Cecilia

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0:48They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again, Now streaming only on Disney+. This episode contains references to sexual violence. Please use discretion. When I was a child, I thought I was an extraterrestrial, that I was a UFO. And I told my grandmother that. It was a really funny story. What did she say when you said you were you? My brother told me that they found me in a railroad, right? One day we were, like, crossing a railroad, and my brother told me, that's where we found you.

1:30Cecilia Gentili:And Mom took you with us because you were naked on the Nell Railroad as a baby. And around the same time, I was kicked out of the bathroom, in the girls' bathroom in school. And I'm from an area of Argentina where there's a lot of UFO activity in the 70s. So I put two and two together, and I went to my grandma, and I said, Grandma, I think I know what happened. I am an alien that I was left by mistake here, but I belong to a country, to a planet where all the girls have peepees like me. And my grandmother, being the great-grandmother that she was, she says, that makes sense. I'm pretty sure that's true.

2:19Cecilia Gentili:and we slept under, you know, outside in a huge patio with the trees, the fruit trees that she had. And we spent the night outside waiting for, you know, for my family from another planet to come and rescue me. And of course that didn't happen.

2:46Cecilia Gentili was born in 1972 in a very small town in Argentina. You know, I was always, you know, using the girls' bathroom. You know, I always had a tendency. Sometimes I didn't say that I was a girl, but I always said that I wasn't a boy. That was a constant for me. And around my teenagers years and adolescence, I started being attracted to other boys. And I thought, like, I guess, like, being gay is the closest thing to what I feel. You know, at the time, it wasn't conversation about trans people and it was not a conversation about being trans. It was not internet, you know. So I thought I was crazy for a long time.

3:49And when I went to the big city, you know, to go to college at age 17, I met the first trans person that I ever met in my life. And it was like this huge realization of like, you know, first of all, I'm not crazy. Second of all, I may not be a UFO person. I may not be an extraterrestrial. And there is like, you know, it is people like me in the world, you know. so I just verbally almost assault this woman because I was like, please, please, please help me, help me, help me I need you, I need you, I'm like you, I need help she was like, oh, calm down and I, you know, she said, okay, you know, I help you she said, I'm working right now she was in the street she said, I'm working right now go to the bar and when I finish working we'll meet and we talk more and that's what I did I waited all night in the bar and then she told me you know yeah you know you can be trans it's three things that you need to know you're gonna be a whore you're gonna get high and you're going to die young.

5:19Those are the three things that you need to know and be clear about before making the decision of transitioning. And I didn't doubt it for a minute. I said yes, yes, and yes, I'm okay with all of those. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

5:45I thought that, you know, that was the only way to survive, right? It was, you know, it wasn't like the idea of having a job while being trans was not possible. the idea of you know being a housewife you know and having a husband that takes care of you it wasn't possible because like anybody you know usually all the men that I People dated at the time were dating me under these extreme shaming, you know, clouds where like they say that they were my boyfriend just in between, you know, four walls in a room. But nobody will hold my hand in the street, you know. So it was like, hey, you know, all these guys want to have sex with me.

6:55Nobody wants to be my boyfriend. So I may as well just get some money out of it, you know, and survive. So it was more like organically came with the idea of being trans, the idea of being a sex worker. So it was like, you know, for me, it was like, this is what the life of a trans person is. and I am trans, and this is what I have to do. It was also a lot of reaffirmation with sex work. You know, when you have, like, all this, the rest of the world telling you that, you know, that you are wrong, that you are an abomination, that, you know, your body is a mistake. And at the same time, you have all these people paying for your body and for your time.

8:03So it was very reaffirming. How was the money? The money was good. I work a lot, you know. I can make decent money in the streets, enough to survive, but not enough to go ahead with certain surgeries that I wanted. You know, money was enough to pay rent and to eat, but I wasn't making money. My transition wasn't going where I wanted to go. My life wasn't going where I wanted to go. and interactions with police and overall, you know, really, really, really bad experiences. Sex work was so heavily policed in Argentina. a group of trans women from the city that I'm from were given a reparations pension for all the suffering that the law enforcement made them go through.

9:47I hope that gives you an idea of what kind of oppression we were going through at the time. It is like, you know, trans women receiving a reparations pension. That's how bad the government feels about the treatment that they gave us. And, you know, it wasn't only just, like, you know, being arrested. It was like, you know, being, you know, asked for sexual favors and asked for bribes and money and being humiliated. So, you know, I would do anything not to be arrested. I would do basically anything not to be arrested. When Cecilia was growing up in Argentina, trans people could be arrested for just walking down the street.

