Help Us—Two Trans Lesbian DV Survivors—Rebuild Our Lives

Hello, my name is Hazel (they/them). My wife (she/they) and I, both trans non-binary, Autistic lesbians, have faced an incredibly challenging journey over the past year. In 2023, we fled domestic violence inflicted upon us by two past partners of ours - who were our roommates well after our respective breakups with them (until 2023); they were still our roommates, against our wishes, our circumstances made it hard to leave.

Our abusive exes basically resent that my wife and I are lesbians and expressed as much to us. It's very hard to for us to discuss this disturbing treatment they subjected us: it’s incredibly triggering (even for anyone reading this, it's very heavy to take in, so we've been afraid to share because of this). Our abusive exes were also both incredibly ableist towards us and made incessant pointed derogatory comments about both of our gender expressions and sexuality in order to try to make us feel terrible about ourselves, and they also sexually harassed and abused us in acts of rejection based violence. This all led to a cascade of hardships that we are still struggling to overcome.

This incredibly traumatic experience forced us to relocate suddenly for our safety, and we lost both of our jobs. Even though my wife's job was remote, they discriminated against her for needing a few days off to pack our stuff and leave (despite her work policy outlining otherwise). We had to wait until our abusers were at work to pack anything we could and quickly flee. There are precious items we had to leave behind and it was beyond devastating. Neither my wife nor I have support of any kind or relationships with our biological parents anymore.

The experience of fleeing was very unforgiving on our bodies, as we’re both disabled and our symptoms have worsened severely in the past year. There were points when I couldn't access essential medication for my Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, too, and this was becoming very dangerous as it became hard to breathe and sleep for months due lack of access to medication and the subsequent swelling of my thyroid.

Our abusive exes' retaliation against us - as individuals and as a couple - had escalated once my wife and I got engaged in 2023. They were both aware that my wife and I were making plans to find our own apartment (without them) in the near future. This lead to them both threatening us in various ways. The escalation of our exes' violence exhibited itself in multiple forms of threats and abuse, which necessitated us to leave immediately - meaning that we both lost our jobs and income suddenly, and lost precious belongings.

Since then, my wife and I have had to relocate a total of nine times to find safety, where our abusers cannot locate us, sometimes living in hotel rooms or out of our car—only to face: more severe housing insecurity, employment discrimination, and medical discrimination at every turn. But we refuse to give up.

There have been a plethora of gross opportunists since, who have felt empowered to intimidate and abuse us while we’re in a vulnerable position, including but not limited to, abusive landlords.

Photos of the conditions below:

All these events that followed, retraumatized my wife and me, reminding us of the ways our abusive ex-partners targeted and attacked both of our multiply marginalized identities.

For 4 years, my wife endured severe treatment from her ex-partner: degradation, manipulation, threats, financial abuse, disability abuse, targeted harassment, and every kind of violence you can imagine - he is also a transmedicalist (even though he is trans himself; he perpetuates lateral transphobia) and he is a violent lesbophobe, he mentioned many times how much he hates lesbians - right to our face, so this was an incredibly unsafe person for us to be living with at all. We also learned that he has a pattern of seeking out roommates with marginalized identities - he targets lesbians, trans lesbians, BIPOC lesbians and BIPOC trans people, and then he sexually harasses them, says racist and transphobic remarks, and then attempts to feign ignorance for his wrongdoings, while continuing to harass people based on their respective identities while weaponizing his own identity (identity shielding). We learned this about him by connecting with his former roommates that he had mentioned, who he said "traumatized [him] by hiding away from [him] and talking about how to get [him] to leave the apartment". We found out the former roommates were also abused by him, and they hid away from him in the apartment to figure out how to safety plan and stay safe - and the treatment they had faced was so disturbing, and eerily similar to what we were subjected to - but of course, they experienced the additional layer of transmisogynoir from him; they have completely severed contact with him as well. We aren't sure how many victims there are, but as far as we know we are 2 out of at least 10 people who have been irreparably harmed by him, 6 of them, were also former roommates of his.

