Australian studies in law, crime and justice

A decade and a half of struggle : the prostitutes' movement

Published in:
Working girls : prostitutes, their life and social control / Roberta Perkins
ISBN 0 642 15877 0
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1991
(Australian studies in law, crime and justice series)

The political mobilisation of prostitutes, like many politicisations of minorities, was inspired by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But due to the extensive surveillance and intrinsic involvement of police in prostitution, the collaboration of brothel owners with the authorities, and the extremely oppressive nature of the laws and law enforcement resulting in the powerlessness of prostitutes both in society and within their own subculture, their politicisation came somewhat later than, say, blacks, gays, women in the feminist movement, anti-war activists and the conservationists. Political campaigns require a great deal of public exposure for the individuals concerned, and most prostitutes were in no position to expose themselves and their families to derision. They had more to lose than other activists. Leaders of the gay movement, for example, were usually men who had emerged from the "closet" years earlier, and had developed lifestyles in supportive and empathetic gay subcultures. Prostitutes, on the other hand, were living two lives, the sanctity of their social life and their relationships with their children being threatened by the consequences of disclosing their clandestine life as "whore". The police would take care of that by arresting and publicly exposing as a criminal any prostitute who dared to challenge the authorities. From an early period in the feminist movement it was obvious to most sex workers that they were going to get no support from that quarter, and they could not expect support from other personnel in the sex industry, such as clients, pimps and brothel managers, whose own interests would not be served by publicly "coming out". If a prostitutes' movement was to take place it would have to be initiated and carried by the prostitutes alone.

When the movement did begin it had followed a period of extreme provocation, and not surprisingly, the main focus was on the removal of oppressive laws. The word "decriminalisation" was coined as a result. The first prostitute advocacy of any permanency was the Organisation known as COYOTE (an acronym for "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics"), founded by the ubiquitous Margo St James on, appropriately enough, Mother's Day 1973, after receiving a grant of $5000 from the radical Glide Methodist Church in San Francisco. In view of earlier comments made in this book about the role of the Christian Churches in condemning prostitution, such a gesture seems oddly out of step with mainstream Christianity. But throughout the history of the prostitutes' movement individual churches and pastors have defied the authority of the central Church by assisting the campaigners. In France, England and Canada, for instance, prostitute activists have conducted protest demonstrations inside churches (in the tradition of seeking "sanctity" or protection from God) with the blessings of the resident vicars. The first three meetings of the Australian Prostitutes Collective were held in the rooms of Kings Cross' Wayside Chapel. Indicated here is a tension in modem Christian thought, or what might be described as a maternalistic undercurrent in the unrelenting paternalistic Christian mode.

The main thrust of COYOTE's momentum was law reform, but it raised funds to keep the momentum going by public social events and conventions. The first convention was held in the Glide Church in 1973 and the money raised from this went into organising the first Hooker's Ball in San Francisco, a major profit- making event which thereafter became an important gala occasion every year in the city's social calendar (Jaget 1980, pp. 200-1).

The "official" launch of the prostitutes' movement, however, occurred in France, not America. It began with protests by street sex workers in Lyons, who had endured extreme police harassment, imprisonment and the murder of a number of their colleagues by a serial killer. A formal protest was sent to the authorities and press by a mixed group of prostitutes and supporters, including members of an activist Organisation known as Nid, noted for "rehabilitating" prostitutes, demanding an end to police harassment and to police inertia with regards to investigating the homicides. When these demands were ignored, and police increased their fines, some 150 prostitutes occupied the church of St Nizier on 3rd June 1975 and called a press conference. They told an eager press gallery that they refused to budge until certain prominent parliamentarians listened to their grievances. While the French left-wing newspaper, Liberation, headlined an article on the event "Hookers in the House of the Lord", prostitutes inside the church hung a banner out the front reading: "Our Children don't want their Mothers in Gaol". The focus of attention for the prostitutes was very different to the public interest. Until that time most people had probably not thought of prostitutes as mothers. The Minister of Women's Affairs and other government officials requested by the prostitutes for a communication refused the women's invitation, and instead the women were driven from the church by a police baton charge early in the morning a week later.

But the exercise in demanding rights had not been in vain. Across the country, in Paris, Marseilles, Grenoble and Montpellier prostitutes also occupied churches when they learned of events in Lyons, and in Cannes, Toulouse and Saint-Etienne they "downed tools". The entire affair was dubbed "the prostitutes strike" by the press and a group of Parisian prostitutes formed themselves into an Organisation they called "The French Prostitutes Collective". At the political level the French Parliament agreed to allow prostitutes more time to pay fines instead of gaoling them police were ordered to step up investigations of the murders and were investigated for corruption following a number of reports by the women (Jaget 1980, pp. 35-54).

