SWARM and THORN recently collaborated on putting together a zine, entitled Nuance Doesn’t Pay the Bills – a work of poetry, prose, and essays from trans sex workers! I was lucky enough to be asked to write a piece for it, The Price of Cisification which I’ve included below. It’s all about the costs associated with pretending to be cis while selling sex as a trans person.
If you asked me to put a price on my detransition, I’d tell you I wouldn’t do it for any amount of money. It would be the height of hypocrisy, because I already did delay my transition for financial reasons. When I was a cis for pay hooker, I put a price on the repression of aspects of my gender to sell my services to clients.
A client would flash cash and I’d give him the full cissexual fantasy. All tits and lipstick and long-haired wigs. A light dusting of fur on my legs that I could easily shave away, a soft jawline and weight carried in the hips, all the result of my choice to put off taking testosterone until I had saved enough money.
I thought about my earnings as payment for hours of my time, failing to factor in the 24/7 forced cisification of my body. Unbeknownst to me, my rate began to serve as subpar compensation for being forced to play the part of a woman. I had to live my life so that I was prepared to be a cis woman during sex with less than an hour’s notice, without the on-call pay to make up for it. I was afraid to so much as cut my hair, lest I scare off some straight men.
In the few hours left between taking selfies and filming myself and being ready for clients and sleep, I was too exhausted to dress in the ways that made me feel masculine and comfortable. Successful transmasculine sex workers became a fascination of mine, serving as wish fulfilment as I watched them whilst all dolled up, and I longed to attain enough success that I could afford to come out.
The material costs associated with medical transition were more quantifiable than the emotional ones I experienced selling sex as a woman. I can add the cost of appointments with endocrinologists and gender therapists to the fee for top surgery, to obtain a figure that represents the price of my transition; I cannot tell you how much money it took to keep me from it, for the benefit of cis men who had no way to know what performance they were really paying me for.
I ask myself how much money would feel like enough, for the misery I felt during the months that my life stagnated while I fucked straight cis male client after client. I ask myself the second question, which I find harder to answer honestly, of how little money I would have done it for.
How much was my additional dysphoria worth, to me? A surcharge for every menstrual cycle I endured, shoving a sponge inside myself so I could keep seeing clients through it. A surcharge for every time I caught
my reflection on my way to a booking and saw a woman. A surcharge for each day I woke up with the same high-pitched voice, because I knew that testosterone would change my anatomy in other ways that clients would notice. How many surcharges would make up for the suffocating feeling of walking around in this working girl skinsuit?
Resentment for every client who values sex workers less when we are gender non-conforming bubbles up inside me, as I consider what happened when I finally began to make compromises. Shaving my head lost me almost every regular, despite my willingness to wear wigs that appeared similar to my previous hair. Trying out t-shirts and jeans for bookings earned me odd looks and reviews on punter forums that called me “tomboyish” and lazy with my appearance. As soon as the word trans appeared on my profile, most of my inquiries evaporated and I had to rebuild my client base almost from scratch.
Eventually, I made the choice to transition despite the financial and social strife I knew would come with it, and to accept the regret I would always feel over not holding on just a little longer and saving a little more money. Surpassing the costs to afford hormones didn’t make me feel like I had permission to be an openly trans sex worker, but a change in perspective. There would never have been a point where I felt like I could stop denying myself, if finances were always the priority, and I had to believe I could still find enough clients to pay my rent.
I wonder how many people are stuck being cis for pay, like I was. At a minimum, I want them to be better paid. I meet closeted trans sex workers who I’m sure would be taking hormones or seeking surgery, if not for how scared they are of being unable to afford basic necessities if they transition, and I feel an echo of that pre-transition ache. I want every single trans sex worker who has yet to transition to become self-aware and determine what the delay of their transition is truly worth.
Staying in the closet can’t be a freebie that clients get with our services. We need to charge them for it.
The price of cisification just went up.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 