Margo St. James: Founder of
the Prostitutes' Rights Movement in the U.S.
Margo St. James passed away on Jan 11, 2021.
By now you may have heard-- our love, heroine, friend, inspiration, mentor, leader, beacon, lover, mother, sister, warrior and daughter, Margo St. James, passed on January 11, 2021. I am so sorry if you are just seeing this in a post. Margo was in hospice at the time, so she was taken care of at the end. Please do what you can to share and honor Margo's legacy, making sure to remind the world of her contributions. Brave Margo launched such crucial changes in the world! Message me @carol_leigh about the memorial and we know how many of you want to connect. 
Margo led the launch of the international #sexworkerrights movement in Amsterdam and at the European Parliament in Brussels at the World Whores Congress in 1985 and 1986 among her other crucial contributions. I thought of this photo by Annie Sprinkle published in Vindication of The Rights of Whores from Gail Pheterson and Margo St. James. See Margo, in the center, her haunting stare. Also Griselidis Real (facing back) and on the other side of Margo is Norma Jean Almodovar and Gail Pheterson, Margo's partner, lover, collaborator and friend.
Please also read below and here, with the original link:
Susie Bright's passionate writing about Margo with Susie and Gail Pheterson in France.
Love,
Scarlot Harlot
Below are some memorials written by her friends. Please visit https://www.facebook.com/LoveforMargoStJames
Annie Sprinkle:
A HO’S HOMAGE TO THE LATE GREAT MARGO ST JAMES
From Annie Sprinkle - Prostitute/porn star turned artist/ecosex activist
It was in between "massages" that I got my hot little hands on my first issue of Margo St. James' newsletter, COYOTE Howls. One of my whore co-workers at midtown Manhattan's Spartacus Spa had brought it to work and passed it around. In it, Margo St. James, the editor, argued that prostitution should be decriminalized! The year was 1975, I was 20 years old. I'd been working in massage parlors for two years and never once heard anyone ever mentioned the idea of decriminalizing prostitution. It seemed like magical thinking, a far-fetched, absurd idea. Spartacus Spa was raided every so often. Arrests for prostitution were routine. We didn't deserve to be arrested and put in jail for offering pleasure, nor should our clients be punished for their sexual desires.
When I heard Margo St. James would be speaking at a meeting of a new group called Prostitutes of New York (PONY), I went. It would be life changing. The meeting was held in the homey apartment of feminist civil rights lawyer, Florynce Kennedy. About twenty-five women of diverse backgrounds were gathered; prostitutes of various kinds (the term sex worker had not been invented yet), a few academics, some social worker types and a sprinkling of bawdy, bad ass women (the term sex positive feminist and hadn't been invented yet.) Call girl/writer Tracy Quan was there as was the organizer from the National Task Force on Prostitution, Pricilla Alexander. I was introduced to some women from PONY's sister activist group, Wages for Housework. When Margo spoke she was low key, calm, cool, and collected. But by the end of the meeting we were all ready to work to rid the world of the bad laws against our profession and to help relieve the stigmas and stop the dangers of being a whore.
Over the years I went to every event Margo did that I could, because they were about the liberation and empowerment of people like me. I knew I would connect with very special people, the energy would be electric, and it was important to show support. Margo's Hooker's Balls were the one place where whores could be out, be proud and be celebrated. There were lines of limos and Rolls Royce's dropping off dazzling groups of whores with their flamboyant pimps in full plumage, dirty dancing, rock and roll, a few speeches, celebrities, paparazzi, artists and tons of fun. The 2nd World Whore's Congress that Margo produced and co-led with her partner of ten years, Gail Pheterson was phenomenal. Held in 1986 during the height of the AIDS crisis, we whores were desperate to learn better how to navigate the epidemic, not get AIDS from our clients, and to get the message out that whores were teaching safe sex not spreading AIDS. Margo and Gail managed to hold the Congress at the best venue, the European Parliament in Brussels, with simultaneous translation in multiple languages via headphones. Margo and Gail created an International network of whore communities, and by the end of the conference a World Charter for Prostitutes Rights had been drafted and presented at a huge press conference. Whenever Margo called a press conference the press came running like bears to honey. She had journalists in the palms of her hands because of her confidence, commitment to justice and she knew how to create good photo ops. Margo got a lot of press.
Margo ran for San Francisco board of supervisors with the help of her campaign manager, Carol Stuart, with whom I had gone to college in New York. She lost by a razor's edge. Even when confronted with controversy Margo stayed cool and collected. She was our fearless leader and she birthed so much of today's sex positive culture.
