Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Chances are your favorite websites used to depend on Google for traffic and money. But that's not really working anymore. Now publishers are scrambling for new lifelines. Neil Vogel, who runs People Inc., says his company figured it out a couple years ago.
You would think, given what everyone said about us, that we would be the guys that would be doing the worst now. We're kind of the guys doing the best now.
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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 a UFO?
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. And mom took you with us because you were naked on the railroad as a baby. And around the same time, I was kicked out of the bathroom in the girls' bathroom in school.
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Chapter 2: What childhood experiences led Cecilia to feel like an alien?
I thought that, you know, that was the only way to survive, right? 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 dated at the time were dating me under this extreme shaming, you know, cloud where, like, They used to say that they were my boyfriend just in between, you know, four walls in a room, but nobody would hold my hand in the street, you know?
So it was like, hey, you know, all these guys want to have sex with me. Nobody 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.
So it was very reaffirming.
How was the money?
The money was good. I work a lot, you know, I 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. I 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.
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Chapter 3: How did Cecilia's understanding of her identity evolve during adolescence?
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. Really funny name, Unique Encounters. And you put pictures there and your phone number, people who 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 facial hair was such a like amazing moment in my life. So, you know, I started being happy. So, you know, I started making, you know, relationships here. I had friends. So it was, you know, it was hard. It was hard.
But it was better than in Argentina. So I wanted to stay here. It was a beautiful community. All my friends that were doing sex work with me at the same time, they were really good people. We were helping each other all the time. We were supporting each other. We were in constant contact.
like, you know, this number is going to call you, don't answer, it's a waste of time, or this guy is going to 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 friends, you know, and we spend time and we cook together. 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 on the streets but rather at home you know at home at home so for me it was you know 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. You know, you're in your place.
Things are yours. So for me, it was better. Again, you know, I was always worried that, you know, a police officer could come and arrest me. You know, it was very common in South Beach that, you know, police would make themselves look like clients, you know, in the phone saying that they were clients. And, um, um, they, um, they will come and arrest you.
So, you know, sometimes like, you know, uh, I, you know, be looking in the window to see, you know, who my client was. And like, sometimes I, you just think like, Oh, this guy looks like, it looks like a police officer. Um, and, um, Every time I see a client with a shaved head, I associate that with police officers, I guess. So I would never see them, you know, I never opened the door.
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