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.
Tag Archives: LGBT
We’ll Make a Video Game with Dragons… and Hookers!
I go through phases with what kind of media I like to consume the most, and video games are one thing I come back to a lot. I’ve been playing games and coming across sex workers in them since long before I became a sex worker myself. Some of the examples that might first come to mind would be games like GTA or The Witcher. For me, the first time I remember playing a game that had a brothel in it was with the Dragon Age franchise.
Frequently Forgotten Top Surgery Tips and Mastectomy Myth-Busting
When planning for top surgery, it can be really daunting. Any kind of surgery is a scary prospect and no matter how many videos you watch or how many people you talk to, you’re never going to be able to perfectly prepare for everything that might happen.
Pansexual Prostitute Panic
Any attraction to men is imagined to override other elements of a bisexual and/or pansexual person’s identity. For queer people selling sex, a skew in the ratio of the genders of their sex partners is likely to develop very quickly, because most sex buyers are men.
Why “Feminist” Anti-Trans Advocates Also Hate Sex Workers
The connection between certain anti-trans ideas and negative views of sex workers is not necessarily clear to people who don’t intimately understand the rhetoric used against each group. Why would having an issue with trans people make someone hate sex workers too? Why would being disgusted by prostitutes make someone hate trans people? For manyContinue reading “Why “Feminist” Anti-Trans Advocates Also Hate Sex Workers”
Transmasculine Guide to Sex Work
If you’re a trans man or transmasculine non-binary person and a sex worker (or want to be a sex worker) then most resources aren’t going to be built with you in mind. The few resources that make an effort to be inclusive will have you as an afterthought and only minimal amounts of advice willContinue reading “Transmasculine Guide to Sex Work”
Hating Men and Hating Sex Buyers
I hear “I hate men” fairly frequently, within certain feminist communities. I once said it often. To be completely honest, I think what opened my eyes to how hating men is useless bigotry was actually selling sex.
Lesbian Hookers
A lot of people struggle to get their head around the idea of a lesbian having sex with men for money. Sex workers are often either viewed as victims forced into the sex trade (“prostituted women”) or they are seen as sexual deviants choosing to profit from seducing men. The idea of a lesbian whoContinue reading “Lesbian Hookers”
The Fear of Being Found Out
One of the things that’s hard to explain about the fear of being found out to be a sex worker is why it’s so all-encompassing and terrifying when selling sex is already so dangerous in the first place. Why are we more scared of people finding out that we sell sex than we are of doing it?
The Shame of Discussing Childhood Abuse for Queer People and Sex Workers
One pervasive piece of rhetoric that is used as propaganda against queer people and sex workers alike is that our lifestyles are what they are because we were abused as children. People will argue that gay men were turned gay because they were molested by a man when they were a child, or that lesbiansContinue reading “The Shame of Discussing Childhood Abuse for Queer People and Sex Workers”
Jack Talks About Sex Work 