For three years I got to hang out with Margo more intimately, when in the late 90s we were neighbors on Orcas Island in Washington State. I'll never forget the way she was there for me when I broke up with my partner, who got really angry and I was afraid. I ran to Margo's house. She was my protector, a shield, and she let me stay with her a few days until I got off the Island safely. I will be eternally grateful for that.
For over four decades now, Margo St. James's life and work inspired mine, and countless others. Sadly now we must say goodbye. The old sex worker adage comes to mind-- Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Margo is everywhere.
by Susie Bright
First Betty Dodson... and now Margo St. James.
Margo has left the Ballroom. Elle est morte.
I know all of us who ever spent one minute with Margo, are sitting here with the news of her death, breathing out, breathing in, trying to take in what an incredible impact she had on us.
Her voice. Her friendship. Her joie de vivre, her independence, her deep connection to living life to the fullest, to liberation at its source. Her absolute no bullshit take on *everything.*
Margo and Betty were the single most important sexual liberationists and feminist revolutionaries who ever slapped society upside its head. No one in our movement has ever affected me more.
Margo’s work and writing with her lover and political partner, Gayle Pheterson, have *never* been surpassed. They are the reason we join in unison, “whores unite.” The video you’ll see below gives you a taste... and it was recorded decades ago!
In my comments, I’ll share other memories that rocked my world, all of Margo’s world.
In the early days, I was just another jeune fille who thought MSJ was the bomb. I read about her, i didn’t know her. I was too young to be part of the early 60s and 70s scene that she germinated in SF and Marin; I only read about it and wished I was there!
It wasn’t until my unexpected move to rural France, in the early 90s, that I discovered a group of retired COYOTE whores were living in the middle of ... medieval nowhere.
At its center was Margo and Gayle’s house, in Montpeyroux. A village. A village with this historic meeting place where every American ex-pat passed through. A maison with a second floor devoted to COYOTE’s archives.
Margo spent all day long with me in that salon, day after day. I did all I could to inject it in my veins. It was pure nitro to learn at her feet. Those meals. Those mechanics. Those nights that you didn’t dare blink.
Then, one day, one of her best American friends, Paul Avery, one of Margo’s faithful, was determined to help her out of the difficult financial straits she was in. He needed a nurse, his years as a combat reporter in Vietnam had long term consequences. They both needed mutual aid, and a plan... and he had the health plan from the SF Chronicle/Examiner... so they got married.
Their wedding is the only marital ritual I have ever truly enjoyed. I hadn’t had so much fun since Montpeyroux. That was in North Beach. Remember that day? Malvina’s Café, and we spilled onto the street. You have never seen so many happy queers and bohemians and lawmen and reporters and politicians and outlaws of every description at a wedding of a man and a woman who were loyal friends to the end. It was like The Hookers Ball, senior style, all those years later.
And then Margo ran for County Supervisor and wanted to list me on her top supporters list. Ha!
“But all I do is love you, I don’t have any money!” I said. “That’s why,” she said.
She was a working class woman from Washington State. She was the epitome of sisterhood. No one could connect to any woman on the street like she could. She was also so many men’s “best woman friend they ever had,’ I can’t begin to count. She was brilliant. She had the biggest ideas. She never forgot the bottom line. She was the female Sherlock Holmes. She was there in the pinch. She never forgot where she came from. She always had a bowl of soup for you. She was the kettle that never extinguished.
So much is made of Margo being a hooker... she spent more hours of her life doing other things, and she made whoredom seem like the prerequisite for doing anything well. She was a field nurse, and an abortionist and a midwife. I was always blown away by her ability to deal with disastrous medical calamities. I saw her stitch someone up who was a mess. Cool as a cucumber, and so competent.
She was a longtime P.I., yeah, a detective. That’s how she and Paul really connected. They knew all the dirt about everybody, they could find out anything; they were bloodhounds.
She had been to law school and spoke like a lawyer, fought like a lawyer, could argue anything.
She was a builder. When I met her in France, she was physically renovating various decrepit stone forts in France, restoring them to their medieval best. How did she know how to use all those tools and methods? I don’t know, but she knew them all.
She was strong as hell. In her builder clothes, she passed as a man. She had them all by the balls. She grew up on a dairy farm. She knew “animal husbandry” like it was second nature. She was so unintimidated by anyone and anything.
Margo looked great in a Nun’s Habit, by the way. She let me try on one of hers. She and Krassner used to make out in front of North Beach tourists, when she was in her nun’s costume. How wonderful is that? True kinship, those two.
There is just NO END to all the wonderful stories I could tell you about Margo. And I was just a tiny little valentine on her kimono.
We talked about dying from the beginning. You were ready for it before I could barely get the words out. You were the original hospice angel before I even know what that meant. You were on the battleground so many times. I remember begging you not to leave too soon.
