One early morning fifteen years ago in San Francisco, a quartet of inexperienced vice-squad cops raided the bohemian ground-floor apartment of three North Beach barmaids.
Margo St. James
Convinced that they were prostitutes because too many well-dressed males had been dropping by after midnight, the cops hauled the women off to jail, ignoring the ten-foot-tall marijuana plants growing in the garden. “We ran an open house,” says one of the girls. “Anyone who was funny, hip, cool, or lonely was welcome. But the cops insisted that if a fashionable middle-aged writer was interested in an uneducated farmer’s daughter, it could only be for her ass.” The judge agreed.
The farmer’s daughter was Margo St. James, then twenty-four, and she was furious. “Don’t get me wrong,” she says. “I was no sweetie pie, but I had never charged for my ass.” So, she set about to reverse her conviction — and to get the judge unseated. Ten years later she achieved both objectives: her appeal was upheld, and the judge was defeated for reelection. “Yep, I’m the vindictive type,” she admits. “I guess I learned that from the Sicilian Mafia in North Beach [San Francisco’s honky-tonk area]. I’m the most loyal friend you can ever get, but if you cross me or do me an injustice, I’ll hound you ‘till you damn near croak.”
But for those ten years, Margo was legally a convicted ill whore. “Once you get that kind of a record, you’ve had it. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re marked. You can’t get a job; you can’t do anything but be a whore. So I became one and forced myself to enjoy it.” And enjoy it she did. She became one of the happiest, swingiest, niftiest hookers in the Bay Area.
But she never forgave the system for its injustice. What’s more, as she plied her trade through the Nob Hill establishment. she learned of more injustices and became more outraged. “Prostitutes are exploited by their pimps, whom they need for protection, and by the cops. who use them for fun, blackmail, and graft,” she says, “and by the public, which neither sympathizes nor understands.” So she decided to do something about this exploitation and started organizing her sister whores. Today her organization, which is called COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), has only a few hundred whores as open members but thousands of followers. scores of rich sugar daddies, and enough political power to unseat bigoted judges, defeat unfair legislation, and demand that nationwide attention be given to the plight of her co-professionals, for too long the pariahs of American society.
“When I was forced to be a prostitute, I took a positive approach and enjoyed it. … But that doesn’t mean it’s a fun profession.”
Now thirty-nine, Margo is both fit and sexy. She keeps her muscles well-toned by jogging a couple of miles every day and by mountain climbing, her favorite sport. Her sex appeal she keeps well-tuned by being herself — warm, loving, inviting. That is, to all except her enemies. She works out of a makeshift office on the second floor of the building of San Francisco’s Pier Forty, where the telephones are always ringing. “As soon as I got there,” writer John Gerassi, who interviewed her for Penthouse, reports, “I became mesmerized by her vitality, her genuineness, her commitment. No wonder that even sheriffs find her irresistible, and she does have some powerful lawmen who are her secret al lies.” No wonder, too, that many a Bay Area wag has insisted that COYOTE, the “loose women’s organization,” is simply another word for Margo St. James. “I love conspiring, plotting, conniving,” she says, “but I hate organizing. I tried to quit many times. But the women won’t let me. They say they can’t find anyone else they could all trust.”
Let’s settle something first: is it true that you’ve said, “Beware of all men who wear boxer shorts”?
St. James: Yep.
Why?
St. James: In my experience I’ve found that vice cops usually wear them. They consider Jockey shorts too cute for their homophobic nature. Besides, they don’t like anything creeping up their asses. The last cop they sent in on me (he was real cute and was supposed to become my lover and confidant — you know, infiltrate) heard what I had said about boxer shorts and stopped wearing underwear altogether. He was the literal type, like all cops; so he went around scratching when he wore his wool suit.
Is that the only way you can spot a vice cop?
St. James: Oh Christ, no, there are lots of ways. A good way is to French kiss him. Boy, does that make him recoil. He’ll almost throw up. To stick your tongue into his mouth is much too personal for him, too intimate. The vice cop feels like he’s sucking cock by proxy, since he assumes you’ve sucked a million cocks. It scares the shit out of him.
That’s your way, but how can a heterosexual male, who doesn’t especially want to try to French kiss him, find out?
