Of course, not all transgender asylum seekers are hookers. In fact, some trans Latinas say that the ones who claim they can't find other jobs are just making excuses. One woman interviewed for this story worked in a cheese factory until she applied for asylum, and has moved to Los Angeles, where she works with kids in an after-school program. Others have found jobs as line cooks or field hands. Claudia Lesly Quijano, who says she saw more than her share of hell in Mexico, cuts hair in the Mission for a mostly Spanish-speaking clientele: "I think you put the limitations on yourself," she says. "When you have the conviction and mentality to grow, it doesn't matter if you don't speak English."
Judith Marty, meanwhile, says 85 percent of her clients who did sex work will leave it behind when they become legal: "You get to see people just bloom." Still, some continue to moonlight as hookers even after finding work as elder caretakers, hairstylists, nonprofit caseworkers, or student mentors. Jannet, who advertises her sexual services on Craigs-list, says she had no choice but to return to sex work after the Mission salon where she worked closed; a hand injury prevents her from holding scissors to cut clients' hair at her home. She says she's applied to work at nonprofits to help transgender people, and sat at a local union hall waiting for a job, with no luck. "I don't do this [hooking] because I want to," she says. "I do it out of necessity.
Jared Gruenwald
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Jared Gruenwald
Saved from deportation by her transgender identity, Brenda Genao makes money stripping and hooking.
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"I can't complain," she adds. "This country has given me respect. I'm very lucky the government helped me, but jobs, there are some, but I can't get them."
While asylum may guarantee transgender Latinas protection from violence back home, it's no guarantee of the good life here, either. Five years after getting her withholding-of-removal status, Brenda Genao says she weaned herself off crack years ago, but she still uses drugs. She returned to San Francisco a few months ago after being arrested in Las Vegas for driving a stolen car, and now strips two nights a week at Divas.
Genao says she likes stripping (she enjoys it when the men tuck money in her panties, a gesture she interprets as recognition of her beauty), but she can't say the same for the sex work, which she does in the cramped SRO hotel room she shares with her miniature poodle, Brandon Joshua, named after herself and her first lover. "Sex is great when you enjoy it," she says. "It's more great when you're in love. But when you have to do something you don't like, it's degrading, nasty, gross. ... You know when you drink those drinks to clean your stomach? It's like that. It's very irritating." She insists she'd love another job — she thinks she'd be good as a teacher's assistant — but with her record, she doubts anyone would let her near children. " I'm in this routine. I'm like in a box, this life. It's the same thing every day."
Genao wants to make a change. "I can't sell my pussy forever," she says. So, earlier this month while posting her ad on Craigslist, she checked out another prospect: an online course to earn a GED. She'll have to do a whole lot more hustling to make the $1,000 payment for materials, but she figures it's a start.
