This year, we’re swapping out the typical 12 days of Christmas for something even better: 12 days of sex workers who should absolutely be on your radar. Whether they’re breaking new ground on OnlyFans, using their platform to call attention to issues like racism and immigration or shattering our ideas of who’s “allowed” to make porn, sex workers are both reimagining what sex work can be and changing the world — one swingin’, phalloplastic dick at a time.
On a sunny fall day back in 2018 — when he was just 23 — British model Roshaante Anderson used the lunch break of his hospitality day job to upload a quick video diary about transitioning as a trans man. Reclining in the car with his phone angled up toward his gold-toothed smile, he humorously quipped about testosterone receding his hairline before taking on more serious subjects like how bottom surgery is no cakewalk. The result, “Regrets on Transitioning,” has since been viewed on YouTube more than 370,000 times.
Of course, not everyone’s watching solely for the candor. Many click because, to paraphrase a top YouTube comment, Anderson is “fine as hell.” With his countless tattoos, honeyed voice and chiseled jawline, he has the charisma of an archetypal “bad boy” with the sweetness of a guy you’d take home to your parents.
Thirsty new followers proliferated as Anderson began to branch out from YouTube confessionals to skits, story-time videos and, to the joy of all the “horny on main” users in his comment sections, sexed-up teasers for his OnlyFans. Equal parts sex and comedy, his channels offer raw, uncensored insight into the life of a post-op trans man, an experience rarely documented online, in porn or beyond.
Now 25, Anderson spent his childhood moving between different cities in the U.K. with his parents and two siblings, who he often jokes are attached to him at the hip. “They used to be extremely homophobic, but now, as long as you’re a good, well-established person who knows what they’re about, they open their arms so wide,” he tells me. He otherwise keeps details of his youth to a minimum, but he describes a happy, sometimes horny adolescence. “I was one of the class clowns, so school was very simple for me,” he remembers. “I did have some cheeky times where I’d be caught in the bathroom with a girl or something!”
His life changed at age 11 when he began developing masculine traits like facial hair and a deepening voice. A trip to a London gender identity clinic with his mom confirmed that he was born intersex — an umbrella term for anyone whose sex doesn’t fit into the strict either/or boxes of “male” and “female” — but his light-hearted nature meant he took the news in stride. His parents had raised him as a girl until this point, but after a period of not really identifying with any gender, he began medically transitioning to male at 16.
Around the time he started transitioning, Anderson stumbled upon the YouTube page of another trans guy who shared video updates of his life on testosterone. “I thought it was so cool that this guy had video footage of himself and his transition,” Anderson tells me. “I thought it would be really cool for me to do something like that — not the stereotypical timeline videos, but ones where I could speak my truth.”
The resulting videos became what he calls his “personal therapy,” a long-running video journal that allowed him to track not only the physical changes he was going through, but his emotional progression, too. Still, it wasn’t until a few years later that he made the decision to start sharing his evolution on YouTube. To his surprise, it seemed to immediately resonate. “I started getting loads of views and people rolling in, hanging on my every word,” he says. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to make a flipping statement!’
Nestled in amongst the horny comments, however, is feedback from what he calls “the little analyzers.” They look at every nook and cranny of his body and say things like, “Oh, I can tell it’s a woman, you can see his narrow shoulders through that jumper!” Annoyed but ultimately emboldened by these intrusive comments, Anderson decided the ultimate “fuck you” would be to tell the story of his body in his own words, with every part of it on full display. So he decided to whip out his dick for a video entitled “Naked Phalloplasty” in October 2018.
The five-minute clip opens with a butt-naked Anderson shuffling backwards in his front room, his muscular, tatted-up body in full view of the camera. He poses briefly with his junk completely visible, breaks out his trademark smile and then shuffles into a more SFW camera position. He explains his decision to undergo phalloplasty, which involves taking a skin graft — often from the thigh or another inconspicuous area — to surgically create a penis.
The video’s caption states “for educational purposes only,” but instead, the full-frontal clip cemented his reputation as a self-aware sex symbol. “Oh my word, that video just skyrocketed,” he laughs. “I got respect from everywhere. Even if you want to say anything bad about the video, it’s difficult because people are like, ‘Well, I couldn’t do that!’”
Anderson says the DMs asking him to join OnlyFans quickly piled up, and he happily obliged. “It took me all of five seconds to decide this is what I wanted to do,” he chuckles. “Now I do all sorts of stuff on there: solo videos, duo videos, a cheeky wank [jerk off] in the woods — you name it. I’m a very free person!” Whether fucking his girlfriend with a strap-on or pumping his balls to get his dick hard — some men with phalloplasties use a specialized internal pump to get erections — his OnlyFans is a filthy, glorious buffet of adult content.
