The Mutual Aid Fund Raising Money to Buy Trans People Snacks

Tuck Woodstock doesn’t want to be perceived today, thank you very much. 

31 March is International Trans Day of Visibility. It’s usually a day to celebrate trans and non-binary people and to raise awareness of the discrimination faced by our community. But many trans people, including Woodstock, feel like we’re visible enough right now. “Trans people being hyper-visible is actively harming us,” they tell VICE, “because when you are visible but you are not protected, you are in danger.”

Woodstock is a journalist, an educator, and host of the T4T podcast Gender Reveal. Trans Day of Having a Nice Snack is one of the mutual aid projects they run alongside the podcast. In the last two years Woodstock has organised almost $50,000 to be sent to trans people around the word for snacks and basic necessities.

This year, they’re focussing on sending mutual aid to trans people living in the US states most impacted by anti-trans legislation. Despite all the work that goes into organising Trans Day of Having A Nice Snack – and just being a public trans person on Trans Day of Visibility – Woodstock took a break from his colour coded spreadsheets to talk to me. Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and length. 

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VICE: Can you tell me how Trans Day of Having a Nice Snack first came into being? 
Tuck Woodstock: Absolutely. In 2021 a few friends and I were talking on Twitter about how when trans people see Trans Day of Visibility coming up on the calendar, instead of feeling excited for this holiday that’s ostensibly about us, we just feel exhausted. As an alternative, my friend Lilith tweeted as a joke [that we should celebrate] Trans Day of Staying In and Having A Nice Snack.  

I saw that tweet and I love to create more work for myself, so I thought it would be incredible if we spent Trans Day of Visibility sending Venmo payments to trans people so that they could buy themselves a nice snack and have at least one nice thing on this day that is supposed to be nice for us, but so often isn’t. 

Can you talk practically about the logistics behind Trans Day of Snack?
People from all over the world send us money via Venmo, Cash App or PayPal, and then I enter every single one of those payments into a Google spreadsheet so I know how much money we have. And then we have participants filling out a Google form to request funds. They can either request money to have a nice snack, or they can apply for additional funds if they’re having a difficult time paying for basic necessities like food, housing, or medication.

Then myself and a team of volunteers get to work just sending Venmo payments to the folks who have filled out this form. We just go down the list and see, okay, this person wants a snack, here’s 20 bucks. This person needs money to pay their rent this month, here’s a hundred bucks. 

We also encourage everyone to buy each other snacks, which is a huge part of this whole thing. We will send money for snacks, but in an ideal world, other people are also buying each other snacks as well. We don’t need every snack today to go through us! 

You definitely have a lot of trans people buying other trans people snacks, but am I right that you really encourage cis people to donate money too?
There’s this adage that I think many people of different marginalized groups are familiar with, where we say we’re constantly just passing the same $20 around in a circle. And one of my direct goals with Trans Day of Snack is to at least be passing around like, $200 instead of $20. So one of our big goals is to get money from non-trans people and put it into this pool of money for trans people. 

Is it important that you’re doing something for Trans Day of Visibility that doesn’t put the emphasis on trans people to explain our gender and justify our existance – especially this year, when it feels like our rights are really under attack?
When Trans Day of Visibility was created in 2009, it was a completely different moment. Despite trans people very much existing at that time and having community, most non-trans people didn’t know very much about trans people. And because of that, we did not see this onslaught of anti-trans legislation and coordinated anti-trans sentiment. 

All of these discussions that we’re seeing about whether trans kids should be allowed to play sports or use the restroom or access healthcare or live with their parents or exist or transition. This is all coming from the increased visibility of trans people.

That’s not to say that we have entirely surpassed the need for Trans Day of Visibility. I would never wish that trans people were less visible because I love to see us out in the world. But at the same time, we can’t just have visibility. We need to have, for example, human rights. And personally, I love to not be perceived, so I will be staying in and having a nice snack.

Are there any Trans Day of Snack snacks that are particularly memorable?
Every year we ask people on the form what their favourite snacks are, and one of the most fun parts of the day is when you’re Venmo-ing people, you get to look at their favourite snack. It’s such a fun way of connecting with strangers because we’ve sent out hundreds and hundred of snack money, and there’s very little overlap. It turns out that there are many snacks! 

It really is such a fun, joyful moment. And I know our volunteers in the past have said that it was a real bright spot in their week to have these little micro-interactions with people where they were just bonding over snacks. I think that is such a nicer way to connect with each other than to only ever be talking about people who want us dead, you know? Instead, you’re like, oh, that’s so cool, I also put my Thin Mints in the freezer.

Finally, what is your favourite snack?
I don’t know my objective favourite snack, but every year for Trans Day of Snack I get a matcha boba with oat milk.