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.

[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.