How marginalized queer and trans communities actually survive when the system wants us dead
THE WOUND
You know that specific terror that hits at 2 AM when you’re calculating whether you can afford your hormones this month or if you’ll have to choose between testosterone and rent? That cold mathematics of survival that cisgender people never have to learn?
Or maybe it’s the moment your chosen family member texts you from the ER—the one without insurance, the one who’s been rationing insulin, the one whose body finally said “enough” because healthcare in this country is a luxury good wrapped in a death sentence. And you’re lying there in the dark doing that familiar mental inventory: Who has $200? Who gets paid Friday? Can we crowdfund this before it hits collections?
That’s the sensory memory of living under a system designed to kill us through a thousand cuts of administrative violence. The weight in your stomach isn’t anxiety—it’s the accumulated knowledge that your survival is considered optional. Negotiable. A budget line item that’s always first on the chopping block.
The cold truth tastes like copper: No one is coming to save us. We only have each other.
THE REAL TALK SECTION
Let’s burn away the fantasy right fucking now.
Mutual aid isn’t a nonprofit with a board of directors and a mission statement that gets workshopped in focus groups. It’s not charity—that top-down model where the “haves” feel good about helping the “have-nots” while keeping every power structure perfectly intact. Charity is what the Red Cross does when disaster hits, showing up with cameras and leave-behind logistics that vanish the moment the news cycle moves on.
Mutual aid is warfare.
It’s queer and trans people—especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color who’ve been doing this since before Stonewall was even a word in the white gay vocabulary—creating horizontal networks of survival because vertical systems are designed to let us die. It’s the recognition that under racial capitalism, under white supremacy, under cis-heteropatriarchy, our precarity isn’t a bug. It’s the entire fucking feature.
In 2023, trans people faced homelessness at rates 4 times higher than the general population. Trans people of color? Even higher. Over 40% of LGBTQIA+ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year. A third of trans adults reported being denied healthcare because of their identity.
These aren’t accidents. These are policy outcomes. Political choices. Violence dressed up in administrative language.
The nonprofit industrial complex wants to manage your suffering, not end it. They need you desperate enough to fill out their intake forms, traumatized enough to make good grant narratives, but not so empowered that you stop needing their services. Because if poor and marginalized queer and trans people actually built sustainable survival networks, what would happen to their funding?
You’re exhausted because you’re supposed to be. Broke because that’s the design. Isolated because connection is dangerous to a system that requires your compliance. Every eviction, every denied prescription, every time you’ve had to beg strangers on the internet to help you eat—that’s not your failure. That’s the system working exactly as intended.
But here’s what they didn’t account for: We’re really fucking good at keeping each other alive.
HOW WE ACTUALLY DO THIS
Start Small, Start Messy
The Trans Housing Coalition didn’t start with a building and a 501(c)(3). It started with three trans people and a Google Doc listing who had a couch when someone got kicked out. The Chicago Mutual Aid Network began in someone’s kitchen with $47 and a signal thread.
Your mutual aid network can start tomorrow with:
A shared spreadsheet
5 people who give a shit
One immediate need you can actually meet
That’s it. No incorporation papers. No bylaws. No executive director making six figures while you’re still rationing hormones.
What You Actually Need
Materially:
Communication platform (Signal, Discord, encrypted group chat)
Shared resource tracking (spreadsheet, Airtable, whatever)
Money moving method (Venmo, CashApp, crypto for those who need it)
Verification process that isn’t fucking cops
Culturally:
Commitment to horizontal power
Zero-tolerance for transmisogyny, racism, ableism
Understanding that perfect is the enemy of done
Willingness to fuck up and repair
The First Conversations
This is where it gets tender and terrifying.
You’re going to have to say out loud: “I need help.” And if you’re the one with resources right now: “I have capacity to give.”
For the one asking: Send the message. “Hey, I’m $200 short on rent this month and facing eviction. Can anyone help?” Feel the shame rise up—that’s capitalism talking. Push through it. Your need is legitimate. Your survival matters.
For the one giving: Give what you can without martyring yourself. $10 is real. $50 is real. A bag of groceries is real. Letting someone crash on your couch is real. You’re not a savior—you’re part of an ecosystem of care.