On one of the last days we saw him, he became more physical, pushing our room divider/curtain rod down. Generally, he would slam things around the house like the recycling bin, but not take out the recycling, he just made loud noises on purpose to overstimulate us, upset us and overwhelm us. However, we were completely unprepared for him to knock over the partition - the curtain rods became unstable and the metal rod hit my wife's back as she was working from home at her desk, and it also nearly smacked into me and our cat Marceline as well. We were staying in the living room which was only ever supposed to be temporary, and it was a fairly small area. My wife had caught one of the poles and I ran to catch the other, meaning that Marceline was nearly hit by one of the poles, if we didn't catch it on time. Him pushing the partition down was completely unprompted, as my wife was working remotely, and I was applying to jobs and we were listening to music. He started stomping and suddenly charged into the curtain rod nearest to our pride flag, without as much of a word. We said, "Why did you just do that?" and he just left the room and didn't answer. In the days to follow, when the curtains were put back up, he kept peeking in and laughing at us when we asked him to leave us alone. You'll also notice there are pieces of cardboard affixed to things to give us even a little more privacy, after such incidents, as we were reaching out to other apartments to try to leave immediately. However we became so scared of him that we ended up fleeing to a hotel instead to try to secure housing elsewhere.

We didn't even remotely feel safe at this point, and we didn't feel safe to leave Marceline alone in the apartment with him, even just to get groceries, with his abuse escalating. He flashed us repeatedly, and he kicked the bathroom door in when we were just trying to go to the bathroom. My wife had to shout "NO!" three times and hold the bathroom door shut before he finally stopped trying to see us (context: the bathroom door was severely broken, thanks to the landlord who never fixed anything), he did actually manage to pry the door open, and my wife had to close it immediately and tell him to go away and stop trying to violate us, and see us in that state.

I faced very similar treatment for 5 years from my ex-partner. I was coerced and financially abused (they took out a credit card in my name without asking me first, and the card was connected to their card, they made me an "authorized user" on their credit card as a "surprise", and they claimed I wouldn't have to pay anything back). They proposed to me 6 months into dating and I politely declined. I was facing violence from my biological mother, and at work, and my ex-partner pressured me into moving in with them using these circumstances as a reason why "[I] should just leave, and quit my job, and move in with [them]". They asked me 5x if I want to move in and I finally accepted when my emergency situation had escalated to an overwhelming degree, as my housing and livelihood was being threatened by my biological mother when she was drunk and violent one night, and I was simultaneously being sexually harassed repeatedly by a coworker at my workplace at the time, and HR was literally laughing off the fact that my co-worker grabbed/pulled my hair and said something sexual to me, in the worst instance HR said, "he was just joking around, he's a funny guy" - this was in 2017. Anytime I was having financial troubles (both before and after moving in with my ex), my ex-partner would get mad at me for being affected by my hardships, and they would scoff at my feelings, saying "just put it on the credit card!" - things like therapy, bills, necessities - they never wanted to actually emotionally support me, but rather, tell me to charge more things to the credit card in order to "solve" these very complicated problems, all it did was make me feel like I didn't have autonomy, and that my partner was enraged by me having feelings, emotional reactions, or being in a difficult position at all, when they are in an incredibly different socioeconomic position than myself. I still generally avoided using the credit card they took out in my name, as it made me uncomfortable, until I decided to get therapy to try to leave them. This ex-partner had sexually assaulted me on several occasions by this point, and threatened suicide when I didn't comply with all of their demands, but because of how unsafe my life was at home with my biological family and at work, moving in with this ex-partner still seemed like my "safest" option at the time. The abuse had unfortunately grown far worse after having moved in, they told me I should go back in the closet because "it doesn't matter that [i'm] gay and trans" and they frequently said, "why does anyone need to know that you're gay?". I was out as queer, but not as a lesbian then - they weren't out as non-binary at the time and they laughed at my dysphoria, often calling me "strange" when my dysphoria would make me visibly uncomfortable or upset. This ex-partner also tended to intentionally post dysphoric photos of me that showed certain body parts that I explicitly told them make me very uncomfortable for others to see especially on the internet, and then refused to take these photos down even after I cried and begged - their response was to laugh at me, argue with me asking me "why it even matters" to align with my gender identity, and often tried to force me to repress my true identity through means of intimidation. They said if I asked them to take the photos down, that it means I "didn't love [them]".

