Solidarity and mutual aid saved my life

After being punished by hostile welfare and housing systems, a trans welfare recipient reveals how she was able to rebuild her life through the power of queer solidarity and mutual aid. The author, Natalie Feliks, is a writer and activist currently living in Naarm. This post is part of series of articles curated for Power to Persuade by the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, shining a light on people’s experiences of the welfare system.

One of my earliest ever memories was when I was four years old, holding my mother’s hand after we dropped my brother off at school in my home city of Adelaide. I turned to my mum and said “sometimes I wish I was a girl”. She just nervously laughed it off and led me home. 

I didn’t come out properly for another sixteen years. Transitioning is expensive and arduous, and I couldn’t do it where I wouldn’t feel safe. Feeling too dysphoric and depressed to make job applications, I went through the Youth Allowance journey. I deprived myself of entertainment and hobbies so I could eventually scrape together enough money to move in with a friend. 

Within a few minutes of moving out of home, all the built-up trauma of transphobic bullying and parental neglect caused my mental health to collapse. Despite desperately trying to power through the costs of psychiatrist appointments, hormones, my name change and new clothes, it all became too much. Centrelink sending a letter with my new name to my mother’s address, despite me expressly asking them not to, was the final straw. I had a breakdown, hurt myself very badly, and ultimately got thrown out my home.  

With barely any support and nowhere to go, I decided to screw it all and moved to Sydney. I spent the first few months getting rejected by social housing and using survival sex for places to sleep. I’m also far from alone.  

Statistics about trans people in unemployment and homelessness get thrown around all the time, but one thing I’ve noticed is very rarely are they accompanied by the actual stories behind them. Why do so many trans people get rejected from social housing? It wasn’t as though they took one look at my medical history and shook their heads with a revolted glare. They rejected me because they noticed my self-harm tendencies, saw me as too emotionally unstable, and told me that I would distress the other tenants. Even passionate allies would agree that they made the right decision. 

But where did that leave me? Still homeless, of course, malnourished, getting sicknesses and skin infections from my cheap clothes, and chasing men and women for roofs over my head. All while terrified that my lack of stable accommodation would raise the eyebrows of Centrelink. I was in a situation which would send anyone to the brink of emotional collapse, but all social organisations offered was the phone number for cisgender counsellors incapable of understanding my background, and a teary shrug. I firmly believe that I only escaped this situation, which could’ve easily killed me, out of sheer luck.  

Eventually, I managed to find my feet - not through social housing or counselling - but through the power of queer solidarity and mutual aid. A friend that I met on a Facebook group agreed to let me couch surf at her place. It was incredible how much nutritious food and acts of kindness cleared my head. I was able to make a plan, and after years of self-advocacy and developing survival skills, I managed to pool together a sharehouse of other trans women where we could all finally live safely. I guess welfare recipients do deserve a working phone. 

Of course, while I’ve been lucky, I’m in a minority of my community. Young trans people are often so isolated and desperate for housing and support to cover the costs of their transition and mental health therapy, that many find themselves being openly abused for sexual, domestic or emotional labour by those more financially privileged. The response by service providers is often confusion or hostility, to the point where even “queer-friendly” service providers would sooner defend Centrelink than accept how deeply cruel it is to be denied our medication and our identity behind unnecessary expenses. Our welfare system is so deeply insufficient and hostile, social services are so ill-equipped, and the lives of trans people are so poorly understood by the general public that often, our options either facilitating our own abuse or death on the street. 

But as for me, I’m thankfully sleeping in a safe bed every night, and I’m doing everything I can to change this toxic society. I’m only 27. My time in homelessness exacerbated my disabilities to the point where wage work is permanently off the table. I still don’t have the financial privilege to help someone like me, but I have my story and the skills I learnt while I was fighting for my life. The most peaceful moments of my homelessness were the times I checked into libraries and passed time by writing fiction. To this day, I still write, and I use that to increase awareness of who I am and why my life is valuable. I’ve met other artists who have come from the same beaten track as me, all doing the same thing for the same reason. We make art not just for ourselves, but to support the people around us and build a future where the next generations will have less heartbreaking stories. 

My story is a trans girl’s story, but it’s also one that should speak to a lot of cisgender people. It’s a story of being left behind because of how poorly our society supports the mentally ill, how gutted and forgotten our social services are, how needlessly vile our welfare system is, and, in the face of all this, how powerful the practice of mutual aid can be. Every life is capable of so much good, even when that capability is hidden to us behind scars, starvation and exposure from the cold, wet street.

 In situations like that, it really feels like all we have is each other. The least we can do is make each other the best we can be.

Bio: Natalie Feliks is a writer and activist currently living in Naarm. She published her first book when she was 20, and is currently working on a YA novel about neurodivergency in queer teenagers. She also loves chocolate, stargazing, and squirrels. You can follow her on Twitter: @nataliesqrl.

Content moderator: AUWU