Yassmine Hussein (NYU Gallatin) |Cairo 52| Cairo, Egypt
The more I work alongside the team of Cairo52, the more I understand the extent to which the barriers for sex workers to be treated as regular citizens are not merely legal, in fact, these barriers to sex workers being a part of society seem to be impacted by a variety of aspects. Among these aspects, the socio-economic class sex workers cater to seems to entail and decide the type of treatment the sex workers receive as well as how they are treated by the law. While the social stigma of sex work touches all sex workers, the law seems to mainly discriminate against sex workers who are catering to middle and lower-class Egyptians. Sex workers who cater to upper-class citizens tend to be protected by their clients. Although this is something that I was aware of due to my research, what I was surprised to learn was the extent to which the sexuality of sex workers played a role in their visibility.
Based on the research Cairo52 has already conducted, it appears that sex workers who are queer or transexual are much more comfortable sharing their profession during interviews and are more comfortable identifying themselves as sex workers in their inner circles. On the other hand, sex workers who identify as women as less likely to share their profession even for research purposes, which has made it even harder for Cairo52 to garner a large amount of interviews with or data from sex workers who are women.
Due to this dilemma, we have been working on using multiple methods to reach this group of sex workers, using traditional methods such as surveys for outreach, but also utilizing word of mouth to reach circles of sex workers who may not have access to the internet or smart devices.