Twice As Fearless
A two-spirited transgender former sex worker, Iván Monalisa Ojeda overlooks the George Washington Bridge that connects New Jersey and New York City, close to his home in Washington Heights, an iconic symbol of his hustle for survival. Photo by Mariela Murdocco
A transgender activist’s new book issues a bold call to protect sex workers
Editor’s note: For a version of this story in Spanish click here.
“Sex work is work,” said Iván Monalisa Ojeda.
A transgender Chilean performing artist, Ojeda has gained recognition for a new book, “Las Biuty Queens” (Astra House), and a documentary film, “El Viaje de Monalisa” (“The Journey of Monalisa”) about his/her 17 years as an undocumented immigrant and sex worker.
“I used to identify myself as a homosexual in Chile,” Ojeda said. “But now I’m a two-spirited transgender because I’m very happy with my masculine persona which is Iván, and with my feminine persona which is Monalisa,” he/she said.
Ojeda explained that the term “two spirit” comes from indigineous peoples in North America. “My second last name is Leviante which means Mapuche,” he/she said. The Mapuches are a group of Indigenous inhabitants of Chile and Argentina. “It’s my past, although my mom never told us, she didn’t like the Mapuches, but I can’t deny it, it’s in my blood.”
“Being born as someone that is ‘two spirit’ is seen as a gift from the Gods, so in native cultures they would educate them because they were going to become the sorcerers, the priests or the magicians of the tribe,” said Ojeda.
Outspoken and blunt, the 54-year-old Ojeda was at home in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, dressed as Iván in shorts and a T-shirt. When he transitions into Monalisa, she likes to wear colorful wigs, stylish high heels, jewelry and fine dresses.
Ojeda has become an avid voice for the rights of sex workers, arguing that completely legalizing the sex trade — including decriminalizing sex buyers, brothels and pimps — will bring workers more protection and reduce sex trafficking. Ojeda’s position has put him/her at odds with those who argue that total legalization would be dangerous for sex workers.
Iván Monalisa Ojeda’s life as a performing artist, a storyteller and as a transgender sex worker in New Yortk City was the inspiration for “El viaje de Monalisa” (The Jouney of Monalisa), a documentary by Chilean filmaker Nicole Costa. The film depicts a life where pain, survival, art and glamour coexist, under the persistent threat of harsh law enforcement. Photo by Mariela Murdocco
An actor with a degree in performing arts from the University of Chile, Ojeda grew up in a conservative family in a small town. A scholarship to study theater in New York in the mid- 1990s was his ticket out.
But the scholarship ended. “What am I going to do?” he/she asked a crew of new friends — Latino transvestite sex workers.
“What we do,” they answered.
“I was kind of waiting for them to say that,” Ojeda said.
So one night Ojeda dressed as a glamorous woman and worked the Times Square area, wearing feathers as a wig, heels and a red velvet hoodie he/she made into a dress. Monalisa was born. Ojeda never went back to Chile. Instead, in search of an identity as a gender-fluid artist, he/she became the queen of the streets — a charismatic hustler with honed acting skills used to perform as a female impersonator.
“Las Biuty Queens” was written in Spanish and is now translated into English and features an introduction by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. The book is a collection of tales about Ojeda’s experiences. He/she writes about his “tribe” of transgender and transvestite immigrants prostitutes. It is an honest look at human struggles with drug addiction, immigration issues, jails and persecution by law enforcement.
“Las Biuty Queens radiates realism,” says Almodóvar’s introduction. “The American dream – seen from the height of a good pair of heels – turns into a nightmare, an everyday nightmare. For these biuty queens, violent death comes with the territory.”
Iván Monalisa brings us “Las Biuty Queens” (Astra House), a book about his experiences as a transgender prostitute in New York City. English edition. Cosmopolitan UK chose it as one of the best books to read in the summer of 2021. Courtesy of Astra House
For Hispanic Heritage Month, The New York Times featured Ojeda’s book as one of "11 Recent Books on Latino Life."
“I made tons and tons of money!” Ojeda said, recalling his/her years as a sex worker. “But I also had horrible experiences. Many of the girls were killed.”