St. James: There are all sorts of clues. For one thing, vice cops have that special look. Watch their eyes. In court, even if they’re undercover, vice cops look at each other and give each other a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. In public you can always catch it. On the street, in bars, in clubs, they give each other that look. It’s a territorial thing. The pimp, the godfather, the cop — they all have that look. It’s a form of body language that anybody who works the street uses to say, “Okay, you’re out here; I’m out here: truce.” The nod gives you the right to be there. It’s public property, and everybody knows it: but every street worker wants to stake out his territory. The pimp, the con man, and the cop all compete for the same territory — to control dope, control women, control whatever shit they’re into. The nod simply establishes the boundaries or a truce.
What about the hooker?
St. James: She knows the language and understands it perfectly, even if she can’t use it, except with her sisters. But she’s got to know it. Since she’s considered an outlaw, she has to be on the constant lookout for anyone trying to rip her off or set her up.
Are you generally against underwear?
St. James: Sure. Underwear is unhealthy unless it’s cotton. It closes off air. Especially bad are pantyhose. So is over douching or wearing tight clothes. I think that 85 percent of the women who have trichomoniasis have it because they wear nylon underwear.
So if a woman has to dress up, she should wear stockings and garter belts rather than pantyhose?
St. James: I would definitely say yes.
That’s good. Some of us have a fetish for stockings and garter belts.
St. James: Well, I don’t even own a set; so I guess I wouldn’t fall into your category of lovables. But I do wear underwear to keep warm or for comfort. Like I wear a brassiere, to keep my boobs from hurting when I run or ride horses — to be comfortable.
Speaking of comfort, how’d you end up here, on Pier Forty, in this very comfortable office?
St. James: This space was donated to me by my informal husband, Michael Phillips, who’s connected with various foundations here in the Bay Area. COYOTE got some seed money from some of these foundations. That’s how we really got launched in a big way.
In effect, COYOTE is a prostitutes’ union, right?
St. James: That’s what the media always calls it. I don’t think of it as a union but as a political organization, much like Common cause or the Black Panthers. And also as a fraternal — or maternal — organization, like the Elks. We spend 50 percent of our time and resources helping whores, and the other 50 percent on public relations, lobbying for new laws, educating the public, and other things.
You take dues from members?
St. James: Anyone can make a donation and is then considered a member. Some of the whores, who’ve been working as groups for months now, are considering pitching in regularly, like maybe twenty dollars a month each, for a legal – defense fund. That would be a little like paying dues. We’d use the money for bail, for legal fees, for political lobbying to get the laws changed. The members will decide themselves exactly what they want done with the money.
How many prostitutes are members of COYOTE?
St. James: About 300 nationwide. Two thirds of them are here in the Bay Area, which includes Sacramento.
How many prostitutes are there in the country? Are there statistics on the subject?
St. James: There must be, somewhere. What I do know is that, as of a couple of years ago, only 10 percent of the prostitutes walked the streets. Maybe now, with the depression and all that, the number is up to 20 percent.
Are there figures on how much money they make?
St. James: The street hookers? Between $10,000 and $20,000 a year. But fixers and pimps get as much as 60, even 70, percent of that. We want them to get only 20 percent — tops. We’re the merchandise, the workers, and without us there would be no business. But because we’re constantly threatened with arrest, the fixers and pimps get away with taking 70 percent.
You use the word “we.” Are you still a whore?
St. James: No, but I was for a long time.
How did you get started?
St. James: As a whore? In school, I guess, though I didn’t charge money for sex then. I was born and raised on a farm in the state of Washington, and all those jokes about farmers’ daughters applied to me, too. My father and mother were divorced, and my father remarried — an eighteen-year-old Catholic virgin — when I was ten, and, wow, what a pain! My father was real cheap, like he gave me twenty-five dollars for three months’ work and told me to buy my school clothes — everything — with it and then beat me for stealing cookies out of the jar. He and his wife used to count them, and if there was one short at the end of the month, I’d be blamed and whipped. I think he got off on beating me. Anyway, I split at fifteen and went to live with my mother in town. And I went wild, you know, like from totally controlled to being turned loose, at least after school hours. So I started screwing around. I used to hang out at the bus stop, and I would go for a ride with anyone who stopped, just to see what would happen. Did I get a reputation! But I did very well in school; nobody could understand how a bad girl like me could get straight A’s and a whole bunch of art scholarships. I was really good at watercolors and painting. Anyway, I got pregnant. The father was the local hero, the high-school baseball star; so I ran away with him to Idaho, got married, and graduated with a belly seven or eight months full. Naturally, they wouldn’t let me on the stage for my graduation. But that’s how I became free. Although … a lot of good it did me. My husband was straight as hell. I couldn’t paint or tuck around because I worked for the phone company, which treats every young girl like a piece of furniture but expects her to be straight. So I split and came here to San Francisco.
