Hookers in the House of the Lord

  Whores, hookers, prostitutes, women "in the life." We use these terms to denote a woman who sells sex for money. Recently, a new term has emerged - sex worker. You might be asking yourself "What is a sex worker? What does a sex worker do?" Is "sex worker" a politically correct way to say prostitute?

   The landscape was set during the sixties when major changes occurred in the role of women in society and of the part played by their sexuality. The influence of the New Left and the revolutionary movements of the 1960s created major points of resistance to the dominant ideas on sexual morality. Sexual issues gained prominence when lesbians and gays, feminists, and prostitutes, in their struggles for civil rights and self-determination, sought to counter the social stigma and marginalization that they faced from mainstream society.

   These were times when the women’s movement demanded financial independence for women, control over their bodies, and the freedom to make sexual choices. Radically questioning the prevailing moral and economic arrangements, in the United States, Black women led the Welfare Movement, demanding cash payment for the job of raising children. Indeed, women begun and continue to refuse to enter into marriage just to support their children. Black women, Third World women, in fact poor women, all fought against forced sterilization. Women fought for and won the right to abortion.

   Women also drew attention to the work that they performed within families and sexual relationships. In Iceland in 1975, women took part in a national strike known as the "Day Off" to demonstrate their productivity in and out of the home. In England, women started the Wages for Housework campaign to demand that industry and government compensate women for their invisible contributions to the economy. In the U.S. women such as Bianca Jagger and Michelle Triola Marvin put a price tag on the job of being a wife and a mistress by forcing the courts to consider the value of women’s work in these realms..

   The emergence of an advocacy movement to politicize prostitutes got rolling in 1975 when 150 prostitutes took over the main church in Lyons, France. They were protesting the unsolved murders of various local prostitutes, police harassment and repression, exorbitant police fines and the multiple arrests that they faced regularly. The movement spread like wild fire to other parts of France where prostitutes joined in the strike and took over churches.

   In Paris, prostitutes took over a church and demanded their full rights as citizens, calling for the abolition of fines and, in its place, a non-punitive tax system that would provide them with the right to pension and welfare benefits like "every other French woman who is a mother." Furthermore, they pressed for the right to be nationalized as civil servants of sex. Indeed, challenging the notion that those who sold sex were deviant and pathological, they claimed that sexual commerce was a "job determined by the sexual needs of one part of society" -- the clients who always went unpunished. They stressed not just the laws of supply and demand but the heavy profits reaped by the state in the criminalization of prostitutes.

   The strike lasted seven days and ended when the police invaded the church, beat the women and terminated the church occupation in Lyon, France. The women’s demands were not met but they were able to generate worldwide attention to the conditions and abuses that prostitutes suffered. The strike also spurred the organization of the French Collective of Prostitutes and marked the shift from prostitute - a stigmatized social identity of shame and social isolation - to sex worker - a social identity reflecting a political movement seeking women’s empowerment and worker’s rights.

   The church occupation inspired the formation of a sex worker rights’ movement in France and was followed by the development of similar groups in England, Australia, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Canada and in major cities in the United States.

   The movement brought attention to the difficult working conditions faced by sex workers and the many dangers of the work. It also raised people’s consciousness to the social and economic issues that all women face, such as violence, sexual harassment and discrimination, rape, lack of viable work opportunities and poverty. A popular slogan used by the sex worker movement in the U.S., "outlaw poverty not prostitution" reflected the harsh reality of economic survival and necessity for many women throughout the world who worked selling sex. Organizations such as the English Collective of Prostitutes, for example, advocate the abolition of laws against prostitutes, "laws which punish women for refusing poverty."

   Sex workers have continued to organize, demanding the decriminalization of prostitution, equal protection under the law, improved working conditions, the right to pay taxes, travel and receive social benefits such as pensions.

   Along with prostitute unions, there have been numerous international conventions and platforms creating further awareness of the plight of prostitutes. International Congresses of Whores (1985 and 1986), the International Committee for Prostitute Rights (1985), the World Whores Summit, The National Conference of Prostitutes in Brazil (1987) and the World Charter for Prostitutes’ Rights (1985) has articulated a global political movement seeking recognition and social change. Additionally, since the seventies, numerous publications by sex workers have appeared in print. In the 1990s, the sex workers’ rights movement includes transgender, Third World, lesbian, gay, bisexual and heterosexual, migrant men and women. Sex worker organizations continue to form throughout Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. They advocate for the decriminalization of prostitution, the recognition of prostitution as legitimate work, and the acceptance of prostitutes as working women. Organizations such as La Unión Unica (the Unique Union) in Mexico City have organized not just sex workers but all those who participate and profit from the sex industry: taxi drivers, bartenders, hotel workers, etc.

   We often speak of prostitution as the oldest profession, acknowledging that perhaps it is similar to other professions; requiring skills, labor, and involving a commercial exchange. The sex worker’s movement in the past twenty years has made some gains in this direction. In New South Wales, Australia an official sex worker union formed in 1996 under the auspices of the Australian Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union. In Paraguay, the national workers’ union recognized sex workers as legitimate workers. As with other workers, they can now retire and receive full pension benefits. In San Francisco, exotic dancers at one prominent theater are represented by Local 790 of the Services Employees International Union of the AFL-CIO. These workers now have access to the same provisions as other service workers. The biggest gain is that the notion of a "sex worker" has given an unprecedented legitimacy to the labor of those who sell sexual services and has positioned them to articulate demands for fair treatment and social justice.

   New words surface to reflect our changing consciousness and social reality. The term "sex worker" is an historical term, the outcome of a social movement by a stigmatized minority population struggling for recognition of their humanity.

  Dr. Amalia L. Cabezas has taught at the Cesar Chavez Center at UCLA and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the UC Irvine Humanities Research Institute. Her ground-breaking research has helped define this new area of study.