But no move was made to decriminalise the laws in France, and later when the government proposed the return of licensing and the "maisons de tolerance" the prostitutes vetoed the idea completely as another attempt at controlling them. These events in France, however, sparked a universal resistance by prostitutes and the formation of a number of organisations modelled on the French idea of a collective. Prostitute advocacies mushroomed across Europe, including the Committee of Civil Rights for Prostitutes in Italy in 1979, Hydra in West Germany in 1980, ANAIS in Switzerland in 1982 and De Rode Draag in Holland in 1984 (Pheterson 1989, pp.67). Prostitutes in England were quicker off the mark, with Helen Buckingham founding PLAN (Prostitution Laws Are Nonsense) in 1975, and a group modelled directly on the French Organisation, calling itself the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) in the same year inventing the slogan which seems to sum it all up very nicely: "No bad women, just bad laws". ECP soon developed a strong socialist feminist perspective and on 18 November 1982 followed the French example by 18 members occupying the Holy Cross Anglican Church in Camden in protest over police brutality. They managed to achieve an official monitor of police behaviour as a result of the press coverage. In Canada, a Vancouver Organisation, ASP (Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes), staged a massive demonstration outside City Hall on 20 April 1983, and followed up with a church occupation on 20 July 1984 in protest over new tougher legislation (Network July 1983; The Body Politic 1983; ECP Newsletter 23 July 1984).

A number of advocacy organisations were formed in America (among which were PONY in New York, PUSSY in Pennsylvania, PUMA in Massachusetts, KITTY in Kansas City and CAT in Los Angeles). But the most publicly active was the US Prostitutes Collective, with a strong feminist persuasion. In Tulsa they staged a street comer stand-in on 18 September 1983 in protest over penalties forcing prostitutes to become street cleaners (Tulsa World, City/State 16 September 1983: Time, 3 October 1983, p. 25). In March 1984 they conducted a street protest in Seattle in response to police inertia in the "Green River" serial murder investigations (The Seattle Times, 17 March 1984; Time, 16 April 1984; Penn 1984). In Sacramento on 14 March 1984 a newspaper office was picketed for printing an inflammatory story thought to encourage violence against prostitutes (The Sacramento Union, 15 March 1984). Masked protesters (it has become a tradition for prostitutes staging public demonstrations to wear masks to hide their identities) demonstrated outside Berkeley City Hall because of the municipal council's sanctioning of citizen vigilantes aiding police to hunt down prostitutes on 20 March 1984 (The Tribune, 20 March 1984; SF Examiner, 20 March 1984). In January 1985 a small army of masked colleagues of a "mistress of sadomasochism" marched with banners outside the Sacramento Superior Courthouse in protest over a trial likely to convict the mistress to a gaol ten-n for solicitation in violation of her parole (The Sacramento Union, 1 February 1985).

Whilst these public outbursts captured the attention of the community at large over the plight of prostitutes, they achieved little by way of solving the legal problems facing prostitutes. In England, though, some headway was made with the co-operative efforts of three prostitute organisations - ECP, PLAN and PROS (Programme for the Reform of Laws On Soliciting), a streetwalkers group founded by parole officer, Louise Webb - assisting MP Maureen Colquhoun in framing a 10 Minute Rule Bill calling for the repeal of a soliciting law penalty that allowed the detention of prostitutes after a third conviction. It passed a first reading in the House of Commons on 6 March 1979, but failed to obtain a second reading and reach the House of Lords for approval because of an electoral intervention and change in government (Jaget 1980, pp. 28-9). However, two years later the issue of repeal was revived as the Imprisonment of Prostitutes (Abolition) Bill, which finally passed through both Houses on 31 January 1983. But what appeared to be a major victory for prostitutes at the time turned sour when the police stepped up arrests and the courts increased fines, so that women still went to gaol, only this time it was for failure to pay fines. Nevertheless, what was achieved was real co-operation between prostitutes and government agents.

On an international scale in this decade some important advances were made to form a coalition of these prostitute organisations to deal with governments worldwide. The first steps were taken by Margo St. James, who with feminist Priscilla Alexander, founded the US National Task Force on Prostitution in 1979 in an effort to provide a mutual outlet for the actions of the myriad of advocacy groups then in existence across the country. A major focus of this coalition was to pressure the United States into ratifying the United Nations 1949 convention on the trafficking of women and children (see p 56) and to recommend "decriminalisation". It also hoped to negotiate with European prostitute groups for a united campaign to end legal oppression worldwide (Jaget 1980, p. 20; Pheterson 1989, p. 5).