”Once you’re labeled as a whore, it’s impossible to get a decent job. I was even turned down as a volunteer fire lookout because of my record.“
Did you start turning tricks in San Francisco?
St. James: No, not right away. I worked as a barmaid and painted. I even sold some of my watercolors. I had a pad on Grant Street, not far from where I worked on Broadway, and it was always open; people were always dropping in, all sorts of people all the time, night people, like Herb Gold or Ken Kesey or Lenny Bruce and pimps or hustlers, even cops. My place was known as “St. James Infirmary.” Anyway, I guess the cops thought all these guys hanging out with a bunch of barmaids and waitresses just had to be clients — and we, hustlers. One day, in 1961 they sent in this young, wimpy kid who just wanted a place to crash — or that’s what he said. But then he asked for a lay, offering twenty bucks, and when one of my roommates jokingly said it wasn’t enough, he pulled out his badge and busted us. Later, when I told the judge I had never “turned a trick in my life,” he said, “Anyone who knows what a trick is is a whore.” And I got a record. Was I mad! I’m still mad. In fact, I kept working against that goddamned judge for years until I finally helped get him defeated for reelection. And I appealed the conviction, too. Years later I won that appeal. But meanwhile I was classified as a prostitute, and that was it. Once you get that record, it’s impossible to get a decent job. You don’t stand a chance, because you’ve been branded as unfit to be in an office. Even as late as 1973 I was turned down as a volunteer fire lookout for the forestry department because of that particular case.
Is that what made you decide to launch COYOTE?
St. James: Yes. I got mad enough to want to fight the cops, the laws, the whole goddamned system. But meanwhile I was also labeled as a whore. If you’re defined as a whore, there isn’t much you can do except be one. Oh, I got some jobs just the same, like I worked for the bail bondsman who put up my bail, and then I worked as a process server for some of the lawyers I met through him. I even went to Lincoln University Law School for a while. But mostly I was a whore. Sometimes I did very well, like when I was the official company whore for a cosmetics firm. I was set up real nice, on Alpine Terrace, with a large sunken bath big and deep enough for great bath parties.
Sounds like you definitely enjoyed your work …
St. James: Sure, why not? When the cops don’t harass you … I mean, it’s like having three different lovers a day. You know anyone who doesn’t enjoy fucking? Look, in my early twenties, I used to cry myself to sleep because I couldn’t come. But once they forced me into being a whore, I had no choice but to try to make the most of it. So I accepted and let go. I tried my best to stay in there with my johns. I guess I just took a positive approach, and it worked. l started coming at least once a day.
With anyone you happened to be with, or were you particular?
St. James: Anyone, from young boys they’re so sweet and tentative-to old men. You know, the old and ugly are the best. Just like homely women, they have to try harder to compensate for being dumpy.
So why did you give it up?
St. James: Wait a minute — you’re getting the wrong impression. Just because I enjoyed my work doesn’t mean it’s a fun profession. In the first place, I was somewhat privileged, thanks to my contacts, and didn’t have to walk the streets. And since I got paid more, I could be choosier. But the streetwalker has it real rough. In California, as in every other state except Nevada, if you just say, “Hi, baby, want a date?” and the guy asks how much and you tell him, that’s soliciting. and disturbing the peace-criminal behavior. For a first offense, a woman who pleads guilty gets ninety days’ suspended sentence and almost two years’ probation. And what that means is that she’s hooked. The cops can blackmail her into doing anything, from informing to setting somebody up to testifying falsely — perjuring herself — in court. What’s more, she can’t go straight after that. No one’s going to hire an ex-hooker. An ex-con, sure; a murderer who’s served his time, sure. Lots of companies have programs for so-called rehabilitated criminals. But a woman who sells her ass? In our society it’s okay if the boss or the male execs tuck around, but a woman is supposed to be nice and loyal. The idea of a secretary being an ex-whore frightens everybody. It’s too threatening. So most prostitutes are obligated to remain prostitutes after their first bust.
