Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc.; Thursday, September 10, 1998
Jim Loney
The study of Miami male transsexuals found they were often rejected by their families at an early age and had few ways to make a living other than street prostitution, in the course of which they were often subjected to robbery and rape.
Transsexual prostitutes were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, at a much higher rate than female prostitutes, in part because they indulged in high-risk sex practices to satisfy customers, said James Bay, a UF graduate anthropologist who wrote the study.
"Given the social climate, there are really just few things they can do. A businessperson has a hard time putting someone like this in front of their business," Bay told Reuters. "Their survival mechanism is to turn to sex for money."
Bay, who interviewed 48 male prostitutes between February and June 1997, said about 40 percent of them were infected with HIV, 69 percent with hepatitis B and 19 percent with syphilis.
"One particularly tragic result is that many of them have died," he said. "They've been infected with HIV and died."
Bay said few transsexuals were strong enough to challenge society's attitudes as did one Florida government employee who started his job as a man, then changed his name to Sabrina and began wearing dresses to work.
"Life's tough enough already. Someone must be very, very brave to go through what Sabrina Robb did," he said.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration decided in September 1997 that Robb's clothing was "neat, clean and appropriate for the office" and that it would not force him to wear men's clothes.
Bay said his study showed that "there is a wide expression of sexuality and gender and excluding people who vary from the norm may not always be in our interest."
Many of the participants in the study had had a strong sense of wanting to be female since early in life and feminized their appearance by dressing as women, taking hormones and injecting silicon into their breasts and hips, although none had undergone sex change operations, he said.
Bay was coordinating an HIV research project for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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