Today is the launch day for a project I’ve been working on for a while – an anthology with trans and intersex sex workers! Transactional Intercourse will be an anthology of trans and intersex sex workers’ writing, serving as a snapshot of our experiences in our own words. It will include essays and personal narratives from 30 sex workers who either sell sex directly to clients or make porn, across the sex and gender spectrum.
To make this project possible, it’s going to need support and funding. I’m a firm believer that sex workers should be compensated for our work, particularly when we’re divulging details of our stories that we’re likely to be stigmatized for, and paying 30 contributors and even more interviewees is a big undertaking. For that reason, fundraising is taking place on Kickstarter to make this book into a reality. You can pre-order yourself a copy now to enable it to be made – we can’t afford to create it without you!
The Kickstarter page contains a lot more information, from what you can expect to see in the book to who will contribute to a breakdown of the costs, but if you’d like a little taster then you can see some snippets from the trans and/or intersex sex workers surveyed in the early stages:
“i slept on the sidewalk or under bridges. i needed to eat. i felt like Elle Fucking Fanning in The Neon Demon, when she gives her speech about how beauty sells and people pay to look at her but that it’s all she has to offer anyone. i needed to do it to survive. it wasn’t about “connecting with human sexuality” or “liberating my sex positive self” or whatever other weird bullshit people tout to feel better. im an unemployable herm. i could get food for playing fetish for people on occasion, if i made sure to very carefully groom myself to be as conforming as possible – because me trying desperately to conform to high fem while having ambiguous genitalia was the only way anyone was ever attracted to me, in or out of sex work. this wasn’t a libratory choice this was survival. — if you never freshed up at the YMCA before taking a client, i don’t care about what you think of All Sex Work. it’s important to bring all voices to the table, but the second SWers who felt exploited/trapped/harmed by their work show up, everyone starts screaming and flipping out. we need decriminalization and destigmatization so that EVERYONE is safer & that includes people like me even if my version of sex work wasn’t #pussypower.”
“I originally began sex work at 18, pre-transition playing the part of a young enthusiastic girl. I knew I was trans, but it was easy to sidestep at the time. There were a few years between beginning testosterone, and it really being difficult to hide where I could still glam it up and play the part, though eventually it was game over after top surgery. —- There was a phase early on where I could still pass as a woman for sex work, where my day to day presentation was significantly more masculine. Baggy clothes, chest binding, short haircuts, even the occasional masculine contouring. These days my presentation is much more effeminate, with tighter clothing, makeup, accessories, even down the the lingerie I seek out. There are two arguments that could be made here, one being that as I’ve gotten older, more comfortable with my body (lack of dysphoria), I’ve become indifferent to gendered expectations of presentation and found joy in effeminate beauty. Then there’s the other argument which I had never put together until this moment, which may be that as I became undesirable or unable to play the part of a woman and all the glam, there might be a part of me that started seeking out in my general presentation day to day ways to feel and experience that desirability, the dressing up, the playfulness, the femininity that I was previously leaning into with sex work.”
If reading any of this piqued your interest, please consider sharing this project with your friends and on your social media, either by linking directly to the Kickstarter or to this post! Getting a book like this made and into people’s hands is an uphill battle but I think it’s one that’s very important to pursue, particularly because of how the voices of trans and intersex sex workers are so often overlooked.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 