Criminal - Cecilia

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

When Cecilia Gentili was growing up in Argentina, she felt so different from everyone around her that she thought she might be from another planet. “Some of us find our community with our own family and some of us don’t.” Today, Cecilia runs a policy reform organization called Trans Equity. She’s active in efforts to decriminalize sex work in New York, and to repeal SESTA-FOSTA. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums,

and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, FDA approved for over 20 years. So, talk to your specialist to see if Botox Cosmetic is right for you. For full prescribing information, including boxed warning, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. Remember to ask for Botox Cosmetic by name. To see for yourself and learn more, visit BotoxCosmetic.com.

That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. 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. And what did she say when you said you were you? 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. And I'm from an area of Argentina where there's a lot of UFO activity in the 70s. So I put two and two together and I went to my grandma and I said, Grandma, I think I know what happened. I am an alien that I was left by mistake here, but I belong to a country, to a planet where all the girls have pee-pees like me.

And my grandmother, being the great-grandmother that she was, she says, that makes sense. I'm pretty sure that's true. And we slept under, you know, outside in a huge patio with the trees, the fruit trees that she had. And we spent the night outside waiting for, you know, for my family from another planet to come and rescue me. And of course that didn't happen. Cecilia Gentili was born in 1972 in a very small town in Argentina. I was always using the girls' bathroom.

I always had a tendency. Sometimes I didn't say that I was a girl, but I You know, I always had a tendency. Sometimes I didn't say that I was a girl, but I always said that I wasn't a boy. That was a constant for me. And around my teenager years and adolescence, I started being attracted to to other boys and i thought like well i guess like being gay is the closest thing to what i feel you know at the time it wasn't conversation about trans people and it was not a conversation about being trans. It was no internet,

you know. So I thought I was crazy for a long time. And when I went to the big city, you know, to go to college at age 17, I met the first trans person that I ever met in my life. And it was like this huge realization of like, you know, first of all, I'm not crazy. Second of all, I may not be a UFO person. I may not be an extraterrestrial. And there is like, you know, it is people like me in the world, you know. So I just verbally almost assault this woman because I was like, please, please, please help me, help me, help me. I need you. I need you. I'm like you.

I need help. She was like, oh, calm down. And I, you know, she said, okay, you know, I help you. She said, I'm working right now. She was in the street. She said, I'm working right now. Go to the bar. And when I finish working, we'll meet and we'll talk more. And that's what I did. I waited all night in the bar and then she told me, you know, yeah, you know, you can be trans. It's three things that you need to know.

You're going to be a whore. You're going to get high and you're going to die young. Those are the three things that you need to know and be clear about before making the decision of transitioning. And I didn't doubt it for a minute. I said, yes, yes, and yes, I'm okay with all of those. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

I thought that, you know, that was the only way to survive, right? It was, you know, it wasn't like the idea of having a job while being trans was not possible. The idea of being a housewife 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 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 these, the rest of the world telling you that, you know, that you are wrong, that you are an abomination, that, you know, you, 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 it was very reaffirming.

How was the money? 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, 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 that at this point, last year, 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, ask for sexual favors and ask 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. When Cecilia was growing up in Argentina, trans people could be arrested for just walking down the street. As she got older, she moved around, trying to find a place where she felt safe and could do her job. And I guess neighbors started calling the police because I was around. And I, you know, for a moment I thought like, you know, I found a place where I can just do what I do without being bothered. And, you know, the police started stopping me and they, they sexually, I was sexually assaulted by two officers. And, and I said, like, you know, it's never, it's never gonna be a place where I can do what I do and not have to go through these things.

It was like this sense of like, it's not a safe place for me in this anywhere in this city. And I am just going to die here. So I thought like, you know, I have to do something with my life now. And that was, you know, when the idea of leaving Argentina, trying to build a future came about. And that's how I came to Miami. Did you think it would be easier to be a sex worker in America? Oh, I thought it was going to be people at the airport waiting for me, offering me jobs.

