A Prostitutes' Jamboree

The World Whores' Congresses of the 1980s and the Rise of a New Feminism

Abstract

“Outlaw Poverty, not Prostitutes!” In this article, I investigate the origins of the international sex-worker movement, focusing on the World Whores’ Congresses of 1985 and 1986 and the World Whores’ Summit of 1989. I first engage in a critical and nuanced examination of initial conflicts between the English Collective of Prostitutes and the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights, organizations with differing ideological commitments which scholars have typically identified as Marxist feminist and liberal feminist, respectively. I then trace the rise of a brand of intersectional, postcolonial feminism by way of the increased participation of non-Western women and women of color in the growing global movement of sex workers, starting in 1986 and building momentum in 1989. This cohort of activists expanded the discourse of the movement to more comprehensively address issues like migration, HIV/AIDS, sex tourism, militarization, and police brutality, and pushed its conceptions of labor and free will to account for the complexities of racism, poverty, imperialism, and global capitalism. They also refused to let considerations of sex and sexuality recede from the conversation, making space for expressions of pride, pleasure, and satisfaction in their work, while also acknowledging the thorniness of consent and coercion. I argue that the generation of sex-worker activists present at the 1989 Summit made crucial intellectual contributions to Third-Wave and sex-positive feminisms, and eventually helped move the broader feminist movement beyond the polarizations of the Sex Wars of the 1980s, the period of acrimonious feminist disaccord that provides a backdrop to my narrative. Throughout this article, I aim to avoid using ideal types to refer to my subjects, focusing instead on the complex subjectivities of politicized sex workers that tended not to conform to academic taxonomies or political orthodoxies.