He also understands that, in the wider context of porn, guys with phalloplasty are hugely under-represented. If trans men are cast at all, they usually haven’t had any kind of bottom surgery, and perform as “bottoms” in gay scenes, without much diversity to speak of. Thus, Anderson sees OnlyFans as a chance to dispel myths around trans sex lives. In fact, his dream is to eventually fuck for a living full-time. “If I’m not a porn star by next year, then I don’t know what’s going on,” he jokes. “Actually, let me give myself until 2022 — we’re in a pandemic!”
It would be no small feat. Buck Angel has been one of the only recognizable names in trans male porn for years, but he hasn’t had bottom surgery. Known as “The Man With a Pussy,” he only showcases a specific facet of trans male sexuality that doesn’t necessarily represent the full spectrum (also, his views on what it means to be trans have also meant he’s effectively canceled). Anderson offers a different take, one he jokes is more mechanical. “Even with the [phalloplasty] pump, it’s all mechanically done because you’ve got to compress the balls,” he says. “I think it’s so cool for people to see that as their potential life.”
Reading about phalloplasty is one thing, but witnessing Anderson swing his meat around with joy and maintain a hot, healthy sex life with his long-term girlfriend is another. For trans guys specifically, seeing him fuck freely could be the brief moment of affirmation they need, especially given the international shit-show that is trans mainstream media representation.
It’s been a rough ride, though, and Anderson’s not trying to sugar-coat that. He can now say with confidence that he absolutely loves his dick (“He’s not the biggest and he’s not the best, but to me he’s the best!”), but he’s also honest about the years of surgeries it took to get to a point where he could enjoy it, let alone showcase it on OnlyFans, where he charges $20 a month for a window into his world.
In a nutshell, there are two main options for bottom surgeries: the aforementioned phalloplasty and metoidioplasty, which uses existing genital tissue to create a penis that can become erect on its own. “Normally people get one or the other, but I had both at the same time,” he explains. “I wanted to keep the T-Dick [the enlarged clitoris some men get from taking testosterone]. I didn’t want it going anywhere — I wanted the natural boners, too, I love them!”
Anderson accessed his surgeries after years of waiting (lengthy wait lists for trans-specific surgeries are common in the U.K., forcing many to go private) through the country’s National Health Service. But he was met with a long and painful string of complications, which have ranged from nerve damage in his arm to a fistula under the base of his penis. “Because I went through all that hell, I can save other people from going through it,” he says of a recent video, in which he summarizes these issues. “Or if people are wanting these surgeries, which is completely fine, I can arm them with as much knowledge as possible before they hand over their money and sign over their body.”
Speaking honestly about his experiences has earned him some backlash from the trans community, however. “I’m saying something different to what people want to hear,” he explains. “People want to hear that surgery changed my life, that it made everything so much better — I would have loved to have been one of the people to say that.” But in his eyes, honesty is key — especially given the lack of information out there for trans guys and intersex people more generally.
Of course, for every in-depth confessional on YouTube, there’s a mischievous clip of Anderson swinging his dick around with a grin on his face, or busting myths about being intersex. “I have a high sex drive to the point of being a nymphomaniac — my sex organs overwork,” he tells me. “Mine is 24/7. Wherever I go, I’ve always got a semi or a boner, guaranteed. It’s so annoying, can you imagine? When I’m around family, it can get awkward!”
His fans, on the other hand — some devoted YouTube followers keen to see his paywalled content, others horny voyeurs less interested in education and more interested in his extended sex scenes — have no complaints about his sex drive. One even bought him a selection of strap-ons, and another sent him hundreds of dollars on his birthday. “I get the best messages ever,” he gushes, telling me that some subscribers tip him just for chatting.
So far, Anderson has used his OnlyFans income to treat his family and friends (“I thought, ‘Fuck it,’ I want to be selfless for once”) and to buy a new car. But like most of us, he’s been feeling the strain of 2020. “I’ve got no new drip, I’m not looking nice and fashionable,” he says half-jokingly, “but I don’t want to let it get me down.”
That seems unlikely. Throughout our hour-long chat, he talks excitedly about new ideas for spoken-word art projects, videos and live-streams, often veering straight from one train of thought to the next. But wherever these ideas take him, he ultimately remains committed to shaking his junk and sharing his story — all in the name of trans awareness and education.
Jake Hall
Jake Hall is a freelance journalist, fashion features editor and author. Their debut book 'The Art of Drag' is scheduled for release in May 2020.
