Take a couple hundred prostitutes, erotic dancers, and prostitute rights activists from around the world: a gaggle of anarchistic, proudly caustic social outcasts — mostly women — who are used to being ignored, discredited, stigmatized, and dismissed, and who have a real taste and genius for stirring up the soup. Put them together with a couple hundred university-based academics and researchers — mostly men — who take for granted being treated with unquestioned deference and respect, who like to keep their professional and personal interactions polite, linear, and rational, and who are (for one reason or another) fascinated with the whorearchy. Shake and bake.
It’s ICOP ‘97, the International Conference on Prostitution. Jointly sponsored by Cal State/Northridge’s Center for Sex Research and the Los Angeles chapter of COYOTE (the main U.S. prostitute rights organization), it’s billed as a unique opportunity for current and former prostitutes, prostitute rights activists, researchers, academics, legal experts, and social workers “to meet each other, present their work, and exchange information on their methods [and] results.”
Sounds like one of those sweet/crazy scenes with a finger on the fluttering pulse of the world’s schizophrenic love-hate relationship with sex. And the underlying issue — the way sex workers, forever dismissed as subhuman beings as punishment for their unsocial sexuality, are banding together and demanding to be seen, respected, and taken seriously — has resonated in my gut for a decade. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
* * * * *
Waiting for the hotel shuttle in the deserted Van Nuys Airport parking lot, I meet three women from London also headed for the conference. They look at me somewhat suspiciously when I say hello. One comments to no one in particular that she didn’t know there were going to be any men at this conference. After a little regular and distinctly respectful (on my part) small talk, they lighten up a bit. Or maybe it’s just their getting to puff cigarettes after 16 hours in no-smoking hell.
At the hotel, the three Londoners and a group of Asian women who speak almost no English move quickly ahead of me while I’m still figuring out which is the registration line. All sorts of women in the lobby are having joyous reunions with lots of smiles and hugs. It is the gathering together of a far-flung tribe, and it’s clear that my place as heterosexual male supporter/observer/reporter is distinctly on the periphery. Fair enough. Feminism is alive and well among those whom the anointed Feminists denounce. As one British whore says later, “never have I seen in one place so many independent, feisty strong and beautiful women in control of their own minds, desires, bodies, and finances. Now that’s what I call a feminist.”
* * * * *
There are 65 workshops with over 275 presenters squeezed into this two-and-a-half-day gathering. The first one I go to is on “Sex Work and the Disabled.” Sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen talks to a small but attentive group about how professional sex with disabled people means getting comfortable with a lot of new things in hurry. Catheters, urine bags, and bowel irregularities, for starters
Humor and creativity, she prescribes, as if we are all about to go out there and do this work ourselves. But watch out for the spasms, she warns. “I learned the hard way not to put my breast in the mouth of a client with jaw spasms. Also, after I almost has my jaw dislocated, I decided never again to put my head between the knees of a client who spasms.” We get the picture. On the other hand, she tells about the wonderful time she once had, pressing a client’s arm against her clit so his spasms could make her come. “It gave him a sense of power,” she observes matter-of-factly, “to know that he could give pleasure to someone else.”
Tuppy Owens, presenting at the same workshop, has worked for years with handicapped people in London. She praises as “sex angels,” the neighbors, friends, and hospital staff who are willing to masturbate people who are unable to masturbate for themselves. Certainly as powerful a gesture of random kindness as scratching a paraplegic’s nose or escorting someone in a wheelchair to the bathroom, but not so commonly offered. Tuppy talks about one man whose arms were so short that his hands were effectively coming out of his shoulders. She asked him if he masturbated with his feet, a question that, frankly, would never have occurred to me. “Yes, of course,” he replied as if that much were obvious, “but hands are better.”
* * * * *
At a workshop on “Prostitution’s Place in History,” Elizabeth Clement reads a paper on “Prostitution and Working Class Women’s Sexual Morality, New York City, 1900-1940,” in that uniquely crisp, clipped academic cadence university conference-goers know so well. I learn that prostitution was accepted as commonplace and no big deal throughout working class New York around the turn of the century. Whores worked out of a myriad of small hotels, and out of candy stores and ice cream parlors as well. But what about the children??!! Seems that tenement families commonly had the whores watch their children while they were waiting for clients, an arrangement that gave the mothers free child care and the whores a legitimate reason to be sitting around if the police came by. When the whores scored a client they sent the kids back to their moms, picking them up again when they were done.
* * * * *
A plenary panel brings together some of the more publicly notorious prostitutes and madams, including COYOTE founder Margo St. James, Xaviera Hollander (the Happy Hooker), Dolores French (author of Working), and Sydney Biddle Barrows (the Mayflower Madam).
French explains how she first went public as a prostitute in 1982, using her real name when she appeared on the Donahue show. “I wanted to prove that a prostitute does not necessarily wear hot pants, Tammy Faye mascara, and have 5” nails,” she says.
Margo St. James notes that during her recent campaign for San Francisco Supervisor people tried to discredit her by claiming that she had never really been the whore she claimed to be. “If the only way they could discredit me was to say I wasn’t a whore,” she laughs, “then we’re really winning the battle for destigmatization.”