The Portland Queer Survival Fund taught us this: Frame asks specifically. Not “help if you can” but “I need $X for Y by Z date.” Concrete needs get concrete responses. Vague requests disappear into the algorithmic void.
Scaling Without Selling Out
When your network grows from 10 people to 100, the state starts paying attention.
Here’s what works:
Pods within networks. Keep tight units of 5-15 people who know each other deeply, then network the pods. If one gets infiltrated or burns out, the others survive.
Distributed resources. Don’t let one person hold all the money or all the information. That’s how movements get decapitated.
Skills-based organizing. Someone’s good at medical navigation? They become the healthcare hub. Someone knows housing law? They’re the eviction defense point person. Distribute expertise, distribute power.
Regular rotation. Nobody holds coordination roles for more than 6 months without break. Prevent burnout. Prevent hierarchy from calcifying.
The Bay Area Transformative Justice network runs on this model—30+ pods, each autonomous, all networked. When one pod needs support, the network floods in. When one pod is compromised, the others keep functioning.
When Conflict Hits
Oh, it’ll fucking hit.
Because you’re bringing together traumatized people who’ve learned survival strategies that sometimes conflict. Because white queers will center themselves. Because class differences create tension. Because disability access gets forgotten until someone speaks up. Because, because, because.
Transformative justice principles for internal conflict:
Assume good intent, address harmful impact. Someone fucked up? They probably weren’t trying to cause harm, but harm happened anyway. Both things are true.
Private call-out, public accountability. Handle interpersonal shit in private first. If the behavior continues or affects the whole network, then make it collective.
Repair over punishment. What does the harmed person need? What does accountability look like that doesn’t just replicate carceral logic?
Sometimes people need to leave. If someone can’t or won’t stop causing harm, choosing the collective’s safety isn’t abandonment—it’s survival.
For Trans Folks Facing Medical Gatekeeping
Your mutual aid network can be:
Hormone buyers clubs. Pooling money to buy from established online pharmacies, splitting costs
Surgical funding pods. Long-term savings circles where everyone contributes monthly toward each person’s surgery fund in rotation
Letter-writing networks. Finding trans-friendly therapists who’ll write HRT letters for sliding scale
Grey market knowledge. Safer DIY protocols, testing access, harm reduction information
The Reddit r/TransDIY community and the DIYHRT.cafe forums operate on mutual aid principles—information as survival resource, freely shared.
For Disabled Queers Managing Chronic Illness
Your mutual aid network can be:
Medication sharing. When someone’s prescription runs out before insurance approves refill, someone else bridges the gap
Accessible transportation. Disabled people with vehicles helping those without
Spoon-based task trading. High-pain days? Someone grocery shops for you. Low-pain days? You meal prep for someone else
Medical navigation support. Someone with brain fog shouldn’t have to fight insurance companies alone
The Chronically Queer mutual aid network in Seattle does this—matching high-needs folks with high-capacity folks in rotating partnerships, nobody expected to be superhuman.
Your mutual aid network can be:
Emergency funds for arrest/legal fees. Because cops target sex workers and mutual aid is faster than bail funds
Bad date lists and safety networks. Encrypted platforms sharing information about dangerous clients
Housing support for those exiting coercive situations. No questions, no judgment, just keys and time
Healthcare access. Connecting to sex-worker-friendly clinics, STI testing, harm reduction resources
The Red Umbrella Fund and local SWOP chapters run on mutual aid models because institutional support for sex workers is nearly nonexistent.
For Black and Brown Queer and Trans People
Your mutual aid network must address:
Compounded economic precarity. Racism + transphobia = survival mode
Police violence. Mutual aid includes bail funds, legal support, protest medic training
Housing discrimination. When landlords won’t rent to you because you’re Black and trans, mutual aid is the housing network
Cultural isolation. White-dominated queer spaces aren’t safe; QTPOC mutual aid is community building plus material support
The Marsha P. Johnson Institute and Black Trans Femmes in the Arts do this—centering Black trans women and femmes in mutual aid that’s both material and cultural.
For Ace and Aro Folks
Your chosen family doesn’t look like the marriage equality narrative, and that’s valid.
Mutual aid includes:
Co-housing networks. Sharing space with people who get that romance and sex aren’t the point
Friendship-based care pods. Deep platonic bonds that function like family without the expectation of romance
Challenging amatonormativity in organizing. “Bring your partner” events are exclusive; “bring your people” is expansive
THE OBSTACLES
Burnout
You’re going to hit the wall where you’ve given everything and you’re running on fumes and rage. This is when mutual aid turns into martyrdom if you’re not careful.
