November 22, 2023 • 42 mins
Layleen’s mid-twenties weren’t easy. In the years leading up to her death at age 27, she was denied job opportunities, spent periods of time incarcerated, and struggled with her physical and mental health. Sex work was one way Layleen could support herself; but a sex work arrest set off a dehumanizing battle with the criminal justice system that led to her death.
Layleen’s story is not an outlier. Decades of transphobic policies made her arrest feel familiar. We’ll hear from trans women who were devastated by the loss of Layleen, in part because they felt her fate could have been their own.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The
Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just
the heads Up, the following episode discusses transphobia, physical violence,
sexual assault, and police violence. Take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm gonna say and that picture. Leileen was about twenty
five years old.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Milania Brown is showing me a framed picture of her
sister Leileen.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
This was just two years before she passed.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
You may have seen it. It's one of a handful
used in news stories after she died. Layleen's long hair
is pulled into a top one. She's resting her hand
on her cheek, gazing sideways toward the camera. She looks beautiful, young,
and a little booguy, with her eyebrows raised like she's
(01:02):
about to tell you a good story.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Did you see she has a lip Pierson. We both
got our lips pierced together that year. She just felt
like doing something wild, and here I am getting dragged
into her, always like I'm supposed to be the older sister, right,
I'm supposed to be like, no, I'm not doing that.
You shouldn't either, But here I am. Okay, Yeah, let's
do it.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The lip piercings didn't last for either of them, but
for Milania the memory has it captures something intrinsic about
their dynamic. Leileen was the fearless and bold one. She
was always pushing her sister to have fun, playing her
(01:49):
favorite music, taking her out for drinks and dancing. Oh yes,
Leileen was the life of the party. In our last episode,
we heard about Layleen's childhood and how she grew into
(02:09):
herself as an adolescent. We got a sense of her
vibrant personality through some of her family's most cherished recollections,
but we want to dive deeper to better understand what
Layleen's life was like in her mid twenties in the
years leading up to her untimely death at age twenty seven.
(02:33):
I'm Raquel Willis and this is Afterlives Episode two. To
(03:00):
survive Leyleen's mid twenties weren't easy. Friends and family were around,
but there was a lot of instability in her life.
She had a hard time finding a stable job.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
She was getting turned away a lot. There was one
store that she went to and that threw her completely off.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Milania says there was a four hire sign out, so
Leiyleen walked in, filled out the application, and it felt
like she had the job until.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Once she gave them her ID, which the idea was
not changed yet, they said, well, we're not hiring.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Just went out.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
This wasn't the only time transphobia got in the way
of Leileen getting work, and that rejection took its toll.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
That played a big part in what she was going
through and the deep depression that she fell in, and
it certainly didn't make her mental any better.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
With no traditional job security, Layleen cobbled together different types
of work, braiding hair, a bit of modeling, and go
go dancing at a club. She also did sex work.
She had a few clients she'd see regularly. For Layleen,
(04:26):
the work was a pretty straightforward way of making money.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Her thought of it was, well, we all prots it
to ourselves, right, And I'm like, can you explain? She's like,
I mean, well, when you want something from your boyfriend,
what do you do.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Layleen was never someone who wanted to be tied down.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
She was more street smart than I was.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
She never just did one thing or stayed in one place.
She spent time living at her mom's house in the
suburbs of Westchester, County and in an apartment with friends.
She also had a few run ins with the law
and was incarcerated for low level crimes.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Prison is prison right, But when she was in Westchester,
they took care of her. There was actually one coo
that always called my mom just to let us know
that she was fine and tell us, you know, I
could see her right now, she's walking around. She's fine.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
This eased her family's mind, but it was the exception,
not the rule. Other experiences Leileen had behind bars were different.
If she ran into trouble in the city, things were
often worse. Poor conditions were exacerbated by transphobia.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Whenever she got locked up in New York City, it
was never a good time for her. She always said
that they treated her really really bad. They didn't respect her.
They would put her with the other guys.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
This back and forth Layleen going to jail, getting out,
trying to piece her life together, and then ending up
in jael again was par for the course. Her family
would worry but always expected her to make it out.
It was a scary cycle, but it was also familiar.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
We always call her, well I did, my little street cat.
She will go and come back.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
In the year before her death, Leyleen came home less often.
She'd fall completely off the radar, call less frequently, and
would act differently when she was home.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Then I started worrying because now she doesn't have a phone,
she doesn't care to have a phone, she doesn't care
to have any contact. She would just pop up when
she wanted to pop up. We really had no idea
what was going on with her.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
At first they thought maybe it was substance abuse.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
She's like, no, I'm not on drugs. I'm not And
were likely Leen, what is going on with you? You
know to talk to us, like do you have cancer?
Do you have a terminal illness? Why are you so
adamant about us not knowing?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Lalen's family knew she was going to doctor's appointments, but
they didn't know.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Why Lalino was kept it to herself.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
At one point, she was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward
at Saint Joseph's Medical Center, not far from her family's house,
but the doctors wouldn't share information about her condition. Until
things got dire, Layleen tried to escape.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Leileen ran out the hospital with a gown with not
even socks on her feet. Saint Joseph's hospital was at
the corner we lived. Literally, like you could walk to
my mom's house. It wasn't even a five minute walk.
But she did run out the hospital. That's when my
mother started, like, you know she went to the hospital.
She flipped. She's like, at this point, in order for
(08:05):
me to protect my child, you guys have to tell
me what's going on because she we don't know what's
going on. And then that's when we found out that
she was schistophrenic and she also was ep elected.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
These were manageable conditions as long as Leyleen was vigilant
about taking her meds. At different points, Milania and their
brother Solomon tried to convince Leayleen to accept their health.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
But Leileen was one of those very independent persons and
she never wanted to feel like a burden, even though
she knew she wasn't. Solomon and I were like, we work,
stay with mommy, you want to go to school, you
want to be a bed, will take care of you.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Holistically recognizing people's lives is a form of empathy. We
don't always extend to those who passed away, especially when
they're trans women of color. Our stories often get flattened
or reduced to fit a narrative. In our afterlives, trans
(09:14):
women are fashioned into saints who did no wrong or
villains who deserve their deaths. When I started writing about
Layleen's story back in twenty nineteen, I set out to
humanize her. She was complicated, like we all are. That
doesn't make what happened to her inevitable. Layleen's mental illness
(09:38):
impacted her interactions with the carthural system, and it's something
we need to understand about her and empathize with. Too often,
our systems are set up to penalize and inflict further
harm on people like her. Similarly, we need to look
at another aspect of leileen life that's heavily stigmatized, her
(10:03):
relationship to sex work. It was a way for her
to maintain that independence her sister talked about, to help
her survive in a world that never made that simple.
