“People treat us as a doll, basically, they can do anything with it, they can remove clothes, they can dress us. A lot of people sees us as inanimate object...you don’t have any control over what’s being done to you. You don’t ask a doll what kind of dress she wants.”

— Jennifer

“Asian women or South East Asian women are exoticised in the eyes of white men...there's that intersection of exoticising women of colour and also exoticising trans women.” - Elizabeth

Sasha described experiencing a “return of PTSD” when she experienced assault by a sex work client, and her complaint to the police was not taken seriously.

"I sat in the seat [of the car] and the doors were locked, immediately. It kind of turned into ‘if you don’t perform oral sex on me I'm going to beat the shit out of you’. My hair was really pulled, I got slapped in the face and I knew this was a very fucking bad situation...I figured unfortunately, the best thing to do was to literally comply...I don’t know if this guy is going to pull out a fucking knife on me or some shit like that." - Dora

Sexual violence was found to have a negative impact on transwomen of colour, including fear, anxiety, depression, self-harm and self-blame. The elevated rates of mental health problems in queer women – in particular depression and anxiety – has been attributed to higher rates of violence within a minority stress model (Szalacha, et al., 2017). For those who are trans, CALD and queer, discrimination and exclusion may be threefold, an intersection of transphobia, racism and homophobia (de Vries, 2015).

“I’d never look at a police officer and feel safe, never will.” - Amanda