One struggle, many voices
Murders, trafficking and violence against sex workers — particularly transvestites and transgender individuals, mostly Latino and African-American — are widespread problems. Advocates say these crimes make it critical that communities pass laws to protect sex workers.
In the United States, prostitution remains illegal, except in seven counties in Nevada.
“I was handcuffed and arrested tons of times just for walking on the street,” said Ojeda. Once he/she was arrested just for asking a guy for the time.
“Three patrol cars and six officers with the whole paraphernalia pull up in front of me,” Ojeda writes in Las Biuty Queens. “Blinded by the lights and stunned by the sound of the sirens, I thought they must have confused me with some high-risk criminal. I’d never felt so important.”
In February, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law repealing New York State’s “Walking While Trans” ban. The 1976 law, which prohibited loitering for the purpose of prostitution, has led to arbitrary arrests of innocent people, based solely on their appearance — often more people of color and transgender people.
The California legislature has approved legislation that repeals discriminatory laws against loitering that target sex workers and trans women of color. The bill, SB 357 — the Safer Streets for All Act — was sponsored by State Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco).
“Blinded by the lights and stunned by the sound of the sirens, I thought they must have confused me with some high-risk criminal. I’d never felt so important.”
“The arrests are abusive,” said Ojeda, who suffered constant persecution by law enforcement while walking the streets of Queens and Manhattan. “Besides, all the bureaucracy and paperwork is such a waste of time and resources, with all the crime that’s out there.”
“If sex workers are being abused, they cannot go to the police to file a report because the officers will incarcerate them, only because they are prostitutes,” said Ojeda. “Prostitutes are afraid to go to the police.”
The transgender spirit Monalisa is the actor, performer, and storyteller that likes to wear colorful wigs, high heels, jewelry and fine dresses. "The one who brings the money," she said. Photo by Mariela Murdocco
In May 2019, Ojeda took a bus to the state capitol, Albany, N.Y., with other activists to deliver a petition to legislators to decriminalize sex work. The group included sex workers, members of the New York legislature, and organizations including DecrimNY, a coalition of more than 30 groups that works with the LGBTQ comunity and immigrants to decriminalize, and destigmatize the sex trade in New York.
In June 2019, a bill to decriminalize sex work was introduced by State Senator Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), Chair of the Senate Women’s Health Committee, and other legislators. The bill changes the law so consenting adults who trade sex or patronize adult sex workers would not be guilty of a crime.
“The continued criminalization of sex work threatens the safety of workers in the sex industry and fails to confront the serious harms of trafficking and abuse,” said Salazar in an interview with palabra. “Sex work is the purchase or trading of sex between consenting adults.”
The position that “sex work is work” is at the center of a movement that includes activists, lawmakers, survivors of trafficking, and sex workers themselves.
“Laws that criminalize sex work create conditions in which workers are discriminated against and forced to work in dangerous conditions, such as making it impossible for workers to screen clients,” Salazar said. “Criminalization also disproportionately harms black women, trans women of color and Latinx communities. The decriminalization of sex work is a necessary step that we must take for the sake of the safety of all individuals in the sex industry.”
But legalization of the sex trade as a whole is opposed by some sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, as well as lawmakers and advocacy groups.
The FBI’s 2019 Human Trafficking report, the most recent data available from 48 states and Puerto Rico, showed 1,883 reported incidents of human trafficking: 1,607 commercial sex acts and 274 instances of involuntary servitude. However, because of lack of education and laws against prostitution, many such crimes are never reported.
“Criminalization disproportionately harms black women, trans women of color and Latinx communities. The decriminalization of sex work is a necessary step that we must take for the sake of all individuals in the sex industry.”
Still, Cristian Eduardo, a survivor of international and domestic human trafficking, firmly opposes Salazar’s bill.
“It decrimininalizes sex buyers, pimps and owners of prostitution places, who are the ones who promote prostitution and sex trafficking, under the idea that everyone that is a prostitute does it by choice, and this is not true,” he said.
