In my year+ of homelessness, I've heard many different variations of those words. They're usually said by someone who is some combination of White, Cis, Male, possessing stable housing or able to possess stable housing, and generally full of unchecked privileged fuckery. While this is abuse that is given to me by the whole of society, I'm writing this article specifically for “radical,” “activist,” “anarchist,” and others who think they can wear a title as a cure-all for their savioristic bullshit.
I don't know what these people think they're accomplishing by policing the words I use to describe my life. It certainly doesn't change the fact that I'm living out of my backpack, that I have to dig through the trash for food, or that I'm constantly on the road in search of new resources as I attempt to find some semblance of stability. It doesn't change the fact that SNAP, Medicaid, food pantries, and other benefits allegedly meant to help people like me are mostly inaccessible since they require a stable address plus a whole slew of bureaucratic hoop-jumping. It doesn't change the fact that homeless shelters and collectivist houses alike are, at best, indifferent and, at worst, outright hostile to Transgender Women such as myself.
Changing my language really doesn't change anything, honestly, except that it takes away my power to talk about my oppression on my terms.
The logic of these people seems to be that I'm not “homeless enough” to “deserve” that word. I'm not sure what qualifies as “homeless enough” – at one point I lived in my tent for three months straight – but then again, neither do they. In fact, the person who said the quote at the start of this article went on to say “I am also unhoused” before proudly confiding that the savioristic trip on which he was embarking with some shitty non-profit required he pay over $15,000. If I had $15,000 to spend… I wouldn't be concerned with where I'm going to sleep next. I wouldn't be worried about what I'm eating tomorrow. I wouldn't be crowd-funding to receive the basic medical treatment I desperately need. So if “unhoused” places me in proximity to him, then no, it isn't the right language.
It's not like I don't use other words. Couch-surfing is one that I'm particularly fond of, especially when paired with homeless, since the house I'm currently in is someone else's home, sooner or later I will no longer be welcome here, and there is no guarantee that the next place I end up is not the street. Notice how I'm able to describe my exact living situation when given the space to do so?
Since I have the typewriter, let me explain what living on the street or in a shelter would mean for me. Being on the street would make me extremely vulnerable to the police. I'm on probation, so the cop who profiles me as a sex worker is sending me to a men's prison in rural Utah, which would expose me to violence that occurs at rates higher than basically anywhere else I could go. In fact, to my knowledge, the only place where Trans Women receive rates of verbal, physical and sexual violence similar to prison is in homeless shelters. This is true even in women's shelters, where residents and staff have the power to use their personal bigotry to wreck a Trans Woman's life. Despite this, I am often judged by standards that say my experience of homelessness is invalid unless I go live in these socially accepted places to be homeless. This is not just classist, it is trans-misogynistic (also ableist, but we'll get to that).
Gender and class interact in complex ways. Trans Women – especially Trans Women of Color – face homelessness and poverty at rates that Cisgender People do not understand. I mean that quiet literally, since no one cares about us enough to commission a comprehensive study on this subject. I can guess that around 40% of us live on less than $10,000 a year. I don't know how much violence we face in our homes, but I know we're significantly more likely to face verbal and physical violence from our families and intimate partners. This creates a situation where we either accept abuse or end up homeless. While I lack data I do know specific stories; I know that the shelter my caseworker is located in, the shelter I might have to move into, kicked a Transgender Woman out for three weeks because a Cisgender Woman lied and said the Trans Woman was waving her penis at people in the ladies room. I know many Trans Women who face daily abuse from their families because they have nowhere else to live. I know a Trans Women who has been homeless since she moved out of her old house, where her roommates would openly stare at her and use slurs in reference to her. I know that several of my sisters in the “middle class” are tied into a system of medical gate-keeping, debt and bureaucracy that could come crashing down on them at any time, which is it's own form of poverty.
It's also important to understand that the world treats Trans People differently as the way we are perceived changes, and this effects our access to money. I wore women's clothing for eight years, but a month after I started changing the way I walk and talk (aka transition) I was sexually harassed by a coworker and lost my job because of it. Talking about my harassment caused me to receive verbal abuse from my “friends,” which led to me being kicked out of my house. I moved back in with my mom, who relentlessly bullied me until I moved out. And that was the start of the never-ending roadtrip I'm currently on. This abuse isn't in the past, either, since I am now so traumatized that filling out the application for the part-time minimum wage job I currently posses gave me panic attacks for a week.
For a week, I was unable to bathe and barely able to feed myself, because filling out a job application was so triggering of all of the emotional, psychological and physical abuse I've gone through in the last year and a half. I have such bad anxiety and depression I am no longer able to work the jobs I need to work to keep myself housed. I experience classism, trans-misogyny, and ableism as a unified form of oppression. When people condemn me for describing my oppression with words they do not approve of, they are replicating these oppressions. That is not solidarity, it is fuckery, and I'm 110% not here for wannabe “radicals” who claim that launching that shit at me is meant to help me live my life.
This debate about terminology doesn't exist among homeless folx. I hear stories of sleeping outdoors, of hustling for money, of homeless camps, of sleeping on friend's couches, of living in cars, of abusive homeless shelters, of squatting houses and breaking into storage units we pay for but aren't supposed to be in after a certain time because this world makes no fucking sense. None of us survive on any one specific thing; our survival mechanisms must be as fluid as the resources available to us. These are vibrant stories of resistance and survival under a dehumanizing system of classist (and therefore racist, cissexist, ableist, etc) oppression. Our conversations around homelessness need to reflect the nuance present in our lives. That means letting homeless folx speak our truths, not policing our language in an effort to silence and erase us. That means listening and responding to our needs, rather than allowing the saviors to dictate them.
Our needs aren't glorious – letting me sleep on your couch is in no way comparable to waving signs in a march or locking down an intersection or yelling “Fuck you” at some pigs*. True solidarity is going to be a way bigger inconvenience and have a way higher cost than saying “I did my part” and walking away before the problem is solved. But if we put down the saviorism and the egos, it's obvious that this kind of aid is actually effective. I speak for a lot of Trans Women when I say none of us expect our liberation to come from Cisgender Men, but if Cis Men (and Cis Women) were to provide the food and shelter so many of us lack we would actually be able to organize amongst ourselves for our liberation. True solidarity is helping us empower ourselves on our own terms.
*Aside: a group of mostly White Cis Men yelling “fuck you” at the cops exposes especially People of Color, but also the homeless and Trans Women and super especially those at the intersections to police brutality. The way to fight police brutality is not to expose the most vulnerable to police brutality. Also saying ignorant shit like “No war but class war” completely ignores how capitalism was built on stolen land by stolen labor, how colonialism is in all ways a much deeper and more fundamental problem than capitalism, and generally shows that you're more concerned with poor White Guys than poor anyone else. I'm really beyond done with all this ignorant drivel that “radicals” feel justified spouting because they have the title to hide behind. Read some books that aren't by White Dudes for once.
In closing, you don't have to care about me, you don't have to care about my Trans sisters, you don't have to care about other homeless people. But, for the love of the Goddess, have the decency to admit you're a violent bigot who hides abuse behind feeling good, that there is nothing radical about that, and that this makes you an oppressor and part of the problem. Those of us trying to survive really don't have energy to waste on people who think it's okay to shit on us because they smile while they do it.
