"This area has been declared a prostitution free zone": discursive formations of space, the state, and trans "sex worker" bodies.

The mayorally instituted and police-enforced Prostitution Free Zones in Washington, DC, serve as a tool of nation-state disciplinarity, wherein many transgender women of color, viewed as ideologically suspect, are profiled as "sex workers," facing police harassment and arrest. This article explores here how this process is not merely about sex work but rather about discourses that are evoked in the displacement of the always-already displaced-racial, sexed, and gendered "others" through interviews with activists and trans community members, as well as District of Columbia government publications.