10:41As she got older, she moved around, trying to find a place where she felt safe and could do her job. And I guess neighbors started calling the police because I was around. And I, you know, for a moment I thought like, you know, I found a place where I can just do what I do without being bothered. And, you know, the police started stopping me and they sexually assaulted. I was sexually assaulted by two officers. and I said like, you know, it's never going to be a place where I can do what I do and not have to go through these things. It was like this sense of like, it's not a safe place for me in this anywhere, in this city.

11:59And I am just gonna die here. So I thought, like, you know, I have to do something with my life now. And that was, you know, when the idea of leaving Argentina, trying to build a future came about. And that's how I came to Miami. Did you think it would be easier to be a sex worker in America? Oh, I thought it was going to be people at the airport waiting for me, offering me jobs. That was my idea of the United States. I thought it were people waving an American flag and saying, like, welcome, and offering me other jobs. So you didn't even have to do sex work anymore. And that wasn't the case. I have to say that was not the case.

13:01We'll be right back.

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15:03And of course, the only thing that I knew how to do was sex work besides hair. And that's what I did. Her plan was to work for three months in the United States, make as much money as possible, and then fly home to Argentina just before her visa expired. But four days before her flight home, Cecilia was arrested. I got arrested on Washington Avenue in Miami.

15:31and I remember, you know, I remember like the girls, you know, the other girls taught me like certain tricks that they're not even true. It's just, you know, things that you do and say, you know, if you touch the client, if it's a police officer, it's not supposed to let you touch him. It's just totally bullshit. I, you know, I touch, I even had oral sex with police officers. And after we had oral sex, they arrested me, you know, or if you ask them if they're police officers, they have to tell you if they're police officers. So, you know, I did my whole, like, you know, list of things to make sure that this guy who stopped me in a taxi, in a yellow taxi, wasn't a police officer.

16:23He was the passenger in the taxi. So I went in the taxi and I said, are you a police officer? And he said, like, no, I'm not. And then I touched him and he allowed me to touch him. So I said, well, he's not a police officer. And he said, how much is, you know, for a date? So I told him how much it was. he says like do you have another friend that you can bring with us and I said no none of my friends are in the street right now and then he stopped the taxi and we got out of the taxi and the taxi driver came out of the taxi too and I thought that that was weird and they arrested me and I said but you told me that you're not a police officer And he said, I'm not a police officer.

17:20The taxi driver is. And I got arrested and I was, I went to the prison, I guess. And of course, they put me there with the men. I saw the judge and the judge let me go with the, I needed to surrender my passport. So I was not able to take my flight. And at that point, I overstayed my visa. So I made a decision to just stay, stay here in the United States fully as an undocumented person. And I'm going to fully dedicate myself to sex work. And that's what I did. And I kind of stopped working in the streets mostly. And I focused on ads. I had ads in the paper. I had ads in a special magazine in Miami called Unique Encounters.

18:41Really funny name. unique encounters. And, you know, you put pictures there and your phone number, people will call you. And then I found the internet, you know, and I found the internet and the money started being good. And I had, you know, my first breast implants and I had a couple of like facial surgeries. I had laser, I had laser in my face. So like, you know, not having And facial hair was such an amazing moment in my life. So, you know, I started being happy. Because, you know, I started making relationships here. I had friends. So it was, you know, it was hard. It was hard. But it was better than in Argentina.

19:39Cecilia Gentili:So I wanted to stay here. It was a beautiful community, you know. All my friends that were doing sex work, you know, with me at the same time, you know, they were really good people. You know, they were helping, we were helping each other all the time. We were supporting each other. we were like you know in constant communication like you know this number is gonna call you don't answer it's a waste of time or this guy is gonna try to come and see you don't see him because he's violent so we had a network where we you know we're all co-workers I guess and And friends, you know, and we spent time and we cooked together.

20:32Cecilia Gentili:It was like really nice. So it was times where I said like this is too much, but it was also good times with community. And how did life get better when you could start getting your clients online so that you weren't out on the streets, but rather setting? Yeah, at home. You know? At home. At home. So for me, it was, you know, it was like, oh, this is great. You know, I just can be at home. I can making, you know, be making my own meals. And if I have a client coming, I just stop and do my client and then eat the food that I cook myself. You know, you know, things are different when you're home.

