Most trans women engaged in survival sex work are not as lucky as Wendi. Poverty is the key factor that drives trans women of color into sex work. The sex industry is filled with women of color, and so are our prisons. Race, class, and gender are all factors that frame the harshness of sentences, and, more likely than not, a trans woman of color arrested on solicitation will be treated as a criminal with little regard to the systemic oppression that has led her there. Our society criminalizes underground economies like sex work, and deep moral biases and stigma make even
