Editor’s Note: The name and personal information of the interviewee have been changed for her privacy.
Transitioning whilst doing sex work forces trans people to reckon with the stark differences across sex worker subcultures, based on the gender dynamics between us as sex workers and the clients we cater to. Either we work as women seeing predominantly straight men, as men seeing predominantly gay and bisexual men, or we struggle whilst seeking women as clients. Whichever we do, we absorb the norms within our subset of the community, and we’re simultaneously pushed out of it or treated worse because we are trans.
It can be jarring to go from being able to charge a higher rate under the guise of being a cis woman to a lower one as an openly trans man. Or to be expected to adhere to a much higher standard of personal grooming as a trans woman than whilst pretending to be the boy-next-door. Cis men often sell sex in ways that are less organized, like hustling over Grindr or attending notorious cruising venues and charging a fee. While cis women are expected to pay out for advertisements or may be encouraged to join agencies. Adjusting from one set of rules for sex work to another can make it feel like being a newbie all over again, and cis workers don’t usually know how to help us.
Trans women and men who come out as trans whilst doing sex work will be paid less than their cis counterparts, on average, and those who are non-binary can expect to be paid more or less depending on how they choose and are able to present themselves. Differences in our experiences emerge when we look at transmasculine and transfeminine people and their trajectories within sex work. Trans men move from the gender category earning more into the one earning less, and trans women can experience the reverse.
Differences in our experiences emerge when we look at transmasculine and transfeminine people and their trajectories within sex work.
As a transmasculine person, my client pool shrinks the further I medically transition. Anticipating the drop in earnings from coming out, I held off on starting testosterone and kept pretending to be a cis woman for brothel shifts even after I did. Though it was painful to hide parts of myself and put off elements of my transition, starting from a better paid position allowed me to build up some savings before I came out. In exchange for tolerating dysphoria, I could save money for top surgery or appointments with gender therapists.
In the hopes of understanding how transitioning whilst doing sex work is different for transfeminine people, I spoke to Marcia, a trans woman who has been selling sex since years before she transitioned. She told me, “It was a big adjustment. I put a tick in the female box and changed the listings I had, and my phone was ringing more. The calls didn’t stop coming. I knew my worth and put my prices up and up, and thank God the clients kept coming because I had to spend so much on make-up and clothes and ads.” Despite the improvement in pay, Marcia explained that it still wasn’t enough, “I was making pennies before, so I had no savings. Nothing. I still don’t earn as much as these girls who are cis, and paying for surgeries is thousands gone every time.”
Although Marcia began to earn more after coming out, she still suffers from a reduced client pool as a result of transphobia, just like I do. I began doing online and full service sex work with the ability to earn a lot and experienced a sharp drop in my earning potential, whilst she started from earning less and reached a middle ground. Ultimately, these differences have brought us to the same place. It has taken us similar lengths of time to reach our desired transition milestones with money we’ve earned through sex work.
We continue to have more similarities than differences, once we put aside the question of rates and client volume, in our shared experiences with balancing between the straight and gay worlds of sex work. All types of trans people will get the most traction by catering to multiple kinds of clients, some more respectful of our genders than others. So we’re likely to advertise ourselves on mainstream sites dominated by cis women as well as gay or trans websites on the side. When I asked Marcia which sites earn her the most, she answered, “A little from everywhere,” and that’s true for me too!
It has taken us similar lengths of time to reach our desired transition milestones with money we’ve earned through sex work.
To further unify us as trans sex workers, we have chaser clients to deal with. From the moment a sex worker comes out as trans, chasers come out of the woodwork to make all sorts of dysphoria-maximizing requests, and because we have less clients to choose from we are more likely to agree to film their custom videos or take an in-person booking with them. Chasers are an important part of our client ecosystem, regardless of how fetishizing their behaviour can be. Clients who begged me not to get top surgery –because they enjoyed how dysphoric my chest made me– were the ones who paid into it, and Marcia confessed to me, “I tell all my clients I will keep my dick for them, and I’m really getting vaginoplasty in 11 months. It’s my money now, bitch.” We seem to have a similar attitude towards trans fetishization; if we must endure it, we’ll monetize it to our benefit.
Since coming out, Marcia and I are also both lumped together into the broad “trans” category on porn sites and are often barred from working in venues that allow cis women only. We’ve each had to navigate whether we should destroy our pre-transition porn content or hike up the price on it to compensate for our discomfort.
While there are added difficulties to coming out and transitioning as a sex worker, there is camaraderie to be found with all other trans sex workers. The direction of our transition is far less important than the space we are crossing, which allows us to relate and commiserate. Thank goodness for that, because I need as many people as I can get who will understand when I complain about the transphobia I face – from clients and other sex workers alike!
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