Early warning signs:
You feel resentful when people ask for help
You’re skipping meals to give someone else money
You can’t remember the last time you slept through the night
You’re convinced you’re the only one who can hold this together
The antidote: Ask for help. Take a break. Let someone else coordinate for a month. The movement needs you alive, not sacrificed on the altar of your own commitment.
Infiltration
Cops love activist spaces. Fascists love vulnerable communities. Someone will show up pretending to care, asking detailed questions about who’s undocumented, who’s doing sex work, who’s got warrants.
Red flags:
New person pushing for more aggressive tactics immediately
Someone asking for “full transparency” about everyone’s legal status
Folks who never seem to need help, only give it (and gather information)
Anyone encouraging you to break security culture
Response: Trust your gut. Vet people slowly. Build trust through consistent action, not through interrogation. Keep sensitive information compartmentalized.
Scarcity Mentality
Poverty makes us compete. “If I help them, will there be enough for me?”
This is capitalism’s most insidious lesson—that care is a finite resource we have to hoard.
The truth: Mutual aid grows capacity. When you help someone avoid eviction, they’re now able to help someone else. When you share food, you build networks that feed everyone. Abundance isn’t about having more—it’s about circulating what we have.
Purity Politics
The left will devour itself if given half a chance. “That person isn’t radical enough.” “This network isn’t doing it the right way.” “You accepted money from someone who works at X company.”
Reality check: We’re all compromised under capitalism. Nobody’s hands are clean. The question isn’t “are you perfectly radical” but “are you showing the fuck up and doing the work?”
Call in over call out. Address harm without requiring performative self-flagellation. Build together or burn separately.
RESOURCES
Books That Don’t Suck:
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade (free PDF online)
The Revolution Starts at Home edited by Ching-In Chen et al.
Signal Groups & Discord Servers:
Local mutual aid networks (search “your city + mutual aid”)
r/MutualAid on Reddit for immediate requests
Trans housing networks in your region
Hotlines That Aren’t Cops:
Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860 (peer support, no police)
LGBT National Hotline: 888-843-4564
THRIVE Lifeline: Text THRIVE to 313-662-8209
By and For Specific Communities:
For Black Trans Folks: Brave Space Alliance (Chicago), The Okra Project (national)
For Sex Workers: Red Umbrella Fund, SWOP Behind Bars
For Disabled Organizers: Sins Invalid, Disability Justice Culture Club
For Immigrants: United We Dream mutual aid networks
THE CLOSING RALLY CRY
Listen: our ancestors survived the AIDS crisis when the government called it divine punishment and let us die in droves. They survived Compton’s Cafeteria and Stonewall and the decades of organized state violence before white gays got marriage equality and declared victory.
Black trans women created mutual aid before it had a name, before it was hashtag activism, because they knew—bone deep, blood deep—that the system would never save them.
We come from people who kept each other alive in the margins, in the shadows, in the spaces the state pretended didn’t exist. This isn’t new. This is lineage.
You don’t have to be healed to help someone else survive.
You don’t have to have money to share skills. You don’t have to have a place to offer transportation. You don’t have to be perfectly radical to show up imperfectly real.
Your trauma doesn’t disqualify you from building community—it’s exactly why you understand what’s needed.
Start where you are. Use what you have. Help who you can.
The state wants you isolated because isolation is easier to control. Your connection to other queer and trans people—especially the most marginalized among us—is literally a threat to systems that require our compliance.
Mutual aid isn’t charity. It’s not activism. It’s not even politics in the traditional sense.
It’s warfare against a system that wants us dead, and it’s love practiced as a verb, and it’s the recognition that your survival and mine are fundamentally interconnected.
We keep us safe. Nobody else is coming.
Now go build something that keeps your people alive.
The world that comes next? We’re making it right now, in Signal threads and kitchen tables and shared Google Docs and the unglamorous, exhausting, beautiful work of refusing to let each other fall.
Every dollar circulated. Every couch offered. Every meal shared. Every hand held through a crisis.
That’s not charity. That’s revolution at the speed of survival.
Make it count.