Eduardo says he was forced to exchange sex for financial support, a room, and medicine when he was diagnosed with HIV. He was then trafficked from Mexico to Canada, and then to New York. Traffickers kept him isolated and constantly under surveillance while he was forced to have sex with men, sometimes at organized parties.
“Even when I had to go to the doctor, one of them would come with me,” he said. “I engaged in sexual activity under the impression that I had no other choice. One day at a party, I remember they gave me a drink. I did not know what happened, but I woke up bleeding from my anus. My body and my mind could not take it anymore. I was afraid of dying until I finally escaped.”
Now a leader and speaker at Sanctuary for Families, which runs a national hotline for victims of domestic violence, Eduardo is also part of the Equality Model committee, which supports partial legalization of sex work: decriminalizing prostitutes but not the sex trade. He contributed to a bill that takes a different approach to decriminalization. The Sex Trade Survivors Justice & Equality Act sponsored by State Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) would decriminalize prostitution and protect prostitutes by increasing financial penalties for pimps, traffickers and sex buyers to discourage exploitation.
“I ended up in prostitution because when I made my gender transition, I was fired from my job, I was kicked out of my housing and I had no support network I could rely on.”
The bill reflects the position of groups including World Without Exploitation, who campaign to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation, but oppose legalizing the sex trade. They do not support legalizing prostitution, but rather decriminalizing prostitutes and those exploited in the sex trade.
“We need to decriminalize prostituted people so that we don't have to fear arrests when we report crimes that happen against us,” said Esperanza Fonseca, a former sex worker who is now a strategist for World Without Exploitation.
“I ended up in prostitution because when I made my gender transition, I was fired from my job, I was kicked out of my housing and I had no support network I could rely on,” said Fonseca, a transgender woman of Mexican descent living in Los Angeles. “At first it seemed like a good way to make it, but it quickly became a trap I could not escape. I was brutally raped several times. I had to go to the hospital, but I never wanted to file a report. The police have been nothing but destructive in my life since I was growing up. The police don’t keep us safe.”
“However, we do not seek to decriminalize those exploiting us, such as pimps and sex buyers,” Fonseca added, “because they are the ones causing the violence.”
Iván Monalisa Ojeda emphazises how proud she/he is for having worked as a sex worker and is now an advocate of prostitution decriminalization. Photo by Mariela Murdocco.
But pimps are necessary, Ojeda said, arguing for a comprehensive approach to decriminalization. “Pimps are protection,” he/she said. “Of course, there are all kinds of pimps, but they take care of you. The girls need and look for them.”
While some argue that prostitution is exploitation, others call it an essential service that should be protected.
“It’s a physical and emotional need,” said a former female escort service worker in New York City, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “When that need is not fulfilled is when distortions happen and people act weirdly and, in some instances, criminally. I met interesting executives who told me they did not have time to date and just wanted casual sex. Many only need someone to talk to. Once a client asked me just to hug him because he broke up with his girlfriend.”
Some states have taken steps to ease restrictions on sex workers and traficking victims. In 2019 Hawaii passed a law under which prostituted individuals could remove convictions if they had not committed a crime in the previous three years. Hawaii is also considering a bill that focuses on sex buyers, by classifying coercion as an offense of sex trafficking. The bill died in committee, but may be reintroduced in the future.
But is it fair to label a sex buyer as a criminal when the sex worker is an adult willing to provide those services?
Ojeda worries some legislation could actually encourage trafficking by penalizing sex buyers. His book and documentary are powerful messages for change.
“Sex workers need to have all the right and protection from the state to do what they want to do,” Ojeda said. “This way, trafficking and minor trafficking will be eliminated. Once prostitution is legalized, there will be no ground for abuses.”
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Mariela Murdocco, a bilingual multimedia journalist and photographer, has been nominated for five Emmy Awards.
Born in Uruguay and based in New York City, she began her two careers simultaneously in 2002. She has worked as a reporter, TV producer, anchor, photographer and videographer for Consumer Reports, Telemundo, News 12, The New York Daily News, Banda Oriental, The Jersey Journal and The Associated Press. She was a TV correspondent for Canal 7 in Uruguay and has contributed to The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Hola TV and Fox News. In 2012 she was elected national Spanish at-large officer for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.