Coyote backlash

Back in the early 1970s I helped Margo St. James get Coyote started.  Coyote was the first well known American 'legalize prostitution' organization.  (The LA branch has a website.)  I got Margo her first money, legal status and an office.

The idea that prostitution should be decriminalized made sense to me as it has to many others. I quickly learned that there are three types of prostitution street hookers, whore houses and call girls. There is plenty of law enforcement against street hookers.  It is an off-and-on again type of enforcement, usually driven by political or neighborhood pressure.  Hookers are usually men and women who have short attention spans, like a high level of excitement in their life, and the women usually have pimps to protect them.  Penalties are fairly light for street hooking, and the penalties are considered part of the job.

Whore houses are occasionally raided, but very occasionally when they are unable to bribe local police.  Again, for the prostitutes, the penalties are not severe.

Call girls are virtually never penalized since they are always part of a referral network and each call girl operates on her own. They tend to be competent women and rarely cause problems that bring on political pressure.

Looking at the market as a whole, hookers are 20% of the people involved, whore houses employ 5% of the people and the remaining 75% are call girls.  In terms of dollars involved, hookers get 5%, whore houses 5% and call girls get the remaining 90%.

The consequence of Coyote's activism in San Francisco was to create a backlash.  The anti-prostitution (really anti-hooker) movement got plenty of money, much of it from political and government sources and had a perverse effect on the local prostitution business.

The anti-prostitution group Sage, founded by Norma Hotaling, was able to create hooker sting operations that arrest male clients. The clients, 'Johns,' are tried and sentenced on the first offense to have their names published in the newspaper and spend a day at an anti-prostitution class.

Starting a 'legalize prostitution' movement in San Francisco has meant that we got a perverse backlash. It has meant that both customers and hookers get punished.

The backlash has lasted more than fifteen years, so far, and doesn't seem to be abating.  So much for decriminalization activism.