When I first moved in with this ex-partner in 2018, their disturbing behavior only escalated more, I had been physically assaulted and threatened (plates thrown at me, my face grabbed, they frequently spit at my face), I was emotionally abused nonstop, labor trafficked, loansharked, and then ultimately told by 2023 that I owe tens of thousands of dollars that they provided for me during our relationship (for things like my essential medications, car repairs, shared household items that they also used), despite them initially telling me that I should accept their help and believe them that they are genuine in wanting to help, or that if I don't accept their financial help, I am "not accepting their love". I came out in May 2020 as a lesbian and I broke up with this ex-partner, but we remained roommates, as they said they don't want me to end up houseless, or back living with homophobic family members again - they reassured me once again, that I will not owe them any money. I expressed I was afraid to owe them money still, and they expressly reassured me I "owe them nothing" and I should really “get over my financial guilt shit" and told me I was not allowed to talk about or ask questions about the terms of the financial conditions of the "help", they said "take the money and don't talk to [them] about it" - only for me to find out these were all actually attempts to loanshark me, when suddenly they alleged I owed them everything back (from 2017-2023). I was unemployed on and off throughout this relationship, making many failed attempts to gain financial independence and find an accessible job that can accommodate me with respect to my disabilities, but at the time, my Hashimoto's Thyroiditis symptoms were so severe that I couldn't work let alone get out of bed on my own - and my jobs never amounted to much money because of my physical limitations.

My abusive ex-partner (they/them) even talked to my wife's abusive ex-partner (he/him) in May 2023, about how they want to control me financially still, trying to get him on their side - however, my wife's ex had more of an interest in abusing us all to themselves - so he started spouting transmedicalist and transphobic remarks towards my abuser and ourselves too, refusing to stop misgendering my ex-partner when my wife and I asked him to stop, saying "real trans people stick needles in them", despite him not being privy to this health information about any of us (ie, surgeries we've had, HRT, private medical info, etc). We told my wife's ex partner we are not okay with him resorting to such discriminatory language in order to "defend us", he actually put us at even more of a risk by misgendering and invalidating my ex's identity, instead of calling out their abuse and wrongdoings, as if their moral failing was being non-binary, rather than them being an abuser.

We took this act as my wife's abusive ex-partner trying to get my ex-partner to incite even more violence against us while trying to make us owe him for "saving us" - my wife's ex partner had a pattern of laughing at us both when we were catcalled on the street for instance, even on one occasion claiming he would do the same in the catcaller's position, so this was not the first time he delighted in us being harmed, and even made matters worse on purpose. Basically, it was true that he was trying to act like our "rescuer", and when we told him he is not allowed to speak to us in derogatory ways, sexualize us, that he is no longer allowed to tells us that he hates lesbians: he said we were ungrateful for how he "generously rescued" us from my ex-partner. All he did was put us in more danger by hopping on a phone call with my ex and disparaging their gender identity.

All he did was scream transphobic remarks and misgender someone repeatedly, this was not heroic by any means, and he did not "generously rescue" us as he claimed. This incident was so traumatic on so many levels, how our ex-partners/abusers were basically fighting over which one of them should get to abuse my wife and I. When my wife and I set boundaries on being spoken to and treated this way by both of our abusive exes, the violence only got worse, there was no way to try talk it out with them anymore. This is when my wife and I fled and completely cut contact with both of our abusive exes, seeking safety elsewhere.

Once we ceased all contact with our abusive exes, they were both making attempts to doxx us online, blame shift, attempted to employ DARVO manipulation tactics, stalking us and inciting additional violence from strangers against us by employing these methods. This has left us feeling isolated from community as we struggled to make ends meet, we haven't felt comfortable to reach out for help, not knowing who we can trust.

We are both childhood trauma survivors, survivors of human trafficking/sex trafficking, and were already suffering from C-PTSD before being abused by these ex-partners: our symptoms have only gotten worse, after having experienced so much violence in the past year - both as individuals and as a couple. Our exes understood our vulnerabilities because we once thought we could trust them, and they exploited us.