People make a lot of assumptions about sex workers that
of course they would end up in jail, or of
course they'd struggle with mental illness. But I think it's
(10:26):
critical for us to examine those biases as harmful as
they are, and to talk about the way sex work
is understood and misunderstood in our society. After all, it
was a sex work arrest that would also lead Leileen
to Rikers Island and to her death. Let's explore that
(10:50):
when we return. Welcome back to Afterlives. Leileen's story has
resonated with so many trans women, in part because she
(11:13):
was a sex worker. Many trans women identify with the
precariousness she faced while doing that work. Oh my gosh, Hi.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Hi beautiful, Hi goddess, Hi gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Okay, this is Cecilia Genteeli. She's from Argentina and now
lives in Brooklyn. She's a brilliant trans elder and was
also at that first rally after Laileen's death. I wanted
to talk to her because she knows firsthand what it's
like to be a trans woman of color who's engaged
in sex work. She has dedicated her life to uplifting
(11:54):
these stories.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I do many things nowadays.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
She's the founder of Trans Equity Consulting, an organization dedicated
to establishing LGBTQ equity in the workplace and supporting the
next generation of trans change makers.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
We work with the government, we work with nonprofits, we
work with for profits. Doing our things were.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
She's also a writer and an actress, with a memoir
Faltaus and a one woman show Reading. She grew up
in the seventies and transitioned in the eighties, a time
when she says being transdefined your entire life.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Being trans was everything that you could be. You couldn't
be trends in a business woman. You couldn't be trends
in a tennis player, you couldn't be trends and a student.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
The first trans woman Cecilia ever met told her that
if she was going to transition, three things would be true.
She would be a sex worker, do drugs, and die young.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I studied my transition at the time. Sex worker came
with it, and working in street based sex work doesn't
really leave much room to anything else. It's part world.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It became impossible for her to be a sex worker
and continue with school or pursue a career. But despite
these early hurdles, Cecilia did find support and refuge.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
The community that I have the most ability it's a
sex workers' community. I have been around a sex workers
who I had strong differences with, people who we did
not see eye to eye, and if something that was
(13:54):
happening to each of us jump to help each og.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
She explained that the sex workers she knew weren't all friends,
but they kept each other safe. Trans women have long
been thrust into sex work like Cecilia was, and have
come together for necessary protection and support. We like to
(14:21):
think things have changed since the eighties, but it was
just a handful of years ago that Leileen was grappling
with her own limited options for making money. It isn't
a coincidence that trans women are disproportionately represented in this
corner of the underground economy. On top of systemic issues
(14:51):
like housing and justice, health care access, and employment discrimination,
trans women are faced with an uphill battle when it
comes to PS option and representations of trans women and
pop culture reinforce the narrative that sex work is all
that's available to us. It's just what we do.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
It is still uncommon to see a trans woman on
screen who is a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, these
other jobs that trans people actually have.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
That's trevel Anderson.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
We're always a sex worker. We call them sex workers today,
but you know, more often than not, the godum prostitutes.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Trevelle is a journalist, cultural critic and the author of
We See each Other, a Black trans Journey through TV
and film.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
I'm fabulous, I'm wonderful, I'm amazing, I absolutely am. But
imagine who I could have been if that which was
deep down inside of me when I first articulated myself
as being quote unquote different than everyone else when I
was for years old, if that was supported.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I often think about that too. How much smoother might
Cecilia or Leileen's journeys have been if they had seen
more paths for trans women elevated. Let's consider what members
of our community are told to believe about ourselves. In
two thousand HBO, Sex and the City aired a now
(16:28):
infamous episode in season three called cock a Doodle Doo.
One of the main characters, Samantha, you know, the libidinous one,
moves to an apartment in the gentrifying meatpacking district in
downtown Manhattan. She's shocked to find out that her new
(16:48):
trendy neighborhood is also occupied by transsex workers. Carrie Bradshaw,
played by Sarah Jessica Parker, narrates Samantha this disdain.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
There they were Samantha's friendly neighborhood pre op transsexual hookers.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Half man, half woman, totally annoyed.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I can't help but wonder why trans women are often
framed as a problem that says people must overcome but
maybe we'll give them a little grace. That was at
the turn of the century. Since then, we've seen some progress,
(17:31):
but it's been slow and gradual. Pose, the FX series
about ballroom culture in the eighties and nineties, broke the
mold in so many ways, giving more depth to trans
people of color, some of whom engaged in sex work.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And so posts.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I think exists as an example of showing the reality
of some trans experiences, but also introducing some nuance, some care,
some compassion into a story and rendering it as complex
as it actually is and not as simple or sanitized
as a mainstream audience might be interested in seeing.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Pose shines most in moments where we see true connection
between trans women of color, like in a pivotal scene
with India More as Angel talking to her house mother
Blanca played by Mikayla j Rodriguez.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I'm tired of being humiliated.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I deserve more, I'm worthy of better. I just need
to know somebody has my back.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
And if you want a family that kids for you, unconditionally.
Then get your broke ass up, walk this curve and
fix that b face.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I should join it.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Depictions of trans characters on screen have real life implications
for how we're treated in the world. For many people,
a trans woman on a popular show might be their
introduction to a community that they don't encounter or choose
not to pay attention to in their everyday lives. One
of the ways Poe stands out from stereotypes about trans
(19:26):
sex workers is by looking at why its characters are
doing sex work. That's the why That helps us better
understand Leyleen's story.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Particularly in the second and third seasons, we get to
dive more into the fact that it's not just folks
wanting to do sex work, though there are some that do.
They've tried getting jobs elsewhere and have not been able
to for so many systemic reasons. And I think Poe's
did a great job of exploring for the folks who
(20:01):
were forced into survival sex work various storylines there, and
others who took and had and have right some sort
of agency within themselves in that particular work.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
People do sex work for a number of reasons. It
could be due to choice, because of coercion, as a
result of circumstance, or some mix of all of these.
