'Tangerine'
I just saw Tangerine, the new Sean Baker film. Its plot concerns the lives of transgender sex workers at the Hollywood corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue. It takes place on Christmas Eve. Although not quite the proverbial perfect holiday tonic, it’s still a charming and smart portrayal of that subset of humanity and their emotional ties. In its way, it distills very disparate lives into the spirit of the season. However, it doesn’t quite portray the street reality as we know it.
Milwaukee has its own bleaker parts of town where trans sex workers ply their trade. In fact, the local daily grind is similar to the film’s, just without the palm trees and the glare of the endless Los Angeles summer. Like real life, the film also portrays transactions-turned-altercations. They inevitably end peacefully. One even involves jovial police, who happily intervene, and, “because it’s Christmas,” let both the john and the prostitute off the hook. Here, in May 2010, a dispute over $20 at the corner of 27th Street and North Avenue ended in the murder of a transgender sex worker.
Beyond the streets, social media and online dating sites provide other venues for sex trade shopping. When exchanging chat banter, seemingly typical users cut to the chase, asking “Are you generous?” or casually mentioning their overdue cell phone bill or rent. Prospective clients respond accordingly. Last summer, the feds busted a New York City-based international website for male prostitutes. It was ostensibly a crack down on sexual exploitation, trafficking and tax evasion. In an interview, one young man on the roster defended the system, explaining that he enjoyed his work, was good at it and was putting himself through college with the income. It sounded respectable, like good ol’ American entrepreneurship. When I lived in Germany I knew an enterprising individual who invested in the stock market. But there, prostitution is legal and regulated. Sex workers receive scheduled STD testing and pay taxes. That would work here but certainly won’t happen, not in Milwaukee anyway.
Here, the business is more a matter of survival. Milwaukee’s 29% poverty rate, African American unemployment at 17.2% and nearly 4,000 Milwaukee Public School students identifying as homeless, make the income opportunity hard to ignore.
Meanwhile, Pathfinders’ Street Beat program and the Walker’s Point Youth and Family Center are reaching out to help sex workers get off the street. But, although Diverse and Resilient’s SHEBA (Sisters Helping Each Other Battle AIDS) serves transgender women of color, offering health and social support, no LGBT agency service specifically targets sex workers.
So, are you generous? With all that tax money we’re saving thanks to Gov. Scott “The Grinch” Walker (he just cut food stamps for the poor to save us even more!), perhaps that end-of-year giving check could go to programs that develop skills and encourage legitimate employment alternatives for our less fortunate LGBT brothers and sisters. Supporting them might keep kids off the street to begin with. After all, our community is like that tangerine of the film title—we’re all segments in one sweet and sour world.
