Making Change: The Cost of Being Transgender
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Kenyatta can’t talk long; she has a date. “We call them dates,” she said of the men with whom she has sex for money. Anxiously, she brushes her long dark hair off her slight shoulders and out of her smoky eyes. Once you know that Kenyatta, 22, was born a male, her large hands and Adam’s apple seem obvious. But at first — and even second — glance, there is little to suggest that she wasn’t a girl her entire life. She prostitutes herself “about twice a month” in order to buy the black market hormones that enlarge her breasts, raise the pitch of her voice and keep hair from growing on her face. “Honestly,” she said, “I have to pull a trick to pay for hormones.” Kenyatta is one of 25 young people spending the night at Sylvia’s Place, an emergency homeless shelter for New York City’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. More : abcnews.go.com |