Queer, Broke, and Done With Amazon: The $20.47 That Made Me Walk Away

It wasn’t just a transaction. It was a reckoning

Photo by on . Queer survival isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes, it’s a quiet desk, a sold item, and a moment to breathe.

This isn’t a coming-out story or a pride anthem — it’s a queer labor story. The $20.47 payout I finally received after two years wasn’t delayed because I’m trans, or poor, or autistic. It was delayed because my Amazon seller account needed updated information. But how I handled it — the silence, the delay, the belief that maybe I didn’t matter enough to push harder — that’s where my identity comes in. Being trans, broke, and neurodivergent means living in systems that quietly erase you unless you fight to be seen. And this time, the fight cost more than it was worth.

When a $20.47 Amazon payout finally hit my account after two years, it should’ve felt like a win. Instead, it felt like a warning — one that pushed me to rethink everything about where I publish, how I sell, and what I owe to systems that never built space for someone like me.

I sold a Blu-ray of Game of Thrones: Season 8 through Amazon’s marketplace — packed it myself, paid for shipping, and sent it out to the buyer. The payment never showed up. Not for two years.

But once I updated my seller info, the money appeared — no email, no alert, just there. That’s what made it worse: it was so stupidly simple…