runaway 'T-girls'

Even though great progress has been made over the past few decades in providing options for correcting TG and TS conditions, the possibilities for transition are mainly available to those who are socially, educationally and financially advantaged in some way.

In parallel with all the advances in medical technology, and in parallel with the tens of thousands of successful gender transitions, an incredible tragedy has unfolded in recent decades. Because of ignorance of gender conditions, thousands upon thousands of transgender and transsexual kids have been excommunicated by their families. Every year, many such kids are forced to run away from home or are literally "thrown away" onto the streets by their families. A high percentage of these kids are Hispanic or African-American, since those communities are even more hysterically homophobic than is the white community - and often mistakenly think that their trans kids are "flagrantly gay". Many trans kids, even some coming from middle-class families, are simply given one-way plane or bus tickets to Los Angeles or New York City and told to "never come home again".

Since these kids are not gay, they do not fit into and are not welcomed by the gay community. With little hope of obtaining proper ID's or getting normal employment in their target gender, they cannot even pay for counseling or basic health services, much less save enough money for a full gender transition. Most can only hope to obtain some emotional relief and body modification from estrogen therapy (buying hormones "on the street") and social transition, and then living life as so-called "trannies" or "she-males".

Many of these castaway and runaway kids end up in lives of prostitution, degradation and ever-present danger on the nighttime inner-city streets - in the same way that ostracized women who have no families or money or any means of employment have been treated for all of human history. The high visibility of these TG/TS prostitutes on inner city streets has given rise to the urban myth that all transgender and transsexual women are prostitutes. Their vulnerability has led to their often being the victims of harassment and hate crimes.

The idea of a "male" taking estrogen and then dressing as a woman and becoming a she-male prostitute seems like a descent into utter degradation to most people. Even many TG women, at least those who are employed and doing OK, look down their noses on the street girls - thinking that what those girls do is disgusting and that "they give all us TG women a bad name". However, if you try hard to visualize how the world looks through the eyes of the young unemployable TG/TS woman on the streets, you'll see that being a she-male prostitute isn't perceived by them as degradation at all.

For many young TG/TS girls, being able to seduce straight men into desiring them and paying for their sexual favors is a powerful affirmation of their attractiveness and femaleness and brings many psychic rewards. With the money they earn they can buy some nice clothes, buy more hormones, and make themselves even more attractive to men. It is not at all surprising that many street T-girls, having no proper ID's, unable to find normal employment, unable to find decent housing and unable to enter the usual straight dating scene, will often turn to prostitution. For more insight into this situation, see Kyle Scanlon's column on this topic. See also the recent Boston Globe article about transgender prostitution in Boston, to learn about why these young TG girls engage in prostitution, and the many health dangers they face as a result.