Transgender people, sex work and HIV

[lovingboth]

Someone recently gave a presentation to a semi-official body on transgendered people and sex work. Most are doing sex work to pay for gender reassignment surgery.

However she said that around 70-80% of mtf sex workers were HIV+ and gave several reasons for this, including being more vulnerable to taking more money to have (anal) sex without a condom.

She also opined that there was a very high rate of HIV infection in mtf people generally (much higher than the about 17% for gay men in London).

Now, it may just be the people I know, but this sounds extremely high to me. Had I been at the meeting, I'd have been asking 'where's the evidence for that?'

Not least because AIUI most of the surgeons who do gender reassignment won't take HIV+ patients.

Thoughts?

Comments

[uran.livejournal.com]

Wow, where the hell did those figures come from?
Every transgendered person I've met has been through sexwork, true, but that doesnt mean so many take it on - possibly the only people open about being transgendered are those who are also open to other sexworkers about being a sexworker.
And I'd love to know where the HIV+ figures came from - seventy or eighty percent is just insane! I want studies and research notes. I think she's full of poo.

[lovingboth]

Quite.

The HIV rate among male sex workers in London who attend the specialist clinic is about 1%. My work's clients rate is slightly higher than that, but is still less than 5%. And that's a bunch who've faced all sorts of very tough situations.

I wonder if some of it is her projecting her behaviour etc on to others - she's BTDT and may have picked it up too.

I'd have loved to have been at the meeting, not least as the minutes deliberately miss out on some of her even more controversial thoughts.

[a-musing-amazon.livejournal.com]

To be honest I've can't recall having ever met any UK transwoman who either admitted to having done sex work or who have said they were HIV positive. I can think of a few I knew through the net who had done/do sex work but they were american (and there was the girl who was featured on that fly-on-the-wall TV program, set around Kings-X), and only one of those was HIV positive - even in America not all srs surgeons will operate if you are HIV positive. I suspect the answere you'll get depends a lot on what your sampling frame is - and for this population there are just no good sampling frames.

[lovingboth]

I know rather more than that - and perhaps I should clarify that the 'most' refered to trans people who were doing sex work, as opposed to the general trans population. I'd be surprised if there were fewer than fifty trans sex workers in London, and I wouldn't be shocked if it were more than a hundred.

Ah, that's reminded me - she said that the UK trans population was about five thousand. Which seems somewhat low, but again it could be down to knowing quite a few through the bi community. I'm not quite sure what her definition was, but I think it wasn't just people who've had GRS.

(Was it the Paddington Green series you're thinking of?)

[a-musing-amazon.livejournal.com]

Can't comment on HIV rates amongst trans-people doing sex work (since I don't really know any). If your numbers are right then there seem a lot less proportionally here than there are in US metropolitan areas: there have been a number of studies of HIV rates in those groups which some ppl have then generalised to the t* population as a whole.

5000 post-ops is the figure 'officially' banded about as the number likely to be affected by the gov.t's proposed new legislation. I think there is some wish not to put the number too high, so I doubt if it bears too much detailed examination.

And, yes the TV program I was thinking of was Paddington Green.