food access

CW: violence through food control; mention of body weight changes as a result of IPV

We, as a global collective, have recently witnessed (and are still witnessing) in real time what happens when people are barred from accessing food, via the humanitarian blockades in Palestine. Now, as a country, the US is about to witness something similar (at a different scale and a different context), as SNAP benefits are withheld from 42 million Americans.

Lack of access to resource is violence.

Intentionally cut off food supply chains are violence.

My wife and I are among the millions of Americans that will not receive needed benefits in November. Both Evelyn and myself have had the immense privilege of not experiencing food insecurity in childhood. As working class trans adults who live rurally, that is no longer the case.

Today is October 30th, and already with the help of friends we have recouped the amount we will not receive in SNAP this coming month.

I say all of this first because context matters. I say all of this first because by comparison, my access to food is greater now than when I lived on the farm.

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The bus I slept on while living on the farm could have easily met all of my food needs. I built out and lived on a school bus prior to meeting M, and was perfectly content using a single propane burner to feed myself.

The farmhouse kitchen, while cluttered, dirty, and never fully functional, also could have met my needs with its two (sometimes three) working burners, and running water.

And yet, each time I wanted to eat, I would either have to leave the farm, or walk the ten steps from the bus to M’s tiny house. This wasn’t because the only working oven was in that space, though that would make more sense than the truth.

Much like the question

if they hated me so much, why did M need the bus to move across the farm so that I would sleep 50 feet away from them, separated only by a wall and a windshield?

I also ask the question

why did M want to share meals if it always ended so poorly?

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The grocery store stressed M out. They told me this early in our relationship, and I offered to be the point person for grocery runs.

After one particular grocery run, M rounded the corner to see me standing next to the bus with the grocery bags, sorting through them. I was pulling out a few items - hand fruit, a few granola bars, some cheese - to keep in the bus. I told them as much, when they questioned what I was doing.

This was an unacceptable betrayal to M. Food was only to be kept in their house, since the two of us split grocery costs.

So, even if I wanted a snack, I would have to leave the farm, or enter their space.

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I wasn’t granted free entry into M’s tiny house. That is more than fair in the way of it being their bedroom, but gets pretty murky given that it was also where food was stored (controlled). By the end of our relationship, M would ask me to come make us a meal in their space, and then tell me as I was actively cooking that I was violating them sexually by being in their space.

Often, whether we went out to eat, or I cooked for us at home, the meal ended before I could eat. Or, by the time I could eat, I was too disregulated to force anything down. With the constant onslaught of criticism and harassment, I often didn’t feel I deserved to eat - that I was a bad person, and I didn’t deserve to eat.

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Many cases of IPV involve food control. It is hard to say whether embodied reflections of restricted food access are a direct result of that control, as immense stress can also contribute to these changes. In my case, I lost so much weight that even my underwear would fall off of my body.

In the first week after leaving the farm, when I was staying with Court in Austin, the two of us went to a thrift store. “I’m just going to get one pair of jeans,” I said, “and I hope I grow out of them so fast.”

And I did. Thank god. I took photos in the mirror in Court’s guest bathroom so that I wouldn’t forget what it looked like when my ribs were popping out of my chest.

I have never been more hungry than when I lived on a farm “dedicated to community support through redistribution.”

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Forced hunger is violence. All people deserve to eat. Morality doesn’t dictate nutrition.