“Nothing Feels Better than Getting Paid”: Sex Working Trans Latinas’ Meanings and Uses of Money

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research with transgender Latinas in Chicago, this article answers Susana Narotzky and Niko Besnier's (2014) invitation to think “economy otherwise.” I contend that in order to think “economy otherwise” we must think it queerly, and attend to feminist ways money animates possibilities beyond racist-cisgenderism. I bring together economic anthropology, feminist anthropology, and queer of color critique to queer money, specifically money earned from sexual labor performed by transgender Latinas. An ethnographic examination of trans Latina sex workers’ lives reveals that money accessed through sexual labor is assigned a number of queer and contested meanings. Its use is based in feminist ethics that eschew dominant economic logics in favor of building relations of care. It enables the creation of transgender bodies, and the development of queer networks of care with biological and chosen kin, in the U.S. and beyond. Trans Latinas, then, use money from sex work to support trans Latina ways of being that exceed the racist-cisgenderism. Sometimes, however, their uses of money reinforce racist-cisgenderism. I argue that the women's fraught uses of money reveal the complex intersections that sustain racist-cisgenderism, and how they are experienced and negotiated in people's everyday lives.