Trans identity and sex work as a profession are an inseparable part of the “unrecognized” labor market in which people with a different identity work in a different profession, under different conditions.

Despite the significant advances in visibility and the ability to speak openly about our identity and profession, the transgender and sex worker community still face significant structural social exclusion. When they become visible to society, transgender women are particularly susceptible to pervasive transphobia in the social sphere and face devastating discrimination.

We often ask ourselves the question why transgender women very often or mostly end up in the sex industry? Is it a choice, is it a passion, is it a compulsion? In fact, transgender women have long and unbreakable ties to the sex worker community and have been the foundation of many movements to fight for the rights of this community.

Many young transgender women, due to their gender identity and gender expression, are ostracized from their homes by their loved ones. Others, on the other hand, aware of the shame that the family will suffer due to the dominant conservative culture regarding diversity, decide of their own free will to leave home. Thus, in the presence of ridicule and discrimination in the mainstream labor market, and in the absence of formal education and adequate resources to start an independent life that would imply freedom in the expression of their identity, sex work represents the first or last choice of profession which is straightforward; it does not require professional qualifications, but it does require coping skills.

Hence, due to widespread dual stigmatization and oppression, transgender women who are sex workers are the most vulnerable women in sex work in almost all countries. Sex work is a sector that carries a high risk, and women workers in the sector, which is outlawed, directly suffer the consequences of the hatred towards “whores”. In Macedonia, however, being a transgender woman, a Roma sex worker, means triple oppression. You are oppressed because you behave differently or promote an identity different from the one you were born with, you are oppressed because you have chosen how to earn a living, and you are oppressed because of your skin color or ethnicity.

On the other hand, defying double stigmatization, systemic oppression and violence, many transgender women, far from home, selling sexual services in exchange for goods or money, find satisfaction in the newfound freedom. They earn enough to pay for their housing, for higher education, to improve their language and spoken interaction skills, to start a community, to provide themselves with hormone therapy, or to bear the burden of possible gender confirmation surgery, or other possible aesthetic procedures. Some of them will return home. But many will remain in the industry, independent and on their own, because, contrary to popular opinion, sex work also offers a career.

Although to a lesser degree or number, some of them will abandon sex work, but they will never give up the fight for rights in sex work. Probably, through civic engagement, they will dedicate themselves to solving the problems they have been living with. They will offer systemic solutions, create health policies, participate in creating public opinion and represent the rights of their communities promoting a positive perception in the public discourse, thereby improving the condition and lives of all sex workers.

Author: Borche Bozhinov

The text is part of Tranzine – A magazine about the history, identities and experiences of transgender people. You can download the magazine here.