SURInEnglish.com – Gema Martínez
Immigrant prostitutes and transsexuals who work in the Guadalhorce industrial estate tell the stories of their daily working lives
“THE street is a jungle for those of us who work on it. When I go out dressed as a girl, I have to be very strong, like a lion.” It is evident that this young South American is not cleaning the streets of the Guadalhorce industrial estate, but working as a prostitute. He is just one of about 70 transvestites and transsexuals who, along with approximately 250 women – most of them immigrant – work the streets of this part of Malaga city. They form the subject matter of the workshop on health, sexuality and sex, given by the Association for Emancipated Women last Friday, which was attended by about twenty people. Some were women in the process of rehabilitation from different addictions, while others were women who have worked the streets as prostitutes in the past, and who now face a different and difficult life that does not entail the sale of their bodies to strangers.