A Portrait of a 76-Year-Old Intersex Prostitute

This story was originally published on ​VICE France.

When I lived in Switzerland, I volunteered for a local organization called Aspa​sie, which campaigns for the rights of prostitutes. That’s how I met Claudette, who was both a member of Aspasie and a prostitute herself.

I ran into her first in November 2011 in a café in Geneva and immediately got along well. Claudette was the one who suggested I photograph her story; I had thought about it, but didn’t dare ask until we got to know each other better. Over the next weeks, I met her friends, her wife, her family, and finally, she allowed me to take some photos of her in her house.

Claudette is 76 and ​intersex, which means she was born with male and female genitals. Many children who are born that way are ​operated on at birth, which means a doctor decides in an instant whether a baby will go through life as a man or a woman. But when Claudette was born in 1937, her forward-thinking parents decided to let her choose her gender identity. (They did legally declare her a boy since, especially back then, being male gave one certain advantages.) 

But she always felt like a girl and has lived her life in a space between genders—she doesn’t really talk about that stuff though, and has often avoided the issue by wearing unisex sport clothes. 

Claudette became a prostitute when she was 16 years old. Her family lived in Morocco at the time, which is where she fell in love with a neighbor, Carmen. Carmen showed Claudette the joys of sex and men, and when she realized how much Claudette loved both, she suggested that Claudette join the brothel she worked for in Tangier. 

In the mid 1950s Moroccans were increasingly demanding their independence from France, and Claudette’s parents decided to ditch this unrest and went back to Switzerland while she was still at college. To help her out, Carmen gave Claudette all the money she had earned at the brothel, and it was thanks to that generosity that Claudette was later able to continue her architectural studies in Switzerland.

Claudette has always returned to prostitution when she needed money—or, she told me, when she needed to feel like a woman. But over the years she’s had all sorts of other occupations: welder, architect, sales associate in an American company, ​sophrologist, the list goes on.

Later she became a father, so for a while she had to act as a man. In her private life, she never hid who she was, but she didn’t want her children to have any problems at school so she was careful in public. Now that her children are old enough, she’s stopped worrying about what people say and has become a prominent activist for sex workers’ rights. Her wife, André, has always known about her dual nature and her job and supported all her choices.

Today, Claudette lives in Haute-Savoie, a French region that’s a hour away from Geneva. She divides her time between her family, her job, activism, and cycling. She used to keep a studio where she received clients but in latter years she’s mostly been going to people’s houses. Sometimes, she also hangs around Boulevard Helvétique in Geneva—an area that’s traditionally known as a prostitute hangout.

To take this series of photographs, I had to earn Claudette’s trust little by little. I wanted to show that prostitution is a complex job that can’t always be described as exploitation. Claudette has been manipulated by journalists quite a few times in the past—they tend to focus on only one aspect of her life, reducing her to just her gender identity or her job. I managed to convince her (and hopefully to prove to her) that I wasn’t going to do the same.

It is very touching to listen to Claudette talk about her clients. I remember one story about a man who ejaculated as soon as she placed her hand on his thigh. He was so embarrassed that he wanted to leave right away but Claudette convinced him to stay—he had already paid and she did not want to take him for a ride. They talked together and he finally admitted to her that premature ejaculation was a major obstacle in his relationships with women. She gave him some practical advice, which he followed right there and then, A few months later, she received an enormous bouquet of flowers accompanied with a card from that same guy—he thanked and told her that he was living happily with a woman.

I still stay in touch with Claudette. The last time I saw her was two months ago at my wedding. She came with her wife and proposed a toast. She met my family and friends. She knows my husband well, and his father—they both love cycling as much as she does.

Claudette is currently experiencing some serious health problems. She was diagnosed with throat cancer, but thanks to an operation that seems to have been successful, she’s on the road to recovery. Her latest ambition is to beat the world record for cycling on track in the 80–84 age category within the next three years. 

Check out Malika Gaudin Delrieu’s web​site here.