Media Reporting and Reference Guide on LGBT Issues

“Trans people (want <strong>and</strong>/
or are able to) work only
as sex workers”.
It is true that many transgender people are sex workers.
But this is a choice they are often forced to make because
of discrimination <strong>and</strong> harassment against them in the
employment sector.
Research <strong>and</strong> available data on the engagement of trans
people in sex work are very limited, with research focusing
mostly on cisgender female street-based sex workers.
According to TGEU, “The proportion of trans people among
sex workers is context-specific. According to the “TvT Survey on
the Social Experiences of Trans <strong>and</strong> Gender-diverse People” 3 ,
ninety-nine per cent of survey respondents in Colombia, 76 per
cent in Turkey, 68 per cent in Venezuela stated that they earn
their living by doing sex work. TAMPEP’s mapping report from
2009 states that 6 percent of all sex workers in Europe are
transgender, while 7 percent are cisgender male. However,
these figures could be higher, as there are very few projects
working with cisgender male <strong>and</strong> trans sex workers.
(...)
Trans people engage in sex work for a variety of reasons, most
commonly because they live in a transphobic environment
<strong>and</strong> face structural barriers to access to education <strong>and</strong>
employment, <strong>and</strong> thus have limited economic <strong>and</strong> employment
opportunities. The lack of quick, transparent <strong>and</strong> accessible
legal gender recognition is a further driving factor. Bullying
in educational settings could, at least partly, be fended off by
identification documents with the name <strong>and</strong> gender matching
gender identity or expression. Without this recognition, school
drop-out rates, underperformance <strong>and</strong> suicidality remain a
reality for many trans people in education.
3
Available here: https://transrespect.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/TvT-PS-Vol9-2015.pdf
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