Speaker 6 (20:33):
The majority of the people that we interviewed cited financial constraints,
specifically difficulty finding well paying jobs and affordable housing, as
the biggest driver of their involvement in the sex.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Straight Rachel Swanner is the research director for the Center
of Justice Innovation.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
As adults, trans women face particularly intense discrimination when it
comes to employment. They have a harder time getting jobs,
and even when they do get them, informal discrimination often
drives them out of the mainstream workforce.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
In twenty seventeen, Rachel published a participatory research study about
the experiences of adults doing sex work in New York
and people with experience as sex workers were a core
part of the research team.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
We talked to three hundred and four people who traded
sex for money, housing, drugs, food safety, or other things
that they might need in New York City.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Eighteen percent of the people in the study were trans women.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
Their sexual and gender identities often played a complicating role
in their family dynamics growing up, so they talked about
having parents or guardians who disapproved of their identity and
that often led to getting kicked out of their homes
or to physical and emotional abuse within the home, forcing
our participants into the streets for safety and survival.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
While Leileen had an affirming, loving family, that's not the
case for many. Over a third of the trans women
interviewed the study started trading sex before the age of eighteen,
so trans women do not enter adulthood with access to
the same career options as this woman.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
One of our participants stated that, you know, trans women
aren't doing this because they think it's fun. They're doing
it to survive because nobody will give them a job.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Here's some more numbers for you. Trans people face an
unemployment rate three times higher than the general population, and
that's even higher for black trans people. Leyleen lived at
this intersection of transphobia and racism, and she was dealing
(22:40):
with other challenging circumstances too, like mental health issues as
well as a seizure disorder, real life factors Consistent with
what Rachel found in her study.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Thirty five percent of the people that we talked to
so they had health problems that were related to their
sex work, and so for some health problems were a
driver of their involvement sex trade, given how challenging it
can be to consistently hold jobs in the mainstream economy
while struggling with illness or pain, and for others, medical
expenses related to theirs and other health problems drove their involvement.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
L'yleen's challenges holding down a job in the formal economy
were layered, and she had a criminal record. While arrests
and fines are supposed to stop people from doing sex work,
in practice they can lead people to be more reliant
on this source of income. Rachel thinks the legal system
(23:36):
sets up a false binary between victims and criminals that
just isn't helpful.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
They too, would identify themselves as victims of larger systems
that made them feel that they had no other viable option.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
She's found that it doesn't reflect people's live experiences.
Speaker 6 (23:53):
It's easier to say, like, these people are breaking the law,
this is wrong, this is morally wrong, without really understanding
the nuances of the experiences that people in the sex
trade have and the different push factors that lead them
to be out on the streets or online training.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Sex trans Sex workers have always had to navigate their
own complex realities in the face of oversimplified and negative perceptions.
Pop culture, public discourse, and policy decisions all contribute to
a culture where sex work is seen as shameful, im moral,
(24:31):
and inherently dangerous. When Leyleen was arrested and later incarcerated
in a sex work scene, it echoed the experiences of
generations of trans women. More on that after the Break
Welcome back to After Lives, Layleen's experience as a sex
(24:56):
worker was a relatable point for many in the community.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
I have that connection. I was a sex worker for.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Many years, including Tabitha Gonzales.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
That's what started my journey to have a criminal history
trying to survive.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Today. Tabitha works as a human rights specialist for the
City of New York, a big change from her days
as a young sex worker in the nineties. Back then,
she had a lot in common with Leileen.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
I really thought that could have been me. I come
from a loving black family. I was affirmed. It wasn't
until I left the family and started to venture out
that my difference triggered violence and assault.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
She's also from the New York metropolitan area, and she
too wanted to leave home and explore the city to
start her adult life and find out who she really was.
Speaker 5 (25:54):
I choose to try to be me authentically where my
family was Affirman. That mean we had the resources, so
I had to transition the way I needed to transition,
and that let me to sex work. There was any
there was a way we can live and live. We
did for some time, but for some of us at
(26:16):
the cost about death vironments.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Many of the risks that accompany sex work come from
the fact that it's criminalized. This work gets pushed into
the shadows and there are a few places to turn
for help. As the Cilia Genteeley points out, it can
be dangerous for sex workers to go to the police.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
The concept that people have is that law enforcement is
there to help everybody, but specifically to help these minorities.
It has not been.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
My experience, in fact, has experienced violence from law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I have experienced sexual violence, physical violence, a lot of
terrible mintum manipulation from police officers.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
She's made it her mission in life to end this mistreatment.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I focus in the communization of sex work and changing
policy and legislation that have created a system of communization
that had affect us so badly historically.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Cecilia and Tabitha's experiences with police violence and frequent arrests
motivate their work.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
When I was out there my interactions with NYPD, I
didn't know the law. I just knew I had to survive,
and if survived meant that I would take the risk
of getting arrested. I did what I needed to do
to survive.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
They're both advocates for trans rights who believe that consensual
sex work should be The realized there was.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
No opportunities for education and support groups and all that
to kind of for Pear to go back out. There
was nothing there for someone to actually change it. First,
I'm black and I'm trans. The systems was never designed
to push us forward. We have to fight for it
(28:25):
still today. I didn't choose advocacy. Advocacy shows me.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
The harm caused by law enforcement through arrest, incarceration, and
abuse is something the women I spoke to share with
transactivists and sex workers going back decades, including queer liberation
pioneers like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Even for
(28:59):
those who didn't know Leaileen personally, they know that level
of harassment and feel connected to her.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I didn't know her, but I know her story right,
because many parts of her story are my story, and.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So Solia tells me. Layleen's passing affected her even more
than the deaths of people she knew personally.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Because I saw what happened to her as something that
could have happened to me. Everything felt so familiar that
it made it so specifically close to my experience.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Layleen's death sparked fresh outrage toward the harms caused by
criminalizing sex work. But to understand exactly why Layleen's experience
ignited a movement, we have to look back at some history.
Decades of transphobic policy preceded Lealen's brushes with law enforcement
(30:03):
as a sex worker. That past matters to her legacy
and why her mistreatment felt personal to trans elders and
young people alike. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, the
NYPD would use so called masquerade laws to mandate that
(30:23):
people dress according to their sex assigned at birth. Early
transactivist Peggy Ames explains these restrictions on a nineteen seventy
three broadcast of wbfo's Stonewall Nation radio series.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
Concerning the transsexual What type of laws of their concerning.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
Dress there are on the statues of the New York
State legal books anti cross dressing laws. So except for
Halloween or if I were going to a drag show
and I enjoyed the acrost the law this is sanctioned,
but it is my understanding. In my case of mail,
I must wear at least three pieces of mail or pier,
(31:03):
and I do not wear in it.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Police use these laws to harass trans and gender nonconforming
people on the street and when raiding bars like the
Stonewall Inn. That bar became the site of the now
famous Stonewall Riots of nineteen sixty nine. This uprising was
led in part by transsex workers of color and helped
(31:26):
put a stop to the enforcement of these laws. But
a few years later, another law was put on the
books in New York, sanctioning a new way to police
trans bodies and an excuse to arrest trans women because
of how they looked. The statute was called the loitering
(31:49):
for the purpose of engaging in a prostitution offense.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
I was arrested so many times.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Here's Cecilia again.
