I agree that there are not many "happy hookers" out there. I wasn't trying to suggest that these males are happy or that they "enjoy" prostitution. At all. Just that they all can't be assumed to be solely motivated by desperation and having no other options. Lots of these down and out males who lack education, family support & regular job options still can make much better money from other kinds of criminal activity than from sex work. And many such males who identify and dress as women do engage in all sorts of other lucrative criminal activity such as muggings, theft, drug dealing, gang fraud activities like stealing old people's SS checks. But many still do "sex work" anyways even though it doesn't pay very well and has many dangers and drawbacks, especially if it's the street hustling kind.

Males as well as females who do prostitution are very unhappy, troubled, traumatized people with a range of problems. But the patterns, and mixed motivations, of male persons who do "sex work" are very different to that of females. And there are myriad differences between males who do prostitution presenting as male - eg "rent boys" - and those who engage in same-sex prostitution as transvestites or in today's parlance when "transgender."

Amongst males who identify as/wish they were the opposite sex, the preoccupation with and need for "validation" and "gender affirmation" is immense. And it colors and drives pretty much everything these people do. Which means that even when they have other options, males who identify as women still will engage in sex work partly for the "validation" of their gender identities, their "femininity" and their "passability." Girls & women who are prostituted and males who do sex work presenting as male do not have this motivation or anything similar.

A key difference between females who are prostituted and males who identify as women is that the females are almost always trafficked and/or under the control of pimps, but the males who dress as women are not.

Moreover, there is no longstanding, dominant trend of girls & women in Western culture writing memoirs, fiction, blog posts and making other kinds of media content in which they glorify being prostituted. Yes, some women have made such material (Story of O, for example). But most of this material is made by and for males. Including males who wish they were the opposite sex and try to present that way. As the work of people like Andrea Long Chu, Julia Serrano, Torrey Peters and many others show, even privileged, highly educated, erudite, financially well-off trans-identified males are enthralled with the idea of doing "sex work" and believe nothing would be more "validating" than to work as "whxre."

In a 2013 paper called Gender Affirmation: A Framework for Conceptualizing Risk Behavior among Transgender Women of Color, a researcher interviewed 22 English-speaking "transgender women of color" in the San Francisco bay area in order

to explore the role of gender affirmation in the context of a newly proposed theoretical model that integrates prominent theories from stigma, eating disorders, and HIV-related research as well as the existing literature related to transgender women, and posits that risk behavior among transgender women of color can be conceptualized as an outcome of unmet need for gender affirmation.

While a number of investigators have observed this need for gender affirmation among transgender participants in their studies, its relationship to high risk behavior has rarely been directly investigated (Melendez & Pinto, 2007; Nuttbrock, Bockting, et al., 2009). If indeed the need for gender affirmation is related to high-risk behavior (and thus negative health outcomes), this finding could provide important implications for intervention strategies, lend insight into how rigid binary notions of gender can both directly and indirectly impact one’s mental and physical health, and open up new directions for future research utilizing an intersectional approach to examining lived experiences of racism, sexism, and transphobia.

Some samples of transwomen report high levels of engagement in unprotected receptive anal sex with multiple partners, sex under the influence of drugs and alcohol, sex work, and sharing needles for injection drugs, hormones, silicone, and other substances for body modification purposes (Kenagy, 2002; Nemoto, Operario, Keatley, Han, & Soma, 2004; Operario, et al., 2011; Sausa, et al., 2007). Some transwomen report that receptivity during sex is experienced as affirming of their female gender identity (Bockting, et al., 1998), and since very few transwomen have access to (and many do not desire) genital surgery, receptivity during sex for transwomen usually means receptive anal sex (Nuttbrock, Hwahng, et al., 2009).

In addition, studies have shown that experiences of stigma and discrimination increase transwomen’s need for gender affirmation from their male sexual partners, thus increasing their willingness to engage in risky sexual behavior and reducing their self-efficacy to negotiate condom use and/or substance use during sex (Bockting, et al., 1998; Melendez & Pinto, 2007; Reisner et al., 2009; Rodriguez-Madera & Toro-Alfonso, 2005; Sausa, et al., 2007; Sugano, Nemoto, & Operario, 2006). One meta-analysis found that almost half (44%) of transwomen reported unprotected receptive anal intercourse, with the highest rates being reported with sex work clients (39%) and primary partners (37%) (Herbst, et al., 2008). Similar to other at-risk populations, sex under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol is one of the most commonly cited sexual risk factors among transwomen as it is often used as method of coping with stigma, loneliness, and/or the demands of sex work, and can lead to unprotected sex (Nemoto, Operario, Keatley, Han, et al., 2004; Xavier, Bobbin, Singer, & Budd, 2005).

...[sexual] objectification was described as frustrating, but many participants (n=15, 68%) also described receiving a certain amount of much-needed gender affirmation from it as well. The objectification experiences were described as affirming in the sense that they felt validated as women through these experiences, but validation came with the price of feeling that they were not being valued as unique human beings with something beyond sex to offer the world.

You walk down the street after you done turned the trick and you feel like you’re the grand diva ‘cause somebody stopped ‘cause you’re pretty. But see what I realize is that it’s not the beauty on the inside that they see. All they see you for is a piece of ass…All they think that transgenders are good for is sex and drugs. (African American, 23)

Another participant described how she attempts to take back some of the power that she feels she loses as a result of being sexually objectified by asking for money after sex:

I have all kind of profiles on the Internet, and guys think you’re a female. Then when you disclose your gender to them, they just think, you know, do you want to come over and kick it, and that means come to your house and have sex. I screw some of them and I ask them for money after I screw them. I tell them I need to go buy a new outfit or this and that. My thing is because I feel like that gives me the empowerment, the power, you know ‘cause everyone, people just think of you as a sex object. (African American, 35)

In addition to being a means of survival, sex work was also described as a means of obtaining gender affirmation:

The money is really good, and easy. And when a guy is paying you to have sex, it can make you feel like a real hot commodity, a sexy lady. It can be fun. (API, 29)

I think that my happiness comes from validation. And I think that’s another reason that transsexuals are so promiscuous. And, because it’s like, oh my god, if a straight man is banging me, it’s like, I guess I made it as a woman. You know? It’s like reassurance. Over and over again. And [non-transgender] women, they don’t spread their legs in front of everybody because they don’t have to. You know, they’re not trying to get validated by a guy. They know who they are. (Mixed race, 28)

We lean on certain people for support and love in this life. And if you’re not getting it from your own blood, it hurts. That’s why a lot of us go out into the streets and look for that love and affection and respect that we would have probably been fine if we got that at home. (African American, 53)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667985/

These are not happy people. Yes, as you say, males who identify as females in the US who do "sex work" often have experienced family rejection, CSA, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, and have served time in jail. But their motivations are complex and multifaceted, particularly the farther into adulthood they are. Most people who engage in self-harming behaviors are getting something out of them. Many males who identify as the opposite sex have a constant, unquenchable need for "gender affirmation" that causes them to have a compulsion to seek it out as if they were addicts, and this affects all the choices they make. This seems to be part of the reason why "transwomen of color" in the US not only do "sex work," but why they have such shockingly high rates of HIV and such unwillingness to get tested or treated, and such reluctance to change their behaviors.