Because of everything we have been through thus far in our lives, we have to live very private lives, so reaching out like this online is honestly incredibly terrifying for us, we don't want any of our abusers, traffickers or trafficking recruiters to ever find us again. We can't share many details about our experiences with human trafficking, understandably, because our privacy and safety is paramount.

There have been multiple attempts that various people have made to traffick us throughout our lives; this took a beyond devastating toll on us and made us feel completely dehumanized. We never want to return to such instability ever again - the trafficking began in 2011 and 2013, respectively. For context, my wife and I have been friends since elementary school, but we started dating in 2022, we have been through a lot to escape our hometown and come out as trans lesbians, and we're just so grateful to have made it out of the closet and then to be able to reunite as our truest, most authentic selves; but we would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge just how hard that was, with so many people trying to keep us under their control, and in the closet. It's disturbing to us, how heavily our community is targeted by sex traffickers, they even threatened our cat's life in order to get us to comply with their demands. We pushed back on their demands and narrowly escaped. What they did to us is so unspeakable, they humiliated us, abducted us with our own car (forced us to let them drive, and threatened to crash our car on purpose unless we met their demands), they used our kindness, our hardship and disabilities against us. They did this to us after knowing that we escaped our abusive ex-partners, and we are taking a huge leap of faith by sharing our stories today. We want to be clear that the sex traffickers weren't strangers to us, they were people that we actually knew pretty well. It feels like a miracle we are even here today, with our whereabouts unknown to them, this was very hard to achieve. We want it to stay this way.

It’s been really difficult for us to not blame ourselves for so much chaos happening all at once. It's hard not to have regrets for not cutting contact with all the aforementioned people sooner, but we didn't have the financial means to break contact immediately, and they also manipulated us severely, telling us they care about us while hurting us. The manipulation was so disorienting. When we are harassed and followed by strangers on the street, in grocery stores on a nearly daily basis, and then we were harassed by our roommates and supposed friends (traffickers), we thought it was our fault for a long time. They already saw our exhaustion, trying our best to survive an overwhelming volume of transmisogynistic lesbophobic violence as a couple, and they hurt us in similar ways too, while saying they were our friends. But, we left the minute we could recognize the abuse for what it really was. My wife and I felt trapped in what felt like an overall inescapable situation, but I am so proud of us for encouraging ourselves and each other to flee and rebuild our lives together, even when it felt impossible - we did escape!

⭐We are currently in a much safer apartment.⭐ We have sadly had to sell our car and some of our personal belongings in order to pay rent. Despite our best efforts, we continue to face immense challenges in maintaining stable housing and employment. We are so depleted, and we really want to be able to stay in this new apartment while we continue our job search.

The good news is, our legal name changes were approved by the courts, an LGBTQIA+ rights organization was able to help with this mine free of cost (my wife's name change was approved before losing her job, so she originally paid all the court filing fees and did hers DIY without a lawyer) - but now we also need financial assistance to update our legal documents, including:

This is part of the reason we are facing employment discrimination; prospective employers have been treating us like we are suspicious just because we are both trans with outdated documents, it just really doesn’t feel safe as job seekers. We are hoping to leave our deadnames in the past where they belong.

Our beloved cat, Marceline, really needs a vet visit, especially after enduring months in that mold-infested apartment. We are all having difficulties with breathing since, and although my wife’s and my insurances cover our doctor's visits, we don't have the funds right now to get Marceline the care she needs. Ensuring Marceline's health and well-being is our utmost priority.

We are reaching out for your help during this incredibly difficult time. It's been really hard for us to reach out, we've been really nervous to disclose what we've been going through. There is much more to these stories that we have left out, because it is very disturbing and painful to relive and some details needed to be left out for privacy reasons, but we hope we have shared enough to illustrate what we have been facing. Any amount you can give would be greatly appreciated and will go towards:

Thank you so much for taking the time to read our story and for any support you can provide. Your generosity will help us rebuild our lives and reach the stability and security we so desperately need. We are still hopeful for a peaceful life together, so anything you can give means so much to us.

With gratitude,

Hazel