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Trans folk do not set out to become sex workers
If you read any history of the 19th century and the rise of city-based capitalism, an interesting aspect of women’s lives starts to peek through the mists, namely, that those women who either were born into or fell into destitution often ended up doing some form of sex work to survive. Some of those women used sex as a means of advancing up through society, gaining a modicum of power while their looks and bodies held out. The tragedy was that as society began to restrict sex work, often in the name of morality, those women whose only avenue of revenue was to sell sex found themselves ever more excluded. Trans girls and women who find themselves marginalised from the wider capitalist ecosystem often find themselves in a similar predicament, and it is worth exploring this, as most of the time trans folk do not set out at the beginning of their transition to do sex work.
Having spend a decade and a half on Reddit and over twenty years on various forms of social media I find it easy to spot the trans girls who are likely to have some form of sex work attached to their accounts. Some are blatant, literally posting sex vids and pics of themselves in their feeds, others are more cautious, posting a cute pic which draws you in, then you see the link to an OnlyFans account or other adult content. Parse through their timelines and a similar narrative emerges, though often…
