From sex work to the United Nations: Phylesha Brown-Acton’s transgender story

TransGenerations, an eight-part web series, tells the stories of transgender Kiwis from their late 70s to early 20s, documenting the history of trans experience in New Zealand and dispelling stereotypes about who trans people are. In episode four, host Brady Peeti meets Phylesha Brown-Acton, a 47-year-old sex worker-turned-trans activist.

She is a proud trans woman, or fakafifine in Niue, where she was born in 1976. Unlike other trans people of her generation and those with a similar story, Phylesha is lucky to have survived.

She had a difficult childhood and was passed around to many family caregivers. In the home, her mother often treated her like a daughter.

It was on her first day of school in New Zealand at age five when she first experienced how the outside world saw her. As Phylesha followed the other girls into the girl’s bathroom, a teacher yanked her back and told her she was a boy.

“And I was distraught,” she said.

The labels continued. In Phylesha’s early teenage years, it was ‘gay boy.’ Still, it didn’t sit right, but then fate intervened on a netball court.

Phylesha was doing an errand for her mother when she walked by a trans netball team practising. It was her ‘aha’ moment. They knew it, too. One of the players called out to her, “Hey, sister. Come.”

At age 15, she began living as a woman — makeup, dressing up, dancing, hitting up gay nightclubs.

Sex work beckoned. It wasn’t unwanted or regretted because “some of the greatest lessons that I have ever learnt in life had been as a result of sex work,” said Phylesha.

But it’s complicated. Many trans people turn to sex work because they have no other employment option, like Gemmah in episode three of TransGenerations.

Phylesha began helping other transpeople get off the street as a community social worker. The unassuming role put her on a ladder that led to advocacy work at the United Nations in New York and Geneva.

At another human rights conference in 2011, she introduced a Pacific community alternative to the LGBTQ+ acronym, where Mahu, Vakasalewalewa, Palopa, Fa’afafine, Akava’ine, Fakafifine and Fakaleiti/leiti became MVPFAFF+.

Now, Phylesha heads up F’INE Pasifika Aotearoa, an organisation she founded in 2015 to support MVPFAFF+ people. Asked what she hopes for, she is full of optimism for the entire trans community’s future.

“If you want to be a trans woman, the first prime minister of this country, do it,” she said.

TransGenerations is made with the support of NZ On Air. To follow the series, see nzherald.co.nz/transgenerations