The American coalition was not as successful as it was hoped, due mainly to opposition from the US Prostitutes Collective, whose chief spokeswoman, Margaret Prescod, argued that St. James and COYOTE's "good times approach belittles the prostitutes' plight" while the US Prostitutes Collective's street protest approach is much more effective (The Wall Street Journal, 28 March 1984). St. James and her colleagues, though, had greater success in Europe, where she and social psychologist feminist Gail Pheterson formed the International Committee for Prostitutes' Rights (ICPR) in 1984, an Organisation which was responsible for two "World Whores Congresses". The first Congress took place in Amsterdam on 14 February 1985, and involved some 75 participants equally mixed between prostitutes and supporters from six European countries, three South-East Asian countries, the United States and Canada. It was mostly notable for two outcomes. The first was the unfortunate ideological differences between the Socialist feminist dominated ECP and the more "grassroots" approach of ICPR which came to a head in an unresolved outburst during one of the sessions. A permanent split between the feminist organised ECP, US Prostitutes Collective and their sister groups in Canada and the Caribbean on the one hand, and the prostitute organised groups attached to ICPR on the other seems imminent as a result of this. The second outcome was much more positive: the "World Charter for Prostitutes Rights", which listed decriminalisation, human rights, self-determination in working conditions, health control by sex workers, and public education as its main objectives (Pheterson 1989, pp. 33-42).

The Second "World Whores Congress" was a much grander affair. It took place on 1-3 October 1986 in the distinguished halls of the European Parliament building in Brussels. Nearly 150 people attended the three-day sessions, over three-quarters of whom were prostitutes from 18 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and the South Pacific. The sessions were divided into three parts, dealing each with human rights, including legal harassment, health, with a focus on prevention of AIDS, and feminism, with a discussion on resolving differences. The dialogue was mostly supplying information, comparing conditions in the various countries, and communicating for the purposes of solidarity, as well as ratification of the above Charter (Pheterson 1999, pp. 43-197).

These Congresses were essential for prostitute solidarity, but they were just as important as a forum for communicating to the governments of the world, as well as the population at large, the needs of prostitutes worldwide. The US National Task Force on Prostitution had achieved non-govemment status with the United Nations; the same was hoped for ICPR. Five delegates, including myself, from the Australian Prostitutes Collective attended the second Congress and put its case for national decriminalisation to the plenary assembly. This Organisation, however, had already established a rapport with the governments of New South Wales and Victoria through the separate inquiries being conducted in each state at the time. A sister Organisation, Prostitutes Association of South Australia, had an even longer and earlier communication with its state government in the bills for "decriminalisation" presented to Parliament (see p. 103).

In Victoria, campaigns for prostitutes' rights actually pre-date prostitute organisations, when a group of feminists demanded the decriminalisation of prostitution laws at the State's Liberal Party Conference in 1970. But as the community conflicts in St. Kilda mounted throughout the 1970s, the Prostitutes Action Group was formed in November 1978 to bring the sex workers' cause to the open forums. At the time they received support from Women Behind Bars and the St Kilda Women's Liberation Group in their public battles with the council and resident conservatives. But eventually the prostitutes, having changed the name of their group to Hetaira to be more appealing to up-market prostitutes, gained the attention of parliamentarian Joan Coxsedge, whose communications with the group led to an interest in law reform by the State Labour Party, finally resulting in "legalisation" (see p. 111)(Johnston 1984, pp. 338-59).

In 1984 the remnants of Hetaira formed a coalition with the Sydney group, Australian Prostitutes Collective, adopting this name as their own. Two years later the group received funding for health and welfare services among prostitutes from the Victorian Government. Such co-operation between government and prostitutes inspired the formation of other organisations in Western Australia, Queensland, the Australian Capital and Northern Territories, and applications for government grants. In 1988 the Victorian group changed its name once again, calling itself The Prostitutes Collective of Victoria, in an effort to dissociate itself from the chaos dividing the Sydney group at the time. In spite of this upheaval's disillusioning effect on the prostitutes movement across Australia, the Victorian group lead the way in arranging the first national conference on prostitution in Melbourne in 1988. In spite of the excellent model established by ICPR's World Whores Congress in Brussels, this conference seemed more beneficial to government officials and bureaucrats who considerably outnumbered prostitutes attending from the various states. In Adelaide the next year a much more prostitute-orientated conference took place with the purpose of forming the Scarlet Alliance as a national forum for prostitute organisations and establishing a national charter for sex workers' rights.

