When Leigh Davids wakes up in the morning and contemplates the day ahead, several things run through her mind:
How will I make R40 today?
Who will f**k me today?
Who will be robbed by me today?
For whom will I perform my poverty today?
Who will send me away when I say I was raped - again?
Will I survive this day?
Davids is a transgender sex worker and activist in Cape Town. She was painting this stark picture of her life at an international conference on the decriminalisation of sex workers.
She sees herself as a storyteller whose tales come from having to battle to survive every second of her life.
What does it mean to grow up as transgender?
"Men started f**king you when you were a child and you thought it was cool because they could see you were a girl.
"Your parents did not come looking for you because you were too much of a problem at home, a problem they did not know how to deal with."Social services turned a blind eye to all of this because you cannot place a child in foster care or a shelter who has gender-identity issues.
"Ever since you were a teenager the police have been turning a blind eye to the paedophiles who give you drugs and f**k you because social services don't know what to do with you and you can't arrest a child.
"You will experience rape, see murder and death before you are 18."
Being black and living in a shack makes Davids even more vulnerable.
Close-up she is quite tall, with a prominent, square jaw. She has a slight American accent, and speaks in slogans, power messages.
Strapped feet
Today Davids understands how to be just herself.
"I ran away from home because my grandfather was an imam. I couldn't be who I was.
"For 24 years I did the makeup and hair and the heels . . . God, the heels. It was to hide this," she says, pointing to her jaw.Ironically she ran away from home to find acceptance for her transgenderism, to a "family" that taught her to hide that she had been born male.
"They strapped my feet for three days until I learnt to walk in heels. I came to learn after 24 years in heels and clothes that were not my size that it's OK to look like myself."
Today she is wearing a tracksuit, scarf and flat shoes.
"I am comfortable like this," she says. "I don't do makeup and hair when I work any more. The clients can see who I am. Sometimes I will not even shave for 10 days, just to have a break.
"Now that I have an understanding about who I am and how to express my true gender, I accept it and my clients accept me."
Her clients are mostly heterosexual, and often married. She estimates that only 30% of them feel uncomfortable having sex with somebody who is transgender.
Reunited with her siblings
After years away from her own family, Davids has reunited with her siblings and her mother, who "buys me hair and underwear now that she understands".
Her mother has also opened up her home to other sex workers as a shelter and cooks for sex workers.
"She says her thoughts were wrong all this time. Now she tells people 'I am the mother of a transgender sex worker' but she's still not OK when some of the extended family are around. Religion makes it difficult," she laughs, toothlessly and loudly.
Decriminalisation will bring legal status and healthcare, and make working conditions easier.Moving portraits
This is artist Robert Hamblin's portrait of a sex worker. Hamblin is a transgender man but doesn't get a second glance from anyone. "It's the privilege of being a white male," he says. He spent seven years befriending transgender sex workers, visiting them in their collective "bedroom" on a traffic island, where they huddle together for warmth after a night's work.
His lnterseXion series combines delicate, feminine portraits with fragments of identity documents containing the numbers allocated to male citizens. The exhibition, which is on tour around the country, highlights sex work in South Africa, and in particular transgender women. Hamblin, also a gender activist, is part of the ongoing debate around the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa and the difficulties surrounding individuals in the industry.
roberthamblin.com/intersexion/intersexion-gallery/..