Then comes the second bust. In California that brings a mandatory forty-five days in the cooler. You can actually get less time in jail for stealing than for sucking. Next, you have to add the costs. In 1971 the San Francisco Crime Commission reported that the city spends almost $400,000 to bust, book, and jail 1,774 whores. We’ve updated those figures. and for 1974-75, we’ve come up with these: to arrest a hooker costs at I east $510 and as much as $638. Court costs range from $800 to $1,000 each. And jail time, at $14 a day per inmate, according to the sheriff’s office, costs between $420 and $840, since jail sentences ranged between thirty and sixty days. That’s a total of at least $1,730 per whore-bust, and perhaps as much as $2,478. Multiply that by 3,000 busts, and you’ve wasted enough money, well, that could have set up a complete hospital ward each year, equipped a whole new school lab, whatever. And for what? A victimless crime. Doesn’t that make you rage?
It sure does, but …
St. James: Wait! I’m not through. There’s still the whole question of moral corruption. Do you know that vice cops mostly go after non-white whores, even though the whites are still a majority? The resulting racial hatred is obvious. Also, one-third of all the busts that we know of — I’m sure it’s much more, but the women are terrified into keeping their mouths shut — one-third of all the busts are carried out after the cops have had sex with their victims. There’s no excuse for it. After all, the business transactions are carried out first; so the evidence is in. But no, not our great police protectors of morality. They have to get their rocks off first and then they remember morality. The net result is that every time a prostitute gets busted, corruption increases in this country. Plus, of course, there are those cops who are on the take. Now do you understand why we want the laws changed?
But if you legalize —
St. James: Not legalize, decriminalize. We want the decriminalization of prostitution.
What’s the difference?
St. James: Decriminalization means the repeal of all laws against prostitution. This would end the harassment of prostitutes. It would stop the state from interfering at any level. It would lower the crime rate, since 70 percent of all women criminals were first jailed for prostitution and learned, in jail, that crime pays. It would free law-enforcement agencies to go after real criminals. It would double their available budget since — if you take all victimless crime together-half of a police budget is spent right there. And it would end or vastly curtail the whore’s dependency on pimps. “Legalization,” on the other hand, would simply establish a whole new battery of laws regulating victimless crimes. Cops would still have to check that the laws are obeyed. Vast amounts of money would still be needed. And worst of all, legalization would bring prostitution under the control of the most powerful pimp of all — the state. Would you like the state to decide who can be a whore and who can’t? How much you can pay? What kind of services are allowed?
But if prostitution is decriminalized, why wouldn’t male entrepreneurs immediately set up brothels and thus control the women the same way that the cops now control them?
St. James: Some would. And some of the brothels would be pretty awful. Just like there are a lot of awful restaurants around. But there are good ones, too, right? If prostitution is decriminalized, however, a lot of women might get together and start a brothel on a cooperative basis. They might get agents, like you writers, who charge 10 or 15 percent. Can an agent make it in the literary-publishing world if his or her clients are all bad? Well, neither could a whore’s agent. The customer would be happier, more secure. The women would earn more. And if the agents, as agents, were compelled to keep their advertising discreet, environmentalists would be happier, too, since the gaudy neon signs would all disappear. For who would need to seek out the flashy night club with the. “Willing hostesses”? Who would need to spend up to $100 for a lousy massage to discover willing masseuses? Decriminalization tends to help wipe out exploitation, too. Take England. There prostitution is legal, but soliciting is not. So certain areas have become known as red-light districts. But how to find the right apartment? A whore is allowed only to put her name and a neutral title or the door, like “model.” That means that ground-floor apartments in the area, in Soho, are more valuable. So the landlord charges more and more for those apartments. But if prostitution was like any other trade, represented by an agent, who would need to pay illegally high rents to be able to attract customers? A customer would simply call an agent, explain what he would like — his type, the service, whatever his fancy — and be given a place to go to. If the agent sends him to a girl who doesn’t satisfy him, he then loses the customer. So the agent will try to be as much attuned to the customer’s wishes as possible — just like writers’ agents or actors’ agents.
But if prostitution is decriminalized, how will society be able to enforce health laws?