Speaker 8 (31:57):
I used to leaven betsty point cap cakes. Didn't cost
eight dollars, you know, don't give me that shit. No,
the cap cake was a little davy. That was the
extent of the day. So I lived there and I
used to get arrested weekly for lauding.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Every week she was handcuffed by the NYPD for loitering.
One problem with the statue was it was written with
some really vague language. Essentially, the police could use loitering
as an excuse to pick up whoever they wanted and
then search them and arrest them.
Speaker 9 (32:36):
Some of the descriptions of what people were wearing were comical,
it didn't result in someone's arrest.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Lee Latimer is a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid
Society in New York.
Speaker 9 (32:47):
One person was described as wearing like a black dress.
One person was wearing type jeans.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
The statue targeted trans women in particular, so much so
that it became known as the walking While translam adam.
Speaker 9 (33:03):
Z apples were something that would be described in complaints
as some type of proof that a person you know
was a transwoman and therefore was in a public place
for the purpose of engaging in prostitution, the police thought
that just about any transwoman socializing in a public place
was a sex worker.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
This law was still on the books until a few
years ago, just as the masquerade laws were used to
target queer gathering spaces like the Stone Wall in the Walking,
while trans law eradicated spaces where trans women used to
come together. The first time I went down there, it
was just this magical place, like there is no other
(33:47):
place than the city like it. It's like you entered this
whole new world. Kristin Leavelle directed an HBO documentary called
The Stroll, about an area in New York City's meatpacking
district where trans sex workers gathered to find clients.
Speaker 10 (34:03):
There was a certain liberation in just being free and
breaking all the rules.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
The same area where sex and the city labeled trans
people as a nuisance, Kristen's vision of the Stroll was
much different.
Speaker 10 (34:17):
The gritty, dark area that seemed so dangerous was just
actually a safe haven for us to just be ourselves.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Kristin worked the Stroll in the early two thousands, but
it had been around since the mid nineteen hundreds. Decades
of heavy policing eventually transformed the area. What used to
be a place where trans sex workers set up encampments
and took care of each other turned into a fancy,
elevated park called the high Line now surrounded by designer
(34:50):
stores and rooftop bars. I mean, what they did there
is cute, it's beautiful, but it still just doesn't have
the allure that the old meatpacking district ad. Transforming this
space fundamentally changed the way trans women could engage with
each other in the city.
Speaker 10 (35:08):
As they were slowly closing.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
The stroll, Kristen remembers when this area meant seeing fifty,
maybe sixty trans women all in one place was a
certain beauty to it.
Speaker 10 (35:21):
To just see all these beautiful trans women just being
themselves out in the streets.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
It's not like that no more. By the time Layleen
was in her twenties in the twenty tens, it seemed
like things were starting to change. Sometimes I feel like
when progress comes, we try to brush over the mistakes
(35:51):
of the past without fully reckoning with them, and we
let people fall through the cracks. Layleeen was twenty two
when Build a Block was inaugurated As mayor in twenty fourteen,
the Blasio promised to put an end to the heavy
enforcement of misdemeanors, the kind of enforcement that the Walking
while trans law encouraged. In February of twenty seventeen, the
(36:17):
NYPD's commissioner announced that he would approach sex work differently.
He acknowledged that we can't just arrest our way out
of this problem. He said that he had already started
to switch the emphasis of policing away from sex workers
to focus on who he refers to as pimps and john's.
(36:41):
This is the year Lealen was arrested for sex work.
In twenty seventeen, overall, there were about two thousand sex
work related arrests in New York City. In nineteen eighty five,
there were about twenty thousand sex work arrests fell under
Deblasio's administration, but they didn't come to a halt. Seven
(37:05):
months after that announcement from the NYPD, after the city
appeared to be taking the side of progress, Leylean fell
through the cracks. She was arrested by plainclothes officers from
a notorious NYPD unit, the Vice Squad. It specializes in
(37:25):
sex work. A source of the New York Civil Liberties
Union told us they are infamously associated with corruption and scandals.
Vice officers have been caught using their badges to commit
sexual violence. As part of the underground economy. Sex workers
(37:46):
are especially vulnerable to police. The Vice Squad is still
around today and has faced increased calls for its disbanding.
It largely operates undercover plane clothes officers set up supposed
dates with sex workers and calling backup after they've accepted
(38:07):
money in exchange for sex. A twenty twenty Pro Publica
investigation into the Vice Squad found that undercover operations were
often not recorded. This not only enables abuse, but the
report found many alleged sex workers and clients were arrested
without actually agreeing to trade sex. Pro Publica's investigations showed
(38:31):
that people arrested by the Vice Squad would often say
no several times before giving into pressure from the officers,
and a source of the Legal Aid Society told us
that clients have described officers pushing money into their hands
to initiate and arrest. The Pro Publica report highlights that
(38:52):
overtime pay was a hugely motivating factor in making sex
work arrests. The more people the squad arrested, the more
officers got paid. On August twenty fifth, twenty seventeen, at
about ten thirty pm, Layleen was arrested on the Upper
West Side of Manhattan in one of these operations after
(39:14):
allegedly agreeing to perform oral sex on an undercover officer.
During the arrest, the NYPD also allegedly found a pipe
in her pocket containing crack cocaine. The implications of this
arrest would follow Laileen for years. It would set off
a chain of events in her life that would keep
(39:36):
her embroiled in a dehumanizing battle with the criminal justice system.
This battle would eventually lead to her death. That's next
time on Afterlives.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Stepping foot on Rikers Island has been widely acknowledged a
potential death sentence in a state where we have outlawed
the death penalty.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Why they and got fail set on Leileen's case is
a question certainly nobody ever answered for me, and it's
a question I never stopped asking.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
I can almost imagine how it felt for her, would
be locked down and now you're in this place where
you're being penalized for still being you.
Speaker 11 (40:16):
It's certainly been my experience that many of the jail
attributable deaths that I investigate involve people that the security
service had decided was a problem.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Thank you so much for listening to Afterlives. You can
find this episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave
us a writing and review to let us know what
you think. After lives as a production of iHeart Podcasts
(40:52):
and The Outspoken Podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans.
I'm your host and creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is
our senior producer and scriptwriter. Our associate producer is Joey
pat Sound design and engineering by Daisy Makes Radio Productions,
(41:15):
story editing by Aaron Edwards and Julia Farlan, fact checking
by Savannah Hugiley. Our show art is by Makai Baldwin.
Score composed by Wadley Murray. Our production manager is Daisy Church.
