From Activist to Ally

Judith R. Walkowitz:Priscilla Alexander, you are a major figure in the history of prostitute rights activism. You were a pioneer activist in San Francisco’s prostitute rights group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), you wrote most of COYOTE’s position papers on policing, the AIDS crisis, decriminalization, the history of sex work, etcetera. You also served as liaison between COYOTE and feminist organizations. You coedited the classic anthology Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry (1987).1In 1989, you went to Geneva and worked for four years at the World Health Organization. You persuaded WHO to use terms like sex work and sex workers.Today we are going to discuss your role as activist, then ally, in the sex worker movement.Priscilla Alexander: The term ally wasn’t even a term when I started in the early 1970s. I was just an activist.JW:Okay, we’ll tackle your recategorization later. How did you first become an activist in the prostitute rights’ movement?PA: It’s odd because I just got involved. I met Margo St. James [in 1975]. She had some money from the Hookers’ Ball and offered me a job as her secretary. I started working as her so-called secretary and then she ran out of money six months later. But by that time, I had found my niche, my place and my movement.JW:Why did you regard it as your movement?PA: I was stigmatized as a whore when I went to Bennington because I was more sexually active than you were supposed to be in the sixties. Guys who came from Williams would go up to the halls and yell up, “Anybody want a date?” and we would come down the stairs. Recently I mentioned this to Kate Marquez [another COYOTE pioneer of the 1980s] and that it was like being selected in a brothel. She said, “No, you didn’t control it. You weren’t in power because you didn’t get the money. You didn’t demand money in exchange.” That was very enlightening for me. I got the stigma without the power.Many years after graduating from Bennington, I was a teacher at a private school. I was having a conversation with one of the dads, a man, of course. He said, “Where did you go to college?” I said, “Bennington.” He said, “What did you major in, fucking?” I think that conversation was in 1973. I was startled. I gave him a piece of my mind but not nearly as much as I would have a couple of years later.When I got involved with COYOTE, it was partly in response to that 1973 experience. Long past Bennington, long past being a college student, long past it mattered whether I was sexual or not. It’s about having that stigma.JW:Can you describe the work that you did at COYOTE?PA: When I first got involved, it was basically Margo and me. I worked at the office full time. There were people who came and left, and they were sex workers. They tended to be in the closet much more than they are now. I remember going to the COYOTE office and feeling like I found my space. It was very liberating.JW:Can you describe the COYOTE office?PA: Oh, it was a bohemian office on Pier 40 in San Francisco, right on the waterfront and freezing all the time. Margo had some money from the Hookers’ Ball to pay my salary. Once they ran out of money, I would get part-time jobs or work office temp to pay my living expenses. Then the rest of my time, I would be at the COYOTE office. It was like I had found the place that I wanted to be. I had found my voice.JW:When you joined COYOTE did you think you would be an equal participant in the movement?PA: I saw myself as a learner. I was a listener. When we held a National Hookers’ Conference [1984], I sat there and took notes and then turned them into policies. I could contribute that skill. I didn’t assume that I knew what sex work was about. I learned that from sex workers.JW:When did the category of “ally” come in?PA: It was really in the late eighties, early nineties when this distinction between sex workers and allies emerged. More and more sex workers who were active in the movement and were public, they wanted the non–sex workers to step aside to be allies.JW:How did you feel about the change in status to ally?PA: I agree with the distinction between the actual leper of the community and the ally. I just found it difficult to have it affect me because I felt like I was in both camps.JW:Because you were stigmatized for going to Bennington.PA: Right.JW:You left COYOTE on account of internal politics in the group, coupled with Margo’s departure. You then went on to pursue advocacy work through other organizations, most notably WHO (1989–93), where you worked to ensure that sex workers participated in policy decisions around AIDS outreach work. What do you think were your biggest contributions to the sex worker rights movement?PA: The major work I did was to get prostitution viewed as work. My biggest contribution was a labor approach to prostitution as paid labor. A labor approach opened up the possibility of unionizing third-party-run management businesses like massage parlors so that you could have collective bargaining. In addition, I popularized the term sex work. I made it the international term.Carol [Leigh] came up with the phrase sex work, but it was largely my work at WHO that made it international.2 At the time, WHO officials were calling it commercial sex work, and I made them drop the commercial. I said, “There is no other kind of sex work, so sex work is sex work.”JW:Do you remember how sex workers responded to your breakthrough anthology Sex Work, a compilation of critical and historical essays, statements of prostitute rights organizations, and personal writings by sex traders?PA: When I was at a conference in Europe, a German sex worker came up to me and said that I had changed her life. That was the most profound thing anybody ever said to me.JW:How did it change her?PA: It changed her whole self-concept. She was able to think of herself not as a stigmatized person, but as a freestanding worker.JW:Even though you stepped aside, you made sex worker advocacy your life work and passion.PA: I’ve also gotten thanks from sex workers who become college professors and use the book in their classes. What better thanks could I have?JW:Do you think there’s still a place for allies to do certain kinds of advocacy?PA: Yes. I think that they must listen to the sex workers. Maybe allies can play an advisory role, but it’s the sex workers that have to make the decisions. I have always agreed with that.It’s very gratifying to have done something that made a difference in people’s lives. I was in a special place, but I don’t think that a non–sex worker will attain that position today. Now that they have come out of the closet, sex workers must do it and can do it.Priscilla Alexander served as a member of the National Task Force on Prostitution and was an activist with COYOTE from 1973 to 1989. She coedited Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry (with Frédérique Delacoste, 1987) and wrote many other articles on prostitution, rights, and AIDS. Between 1989 and 1993, she worked for the World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS

Political science · American Sports and Literature · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

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