St. James: There’s no need for health laws. Do you go to a doctor because someone forces you to? As long as public health is available, whoever wants to take care of herself will do so. Prostitutes know very well that it’s bad business to carry communicable diseases; so they get themselves checked more than anyone else, as it is. If prostitution is decriminalized, the prostitute will be much more aware that her success will depend on repeat customers; so she’ll take care of her health even more than she does today.
Moreover, the statistics belie the myth about prostitutes and VD. For example, less than 5 percent of prostitutes have VD — 85 percent of VD cases occur in non-prostitutes between fifteen and thirty. Look, if you’re going to make an issue out of VD, then you should be consistent and order all customers checked. As it is now, when a prostitute gets arrested, she’s quarantined until her blood tests are in. It’s degrading and humiliating. But what about the customer? He’s never checked. Yet one customer can spread VD to 100 other customers through the whore. The same customer can spread it through his wife or his girlfriend. She lucks another guy, and he gets it, and so on. So the fuss about check-ups is illogical.
By the way, it seemed from the tone of your comment a minute ago that you’re down on massage parlors. Is that a correct inference?
St. James: No, not at all, not in principle. But because of the laws, massage parlors have to play the hypocritical game that the cops have set up. So the customer gets screwed, or rather — very often-he gets taken, but not screwed. The massage parlor has to advertise falsely. On the one hand, the ad must imply that a customer is going to get blown or at least jerked off. On the other, it can never say that, or else the parlor will risk getting raided. So the customer doesn’t know what to expect. The parlor can take him for a ride and leave him panting, and he has no way to get squared. What’s he going to do? Call a cop and say, “Hey, they took me for a hundred bucks, and I didn’t even get my little tool massaged.” The way massage parlors now exploit the customers is one excellent reason for decriminalizing prostitution. Another is that those legalized pimps take 60 to 70 percent from the women. Whatever happens, the situation can’t be worse than it is.
You mean with those new zoning laws?
St. James: I meant in general, but the new zoning laws that New York and Washington are trying to put into effect are a case in point. The officials claim that they want prostitutes off the streets; yet what are they doing about it? They’re closing down massage parlors or trying to. What will be the result? Obviously, there will be more whores on the street.
Well, the argument that New York and Washington make is that massage parlors or sex shops or porno houses attract a particular kind of crowd that scares away the tourist and so-called decent people.
St. James: What hypocrisy! The majority, of the customers are tourists, out-of-towners who would be afraid to get spotted going into such places in their hometown. But it is true that these houses attract people with no taste. That’s not because of what is sold inside the establishments but because of the way it is advertised outside. If the cities legislated against gaudy advertisements — if they dared to keep in check the neon crap-then massage parlors, porno houses, pizza palaces, trinket stores, would all have to look better, like doctors’ offices. Doctors are forbidden to advertise; all they are allowed to do is put out a shing le. Why couldn’t such laws be made to apply to other professions, like shoe sellers, sandwich makers. and masseuses? People react to their environment. Take a look at those fancy massage parlors on the East Side of New York. Discrete, right? But on Forty-second Street what do you expect? The movie-house neons are twenty feet tall and awful I. The signs advertising pizza joints are revolting. The dozens of radio and trinket stores all claim to be making their last closeout sales in placards covering their whole window spaces. So why shouldn’t a porno peep house try to compete with signs just as big? Walk along Eighth Avenue The whole street is disgusting-garbage all over the place. Is it the massage parlors that spew out so much garbage? Of course not. In fact, if you do walk down that avenue and you’re objective, you’ll find that the best-looking scenery is the whores. And take a close look at what goes on. There are more people on the corners than elsewhere. What kind of people? The poor and the lonely. They get to talk with the whores. Whores actually help. When a city locks up the whores and c loses down a red-light district, the district dies. Whores, massage parlors, porno houses, are always concentrated in low-rent areas, I ike Eighth Avenue in New York or the Tenderloin district here in San Francisco. What kind of people live in such areas? People on welfare. The old. People who have nothing to do and few friends. Ask the old men in the hotels, the cheap, dilapidated hotels of the area, what they like best about the area. The prostitutes. They can talk, look, feel part of the action. Don’t forget, this s is a country which has no respect for the old, for the poor, for the lonely. Kill the neighborhood in which the prostitutes live, and you kill the people who live in it. And the best way to kil l a. neighborhood made up of the poor and the old is to keep patrolling it with cops in squad cars. Police patrols are fine in the fancy neighborhoods. Upper-c lass and middle-class folks have all sorts of toys to keep them off the streets. But the poor? They have only each other. The whore, the pimp, and the local hawker for a sleazy joint are the means by which the poor and the old-who are inevitably shy-can start conversations. (Since money talks, the lack of it silences.) And the police should be part of it-not hassling everyone who doesn’t dress just right or. who happens to be the wrong color.
