Margo St James founded the first sex worker led organization in the United States, COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). She is considered the mother of the sex worker rights movement in the US.
Born September 12, 1937, Margo St. James grew up in a conservative family. She was the oldest of three children. Her father was a dairy farmer and her mother was a secretary in Bellingham, Washington. As a young woman, she attended Fresno State College and won several art competitions. She got married and had a baby boy immediately after graduation, but in 1958 she left her family to pursue a career as a visual artist in San Francisco.
With her incredible charisma Margo St James became part of the arts scene in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. She hosted parties and all kinds of guests came over to smoke, drink, and hang out – including other artists, musicians, writers, and figures in the growing counter cultural scene. Her popularity drew the attention of law enforcement who falsely accused her of prostitution in 1962.
Margo St James famously told the judge, “I never turned a trick in my life.” The judge responded, “Anyone who knows that kind of language is obviously a professional.” She was convicted and briefly imprisoned. She was also subjected to an invasive physical exam, and after the conviction, her criminal record made it difficult for her to get a job. This galvanized the career in advocacy that would shape the rest of her life. She took a college equivalency exam and enrolled in law school specifically to fight her conviction. After successfully appealing, she worked for a criminal defense attorney and became one of the first women private investigators in California. She also worked as a waitress, valet parking attendant, and hostess. Although Margo St James would go on to engage in various forms of sex work, she was described by her peers as “terrible at it.” However, her conviction spurred her to take up the sex worker rights movement.
She is considered the mother of the sex worker rights movement in the US.
In 1970 she moved to Marin County. Her next door neighbor was a well-known feminist poet, Elsa Gidlow, and she inspired Margo to think about her experience through a feminist lens. Margo founded WHO (Whores Housewives and Others, meaning lesbians), in an effort to unite women around a common cause. In 1973, author Tom Robbins called Margo “the coyote trickster” for her quick wit and non-conformist ideas, the name stuck. In 1973 Margo St James founded COYOTE , a pioneering organization that championed the rights of sex workers. The group was instrumental in stopping mandatory STI testing, and helped frame sex work as a legitimate occupation. She also founded COYOTE HOWLS, the organization's newspaper, and established an annual Hooker’s Masquerade Ball to fund the organization.
In 1976 Margo attracted attention at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, as well as raising the issue of sex work at feminist and human rights conferences. COYOTE attracted media attention and drew in people who were trying to push back against criminalization and stigma, including Carol Leigh who went on to coin the phrase “sex work” in 1979 to push back against prohibitionist feminists at a conference who were calling us “prostituted women.” In 1980 St. James sought the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.
Hired in 1975, Priscilla Alexander helped run the organization. Priscilla went on to publish a collection of essays in 1987 entitled “Sex Work” that would help popularise the phrase. She also pushed human rights organizations such as the WHO (World Health Organization) to adopt the language.
COYOTE attracted media attention and drew in people who were trying to push back against criminalization and stigma.
Margo worked with organizations all over the world to put together the first and second World Whore’s Conference in 1985 and 1986. With Gail Pheterson, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Whores, which documented these events and established a platform that united sex worker advocates around the world. From 1985-1992, she lived with Gail Pheterson in Europe – first the Netherlands and then in France. She returned to San Francisco in the 1990’s where she was appointed to the San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution. In 1992 she married long-time friend and retired Bay Area journalist Paul Avery, who was later diagnosed with emphysema. She took care of him until he passed in 2000. In 1996, she campaigned for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and promised to install a red light outside the City Hall. Her famous slogan "The Lady Is a... Champ" was coined by longtime associate, chairperson of the California Democratic Party and former member of US Congress, John Burton.
In 1999 she helped to establish the St. James Infirmary, which provided health care services to sex workers in the Tenderloin until 2023. She also supported the first International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers in 2003 and helped the founders of SWOP-USA by coming back to the USA and leveraging her connections and the celebration of her birthday as an early fundraiser for the group. COYOTE created the conditions to bring organizers and media together. Margo St James regularly attracted the attention of the press and helped put together campaigns to challenge prevailing ideas about this, the oldest profession. She inspired all kinds of people to take up the cause of sex worker rights. She lived in her family cabin in Orcas Island, Washington for many years until she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s. She was diagnosed in June 2020, and passed on January 11 2021, at a memory care facility in Bellingham, Washington.
COYOTE's and St. James's papers are archived at Schlesinger Library’s collection on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a memorial put together by her friends and those she inspires is available at margostjames.com.
Although I never had the opportunity to meet Margo St. James personally, I have been honored to collaborate with many of her contemporaries, mentees, and those she inspired. Margo’s quick wit, media savvy, and relentless advocacy brought sex worker issues into the mainstream. Today, Margo St. James’s trailblazing spirit continues to inspire the next generation of sex worker rights advocates.
