Please Support Myka's Immediate Survival

I am a queer, trans, autistic Latina who is facing imminent housing and food insecurity. I need your help to keep a roof over my head as well as maintain my medical care.

What's Happening:

Employment

It was already difficult finding a job as a Trans woman prior to the current economic chaos. Trans women haven an unemployment rate of 18% and 40% of those who have found work are grossly underemployed.

As jobs become more and more scarce generally, and Transphobia has become more and more permissible, it has made me nearly unemployable. I haven't had steady work 19 months. What meager gig work I have managed to continue piece together since that time has effectively dried up.

Benefits

I have not had access to the social safety net — medicaid, unemployment, and food assistance for the last five years since my name change. Illinois has chosen in that department alone, not to recognize my legal name change cutting of access to those benefits as a result.

I have been working with a Trans community organization to redress this, but so far have been unsuccessful.

Gender Affirming Care

As I have not had access to Medicaid, I have had to rely on the beneficence of community medical programs. The clinic I have been receiving my gender affirming care from has been taking steps, since Trump took office, to scale back my care. When my HRT was cut back, not for any legitimate medical reason, I was callously told — as far as the physical and devastating metal health impact of being less of who I have become — "you'll adjust."

Despite scaling back my treatment they, with no warning, increased my co-pay by 438%, putting an near untenable and recurring financial burden I cannot currently afford.

What I Need:

I'm seeking $3,000 to address my immediate needs including:

• Making Rent/Utilities

• Food/Basic Goods

• Medication

My Story:

My journey has been marked by persistent challenges. In the ten years I have been out, I've weathered repeated professional and personal obstacles. Seven years ago, I lost my stable full-time job due to workplace discrimination. I was forced to emergency move to escape an abusive, transphobic roommate, which launched me into five years of housing insecurity.

Determined to build a sustainable future, I went back to school and studied web development. Despite my qualifications, I found it increasingly difficult to break into the tech industry.

It is a truth that is part of my own story, but one I learned through my research I spearheaded into trans workplace experiences was systemic as well. The only trans professionals who successfully secured full-time employment were those who had already established their careers before transitioning.

Despite learning this I continued to try and break through. Surviving from a pieced together an income earned through dog walking, day labor gigs, and whatever freelance development gigs I could fight to secure for experience.

A breakthrough came when I joined a queer-owned marketing company. As a full-time freelancer for them, I worked my way up to lead developer and project manager, finally achieving a semblance of stable housing. But in 2022, everything changed when the company was sold to a new owner who demanded I "not be trans in the workplace." When I chose to live authentically, my work hours were drastically cut from near-full-time to just a few hours a month.

Since then, I've been cobbling together gig work — from pet care, house painting, home improvement, landscaping, to copy editing — while continuously searching for stable employment in any field matching my lifetime of acquired skills. The work has grown scarcer, and barriers from increasing transphobia have made continued housing security increasingly precarious.

This has been, all the while, personally living through the traumas, large and small, that make up the unending journey of resilience that is a trans person's life. From microaggressions and the harsher slurs, to the systemic workplace, medical, and legislative discrimination which the new administration has only promised nothing less than making our very existence a crime. As well as the daily vigilance to avoid the outright verbal and physical assaults that I regularly experience from merely existing in public.

Despite my personal struggle, I have remained committed to social movement work supporting all marginalized peoples. I have has spent decades fighting for survival, justice, and community empowerment. My advocacy focuses on creating systemic change, amplifying voices that are often silenced, and building collective power for those facing intersectional oppression.

Your Support Means:

• Immediate housing and food security

• Maintain lifesaving gender affirming care

• Continued community advocacy

I've never stopped fighting — for myself, for my community, for a more just world. With your help, I can keep pushing forward, and continue to find work stability while fighting for solidarity and hope.

Every contribution is an investment in collective liberation.

Thank you for seeing me, hearing me, and standing with me.