Executive producers include me, Raquel Willis, and Jay Brunson from
(41:37):
The Outspoken Podcast Network, Michael Alder, June and Noel Brown
from iHeart Podcasts, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley
from School of Humans and The Cats Company School of
(42:14):
Humans
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The
Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just
the heads Up, the following episode discusses transphobia, physical violence,
sexual assault, and police violence. Take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm gonna say and that picture. Leileen was about twenty
five years old.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Milania Brown is showing me a framed picture of her
sister Leileen.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
This was just two years before she passed.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
You may have seen it. It's one of a handful
used in news stories after she died. Layleen's long hair
is pulled into a top one. She's resting her hand
on her cheek, gazing sideways toward the camera. She looks beautiful, young,
and a little booguy, with her eyebrows raised like she's
(01:02):
about to tell you a good story.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Did you see she has a lip Pierson. We both
got our lips pierced together that year. She just felt
like doing something wild, and here I am getting dragged
into her, always like I'm supposed to be the older sister, right,
I'm supposed to be like, no, I'm not doing that.
You shouldn't either, But here I am. Okay, Yeah, let's
do it.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The lip piercings didn't last for either of them, but
for Milania the memory has it captures something intrinsic about
their dynamic. Leileen was the fearless and bold one. She
was always pushing her sister to have fun, playing her
(01:49):
favorite music, taking her out for drinks and dancing. Oh yes,
Leileen was the life of the party. In our last episode,
we heard about Layleen's childhood and how she grew into
(02:09):
herself as an adolescent. We got a sense of her
vibrant personality through some of her family's most cherished recollections,
but we want to dive deeper to better understand what
Layleen's life was like in her mid twenties in the
years leading up to her untimely death at age twenty seven.
(02:33):
I'm Raquel Willis and this is Afterlives Episode two. To
(03:00):
survive Leyleen's mid twenties weren't easy. Friends and family were around,
but there was a lot of instability in her life.
She had a hard time finding a stable job.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
She was getting turned away a lot. There was one
store that she went to and that threw her completely off.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Milania says there was a four hire sign out, so
Leiyleen walked in, filled out the application, and it felt
like she had the job until.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Once she gave them her ID, which the idea was
not changed yet, they said, well, we're not hiring.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Just went out.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
This wasn't the only time transphobia got in the way
of Leileen getting work, and that rejection took its toll.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
That played a big part in what she was going
through and the deep depression that she fell in, and
it certainly didn't make her mental any better.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
With no traditional job security, Layleen cobbled together different types
of work, braiding hair, a bit of modeling, and go
go dancing at a club. She also did sex work.
She had a few clients she'd see regularly. For Layleen,
(04:26):
the work was a pretty straightforward way of making money.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Her thought of it was, well, we all prots it
to ourselves, right, And I'm like, can you explain? She's like,
I mean, well, when you want something from your boyfriend,
what do you do.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Layleen was never someone who wanted to be tied down.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
She was more street smart than I was.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
She never just did one thing or stayed in one place.
She spent time living at her mom's house in the
suburbs of Westchester, County and in an apartment with friends.
She also had a few run ins with the law
and was incarcerated for low level crimes.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Prison is prison right, But when she was in Westchester,
they took care of her. There was actually one coo
that always called my mom just to let us know
that she was fine and tell us, you know, I
could see her right now, she's walking around. She's fine.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
This eased her family's mind, but it was the exception,
not the rule. Other experiences Leileen had behind bars were different.
If she ran into trouble in the city, things were
often worse. Poor conditions were exacerbated by transphobia.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Whenever she got locked up in New York City, it
was never a good time for her. She always said
that they treated her really really bad. They didn't respect her.
They would put her with the other guys.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
This back and forth Layleen going to jail, getting out,
trying to piece her life together, and then ending up
in jael again was par for the course. Her family
would worry but always expected her to make it out.
It was a scary cycle, but it was also familiar.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
We always call her, well I did, my little street cat.
She will go and come back.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
In the year before her death, Leyleen came home less often.
She'd fall completely off the radar, call less frequently, and
would act differently when she was home.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Then I started worrying because now she doesn't have a phone,
she doesn't care to have a phone, she doesn't care
to have any contact. She would just pop up when
she wanted to pop up. We really had no idea
what was going on with her.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
At first they thought maybe it was substance abuse.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
She's like, no, I'm not on drugs. I'm not And
were likely Leen, what is going on with you? You
know to talk to us, like do you have cancer?
Do you have a terminal illness? Why are you so
adamant about us not knowing?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Lalen's family knew she was going to doctor's appointments, but
they didn't know.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Why Lalino was kept it to herself.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
At one point, she was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward
at Saint Joseph's Medical Center, not far from her family's house,
but the doctors wouldn't share information about her condition. Until
things got dire, Layleen tried to escape.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Leileen ran out the hospital with a gown with not
even socks on her feet. Saint Joseph's hospital was at
the corner we lived. Literally, like you could walk to
my mom's house. It wasn't even a five minute walk.
But she did run out the hospital. That's when my
mother started, like, you know she went to the hospital.
She flipped. She's like, at this point, in order for
(08:05):
me to protect my child, you guys have to tell
me what's going on because she we don't know what's
going on. And then that's when we found out that
she was schistophrenic and she also was ep elected.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
These were manageable conditions as long as Leyleen was vigilant
about taking her meds. At different points, Milania and their
brother Solomon tried to convince Leayleen to accept their health.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
But Leileen was one of those very independent persons and
she never wanted to feel like a burden, even though
she knew she wasn't. Solomon and I were like, we work,
stay with mommy, you want to go to school, you
want to be a bed, will take care of you.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Holistically recognizing people's lives is a form of empathy. We
don't always extend to those who passed away, especially when
they're trans women of color. Our stories often get flattened
or reduced to fit a narrative. In our afterlives, trans
(09:14):
women are fashioned into saints who did no wrong or
villains who deserve their deaths. When I started writing about
Layleen's story back in twenty nineteen, I set out to
humanize her. She was complicated, like we all are. That
doesn't make what happened to her inevitable. Layleen's mental illness
(09:38):
impacted her interactions with the carthural system, and it's something
we need to understand about her and empathize with. Too often,
our systems are set up to penalize and inflict further
harm on people like her. Similarly, we need to look
at another aspect of leileen life that's heavily stigmatized, her
(10:03):
relationship to sex work. It was a way for her
to maintain that independence her sister talked about, to help
her survive in a world that never made that simple.
