When Aleisha turned 23, she started working in prostitution in Rio de Janeiro. Many of her friends were doing the same. She had started transitioning a year before. Her father had just passed away and her mother moved to another city. She needed money for her gender confirmation surgery and could not find another job.
After her transition Aleisha left for Europe. In Amsterdam she quickly and easily found work on De Wallen, the red light district. But not anymore. And when I get off work, I enjoy being on the couch with my dear little dogs. She is not afraid of her work herself. There are security guards and you can call the police, if you do end up in a difficult situation.
For trans women in sex work, De Wallen of Amsterdam is much safer than other workplaces in the world. Aleisha regularly undergoes health checkups at several specialized organisations in Amsterdam. The exact number of transgenders in Dutch prostitution is unknown. In this group was estimated to consist of around a thousand people. Of these thousand people several hundred are from Thailand and the remainder originates from Latin-America: mainly from Ecuador and to a lesser extent from Colombia and Brazil.
Many transgenders have experienced violence and homophobia in their countries of origin. This is also the case for the transgender people from my research group. Many of these women were seen as gay men because they were living in a male body and because their sexual orientation was focused on men.
They dealt with discrimination and rejection from their families due to their alleged homosexuality. The climate of relative tolerance in the Netherlands with regards to sexual orientation and transgenderness encouraged them to migrate in the hopes of building an independent life and further developing their sexual and gender identity.