21:21Cecilia Gentili:You know, you're in your place. Things are yours. so for me it was better again you know I was always worried that a police officer could come and arrest me it was very common in South Beach that police would make themselves look like clients in the phone saying that they were clients

21:53Cecilia Gentili:and they will come and arrest you. So, you know, sometimes like, you know, I would, you know, be looking in the window to see, you know, who my client was and like sometimes I would just think like, oh, this guy looks like a police officer. And every time I would see a client with a shaved head, I associate that with police officers, I guess. So I never see them, you know. I never open the door. She says the Internet helped a lot. Cecilia could now look someone up before deciding whether to meet them. And sex workers in Miami could communicate on forums and warn each other about police, violent clients, or clients that wouldn't pay.

22:43They would ID clients by phone number in case they'd given a fake name.

22:48Cecilia Gentili:So it was great, you know, life was much better. Of course, all of that ended with SESTA and FOSTA. SESTA and FOSTA, which stands for the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, are a set of bills that were signed into law in 2018. Under the law, website publishers, including sites like Craigslist, would be responsible if anyone posts ads for sex work on their platforms. The bill's supporters frame this as an important way to curb sex trafficking online. Critics argue that it makes no distinction between victims of sex trafficking and consensual sex workers.

23:34One of the immediate effects of the law was that those sites that sex workers use to find clients and communicate with each other started shutting down. Are sex workers less safe without these types of sites? Of course.

23:51Cecilia Gentili:You know, we don't have the opportunity to, you know, look in the, you know, in our forums and like to see if, you know, the clients that are coming to see us are, you know, not good, you know. and also like where, you know, many of us are not able to advertise, you know, people had to go back to the streets, you know, people that were not used to the streets anymore, you know, and also like, you know, the fact that it was more, more sex workers in the streets, it gave clients a certain level of leverage, right? Because, you know, sex workers had to, you know, take clients, you know, that they wouldn't otherwise, just because, you know, they needed to work.

24:48Cecilia Gentili:So system foster, you know, and shutting down the websites, you know, was terrible for the sex workers community. It's really terrible, really, really terrible. It seems like not many people understand just how common sex work is. Do you think that's right? Absolutely.

25:18We'll be right back.

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26:00After living in Miami for five years, Cecilia started getting threats that she would be reported to the police as an undocumented immigrant. So she moved to New York.

26:10Cecilia Gentili:I used to live on Mott Street and me and a friend of mine, you know, had apartments right across the hall. And the police went once and they raided her apartment and arrested her. and they were knocking on my door and knocking on my door and knocking on my door and I just didn't open. I was terrified. And, you know, and I looked through the people and I saw how they were taking her and they really wanted me too. And I just didn't open. Nobody should have to work or do what they do for a living with this terrible fear of being arrested all the time. Are there fewer clients now? I couldn't tell you.

27:07Cecilia Gentili:I haven't been actively working for a couple of years now, but I am in touch with most of my friends. And like, you know, it is a lot of consensual sex nowadays in forums like Grindr, Tinder and all of that. So I noticed that, you know, it's less clients because it's more opportunities to have sex, consensual sex for free. But of course, that is not regulated. It does not criminalize, right? But once you exchange money for sex, you are a criminal. So, you know, when you play football, you are selling your body for money, right? Just in a way that, you know, you're selling the strength of your body to catch a ball, right?

28:13is nothing different, right? If you know how to cook, you become a chef. I know how to have sex. So that's why I became a sex worker. So I think that because of the idea of sex, it has been painted as something that is sinful and not moral, you know, had created this idea that sex work should not be allowed. How much of sex work is talking, making people feel good about themselves and not actually... A lot. Yeah. A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot of sex work is a lot of therapy. I always said that, you know, I should have a social work degree because I have counsel and listen to an incredible amount of people, you know, who, you know, hire me through sex work.

29:29And in reality, sex was the least that we did in our encounters. I, you know, I encountered all kinds of people. And, you know, with some of them was also a lot of sex, you know.

29:47Cecilia Gentili:But with most of them was just that human connection, right? People have need to be connected and to feel comfortable about who they are, you know. So it is a lot about the connection and sometimes it's about sex too. Cecilia now lives in Queens. She was granted asylum in 2011. She plans to apply for citizenship next year. And I have a very, I don't know what's normal, but in my idea of normality, I have a very normal life. I have a partner. He's wonderful and I love him very much. We get up at seven. I make some breakfast or coffee and he goes to work and I get ready. and I start with my work.

30:53Cecilia Gentili:And what I do is advocacy and then I do all kinds of, you know, after work activities and I come back home tired and have dinner with my partner and go to sleep. So that's my life. That's my life nowadays. You know, it's another kind of busy.