People make a lot of assumptions about sex workers that
of course they would end up in jail, or of
course they'd struggle with mental illness. But I think it's
(10:26):
critical for us to examine those biases as harmful as
they are, and to talk about the way sex work
is understood and misunderstood in our society. After all, it
was a sex work arrest that would also lead Leileen
to Rikers Island and to her death. Let's explore that
(10:50):
when we return. Welcome back to Afterlives. Leileen's story has
resonated with so many trans women, in part because she
(11:13):
was a sex worker. Many trans women identify with the
precariousness she faced while doing that work. Oh my gosh, Hi.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Hi beautiful, Hi goddess, Hi gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Okay, this is Cecilia Genteeli. She's from Argentina and now
lives in Brooklyn. She's a brilliant trans elder and was
also at that first rally after Laileen's death. I wanted
to talk to her because she knows firsthand what it's
like to be a trans woman of color who's engaged
in sex work. She has dedicated her life to uplifting
(11:54):
these stories.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I do many things nowadays.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
She's the founder of Trans Equity Consulting, an organization dedicated
to establishing LGBTQ equity in the workplace and supporting the
next generation of trans change makers.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
We work with the government, we work with nonprofits, we
work with for profits. Doing our things were.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
She's also a writer and an actress, with a memoir
Faltaus and a one woman show Reading. She grew up
in the seventies and transitioned in the eighties, a time
when she says being transdefined your entire life.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Being trans was everything that you could be. You couldn't
be trends in a business woman. You couldn't be trends
in a tennis player, you couldn't be trends and a student.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
The first trans woman Cecilia ever met told her that
if she was going to transition, three things would be true.
She would be a sex worker, do drugs, and die young.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I studied my transition at the time. Sex worker came
with it, and working in street based sex work doesn't
really leave much room to anything else. It's part world.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It became impossible for her to be a sex worker
and continue with school or pursue a career. But despite
these early hurdles, Cecilia did find support and refuge.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
The community that I have the most ability it's a
sex workers' community. I have been around a sex workers
who I had strong differences with, people who we did
not see eye to eye, and if something that was
(13:54):
happening to each of us jump to help each og.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
She explained that the sex workers she knew weren't all friends,
but they kept each other safe. Trans women have long
been thrust into sex work like Cecilia was, and have
come together for necessary protection and support. We like to
(14:21):
think things have changed since the eighties, but it was
just a handful of years ago that Leileen was grappling
with her own limited options for making money. It isn't
a coincidence that trans women are disproportionately represented in this
corner of the underground economy. On top of systemic issues
(14:51):
like housing and justice, health care access, and employment discrimination,
trans women are faced with an uphill battle when it
comes to PS option and representations of trans women and
pop culture reinforce the narrative that sex work is all
that's available to us. It's just what we do.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
It is still uncommon to see a trans woman on
screen who is a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, these
other jobs that trans people actually have.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
That's trevel Anderson.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
We're always a sex worker. We call them sex workers today,
but you know, more often than not, the godum prostitutes.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Trevelle is a journalist, cultural critic and the author of
We See each Other, a Black trans Journey through TV
and film.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
I'm fabulous, I'm wonderful, I'm amazing, I absolutely am. But
imagine who I could have been if that which was
deep down inside of me when I first articulated myself
as being quote unquote different than everyone else when I
was for years old, if that was supported.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I often think about that too. How much smoother might
Cecilia or Leileen's journeys have been if they had seen
more paths for trans women elevated. Let's consider what members
of our community are told to believe about ourselves. In
two thousand HBO, Sex and the City aired a now
(16:28):
infamous episode in season three called cock a Doodle Doo.
One of the main characters, Samantha, you know, the libidinous one,
moves to an apartment in the gentrifying meatpacking district in
downtown Manhattan. She's shocked to find out that her new
(16:48):
trendy neighborhood is also occupied by transsex workers. Carrie Bradshaw,
played by Sarah Jessica Parker, narrates Samantha this disdain.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
There they were Samantha's friendly neighborhood pre op transsexual hookers.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Half man, half woman, totally annoyed.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I can't help but wonder why trans women are often
framed as a problem that says people must overcome but
maybe we'll give them a little grace. That was at
the turn of the century. Since then, we've seen some progress,
(17:31):
but it's been slow and gradual. Pose, the FX series
about ballroom culture in the eighties and nineties, broke the
mold in so many ways, giving more depth to trans
people of color, some of whom engaged in sex work.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And so posts.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I think exists as an example of showing the reality
of some trans experiences, but also introducing some nuance, some care,
some compassion into a story and rendering it as complex
as it actually is and not as simple or sanitized
as a mainstream audience might be interested in seeing.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Pose shines most in moments where we see true connection
between trans women of color, like in a pivotal scene
with India More as Angel talking to her house mother
Blanca played by Mikayla j Rodriguez.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I'm tired of being humiliated.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I deserve more, I'm worthy of better. I just need
to know somebody has my back.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
And if you want a family that kids for you, unconditionally.
Then get your broke ass up, walk this curve and
fix that b face.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I should join it.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Depictions of trans characters on screen have real life implications
for how we're treated in the world. For many people,
a trans woman on a popular show might be their
introduction to a community that they don't encounter or choose
not to pay attention to in their everyday lives. One
of the ways Poe stands out from stereotypes about trans
(19:26):
sex workers is by looking at why its characters are
doing sex work. That's the why That helps us better
understand Leyleen's story.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Particularly in the second and third seasons, we get to
dive more into the fact that it's not just folks
wanting to do sex work, though there are some that do.
They've tried getting jobs elsewhere and have not been able
to for so many systemic reasons. And I think Poe's
did a great job of exploring for the folks who
(20:01):
were forced into survival sex work various storylines there, and
others who took and had and have right some sort
of agency within themselves in that particular work.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
People do sex work for a number of reasons. It
could be due to choice, because of coercion, as a
result of circumstance, or some mix of all of these.