* * * * *
At a workshop on “The Client,” Hugh Loebner, prominent among the few talkshow johns, calls on clients of prostitutes everywhere to come out of the closet about paying for sex. At Stonewall, he notes, gay people “gained their freedom by speaking, nay, shouting out. Now it is our turn.” An annual coming out demonstration is scheduled for June.
Loebner also reports on prostitution among the Bonobo chimpanzees, confirming an old notion of mine that every sexual variation can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom if you look hard enough. Male Bonobos, it seems, will dangle dead meat in front of sexually aroused females, letting the females eat only after they have sex with the males. The males are also more likely to hunt when there are sexually active females around, knowing that it’s the guy with the Porsche that’s most likely to get laid.
* * * * *
It is illegal to enter the U.S., even temporarily, if you are a prostitute, like it is illegal to enter the country if you have AIDS. How to have a real international presence at the conference? “The university people wanted us to tell the women to deny being prostitutes on their visa applications,” COYOTE organizer Norma Jean Almodovar explains, outraged at the thought. “But most of the women were going to acknowledge being prostitutes in their presentations. They could all be prosecuted for perjury, and me for advising them to lie. Would they ask a group of sociologists to perjure themselves? I don’t think so. But it’s ok to ask whores to lie because of who we are.”
Barbara Boxer’s office advises that the women can get visa waivers if they have letters officially inviting them to speak at the conference. When the university organizers drag their feet, not wanting to take what they call a political stance, Almodovar sends the invitations herself, commandeering university letterhead. The women get their waivers.
(Even with waiver in hand, a Nicaraguan prostitute on her way to the conference is twice pulled out of line and interrogated by INS in Miami. She misses her flight, stays in the airport overnight, and arrives late to the conference. Speaking through an interpreter at the conference Awards luncheon, she tells her story in tears and anger. She is given both a standing ovation and a COYOTE award for bravery.)
* * * * *
Fred Cherry, 71, a vocal prostitution activist who suffers from chronic malabsorption syndrome (he was once 5’10” and 98 pounds), loves to talk about having sex with prostitutes. His first sex was with a prostitute, he says, solicited by his mother, who “didn’t want me to starve,” sexually as well as nutritionally. He has been fighting for decriminalization of prostitution since 1962, when he was hooted down for suggesting at an ACLU meeting that they take a stand on the issue. Fred has come through with a lot of money for this conference. He also happens to be rabidly homophobic, railing about how gay sex clubs get away with things that heterosexuals get busted for, and much more.
“He may be a homophobe,” Almodovar says while presenting him with a conference award, “but he’s our homophobe.” When he seizes the mike and starts to rant, she affectionately but firmly pulls him away.
* * * * *
Almodovar has scored a big coup by getting Joycelyn Elders, the surgeon general Clinton canned for wanting to tell kids about masturbation, as keynote speaker. COYOTE has unilaterally raised $10,000 to cover Elders’ fee. “I don’t know why a conference of hookers would invite Dr. Elders to speak,” Almodovar quips in her introduction. “Masturbation could single-handedly put us out of business.” Elders gets a conference award. “I don’t get too many of these,” she smiles.
Elders is not used to talking to a group more radical than she is. When she raises the specter of six-year-old children forced into prostitution and speaks of how “poverty is the real crime of prostitution,” she is greeted with silence instead of applause. The notion that prostitutes are typically broken, coerced, and in need of rehabilitation is as seriously retro here as the notion that black women are basically welfare cheats. Elders catches that something is amiss and shifts gears.
“Many women marry for money,” she booms, her hands moving dramatically through the air. “To me that’s just one more form of prostitution.” Applause gratefully breaks the tension. “Tell it like it is, sister,” a very white woman next to me calls out.
“If two consenting adults choose to have sex” Elders goes on, gathering steam, that should be none of the rest of our business.” More applause. And then, finally, the words everyone is waiting to hear: “We’ve got to go about decriminalizing all aspects of adult prostitution.”
She gets a long standing ovation. This is a movement with precious few public allies. Lots of people arrange to get their pictures taken with her.
* * * * *
It is the final round of workshops, including a huge panel on “The International Sex Worker Movement.” Yaoska Villavicencio, the Nicaraguan woman detained by immigration in Miami, is speaking when hotel workers suddenly begin pulling down the walls of the room in preparation for the conference’s closing plenary. The activists on the panel, incensed all weekend at not getting the translators they were promised, refuse to be cut off. University organizer Vern Bullough pulls rank and insists that the session end immediately. The women are not having any of it. They scream at him in Spanish. “Tell them to go to hell,” he replies.
Villavicencio is in tears. “Why did you give me an award?” she says. “Was it so that I could endure so much humiliation.” The Latinas start chanting in the hallway. Bullough, at his wits end, abandons the final plenary altogether, declares the conference over, and leaves.
* * * * *
Success or fiasco? Most people don’t seem phased by the conflict. People got mad at each other; happens all the time. Steph Walker, a prostitute rights activist from Britain, is unambiguous in her enthusiasm. “The conference has changed my life,” she says. “My emotions ran from inspired, joyful, celebratory, and proud to angry, saddened, burnt out, and vulnerable and I would change none of that. I have instilled in me now a sense of real trouble making which I shall hold onto and feed on a regular basis.”
The Realist, Summer, 1997
Copyright © 1997 David Steinberg
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