COYOTE, a prostitutes’ rights organization founded in San Francisco in 1973 by ex-prostitute Margo St. James. As part of a shift in the thinking surrounding sex work during the early 1970s, organizations such as COYOTE formed to advocate for prostitutes’ rights and to give voice to the prostitute’s point of view.
In the years immediately prior to COYOTE’s founding, second-wave feminism was a strong movement in the United States. No organization, however, dedicated itself solely to prostitutes’ issues, and divisions were arising among feminists concerning matters of sex and sexuality. Some feminists were uncomfortable with lesbians (called the “lavender menace” by National Organization for Women founder Betty Friedan), and one point of view held that pornography, prostitution, and, to some feminists, any sex with men perpetuated women’s sexual subordination. So-called “sex-positive” feminists advocated women’s choice in sexual partners, believing that all women deserved free access to sexual pleasure and that consenting adults should be free to exchange sex for money. “Sex-positive” feminists worked against negative perceptions of prostitution—referring to it instead as “sex work” and to its practitioners as “sex workers”—and advocated for decriminalization and even regulation of the sex trade.
COYOTE worked to repeal prostitution laws and to end the stigma associated with sex work, calling for the abolition of laws against sex workers, who included strippers, phone sex operators, prostitutes, and adult-film actors. They also advocated the abolition of laws against pimps and panderers but argued for governmental regulation of the prostitute-pimp relationship as a contractual labor agreement. Prostitutes’ rights advocates distinguish between voluntary and forced prostitution, and they adamantly decry the use of children or unwilling individuals in sex work. However, they argue, adult women who choose to sell sex for money should be accorded the same rights as other service workers, including health and safety regulations and the right to organize. In addition, COYOTE believed that mandatory health checkups were a violation of prostitutes’ rights, although they urged local, state, and federal governments to provide prostitutes inexpensive access to health care and insurance.
Some cities had very active chapters of COYOTE, especially San Francisco and Atlanta, Georgia. Many other chapters, however, folded within a few years of their establishment, when, for example, founding members, usually one or two outspoken prostitutes or ex-prostitutes, turned to other work or another cause. Lack of consistent and substantial funding for the work blocked prostitutes’ rights organizations from either longevity or success, as did the danger inherent in coming out in public as a prostitute. Another ongoing problem for prostitutes’ rights groups was the hierarchy among supporters and founding members, who were often educated or came from the upper echelon of sex workers. Such stratification decreased organizers’ abilities to communicate with prostitutes of lower status.
COYOTE published a newsletter from 1974 to 1979. The organization hosted a prostitutes’ convention and drafted a bill of rights that underpinned the1985 declaration of human rights for sex workers put forth by the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights, which St. James founded with Gail Pheterson that year. In the 1980s, amid the growing AIDS crisis in the United States, COYOTE refocused its efforts on outreach, education, and the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS. In 1999, COYOTE transitioned into the St. James Infirmary, a peer-run health and safety clinic for sex workers in San Francisco that it founded with the Exotic Dancers Alliance and local public-health authorities.