Stevie Trixx is always being asked the kinds of questions you’re not supposed to ask a trans person.
“When did you have surgery?”
“How long have you been on hormones?”
“Do your parents know?”
But Trixx, a soft-spoken and red-bearded trans male sex worker, takes those questions in stride.
“It’s their first time meeting a trans person,” he tells them., referring to his clients. “I’m not offended because I’m being paid. I’m in a position of power.”
Trixx, 32, is one of a small number of trans male sex workers in the United States. Being a minority within a minority comes with unique challenges. Trans men are less visible than trans women in sex work, in large part because men, both trans and cis, are less forward-facing in the field than women overall. But trans men are beginning to claim more space in the industry, thanks to the emergence of a new generation of performers like Trixx and advocacy organizations like Molly House Project, which serves masculine-of-center trans sex workers.
“In part because transgender women have fought so hard, most people don’t know that trans men exist,” Trixx says. “Trans men are a fraction of a tiny population.” A 2020 study published in the journal Transgender Health suggests that trans men may now be coming out in equal numbers to trans women, but still the visibility gap persists, both in sex work and society overall.
Trixx is helping to address that gap, but not necessarily in the way he expected to do so. Before he began escorting and acting in porn, he completed a master’s degree in gender studies at New York University, then started working as a journalist.
“Writing about trans issues in 2015 was tough,” he says. “I was honestly facing a lot of harsh criticism in my community for saying things that weren’t 100% perfect.”
Before long, Trixx switched from writing to sex work.
“I actually feel like I’m making more of an impact [as an escort] than when I was a writer,” he says. “There's something different about seeing a trans person existing and enjoying their sexuality versus having the concept of ‘trans’ or gender theory explained to you.”
Trixx knows that doing sex work isn’t a perfect replacement for educating people about transgender people.
“There's a risk there,” he acknowledges. “For some, that understanding will stop at fetishization, which has its own dangers. But for others, experiencing attraction to or love for a trans person opens the door to care for and advocate for us. I think — or maybe just hope — my presence has generated more of the latter.”
Over the past few years, Trixx has seen demand for escorting increase, but in mid-March 2020 he stopped seeing clients because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He resumed seeing a few clients at the end of last year, but he won’t see more until after vaccination.
Trixx is part of a wave of trans male porn performers speaking out about the issues they face, like being fetishized on the job.
“People book me or watch me videos solely for the fact that I'm trans and haven't had — won't have — lower surgery,” says Trixx. “There's a kind of disembodied way that people talk about trans guys, where the focus is on our genitals. I get a lot of guys saying things like ‘I'd fuck that hole, pussy, et cetera.’”
Trixx doesn’t particularly like it when his clients — who are mostly cis gay men, though they include people of all genders — fetishize him in this way, but he knows it won’t stop anytime soon.
“When you put yourself out there the way I have in a niche minority community then you have to expect it,” Trixx says.
Many trans male sex workers have banded together online, where they can safely discuss their experiences.
“There is a sense of community between trans men, for sure,” says Viktor Belmont, a trans porn performer and escort, who calls Trixx an “internet sweetheart” because they’ve chatted online but have never met in person. “I come at it with every new trans guy I see: I retweet them, repost them, try to get them ahead. We are a small community but one in the porn world that is growing rapidly.”
But Belmont doesn’t view new performers as competition. “I love seeing boys who used to be my fans now with more followers than I have,” he says.
Trixx, too, is happy to watch the community grow and sometimes offers advice to up-and-coming trans male performers. “I'm generally open to sharing what I know, because I didn't have that at all,” he says. “I've really just figured this out by myself.”
Navigating the gay porn community has been especially tricky, according to Trixx.
“I think some of [the gay porn studios] aren't necessarily ready to work with us,” Trixx says. He has only been featured in one studio film — Treasure Island Media’s Bussy — which was released in January 2020 and was greeted with backlash.
“People threatened to not subscribe to their site anymore,” says Trixx. Many of the performers in Bussy are trans men who haven’t had bottom surgery, which apparently angered some of the subscribers to Treasure Island Media, one of the most recognizable gay porn studios in the U.S.
Indeed, as with many debates over the humanity of trans people, genitals have become a battleground. In some (often toxic) online forums, many users believe that no matter how much testosterone a performer takes, no matter how hairy his chest nor how prominent his beard, he shouldn’t be in gay porn if he has a vagina.
“There is desperate need for cis gay men to hold on to the dignity that they have fought so hard for,” says Shaan Lashun, a trans man and co-founder of The Molly House Project. “And if you dare put a vagina somewhere that they have worked so hard to put all [their] penises, they see it as an attack, and like you're invalidating their rights.”
