But many of the men who are called "transwomen" nowadays don't take any cross-sex hormones or T-blockers - they're just what used to be called transvestites and cross-dressers who've been repackaged as "brave and stunning" "civil rights pioneers" and given a glossy new brand-name and shiny new public image. Especially today, a good number of TIMs eschew medical interventions; it's all about clothing, makeup and wigs/weaves for them. Even trans advocates tend to use cagey lingo such as "80% of transgender people have either taken GAHT (gender affirming hormone therapy) or want to take GAHT at some point" to obscure the truth that at any given time lots of these guys are not messing with their hormones.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6354936/

Moreover, in the US poor TIMs who do want hormones & surgeries for free need only move to one of the many states like CA or NY where Medicaid and other state programs not only provide trans males with all "trans-related" health care at taxpayer's expense, but provide them with free housing and various other benefits too.

This was the case for Jerome Cricket Thunderpussy Nimmons, a TIM from the deep South (GA or AL, I think) the NYTimes profiled on the front page in 2015 for being the first man in NY to receive genital surgery courtesy of NY state and federal taxpayers via Medicaid. Nimmons, who seemed to be a career petty criminal starting in his teens, moved to NYC straight out of getting out of jail in the South, coz in jail he heard NYC gave trans-identified males free housing, health care & lots of other benefits. So of course he boarded a bus to the Big Apple straight away after his release.

The assumption that most black TIMs today are middle class also doesn't fit with how the trans-lobby and propaganda groups characterize these men. A majority of them are usually described as coming from economically deprived backgrounds, with low skills and poor or no job options, and with high degrees of mental illness, homelessness, instability and "interactions with the criminal justice system."

In documents I've linked to on this thread, trans lobby groups say that in the US, 50% of black TIMs - by some counts as many as 68% - have served time in jail/prison. And the CDC says 44% of black TIMs in the US today have HIV but most don't/won't get tested or treated for it. Various surveys show that people who ID as transgender in the US are considerably less likely to be college educated, gainfully employed and are nearly twice as likely to be living in poverty than the rest of the population. And all those figures are for the entire trans population in the US, not just the segment who do sex work, who presumably are not as well off as those who don't work in prostitution.

https://theconversation.com/transgender-americans-are-more-likely-to-be-unemployed-and-poor-127585

Transgender prostitutes are on "elite" cohort of prostitutes, and "elite" ones are still murdered and abused, but on much lower rate then average prostitutes.

Maybe this is the case where you live. But it's definitely not where I'm from (NYC)! Tons of males who used to be called transvestite prostitutes have always been streetwalkers and street hustlers - guys who do their work behind a dumpster, in a back alley, down a dark side street, in a car or cab, in abandoned buildings or seedy hotels and motels where rooms can be rented by the hour.

Nowadays TIMs who do "sex work" might use the internet to get their clients, but I doubt the majority are what anyone would call "elite." Perhaps some TIMs who've had tons of expensive surgeries and look like Gigi Gorgeous, Munroe Bergdorf, Blaire White or Laverne Cox are working as high-priced escorts and meeting clients at the Soho Grand, Ritz Carlton or Hyatt. But this seems not to be the case for the majority, particularly males with skin that is black or brown.

The big transgender survey done by the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2015 found that most American TIMs doing "sex work" were black or brown - and looking at this cohort of males in particular, the survey found that more than 26% had dropped out of school, half had been homeless, 35% had been thrown out of a shelter, 69% had "adverse outcomes in the traditional workforce" (code for couldn't find or keep a regular job), 40.6% said they had HIV, 79% said they had "high levels of interaction with the police," 58.8% said they had been "sent to prison," and only 22% said they lived in households where the income was over $50K per annum (that's income for the entire household, not individual income).

Of course, the findings of the NCTE survey must be taken with a grain of salt since it was done online. Still, nothing I've read about this population, nor my own dealings with and observations of them going back decades*, would cause me to describe most of these men working as prostitutes as either "middle class" or "elite."

https://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/Meaningful%20Work-Full%20Report_FINAL_3.pdf

*To clarify, I'm not a customer, LOL. But I've lived in nabes where black and Latino male transvestite sex workers were a very visible presence on the streets: for many years I went to a gym in a building where there was a large phone sex operation manned mostly by transvestites "of color" who did other kinds of sex work, so these guys were always in the elevators or out in front of the building smoking; and in the height of the HIV-AIDs crisis, I met many whilst doing outreach work. Most came from backgrounds that were quite poor and disadvantaged, and in adulthood were still very far from "middle class" - and none were seen as "elite" amongst prostitutes. They were a far cry from "The Mayflower Madam," and their lives were much more like "Paris Is Burning" than "Pretty Woman." Most had lives that make "Breakfast on Pluto" look like a walk in the park.