COYOTE

COYOTE, or Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics, is a sex worker activist organization. COYOTE's goals include the decriminalization (as opposed to the legalization) of prostitution, pimping and pandering, as well as the elimination of social stigma concerning sex work as an occupation.

Though it is frequently described as a prostitutes' rights group, COYOTE's mission includes advocating for all varieties sex workers of all genders, including strippers, phone sex operators and adult film performers. COYOTE provides counseling and legal referrals for sex workers, and assistance in leaving sex work for different careers.

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COYOTE provides expert advice and sensitivity training for social service and law enforcement agencies that deal with sex workers. COYOTE members have testified as expert witnesses during trials. The organization works to educate the general public about sex work, and promotes education about safe sex, AIDS and sexually transmitted disease among sex workers, their clients and the general public.

History

COYOTE was founded in California in 1973 by Margo St. James, a feminist former prostitute. She chose the name COYOTE because novelist Tom Robbins called her a "coyote trickster" and came up with "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics" to fit the chosen acronym. St. James believed that sex work should be considered labor equivalent to any other career, writing in 1977 that "to make a great distinction between being paid for an hour's sexual services, or an hour's typing, or an hour's acting on a stage is to make a distinction that is not there." (Chapkis)

"Samantha" and Gloria Lockett were co-directors of COYOTE in the early 1990s. They had been critical of the group for focusing on "higher class" prostitutes (such as call girls and escorts) and caucasians, while ignoring the concerns of streetwalkers and ethnic minorities. (Chapkis)

Norma Jean Almodovar is currently the director of COYOTE Los Angeles. There is also a COYOTE branch in San Francisco.

See also

Sex-positive feminism

References

Web sites

* [http://www.coyotela.org/what_is.html What is COYOTE?] from COYOTE Los Angeles
* [http://www.bayswan.org/COYOTE.html COYOTE information] from BAYSWAN
* [http://www.walnet.org/csis/groups/coyote.html Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics]

Books

* Chapkis, Wendy. "Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor" (1997, Routledge, New York). ISBN 0-415-91288-1

* Jenness, Valerie. "Making it Work: The Prostitutes' Rights Movement in Perspective" (1993, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York).

External links

[http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00278 COYOTE Records.] [http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger Library,] Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.