a phone box at a certain time and the volunteer would call them. Because of that history, DLL have a policy to offer to call people back.”
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