When Kristen Lovell moved to New York in the 1990s and began to transition, she was immediately fired from her job. Faced with poverty and scarce employment opportunities, she found her way to the Meatpacking District and a handful of blocks then known as “roams”, where queer and trans people engage in sex work and form a close-knit community built on survival and sisterhood. . .
That community is the subject of a surprising new documentary, walkDirected by Lovell and Zackary Drucker, both trans women, which premiered Wednesday night on HBO and Max. As a sex worker myself, I can confidently say that this is a movie I’ve never seen before, especially because of the directors’ willingness to let trans women show and tell their own stories on screen. In a series of interviews with people she knows from the trip, Lovell kindly takes us into her world to meet friends, sisters and contemporaries who are trans sex workers and solidify their place in queer history.
Their stories are both enlightening and harrowing, offering viewers a rare glimpse into the lives of those cast aside. Egyptt, one of the sex worker brothers Lovell told about their experiences, says the following about the trip: “Some of them choose sex work because they have no other choice. At the time, most of us had no choice because jobs were not available to us.” “People weren’t hiring people who looked like me,” explains Lady P, another trans woman from the march. Ceyenne, a black trans woman and prominent activist and founder of the nonprofit GLITS, described how she left home and fled to New York without a fixed place to stay, sleeping on trains when necessary. “I was safer on the street than I was in that house,” She says of her childhood home.
But in the Meatpacking District he and others found a home in the 70s, 80s and 90s where BIPOK, LGBTQIA people and sex workers could be their true selves. As Ivy, who owns a neighborhood gallery, recounts the old days, “The Meatpacking District was just S&M bars, meatpackers and hookers.” But it was also a place where queer and trans BIPOKs and sex workers could find a chosen family. “These girls taught me how to survive,” says Tabytha, now a human rights activist in New York City, of the “traveling moms” she befriends.
This struggle for survival walktells viewers that Black transgender sex workers are harassed, assaulted, and raped by law enforcement in higher incidences than the rest of the sex worker population. Lovell’s interviews about her experiences with such harassment by the police are not only important, but also a turning point for the emancipation of sex workers. As a 20-year-old sex worker, it was infuriating but empowering to see sex workers discussing their experiences of being raped by the police face-to-face in front of a camera. Usually, we only talk about these kinds of things amongst ourselves – especially because, yes, we are often ignored or not believed in by people who refuse to accept the painful truth that a sex worker is. to be It is therefore an act of heroism for our communities that Lovell and Drucker chose to feature these stories.
walk it is also a vital story of gentrification and discrimination. The doctor notes that the years of former NYC mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg weren’t kind to Manhattan’s sex worker communities. Lovell and Drucker cover how both the gentrification of New York City and the gentrification of outdoor sex work being directed online have changed the landscape of sex workers in the Meatpacking District. This is, unfortunately, a theme that can be applied to more and more regions across the US; As cities get bigger and more expensive, what about those of us who are already here? What are we planning as a society to do with people who can’t keep up with the cost of living in our rapidly becoming decentralized cities? Removing BIPOCs, LGBTQIA+, and the homeless as well as sex workers shouldn’t be the answer, but where do these communities go with no affordable places left?
For a film that asks such difficult questions and describes such a troubled period in history, walk ultimately left me feeling hopeful, enlivened by vivid stories of those who refused to be forgotten or erased. I will never stop believing in the power of sex workers to transform our communities because we do it every day and we have always done so, even if it is not seen by the mainstream world. Today is Pride Month and I hope one day the integration and implementation of sex workers’ rights as human rights will become as mainstream as Pride. It’s not as exaggerated as you might think, especially after hearing tales of resilience told so boldly back in 2010. walk, helping to illuminate the once dark corner of history. As Lovell vehemently stated at the end of the documentary, “You can take the girl out of the ride, but you can’t take the ride out of the girl.”