The rise and fall of the Australian Prostitutes Collective (initially called the Collective of Australian Prostitutes) is an object lesson to other prostitute organisations. It was founded by Kerry Carrington, Debbie Homberg, Roz Nelson and myself at a meeting in the Wayside Chapel's annexes in Darlinghurst, Sydney, on 13th July 1983 (Sydney Morning Herald, 10 September 1983; Campaign, August 1983). The meeting was attended by 70 people anxious to give support to prostitutes in their struggle against conservative residents of East Sydney. Initially it was a lobby group only demanding decriminalisation, but in time it also took on the role of a welfare Organisation attending to the daily needs of individuals. Members of the Organisation had earlier established a rapport with the New South Wales Select Committee Upon Prostitution. Both groups had a common interest: to find a solution to the problems occurring between prostitutes and the community at large. With this in mind both groups co-operated, with the APC supplying prime witnesses and the Select Committee seriously considering recommendations from prostitutes. The APC formed a special subgroup with members of the gay youth Organisation, Twenty-Ten, in order to negotiate with the Select Committee through the medium of submissions and verbal communication. This sub-group was called the Task Force On Prostitution, and in addition to presenting 21 written submissions its members appeared as witnesses as under:

• 30 August 1983, Annette Crowe (APC)
• 12 September 1983, Roz Nelson (APC)
• 12 September 1983, Garry Bennett (Twenty-Ten)
• 4 October 1983, Roberta Perkins (APC)
• 14 November 1983, Terry Goulden (Twenty-Ten)
• 15 December 1983, Debbie Homberg (APC)
• 27 June 1984, Roz Nelson and Roberta Perkins (APC)
• 19 July 1984, Bebe Loff, Marianne Phillips, Cheryl Overs (APC, Vic.)

Apart from these co-operations, Garry Bennett and I took members of the Select Committee on a night time tour of Kings Cross, East Sydney and Darlinghurst on 6 August 1983, when they spoke to street and brothel prostitutes, visited brothels and gained a general impression of the area. The findings from research conducted at this time for the Task Group On Prostitution were published two years later (Perkins & Bennett 1985).

Among the recommendations made by the Select Committee were suggestions for increases in health and welfare services and the greater availability of condoms as an important AIDS prevention measure. By this time, however, the APC had received a substantial grant from the New South Wales Government in 1985 to combat AIDS in prostitution. It was the first Australian prostitute Organisation to receive such funding, and one of the first in the world. It set a precedent for other Australian governments, and even in California the long-standing advocacy COYOTE was granted funds in 1987 from the state government as well as non-government groups to prevent the spread of HIV among prostitutes. In order to avoid controversy, COYOTE established a sister Organisation, CAL-PEP (California Prostitutes Education Project), so that it appeared like two unrelated groups focusing on different needs of sex workers. Such subterfuge was deemed not necessary in the climate of "decriminalisation" in New South Wales, and. certainly the State Government made no conditions on advocacy when granting monies for AIDS prevention in 1985.

Funding enabled the APC to establish office premises in Kings Cross, employ a staff of "project workers", and service every brothel in the State with condoms and educational material on a rotation outreach system. The idea of a "travelling parlour show" was introduced whereby members of the APC took STD workers to the brothels for thorough STD education programs. This service, along with less personal methods for preventing the spread of AIDS in the community, was largely responsible for the rapid mobilisation against AIDS by prostitutes and the widespread introduction of mandatory condom use in brothels across the State. In every respect the APC, with its liaisons with both prostitutes and the government, became the perfect medium through which the latter could communicate with sex workers for purposes of reducing health risk. While in a "decriminalisation" legal system such as in New South Wales the opportunity for developing mutual trust exists, in an oppressive atmosphere of criminalising laws, heavy penalties and persistent policing such as in California, Queensland, South Australia, England and France, mistrust and resentment make a permanent barrier between prostitutes and governments, and organisations such as CAL-PEP walk a fine line between collaborating with the oppressors and assisting in illegal activities. The use of prostitute organisations in this way by oppressive governments is yet another example of social control.