“People get very protective about their communities and I do understand that,” Trixx says. “But trans men are not taking over gay porn and [yet] they elevate it to that level of panic, you know? We're barely scratching at the door.”
The stigma faced by trans men in the gay porn genre also extends to the cis gay men with whom they share scenes.
"[Gay porn stars] can only have shot scenes with cis men for their entire career and they shoot with one trans guy and suddenly, the trolls are out saying, ‘Oh, you're only gay for pay or this means you're bisexual or whatever else,’” Trixx explains. “[These performers] have filmed with hundreds of men and suddenly for being with a trans guy they’re being accused of being bisexual and being heterosexual … as opposed to just realizing that trans men are men, and it's still gay porn, regardless of what genitals are involved.”
So far, the gay male porn industry isn’t changing fast enough for Trixx. He attended the industry’s premiere event last year —the GayVN, sometimes called “the Oscars of gay porn” — but there was only one award for Favorite FTM (female-to-male) star. That award was in the fan-voting category and wasn’t even handed out at the ceremony. But Trixx thinks that the industry is showing limited signs of progress.
“I went to the GayVN Awards and there was a ton of discussion about their needing to be more inclusion or diversity in gay porn,” he says. “And we can’t even get access to studio work.”
Belmont feels similarly about the big studios. “Most of the studios are transphobic, but the gatekeeping and discrimination of the old guard is being buried with the new pay-per-subscription sites,” he says.
When Belmont started in the industry in 2014, he explains, “I had a lot of hard moments and I had to get a tougher skin. Turns out some cisgender gay men don't need a lot of excuses to tell you how much they hate vaginas. Pretty awkward when they don't know you have one.”
But Belmont also believes the industry is shifting for the better. “A lot of people who said things that were hurtful have become accountable.”
Porn is doubly important to Trixx and Belmont now that they rely on it for all their income.
“Porn doesn’t pay the bills,” says Trixx.
While Trixx saw an increase in people signing up to his OnlyFans when the pandemic began last March, his subscriber count had plateaued by May.
“It definitely improved as I figured out how to navigate the pandemic,” says Trixx. “I've made a lot more solo content over the past year and focused on bringing in followers through social media which has made it possible for me to continue to support myself by making content.”
Belmont has also seen an uptick in subscribers to OnlyFans during the pandemic, but he is nonetheless struggling financially.
“What if your favorite performer was messaging you to ask how your day was and posted hot videos for less than the price of a Big Mac?” Belmont asks. “You'd sign up! But it isn't enough for some of us.”
To aid men in sex work, both trans and cis, the Molly House Project started a COVID-19 relief fund in March 2020. Within four days, they had 70 applicants, and were forced to put a temporary hold on new applications. Some applicants were trans women, whom they had to politely decline, but some of the women were upset.
“They're like, ‘Oh, well, you don't care about the girls,’ to which we respond: Here's a link of seven specific funds for trans women only. This one — this one over here — this is for us,” Lashun says.
Trixx is going all-in on online work in response to the pandemic, but he was initially restricted to solo scenes which don’t sell as well. He has also posted some fitness videos and compilation videos.
“I just have to keep going, keep my head up, and keep making content,” he says. “I’m going to survive this.”
As COVID-19 restrictions ease, he and Belmont don’t have any plans to immediately dip back into in-person escorting sex work full time.
“I've seen a handful of clients here in LA, mostly at moments when I needed the extra cash. I probably won't be back to normal with it until I'm vaccinated,” Trixx says.
Currently, both performers are running discounts on their OnlyFans, a site that has seen more performers sign up since the pandemic, which may have driven down rates for sex workers across the board. But Trixx doesn’t intend to forgo partnered porn forever. He fulfilled his dream of moving to L.A. in July 2020, and he’s gradually started filming it again.
It is unlikely that the mainstream porn industry, which is centered in the LA area, will embrace men like Trixx soon, but according to this trans sex worker, he doesn’t need their approval. He has already made a name for himself in the independent porn world, where he won Best Trans Male Performer award at the 2021 Trans Erotica Awards for his independent content. In so doing, he is forging a vision of a trans-inclusive future for men in sex work.
In the independent world, Trixx says, the old stigmas are fading away and being replaced, at last, with the sort of acceptance he hopes will spread.
“Guys shoot with cis men, they shoot with trans men,” he says. “There aren't those same anxieties and those same pointless boundaries around who they can and can't be with.”
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