In Paris people live in the streets. Every corner has a cafe open until at least midnight People just hang out-inside if they’re able, outside if they aren’t. What happens? There’s no crime. And you rarely see a cop. But no crime. In America the police prowl around all the time, flaunting their authority, twirling their nightsticks menacingly, like symbols of repressions and shakedowns. No wonder that the people who can afford to stay off the streets! And no wonder those whose only distractions are to be found on the streets represent a menace to the cops.
But in France, too, prostitutes are harassed.
St. James: Now, yes. Ever since they caught that big pimp, two years ago, the chief of police of Lyons. That’s when the trouble started. After he was exposed, every one of the towns started getting tough on prostitutes.
What about the other European countries?
St. James: We plan to make some studies over there. Offhand, I would say that the Netherlands is not so bad. Sweden and Denmark are okay. Germany stinks, as you would expect. The German commercialized prostitution into a landlord trip — you know, huge Eros Centers, with everybody staring and a doctor on hand. Sweden has laws against pimps; so naturally there are lots of pimps.
How about you? Did you used to have a pimp?
St. James: No. I gave my money away indiscriminately, not to just one man. I like to spend my money my own way.
But you don’t seem to condemn pimping.
St. James: Oh, I think some pimps are fine. A good pimp who knows how to take care of business, who works out a partnership that is equitable, well, why not? Besides, pimps give prostitutes status. Whores are no different from the rest of society. It gives status to a woman to have a man. So, don’t attack the pimping industry — that’s not to blame. Attack the value system of a society which defines womanhood in terms of its relationship to manhood.
When, precisely, did you become political?
St. James: In 1970. That’s when I started WHO-Whores, Housewives, and Others a consciousness-raising group, bringing together anyone who was interested in the plight of prostitutes. The organization was sort of based, in my head at least, on what my good friend Ti-Grace Atkinson said about whores: that “the only honest woman is a whore; at least she gets paid for it.” Then, in 1971, I met Flo Kennedy, the black feminist lawyer, and she talked me into organizing my rage. She politicized me, so to speak. She convinced me that we would never get anywhere unless we acquired some political clout. So I started organizing in earnest. COYOTE was actually founded on Mother’s Day in 1973. At first everybody laughed. But we kept on. We went into court every time we could. We’ve challenged the laws so often now that a lot of places are beginning to drop prosecution of prostitutes.
How big a network, would you say, does COYOTE have now?
St. James: We’re now in twelve major cities, and we’ve gone international. I was over in Paris during the prostitutes’ strike there last year.
Where does your money come from?
St. James: Each locality raises its own funds-from the public. And we’ve gotten a few large donations, which are spread around among the chapters.
You’ve been helped by the American Civil Liberties Union, too, haven’t you?
St. James: The ACLU has been fighting a lot of sexual-privacy cases, and prostitution comes under that heading. Many of the laws under which prostitutes are arrested involve invasion of privacy. In some cases you can bring a taxpayer’s suit against your local vice squad for violating such laws. You can also bring a taxpayer’s suit against an individual police officer. The ACLU has been doing a lot of that to help the cause.
Are you getting any police or court cooperation?
St. James: Sometimes. In Berkeley we did. When we filed suit in Alameda County, the police there didn’t show up to defend themselves and so lost by default That’s why Berkeley hasn’t prosecuted prostitutes for almost two years now In San Francisco and Oakland, however, the police have fought back. We won a couple of test cases, and they’re appealing; but we’ve gotten more than a hundred individual cases thrown out. And we have also gotten the VD-quarantine law declared unconstitutional.
But, in general, do you think that the police will ever go for the idea of decriminalization?