The APC, for all of its excellent project work, was unfortunately doomed to a short-lived existence. By August 1987 it began experiencing serious internal disjunctions which threatened to disintegrate the Organisation. Part of this was due to individual bids for power, but most of the blame for this unfortunate collapse of a well-run service must be laid at the feet of ministerial inertia in a more conservative Labor Party Government in 1987 than was in existence in 1985. The initial crux of the problem occurred when two senior government bureaucrats entered the management committee of the APC. Although a majority of prostitutes steered this committee, the two bureaucrats assumed a superior power, which led to a demand by the prostitutes for their removal. Instead of recognising the majority decision, the dissenting bureaucrats managed to seize the APC's negotiating arrangement with its bank. Once they had power over the government funds, they systematically removed their opposition on the staff by an expediency of formal dismissals. A first-class industrial brawl broke out, with the "bureaucrats' faction" (as the media dubbed it) claiming to "Protect" public monies, while the "prostitutes' faction" took their grievances to the funding body. When they found this avenue blocked by the bureaucrats' colleagues within the department, they appealed directly to the Minister for Health, the highest authority for the funding body, presenting him with a petition of 500 prostitutes I signatures calling for the official removal of the two bureaucrats. But he claimed to be a neutral party with no right to interfere in what ostensibly is an independent Organisation, in spite of the real risk of abuse of government funds. The prostitutes took this refusal to arbitrate in the dispute as tacit approval of the behaviour of the two bureaucrats, who by now had managed to secure a few token prostitutes on their side by offering them jobs. The prostitutes staged a street demonstration and picketed the Minister's office, which at one point involved police, an action that only inflamed an already volatile situation.

Whatever the Minister's real thoughts on the matter were, the fact was his Party was in a very shaky political position with a series of public scandals under its belt and criticisms levelled at it for its shortcomings in the rising AIDS crisis. He and his parliamentary colleagues were facing a state election in a few weeks and the last thing he could afford was involvement in a scandal over misuse of public monies given to prostitutes, let alone lend support to the prostitutes faction's" accusations of double-dealing by two of his senior officers. I imagine he thought that neutrality was the better course of valour. But his anxieties served him nought, for the much more conservative Liberal Party won the election with a clear majority. The prostitutes gave up now that they were faced with a government that was hell-bent on introducing tougher laws to punish sex workers. In the meantime the APC was allowed to continue operating under the control of the bureaucrats. But the vast majority of prostitutes no longer trusted it, and it became an Organisation without function. In the end the Government decided to withdraw any further funding (now that a "decent" period had passed to allow memories to fade) and finish the embarrassment altogether.

So, finally, what occurred was a bizarre situation. The first prostitute Organisation to receive funding to combat AIDS in an atmosphere of communication with government, legal relaxation, and mutual trust, was also the first to lose it, while other prostitute groups walking the tightrope between antagonistic forces were flourishing with government funds. But, these especially, should be aware of the history of the collapse of an efficient service for prostitutes operated by the APC. They need to be wary of who they allow onto their committee, and government employees, particularly those on the staff of the funding body who feel they have automatic superiority over prostitutes, should be carefully screened before being approved. It is important to realise that, as with the APC, there is no such thing as safety in numbers when the minority have state power to call upon surreptitiously. Most especially they should tread warily with government funding, lest it becomes a source of power to control prostitutes. It may, for instance, be withheld for a period of time until the Organisation ceases its advocacy work, especially when this challenges the laws aimed at prostitutes. Thus, funding becomes a most effective weapon for the control of prostitutes by holding power over their most trusted means of communication with government in the bid for prostitutes rights. An Organisation with all its good intentions in the flush of its early days of hard voluntary work, and dedication to achieving human rights, is soon corrupted with funding, for once this is withdrawn the initial enthusiasm seems primitive and futile. At first the funding appears like a reward for all the hard work of the past and the "generosity" of the government in granting it gives the impression that the politicians understand at last. In the meantime, new workers in the Organisation replace the old and these are motivated more by wages than causes. Soon, the Organisation is structured in such a manner that funding becomes an imperative. Once it is withdrawn, or threatened with withdrawal, the members of the group feel they can't survive without it. Returning to volunteer work seems such a retrograde step. The loss of funding is like a deflated ego or a betrayal, and it seems fruitless to start all over again. Indeed, government funding is a corrupting influence. But it is also a more efficient mechanism for social control than the law. Such was the fate of the APC, for it failed to notice the warning signs in its enthusiasm for expanding its service with government funds. Others, however, might learn from its mistakes. Some prostitutes working in a fully government funded Organisation with "grassroots" pretensions warn others they "should not bite the hand that feeds them", meaning "do not rock the boat", or be compliant. They may learn to their sorrow however, that the hand is made of steel; it cannot be bitten but it can smack with a savage wallop for disobedience.

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