Ehh a fair amount of them do identify as trans(which is one of the reasons ladyBOY is a really sexist name) and something similar to femboys in the west but there are also the ones who are closer to being males and they just do it for money which is extremely sad. But i am a straight(enough that i have all the priviledge) european male so this just what i heard from others.
I don’t think that prostitution is any more sad than any other job, but it all depends on the situation. If it’s a human-trafficking thing where they’re forced into it, or they have to deal with abusive clients, that’s fucked up.
Ok but there are different fucked uppness levels. Having to work an IT job for example can be pretty chill while working in an amazon warehouse is absolutely horrid from what i heard. And then id say having to dress up and be forced to be another gender to get enough money to stay alive is even more fucked up. Of course you could argue its better than for example in even poorer countries where you would have to do even worse things. But that is a pretty complicated conversation i dont really want to get into or have the qualification for.
Some are some aren’t. It’s probably closest to the mid 20th century American concept of transvestite, which at the time encompassed everyone from transsexuals (at that time the medical definition of transsexual required what we would today describe as severe dysphoria and exclusive Heterosexuality) to the more modern definitions of trans people, both binary and nonbinary, as well as cisgender crossdressers of all varieties. Source
Transvestite prescriptively means a crossdresser, by the way. Literally, that is. "-vestire “to dress, to clothe” (from PIE *wes- (2) “to clothe,” extended form of root *eu- “to dress”).
I’m not gonna argue over how the terms was used in mid 20th century America, I wouldn’t know. Just like etymology, don’t mind me.
Oh absolutely, and it meant that then because sexology was in the process of catching up with groups of people that medicine had recently gained the ability to make the differences between far more significant. They were also very prone to medical gatekeeping and treating transition as the absolute last resort for those unable to live a normal life as their assigned gender