St. James: They pass the buck to the law-makers, but they want to keep prostitution illegal for all sorts of reasons, like we said earlier-to keep whores vulnerable to police blackmail and for their own graft. Cops figure that as long as prostitution is illegal, whores will remain in the center of the crime world and hence will be a good source for information and setups. The more things a society declares illegal, the more important a cop’s job is, right? Besides, by keeping prostitution illegal, the cops keep prostitutes in their bailiwick. It gives them access to the most beautiful women around. That’s some fringe benefit, and they don’t pay for it
When the cops arrest a whore their nice little fringe benefit — do they more often than not rape her?
St. James: Many women give a quick blow job to avoid the trip to the station. That’s standard. They are too intimidated to refuse; they think they have no other choice.
What, specifically, are your plans for the future?
St. James: For the organization? More of the same. A real campaign in Washington to get the laws changed. We’re also planning to force the Republican and Democratic conventions to take up our demands for decriminalization. That’ll be some scene. The National Organization of Women, NOW, has adopted our demands and will help. We’re also planning some documentaries, and I’d like to start a hookers’ hiring hall. But the most important thing is to keep fighting for the needed changes in the existing law.
Do you really think that the majority of people in this country would go for decriminalization?
St. James: Sure: Most people who realize the problems would like to see all victim-less crimes decriminalized.
What about the woman who feels threatened by the prostitute, the woman who says prostitution encourages her husband to be unfaithful?
St. James: I think the United States is the only country in the world which has such an illogical conception of prostitution. In every other country which admits it has a double standard-like Mexico, France, Sweden, Denmark, those countries which openly admit their sexist value system-it is understood that prostitution actually helps keep the family together. The whore simply gives a chance to the husband to do his thing without threatening the marriage. I mean, who’s going to marry the whore? But in this country the woman wants the husband not to wander-not even for a shot So hubby ends up with his secretary and bingo: divorce. Well, it’s just a question of education. Once the American women understand that as long as hubby gets a chance to visit a local cathouse at least once a week, he’ll remain a relatively happily married man, they’ll go along with the idea.
What about the other way: is there a genuine need in today’s consumer society for male prostitutes?
St. James: Women sure need some good lovers, of which there aren’t many. At least, not from my experience.
But men can’t fake it …
St. James: Here we go. Well, okay, that’s right; men have to get it up to get it on. But, to tell the truth, most women would prefer good oral sex anyway.
Can you visualize a society, in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, that would have no prostitution at all?
St. James: Sure, a fascist or Communist state with the prostitution all at the top.
And what about a well-adjusted society — assuming such a society does or could exist?
St. James: I don’t think it’s a question of adjustment. There are a lot of handicapped and ugly people in the world who can’t seem to get sex partners. Then there are a lot of people, a lot of men these days (in a nonsexist society it would be both), who are so busy that they don’t want to get involved in a complicated relationship and would be perfectly happy with a quick one. Or people who don’t want the so-called meaningful relationship because they are fundamentally happy with their partners, people who don’t want to be what we call “unfaithful.” Then there are people who are on trips that are a bit odd, you know, who want to be beaten or whatever, but whose partners aren’t into that. I don’t know. Maybe in a society that does not dehumanize, where everybody has his and her basic needs, where people can love each other openly, with respect, there might not be a need for prostitution. Some people say that paying for a prostitute is a power trip; therefore, in an unalienated society, no one would need to go on such a power trip. Perhaps — I can’t see it. In any case, and certainly for the foreseeable future, we’re going to have prostitution, no matter what laws are pushed on us. If we win, though — if COYOTE can convince the public and the legislators — then we’ll have prostitution which would be open and honest. Safer for the customer, less exploitative for the hooker, and less corrupting for everyone. Besides, there is a question of morality, of principle, involved: no one has the right to tell me, to tell any woman, what to do with her body or her life — except herself.
What do you tell yourself these days?
St. James: I used to think the most important thing in life was being in love. Now I think it’s being free. If someone ever decides he loves me, he’ll have to buy my Philosophy. My ass isn’t for sale.
Margo St. James died in 2021, but she remained a hero for her entire life to many of us. Of course hero/villain, thin line, all that. Still, should you wish to do some hoity-toity research, we can get you started at a hoity-toity place if that helps. Our lead editor had his law school graduation picture taken wearing overalls — and a tie — so we may not be the best guide to a hoity-toity journey, but we understand they can be very fulfilling, even if they do prefer wine to beer.
