At 15, Tamika Spellman got a girl pregnant.
Born a boy in Buffalo, New York, she’d had a pretty “typical childhood” growing up with her parents, she said in a recent interview. But it was around the time Spellman’s girlfriend got pregnant that she realized the male body she was born into was not her true identity.
“I always felt I was supposed to be a girl,” said Spellman, 53, a Black trans woman who is now an advocacy director at the DC-based nonprofit Honoring Individual Power and Strength (HIPS), which provides harm reduction services, advocacy and community engagement for those engaged in sex work, sex trafficking and drug use.
HIPS executive director Cyndee Clay said Spellman is the “perfect example of what happens when you give people a chance and support them doing this kind of work.” Her “lived experience,” combined with her talent for bringing people together, makes Spellman “a great community organizer,” Clay added.
Relationships with her own family weren’t always so good. After she began to live her life as a young woman, Spellman said, she lost relationships with some relatives who disagreed with the decision.
While she wasn’t kicked out or disowned, Spellman moved out of her parents’ home at 16. She was too young to receive government assistance, and being transgender made it difficult for her to find a good-paying job, she said. Spellman was also supporting her child and the child’s mother, with whom she maintained a relationship during her transition.
Sex work was best money available
That’s when Spellman decided to become a sex worker.
Spellman said the move “just kind of happened,” but was aided by the fact she already knew about that world. For instance, she said, an uncle worked as a pimp, and other family members were involved in the sex trade. And “I knew where the sex work areas were,” she added.
To Spellman, this type of work meant fast money and a way to provide for her son and for a daughter born four years later to the same woman. “It was a good bit of money for that time period,” she said.
Most people, though, including law enforcement authorities in every U.S. state but several counties in Nevada, see sex work as dangerous and illegal. Where Spellman lived in the Buffalo area, this work could get her arrested at any time if caught by the police.
Or worse: “I have been raped by police in DC, Alabama, New York, Detroit,” Spellman said. Some police officers take advantage of sex workers during arrests, she said, when pat-downs can turn into assault.
Spellman’s traumatic experiences as a transgender Black teen and then as a sex worker also included being robbed, being shot and experiencing homelessness. Her trauma led to mental health and drug use disorders that lasted years, she said.
“I don’t know if it was an act of God that saved me,” she said.
Finally, therapy helps her help others
It took Spellman a long time to get help to cope with her traumatic past, she said, but she started therapy in the 1990s. “It’s something we don’t do and don’t talk about,” she said, but it helped save her life.
After so many years of fighting just to survive, she said, learning to heal from the traumatic experiences of her past made her realize she needed to be a voice for change — and to stand up for people who have experienced the same kinds of pain and suffering. It led to her vocation as a fierce advocate for those who have chosen, or been forced, to become sex workers.
As an advocacy specialist at HIPS, she uses her voice and experience to challenge the prevailing notions about sex workers. Spellman’s tasks also include speaking out against the criminalization of sex work and the violence that is often directed toward Black and brown women who do this work.
Unlike white women involved in sex work who often end up selling sex online, Black and brown women usually work on the streets, exposing them to more danger of violence from customers and even police, Spellman said.
Criminalization is “not keeping us safe,” she said. “In fact, it’s doing the absolute opposite. Police tend to not have respect for sex workers … instead of the protective force or watchful eye they could be.”
Advocating for harm reduction for sex workers
In fact, current laws often make it far harder for people to escape the work and make money another way, Spellman said. She recalled her own experiences when trying to find work where she could get health insurance for her family; she ended up in a series of low-wage jobs in industries such as fast food that offered little chance for advancement.
“Me being criminalized caused me to be stuck,” said Spellman.
The harm-reduction approach — an emphasis in use at HIPS and comparable organizations elsewhere — recognizes that sex workers will continue to do the job regardless of it being illegal, and seeks to make the work as safe and risk-free as possible.
To that end, Spellman distributes condoms, clean needles and injection supplies and helps arrange access to overdose prevention supplies such as naloxone. She’s spoken out in favor of decriminalizing sex work on many panels, conferences and functions, and has authored articles on the topic. Spellman is also a member of the Sex Worker Advocates Coalition (SWAC), a group that seeks to advance and promote the human rights and wellness of sex workers in the Washington area.
While Spellman works hard to change the laws about sex work, she also wants the world to be a better place for people like her and for those who follow in her steps. Spellman, who has five grandchildren and a great-grandchild, said violence against transgender people and those engaging in sex work is still far too common.
“What kind of society are we trying to leave them?” Spellman asked. “I can’t leave my grandkids what we have today.”
Dionna Duncan is a junior at Archbishop Carroll High School in Northeast DC. She was a participant in the Urban Health Media Project’s fall 2020 workshop “Surviving and Thriving Despite Trauma,” sponsored by the National Council for Behavioral Health. Photographer and videographer Sierra Lewter, a 2018 graduate of DC’s Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, is a UHMP intern and junior at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
This article is part of a series on DC residents who have confronted challenges in inspirational and sometimes unconventional ways.
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