That was my idea of the United States. I thought it were people waving an American flag and saying, welcome, and offering me other jobs so I didn't even have to do sex work anymore. And that wasn't the case. I have to say that was not the case. Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these Series Essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robison, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Cecilia says that when she arrived in Miami, she started looking for jobs right away. She looked for a job in a hair salon, but she didn't have a license and she was undocumented. This was in 2000. She was 27. So, you know, whatever got better in terms of me being trans in the United States got worse in terms of being undocumented. And of course, the only thing that I knew how to do was sex work, besides hair, and that's what I did.

Her plan was to work for three months in the United States, make as much money as possible, and then fly home to Argentina just before her visa expired. But four days before her flight home, Cecilia was arrested. I remember, you know, I remember like the girls, you know, the other girls taught me like certain tricks that they're not even true. It's just, it's just, you know, things that you do and say, you know, if you touch the client, if it's a police officer, it's not supposed to let you touch him. It's just totally bullshit. I, you know, I touch, I even had oral sex with police officers. And after we had oral sex, they arrested me, you know, or if you ask them if they're police officers, they have to tell you if they're police officers. So, you know, I did my whole, like, you know, list of things to make sure that this guy who stopped me in a taxi, in a yellow taxi, wasn't a police officer.

He was the passenger in the taxi. So I went in the taxi and I said, are you a police officer? And he said, like, no, I'm not. And then I touched him and he allowed me to touch him. And so I said, well, he's not a police officer. And he said, how much is, you know, for a date? So I told him how much it was. He says, like, do you have another friend that you can bring with us? And I said, no, none of my friends are in the street right now. And then he stopped the taxi and we got out of the taxi and the taxi driver came out of the taxi too. And I thought that that was weird. And they arrested me. And I said, but you told me that you're not a police officer.

And he said, I'm not a police officer. The taxi driver is. And I got arrested and I was, I went to the prison, I guess. And of course they put me there with the men. I saw the judge and the judge let me go with the, I needed to surrender my passport. So I was not able to take my fly. And at that point, I overstayed my visa. So I made a decision to just stay, stay here in the United States fully as an undocumented person. And I'm going to fully dedicate myself to sex work. 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 know, you put pictures there and your phone number, people will 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 an amazing moment in my life.

So, you know, I started being happy. So, you know, I started making 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. sex work, you know, with me at the same time, you know, they were really good people, you know, they were helping, we were helping each other all the time, we were supporting each other, we were like, you know, in constant communication, like, you know, this number is going to call you, don't answer, it's a waste of time or this guy is gonna try to come and see you don't see him because he's violent so we had a network uh where we you know we're all co-workers i guess and uh and friends you know and we spent time and we cooked together. It was like really nice. So it was times where I say like, this is too much, but it was also good times with that, with community. And how did life get better when you could start getting your clients online so that you weren't

out on the streets, but rather at home. At home. At home. So for me, it was like, oh, this is great. I just can be at home. I can 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 cooked 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 they would come and arrest you. So, you know, sometimes like, you know, I would, you know, be looking in the window to see, you know, who my client was. And like, sometimes I would just think like, oh, this guy looks like a police officer. And every time I would see a client with a shaved head, I associated that with police officers, I guess. So I would never see them, you know.

I never opened the door. She says the Internet helped a lot. Cecilia could now look someone up before deciding whether to meet them. And sex workers in Miami could communicate on forums and warn each other about police, violent clients, or clients that wouldn't pay. They would ID clients by phone number in case they'd given a fake name.

So it was great, you know, life was much better. Of course, all of that ended with SESTA and FOSTA. SESTA and FOSTA, which stand for the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, are a set of bills that were signed into law last April. Under the law, website publishers, including sites like Craigslist, would be responsible if anyone posts ads for sex work on their platforms. The bill's supporters framed this as an important way to curb sex trafficking online.