Speaker 6 (20:33):
The majority of the people that we interviewed cited financial constraints,
specifically difficulty finding well paying jobs and affordable housing, as
the biggest driver of their involvement in the sex.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Straight Rachel Swanner is the research director for the Center
of Justice Innovation.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
As adults, trans women face particularly intense discrimination when it
comes to employment. They have a harder time getting jobs,
and even when they do get them, informal discrimination often
drives them out of the mainstream workforce.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
In twenty seventeen, Rachel published a participatory research study about
the experiences of adults doing sex work in New York
and people with experience as sex workers were a core
part of the research team.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
We talked to three hundred and four people who traded
sex for money, housing, drugs, food safety, or other things
that they might need in New York City.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Eighteen percent of the people in the study were trans women.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
Their sexual and gender identities often played a complicating role
in their family dynamics growing up, so they talked about
having parents or guardians who disapproved of their identity and
that often led to getting kicked out of their homes
or to physical and emotional abuse within the home, forcing
our participants into the streets for safety and survival.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
While Leileen had an affirming, loving family, that's not the
case for many. Over a third of the trans women
interviewed the study started trading sex before the age of eighteen,
so trans women do not enter adulthood with access to
the same career options as this woman.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
One of our participants stated that, you know, trans women
aren't doing this because they think it's fun. They're doing
it to survive because nobody will give them a job.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Here's some more numbers for you. Trans people face an
unemployment rate three times higher than the general population, and
that's even higher for black trans people. Leyleen lived at
this intersection of transphobia and racism, and she was dealing
(22:40):
with other challenging circumstances too, like mental health issues as
well as a seizure disorder, real life factors Consistent with
what Rachel found in her study.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Thirty five percent of the people that we talked to
so they had health problems that were related to their
sex work, and so for some health problems were a
driver of their involvement sex trade, given how challenging it
can be to consistently hold jobs in the mainstream economy
while struggling with illness or pain, and for others, medical
expenses related to theirs and other health problems drove their involvement.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
L'yleen's challenges holding down a job in the formal economy
were layered, and she had a criminal record. While arrests
and fines are supposed to stop people from doing sex work,
in practice they can lead people to be more reliant
on this source of income. Rachel thinks the legal system
(23:36):
sets up a false binary between victims and criminals that
just isn't helpful.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
They too, would identify themselves as victims of larger systems
that made them feel that they had no other viable option.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
She's found that it doesn't reflect people's live experiences.
Speaker 6 (23:53):
It's easier to say, like, these people are breaking the law,
this is wrong, this is morally wrong, without really understanding
the nuances of the experiences that people in the sex
trade have and the different push factors that lead them
to be out on the streets or online training.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Sex trans Sex workers have always had to navigate their
own complex realities in the face of oversimplified and negative perceptions.
Pop culture, public discourse, and policy decisions all contribute to
a culture where sex work is seen as shameful, im moral,
(24:31):
and inherently dangerous. When Leyleen was arrested and later incarcerated
in a sex work scene, it echoed the experiences of
generations of trans women. More on that after the Break
Welcome back to After Lives, Layleen's experience as a sex
(24:56):
worker was a relatable point for many in the community.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
I have that connection. I was a sex worker for.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Many years, including Tabitha Gonzales.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
That's what started my journey to have a criminal history
trying to survive.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Today. Tabitha works as a human rights specialist for the
City of New York, a big change from her days
as a young sex worker in the nineties. Back then,
she had a lot in common with Leileen.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
I really thought that could have been me. I come
from a loving black family. I was affirmed. It wasn't
until I left the family and started to venture out
that my difference triggered violence and assault.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
She's also from the New York metropolitan area, and she
too wanted to leave home and explore the city to
start her adult life and find out who she really was.
Speaker 5 (25:54):
I choose to try to be me authentically where my
family was Affirman. That mean we had the resources, so
I had to transition the way I needed to transition,
and that let me to sex work. There was any
there was a way we can live and live. We
did for some time, but for some of us at
(26:16):
the cost about death vironments.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Many of the risks that accompany sex work come from
the fact that it's criminalized. This work gets pushed into
the shadows and there are a few places to turn
for help. As the Cilia Genteeley points out, it can
be dangerous for sex workers to go to the police.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
The concept that people have is that law enforcement is
there to help everybody, but specifically to help these minorities.
It has not been.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
My experience, in fact, has experienced violence from law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I have experienced sexual violence, physical violence, a lot of
terrible mintum manipulation from police officers.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
She's made it her mission in life to end this mistreatment.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I focus in the communization of sex work and changing
policy and legislation that have created a system of communization
that had affect us so badly historically.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Cecilia and Tabitha's experiences with police violence and frequent arrests
motivate their work.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
When I was out there my interactions with NYPD, I
didn't know the law. I just knew I had to survive,
and if survived meant that I would take the risk
of getting arrested. I did what I needed to do
to survive.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
They're both advocates for trans rights who believe that consensual
sex work should be The realized there was.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
No opportunities for education and support groups and all that
to kind of for Pear to go back out. There
was nothing there for someone to actually change it. First,
I'm black and I'm trans. The systems was never designed
to push us forward. We have to fight for it
(28:25):
still today. I didn't choose advocacy. Advocacy shows me.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
The harm caused by law enforcement through arrest, incarceration, and
abuse is something the women I spoke to share with
transactivists and sex workers going back decades, including queer liberation
pioneers like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Even for
(28:59):
those who didn't know Leaileen personally, they know that level
of harassment and feel connected to her.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I didn't know her, but I know her story right,
because many parts of her story are my story, and.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So Solia tells me. Layleen's passing affected her even more
than the deaths of people she knew personally.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Because I saw what happened to her as something that
could have happened to me. Everything felt so familiar that
it made it so specifically close to my experience.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Layleen's death sparked fresh outrage toward the harms caused by
criminalizing sex work. But to understand exactly why Layleen's experience
ignited a movement, we have to look back at some history.
Decades of transphobic policy preceded Lealen's brushes with law enforcement
(30:03):
as a sex worker. That past matters to her legacy
and why her mistreatment felt personal to trans elders and
young people alike. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, the
NYPD would use so called masquerade laws to mandate that
(30:23):
people dress according to their sex assigned at birth. Early
transactivist Peggy Ames explains these restrictions on a nineteen seventy
three broadcast of wbfo's Stonewall Nation radio series.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
Concerning the transsexual What type of laws of their concerning.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
Dress there are on the statues of the New York
State legal books anti cross dressing laws. So except for
Halloween or if I were going to a drag show
and I enjoyed the acrost the law this is sanctioned,
but it is my understanding. In my case of mail,
I must wear at least three pieces of mail or pier,
(31:03):
and I do not wear in it.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Police use these laws to harass trans and gender nonconforming
people on the street and when raiding bars like the
Stonewall Inn. That bar became the site of the now
famous Stonewall Riots of nineteen sixty nine. This uprising was
led in part by transsex workers of color and helped
(31:26):
put a stop to the enforcement of these laws. But
a few years later, another law was put on the
books in New York, sanctioning a new way to police
trans bodies and an excuse to arrest trans women because
of how they looked. The statute was called the loitering
(31:49):
for the purpose of engaging in a prostitution offense.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
I was arrested so many times.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Here's Cecilia again.
Speaker 8 (31:57):
I used to leaven betsty point cap cakes. Didn't cost
eight dollars, you know, don't give me that shit. No,
the cap cake was a little davy. That was the
extent of the day. So I lived there and I
used to get arrested weekly for lauding.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Every week she was handcuffed by the NYPD for loitering.
