Sitting in the audience, I couldn't help but feel a little awkward watching the 6 year old little girl we knew in Raleigh, North Carolina as a beautiful powerful woman talking about sex work throughout history. Much of the tale from Kaitlyn Bailey was interspersed with her own experience as a sex worker and with the comparison and reactions of her father, a man we knew fairly well. I say knew well because he actually passed away fairly recently, he was certainly a man of integrity but filled with contradictions. He was always kind to me and Rusty and he is certainly missed...His wife is actually still a very good friend and I miss her (shout out to Donna).
We went to watch the first show of A Whoreseye View, written and performed by Kaitlyn Bailey. Youtube - Whoreseye View. This show is exceptionally well written, informative, with the right amount of a call to action mixed in. The audience was filled with San Francisco royalty currently associated with organizations to legalize sex work. Of note, Annie Sprinkle was in attendance (Annie Sprinkle Wikepedia) with her partner Beth Stevens, both vanguards of sexuality and advocates for legalizing sex work. The mood of the show was jovial and the audience was filled with wonderfully boisterous women, many of whom were or had been sex workers (Kaitlyn asked that question of the audience so I am not making an assumption).
I learned many interesting statistics and historical facts but more importantly I learned a great deal about Kaitlyn, the personalized approach woven throughout the performance really spoke to me because we have known Kailyn for a very long time and I was fascinated by her journey. She is the founder of Old Pros - a nonprofit media organization on a mission to change the status of sex workers in society. She hosts a podcast as well that highlights sex workers throughout history and places the historical figure in the context of their times.
She is an amazing story teller, and to be frank I learned alot about societal attitudes in different historical periods regarding sex work. I also learned that the approach of ending sex trade by criminalizing prostitution, banning pornography, and arresting sex workers has had detrimental impacts on sex workers. Legalizing sex work is actually counter to old school feminism (aka Gloria Steinam) who does not even use the term sex worker. In an over simplification, many feminists feel that instead of decriminalizing sex work, the focus should be on criminalizing the people who purchase sex. I think both camps agree that sex workers should not be the ones arrested.
It's a fascinating topic and unfortunately I don't know enough about it, but just when I have written San Francisco off as a bourgeois tech haven, she shows me there is still vestiges of the old Bohemia. I'm happy to live in a place that supports the debate especially when much of our country are happy to continue to arrest women and gays that have no agency and no protections just because they are participating in sex work. I'm also so thrilled to turn up at a performance and meet Annie Sprinkle as well as one of the women that started Good Vibrations.
Kaitlyn is off to New Zealand and then to Australia with this show. She will be back in New York soon to perform, and hopefully back here in SF in the fall. Check the schedule for performances and support Kaitlyn's work in any way you can.
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