Transgender sex workers

Transgender sex workers are transgender people who work in the sex industry or perform sexual services in exchange for money or other forms of payment.

Quotes

• Despite the extreme ways in which their bodies are mythologized, fetishized and denigrated by our culture, trans sex workers, compared to other kinds of trans worker, enjoy the least solidarity and have the least political attention paid to the reality of their lives. This disparity only increases when the trans sex worker is also a migrant and a person of colour.
  • Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Allen Lane. 2021. ISBN 978-0-241-42314-1.  Chapter Four

• In a society that is both patriarchal and capitalist, men’s misogyny towards women sits comfortably alongside their desire to extract women’s sexual labour. This does not change because the woman is trans. In fact, given the political invisibility of most trans women, it may be intensified. To put it plainly, many of the men who purchase the services of trans sex workers will be the same men who argue for the oppression of all trans people and all sex workers. They will be the same men who preach hate and incite violence against them and the same men who, in some cases, personally use physical violence against them. It is no coincidence that trans sex workers are often at the forefront of LGBTQ+ community organizing and activism across the globe, particularly in countries where LGBTQ+ rights are opposed by the state. At times, the two collide.
  • Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Allen Lane. 2021. ISBN 978-0-241-42314-1.  Chapter Four

• Globally, trans sex workers make up 62 per cent of all trans murder victims, where the victim’s profession is known. [...] Trans sex workers around the world are often at most risk from the very same men to whom they sell their services. This is not some puzzling ‘hypocrisy’, but a horrifying and sometimes deadly reality. It should also be an urgent wake-up call for society and workers’ movements to better protect and support trans sex workers. Trans people’s increased likelihood of experiencing family rejection and homelessness, combined with substantial healthcare costs and a struggle to secure other forms of employment, means that many engage in the stigmatized work of selling sex. And, as we have already seen, trans sex workers experience unique and severe forms of vulnerability and violence. Therefore, the issue of sex-worker rights and safety must be at the heart of the trans liberation movement.
  • Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Allen Lane. 2021. ISBN 978-0-241-42314-1.  Chapter Four

• Above all, anti-prostitution feminism argues, men’s demand for the right to purchase sex should be condemned and criminalized. Given the extreme violence to which trans people, particularly trans women, who do sex work are subject worldwide, it seems tempting for trans politics to join with this condemnation of male violence and, consequently, with the condemnation of men who purchase sex. It is true that many sectors of the sex industry, from pornography to street sex work to managed brothels, rely on the exploitation of trans sex workers’ financial and social vulnerability by cisgender men for profit. Yet the converse argument – for pro-sex-worker trans politics – isn’t intended as a moral absolution of the client or unethical industry practices; it isn’t concerned with morality at all. Rather, it recognizes that trans sex workers exist in a society in which money is necessary for survival, and that sex work is one of a limited number of options available to the marginalized in this society – and so, regardless of any condemnation or criminalization of clients, trans sex workers will still need to sell sex. Accepting this reality turns the focus from ‘ending demand’ for sexual services, to harm-reduction for the worker. It is on this basis that full decriminalization of sex work in all its forms must be a central tenet of the movement for trans rights.
  • Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Allen Lane. 2021. ISBN 978-0-241-42314-1.  Chapter Four

• The murders of trans women sex workers are not rare. This is a recurring phenomenon and we regularly try to alert public opinion and the authorities to this violence. Unfortunately, as always, we find ourselves alone.
  • Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Allen Lane. 2021. ISBN 978-0-241-42314-1.  Chapter Four

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