I hope everyone feels a little of Margo’s spirit in my memories, and that you’ll tell me some of yours.
Her legacy, the St James Infirmary, is the the most righteous clinic that ever opened a door. Support them. Support whores who are telling it like it is. Be Like Margo. You couldn’t do better.
Margo St. James, pour toujours dans nos coeurs.
Nous ne t'oublierons jamais...
xoxoxo je te aimerais toujours
Story by Margo St. James
What's a nice girl like you? was the usual reaction of men to my becoming a
feminist as well as my becoming a prostitute. The difference for me was I chose
to be a feminist, but I decided to work as a prostitute after being labeled
officially by a misogynist judge in San Francisco at age twenty-five. It was
1962. I said in court, "Your honor, I never turned a trick in my life!" he responded,
"Anyone who knows the language is obviously a professional." My crime was I
knew too much to be nice girl.
The forerunner of COYOTE was WHO, Whores, Housewives and Others. Others meant
lesbian, but it wasn't being said out loud yet, even in liberal bohemian circles.
The first meeting of WHO was held on Alan Watt's houseboat. The name COYOTE
came from novelist Tom Robbins who dubbed me the COYOTE Trickster. I was living
in Marin. Richard Hongisto, a liberal sheriff elected in San Francisco about
that time attended my parties. He had been a cop, and had a sociology degree.
I cornered him at a party once and asked him what it would take to get NOW,
and Gay rights groups to support prostitutes' rights, because he seemed to have
most of the support of the liberal groups in town. He said that we needed someone
from the victim class to speak out, and that was the only way the issue would
be heard.
I decided to be that someone, even though I had only worked for four years,
and wondered what effect speaking out would have on my life. I received support
from my family, my mother, the housewife-secretary, my sister, the gospel singer
with eleven children, my sailor brother, my son, the salmon fisherman, their
families. Together with friends across the country and around San Francisco,
they convinced me that speaking out was the right thing to do. My father stopped
talking to me.
In 1973 I decided to reconnect with the lawyers and bail bondsmen I had known
and I hoped the hookers would join me The PR people responsible for getting
the sheriff elected volunteered to help me with COYOTE. They still remembered
me. I had gained some notoriety at the time of my trial and I successfully appealed
the conviction, but it didn't help me find other gainful employment. A professor
at UC gave me some good leads and resources. Another old friend got a job as
a jail doctor, so I had inside information from him and from the girls. Prostitutes
were still being quarantined at the time which meant you had to be examined
for VD before you could get out of jail. We stopped the practice the following
year.
A liberal mayor was elected, George Moscone, and he hired an out-of-town Police
Chief who the cops didn't like because they had so far managed to keep minorities
and women off the force. We all know what happened to the Mayor, and a Gay Supervisor,
murder by a former cop. The climate changed after the murders, and the liberals
became afraid to speak up about the issue.
I started organizing internationally with a close friend, Jennifer James, an
anthropology professor in Seattle in 1973. She coined the word decriminalization
and was responsible for getting NOW to make it a plank in their 1973 convention.
COYOTE published a newsletter from 1974-79 and the Hooker's Ball became popular,
attracting 20,000 people in 1978 at Cow Palace.
I began attending international conferences starting with the United Nations
Decade of Women Conferences in Mexico City, the 1976 Tribunal of Crimes Against
Women in Brussels and the 1977 International Women's Year Conference in Houston,
the 1980 Decade of Women Conference in Copenhagen, and 1976 Democratic Convention
in New York, where St. James orghanized 'loiter-ins,' and the Republican Convention
in Kansas City. She worked closely with Gail Pheterson, (editor of Vindication
of The Rights of Whores from Seal Press and author of Prostitution Prism from
University of Michigan Press) beginning in 1983 in Rotterdam, and with Priscilla
Alexander (co-editor of Sex Work from Cleis Press) since 1977. In 1984 COYOTE
hosted a Hooker's Convention and drafted a Bill of Rights which was the underpinnings
for the World Whores' Charter drawn up by the International Committee For Prostitutes'
Rights in the European Parliament in Brussels. The conservative swing in the
US and the women's movement prompted me to move to Europe so I could put more
energy into international organizing, Although those wanting to abolish prostitution
were more active than ever, there are politicians and women's groups willing
to stand up for prostitutes in many countries.
In 1993 I moved back to the United States, married San Francisco Examiner journalist
Paul Avery, and resumed my efforts to repeal the prohibition and claim human
rights for hookers in San Francisco, which had been my home since 1959. COYOTE
was going strong again thanks to the efforts of Samantha Miller and others who
kept it alive.
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