One problem with the statue was it was written with
some really vague language. Essentially, the police could use loitering
as an excuse to pick up whoever they wanted and
then search them and arrest them.
Speaker 9 (32:36):
Some of the descriptions of what people were wearing were comical,
it didn't result in someone's arrest.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Lee Latimer is a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid
Society in New York.
Speaker 9 (32:47):
One person was described as wearing like a black dress.
One person was wearing type jeans.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
The statue targeted trans women in particular, so much so
that it became known as the walking While translam adam.
Speaker 9 (33:03):
Z apples were something that would be described in complaints
as some type of proof that a person you know
was a transwoman and therefore was in a public place
for the purpose of engaging in prostitution, the police thought
that just about any transwoman socializing in a public place
was a sex worker.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
This law was still on the books until a few
years ago, just as the masquerade laws were used to
target queer gathering spaces like the Stone Wall in the Walking,
while trans law eradicated spaces where trans women used to
come together. The first time I went down there, it
was just this magical place, like there is no other
(33:47):
place than the city like it. It's like you entered this
whole new world. Kristin Leavelle directed an HBO documentary called
The Stroll, about an area in New York City's meatpacking
district where trans sex workers gathered to find clients.
Speaker 10 (34:03):
There was a certain liberation in just being free and
breaking all the rules.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
The same area where sex and the city labeled trans
people as a nuisance, Kristen's vision of the Stroll was
much different.
Speaker 10 (34:17):
The gritty, dark area that seemed so dangerous was just
actually a safe haven for us to just be ourselves.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Kristin worked the Stroll in the early two thousands, but
it had been around since the mid nineteen hundreds. Decades
of heavy policing eventually transformed the area. What used to
be a place where trans sex workers set up encampments
and took care of each other turned into a fancy,
elevated park called the high Line now surrounded by designer
(34:50):
stores and rooftop bars. I mean, what they did there
is cute, it's beautiful, but it still just doesn't have
the allure that the old meatpacking district ad. Transforming this
space fundamentally changed the way trans women could engage with
each other in the city.
Speaker 10 (35:08):
As they were slowly closing.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
The stroll, Kristen remembers when this area meant seeing fifty,
maybe sixty trans women all in one place was a
certain beauty to it.
Speaker 10 (35:21):
To just see all these beautiful trans women just being
themselves out in the streets.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
It's not like that no more. By the time Layleen
was in her twenties in the twenty tens, it seemed
like things were starting to change. Sometimes I feel like
when progress comes, we try to brush over the mistakes
(35:51):
of the past without fully reckoning with them, and we
let people fall through the cracks. Layleeen was twenty two
when Build a Block was inaugurated As mayor in twenty fourteen,
the Blasio promised to put an end to the heavy
enforcement of misdemeanors, the kind of enforcement that the Walking
while trans law encouraged. In February of twenty seventeen, the
(36:17):
NYPD's commissioner announced that he would approach sex work differently.
He acknowledged that we can't just arrest our way out
of this problem. He said that he had already started
to switch the emphasis of policing away from sex workers
to focus on who he refers to as pimps and john's.
(36:41):
This is the year Lealen was arrested for sex work.
In twenty seventeen, overall, there were about two thousand sex
work related arrests in New York City. In nineteen eighty five,
there were about twenty thousand sex work arrests fell under
Deblasio's administration, but they didn't come to a halt. Seven
(37:05):
months after that announcement from the NYPD, after the city
appeared to be taking the side of progress, Leylean fell
through the cracks. She was arrested by plainclothes officers from
a notorious NYPD unit, the Vice Squad. It specializes in
(37:25):
sex work. A source of the New York Civil Liberties
Union told us they are infamously associated with corruption and scandals.
Vice officers have been caught using their badges to commit
sexual violence. As part of the underground economy. Sex workers
(37:46):
are especially vulnerable to police. The Vice Squad is still
around today and has faced increased calls for its disbanding.
It largely operates undercover plane clothes officers set up supposed
dates with sex workers and calling backup after they've accepted
(38:07):
money in exchange for sex. A twenty twenty Pro Publica
investigation into the Vice Squad found that undercover operations were
often not recorded. This not only enables abuse, but the
report found many alleged sex workers and clients were arrested
without actually agreeing to trade sex. Pro Publica's investigations showed
(38:31):
that people arrested by the Vice Squad would often say
no several times before giving into pressure from the officers,
and a source of the Legal Aid Society told us
that clients have described officers pushing money into their hands
to initiate and arrest. The Pro Publica report highlights that
(38:52):
overtime pay was a hugely motivating factor in making sex
work arrests. The more people the squad arrested, the more
officers got paid. On August twenty fifth, twenty seventeen, at
about ten thirty pm, Layleen was arrested on the Upper
West Side of Manhattan in one of these operations after
(39:14):
allegedly agreeing to perform oral sex on an undercover officer.
During the arrest, the NYPD also allegedly found a pipe
in her pocket containing crack cocaine. The implications of this
arrest would follow Laileen for years. It would set off
a chain of events in her life that would keep
(39:36):
her embroiled in a dehumanizing battle with the criminal justice system.
This battle would eventually lead to her death. That's next
time on Afterlives.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Stepping foot on Rikers Island has been widely acknowledged a
potential death sentence in a state where we have outlawed
the death penalty.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Why they and got fail set on Leileen's case is
a question certainly nobody ever answered for me, and it's
a question I never stopped asking.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
I can almost imagine how it felt for her, would
be locked down and now you're in this place where
you're being penalized for still being you.
Speaker 11 (40:16):
It's certainly been my experience that many of the jail
attributable deaths that I investigate involve people that the security
service had decided was a problem.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Thank you so much for listening to Afterlives. You can
find this episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave
us a writing and review to let us know what
you think. After lives as a production of iHeart Podcasts
(40:52):
and The Outspoken Podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans.
I'm your host and creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is
our senior producer and scriptwriter. Our associate producer is Joey
pat Sound design and engineering by Daisy Makes Radio Productions,
(41:15):
story editing by Aaron Edwards and Julia Farlan, fact checking
by Savannah Hugiley. Our show art is by Makai Baldwin.
Score composed by Wadley Murray. Our production manager is Daisy Church.
Executive producers include me, Raquel Willis, and Jay Brunson from
(41:37):
The Outspoken Podcast Network, Michael Alder, June and Noel Brown
from iHeart Podcasts, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley
from School of Humans and The Cats Company School of
(42:14):
Humans
Host
Raquel Willis
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