Critics argue that it makes no distinction between victims of sex trafficking and consensual sex workers. One of the immediate effects of the law was that those sites that sex workers used to find clients and communicate with each other started shutting down. Are sex workers less safe without these types of sites? Of course. You know, we don't have the opportunity to, you know, look in our forums and like to see if, you know, the clients that are coming to see us are, you know, not good, you know, many of us are not able to advertise, you know, people had to go back to the streets, you know, people that were not used to the streets anymore, you know, and also like, you know, the fact that it was more, more sex workers in the streets, it gave clients a certain level of leverage, right? Because, you know, sex workers

had to, you know, take clients, you know, that they wouldn't otherwise, just because, you know, they needed to work. So Sesta and Fosta, you know, and shutting down the website, you know, was terrible for the sex workers community. It's really terrible, really, really terrible. It seems like not many people understand just how common sex work is. Do you think that's right? Absolutely. After living in Miami for five years, Cecilia started getting threats that she would be reported to the police

as an undocumented immigrant. So she moved to New York. I used to live on Mott Street, and me and a friend of mine, you know, had apartments right across the hall. And the police went once, and they raided her apartment and arrested her and they were knocking on my door and knocking on my door and knocking on my door and I just didn't open. I was terrified and, you know, and I looked through the people hall and I, you know,

saw how they were taking her and and they really wanted me too, and I just didn't open. Nobody should have to work or do what they do for a living with this terrible fear of being arrested all the time. Are there fewer clients now? I couldn't tell you. I haven't been actively working for a couple of years now, but, you know, I am in touch with most of my friends. It is a lot of consensual sex nowadays in forums like Grindr, Tinder and all of that.

So I noticed that, you know, it's less clients because it's more opportunities to have sex, consensual sex for free. But of course, that is not regulated. That's not criminalized, right? But once you exchange money for sex, you are a criminal. So, you know, when you play football, you are selling your body for money, right? Just in a way that, you know, you're selling the strength of your body to catch a ball, right? It's nothing different, right? If you know how to cook, you become a chef. I know how to have sex, so that's why I became a sex worker.

So I think that because of the idea of sex has been painted as something that is sinful and not moral, you know, had created this idea that sex work should not be allowed. How much of sex work is talking, making people feel good about themselves and not actually... A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot of sex work is a lot of therapy. I always said that, you know, I should have a social work degree because I have counsel and listen to an incredible amount of people, you know, who, you know, hire me through sex work. And in reality, sex was the least that we did in our encounters. I, you know, I, I encounter all kinds of people and, you know, with some of them was also a lot of sex, you know, I encounter all kind of people

And, you know, with some of them was also a lot of sex, you know But with most of them was just that human connection, right? People have need to be connected And to feel comfortable about who they are, you know So it is a lot about the connection and sometimes it's about sex too. Cecilia now lives in Queens. She was granted asylum in 2011. She plans to apply for citizenship next year. And I have a very, I don't know what's normal, but in my idea of normality,

I have a very normal life. I have a partner. He's wonderful and I love him very much. We get up at seven. I make some breakfast or coffee and he goes to work and I get ready and I start with my work. And what I do all kinds of, you know, after work activities. And I come back home tired and have dinner with my partner and go to sleep. So that's my life. That's my life nowadays. You know, it's another kind of busy. Today she's active in efforts to decriminalize sex work in New York.

She runs a policy reform organization called Trans Equity, and she leads a support group for undocumented trans Latinas. What do you want to say now to that little girl thinking that she was an alien, seeing all that you've seen now and where you are in your life, what would you say to that woman? I think that we are all aliens until we find our communities. You know, I think, you know, some of us find our community with our own family,

and some of us don't. So for those that don't find their own community with their own families, it is a family out there and you just have to look for them. And when you find them, you will find your family and you will find your planet somehow where you don't feel like an extraterrestrial. So it is a hard but beautiful journey. But the reward of finding your community is wonderful. In our next episode, we go to one of the only legal brothels in the United States, the Bunny Ranch,

where we spoke with the top-earning legal sex worker in the country. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com or on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show.

Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. Shows like The Truth. They've just released a five-part series called The Body Genius. It's a dark comic mystery about a fictionalized Hollywood where looking the part might cost you your life. A few days ago, Wesley Stern,

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