On September 15 I'm having facial feminization surgery. The date moved up by three weeks with twelve days' notice, and I can absorb that. What I can't absorb is that the money I had saved for the weeks afterward is gone.
Earlier this year someone took my identity and emptied the account I had been building toward this. I caught the fraudulent charges and reported them. My bank credited the money back while it investigated, then closed the investigation, ruled it couldn't determine the charges weren't mine, and reversed the credit. I got to watch the same savings disappear twice.
I covered September's rent by going to my longest-standing clients and asking directly. That worked, and it worked exactly once. It covered rent and nothing else.
Here is the part that is harder to say plainly. I do survival sex work, and I have since February 2024, when I was terminated from a corporate position after requesting extended leave for a gender-affirming procedure. I have applied to more than 150 jobs in my field since then. I spent over a decade in television, advertising and marketing, and as roles for trans people in both industries disappeared, this is the work that kept me housed.
That work requires my face, my voice, and my presence. Facial feminization surgery takes all three away for four weeks, and my platforms lose their footing for longer than that.
So the recovery is not a stretch of reduced income. It is a stretch of no income, and it begins the morning of the 15th.
I'm asking for $4,200. That covers:
$1,867.50 for October rent, which comes due two weeks into a month I can't earn in
$855 for one month of bills, health insurance and debt payments
$600 for post-operative medications, supplies, and the follow-up visits
$400 for getting to and from Pasadena for those visits, which I can't drive myself to, and for food through the weeks I can only manage soft food
$477.50 as a buffer for the ramp back, because the platforms I work on rank you by how recently you were active, and four weeks dark costs more than four weeks
I'm not asking anyone to fund the surgery. That part is paid for. I'm asking for the weeks on the other side of it, when the only thing I have to sell is the thing I'm having operated on.
That is what the four weeks are for. I only need to get through the month that follows.
If you can give, thank you. If you can't, sharing this does the same work. It genuinely does.
I'll keep this updated as it moves. Thank you for reading it.
— Amo Elizabeth
