Passions

[Butterfly]

Passions
By Dyssonance
12 September, 2010


http://www.dyssonance.com/?p=10443


Here's a fact of life: most trans people are involved in sex work at one point or another.  Here's another fact: sex work is often somewhat validating to many trans people — it is perceived as recognition of one's self, and enables exploration and release of things.  It gives them a sense of hope and possibility because the general story in the trans world is that it is really hard to find a partner with whom to share one's life, and sex working allows one to make money.

Often damn good money.

The importance of passing — of being taken for something you are not — comes from the sex industry.  The "daylight test", an element of that, comes from the sex work industry.  Stonewall was an uprising of sex workers — some trans of different sorts, some cis of various orientations.  They were joined by others who were dealing is issues of poverty and classism.