Julia, a 31-year-old transgender refugee from central America, wishes she didn’t have to rely on sex work right now - especially not illegally without her usual support system.
“It’s a fast way to get money but for me it is not sustainable,” the former student activist said by phone from Eindhoven, a city in the south of The Netherlands.
“It’s been a living hell.”
She is among hundreds of prostitutes – mostly women – in the Netherlands who have been forced to keep working through lockdowns regardless of the risks in order to stay afloat.
Despite the Dutch sex industry being legal, regulated and taxed, sex workers this year have fallen through the gaps even as their work has been officially banned to stop the spread of the coronavirus.