When we occupy the churches,

you are scandalised,

religious bigots!

You who threatened us with hell,

we have come to eat at your table,

at Saint Nizier.

Protest song penned by sex workers who occupied French churches during an eight-day 1975 strike.

Today is International Whore’s Day (or International Sex Worker’s Day to all the non-whores, or folks who don’t prefer that term)! It also happens to fall at the beginning of Pride Month, which originated in the US and is celebrated internationally throughout many countries! I’ve decided to write a series of blog posts to talk about the origin story of these two momentous events, and the intersections of queerness and sex work. First up is a little history of International Whore’s Day, and why it still matters today. Let’s get into it!

What started International Sex Worker’s Day?

On June 2, 1975 a group of just over a hundred women, all of whom were sex workers (and who generally called themselves prostitutes—a term that not all sex workers prefer) went on strike. They occupied Saint-Nizier Church in Lyon, France for 10 days before being forcibly removed by police. Other occupations of churches erupted in solidarity in Paris, Marseille, Grenoble, Saint-Étienne and Montpellier. This event is regarded as the birth of the sex worker’s rights movement in Europe and the UK due to what the workers were protesting and the course of events leading up to and following the ten day occupation. Among other things, it gave rise to the French Collective of Prostitutes, which in turn sparked other Collective of Prostitutes groups in countries like England and Australia.

Why does their work still matter today?

The women were protesting a few things. One was that over the previous three years, police had increased the frequency of fines for sex workers. At the time prostitution was legal, but soliciting was not—a predecessor to what we now know as the Nordic Model of criminalization. This dynamic lead to French prostitutes having to work in secrecy and caused them to have to take on more dangerous working conditions and clients. After more than 20 years of the Nordic Model in several Scandinavian countries we know this model does not curb the likelihood of trafficking—which is the claim of proponents of this model. In fact, it reduces sex worker’s ability to reinforce safety measures like usage of condoms, reporting sexual assault to police, and working together to reduce likelihood of client violence.

The model of criminalization didn’t stop police from targeting the sex workers of France. They often received fines for things that law enforcement could trace to prostitution. The protesters at Saint-Nizier Church also specifically demanded the release of ten other prostitutes who had been recently jailed for “incitement of debauchery.” We still see similar things today in the US with state and local loitering laws which disproportionately affect trans people. Laws like the only recently repealed “walking while trans” bills in New York and California show us that the mentality of “Not In My Backyard,” which seeks to disappear street based sex workers, not only further endangers us by pushing us into the shadows, but also targets other groups like trans people, black and brown people, and undocumented people who represent a sexuality-based affront to white-supremacist morality.

As well, the protestors demanded a police investigation into a series of brutal murders of sex workers—which weren’t being taken seriously. This is incredibly similar to a period in the sex worker’s rights movement in the US in the early 2000s which is intertwined with the organizing and community events in the aftermath of the murders done by Gary Ridgway, also known as the Greenway Killer, in Seattle, Washington. Too often our deaths and overall physical safety are ignored because society at large sees us as disposable due to the nature of our work. We’re dehumanized by being seen as undeserving of safety.

As more sex workers across France were poised to gather in churches, and feminists (including Simone de Beauvoir and US feminist Kate Millett) began speaking in support of the protestors, they were ordered to be removed by Minister of the Interior, Michel Poniatowski, on the basis that the women were not organizing the strike, but rather it was their pimps. He is quoted as saying, “So the public must be careful that their compassion and good faith isn’t betrayed by demonstrations which are, in reality, organized by the pimps who very often are the backbone of the drug and human trafficking world.” This clear attempt to discredit the efforts of the sex workers, and to quell all sympathetic allyship still happens today. I personally witnessed this in 2019 during the DC council hearing for the bill to decriminalize sex work in the District of Columbia. Despite the fact that sex workers gave written and verbal testimony in support of the bill—including several non-sex work organizations and individuals—the chief stance of those in opposition was that a shadowy “pimp lobby” was spear-heading the decriminalization effort, thus erasing the lived experience of those sex workers present at the hearing.

The events on and following June 2, 1975 are generally regarded as a victory in the international sex workers rights movement, and we celebrate it as such! The materially beneficial changes resulting from that strike were sadly short lived. But when taken in the long view of the movement, the women of International Whore’s Day are considered pioneers who truly pushed a narrative that we still struggle to maintain today. In many people’s view (including mine) that is a triumph because it marks an occasion when we can continue to speak out, to educate, and show the world that we deserve rights!