At the Hookers Ball, strippers, dancers, and activists took over San Francisco and partied for sex workers rights
The children’s poet Shel Silverstein even wrote a (semi)-naughty poem for the occasion
It was billed as “the social event of the year for heterosexuals, bisexuals, trisexuals, transexuals, nonsexuals and other minorities who feel they are discriminated against.” A pretty inclusive invitation considering it was 1974.
The event was the first annual Hookers Ball, a 300-person party that took place at the the Longshoremen’s Hall in San Francisco. It was organized by COYOTE (an acronym for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), a grassroots group for sex workers’ rights founded in 1973 by Margo St. James, a former sex worker, and Jennifer James, a professor of anthropology. The Hookers Ball was held just ahead of Halloween, and drew a motley, costumed crowd. The proceeds were for a bail bond fund for sex workers.
Shel Silverstein, best known for his kid-friendly poetry, wrote a song for the occasion that went “Everybody needs a hooker once in awhile to blow away those clouds and make you smile.” St. James remembers the support of certain community members. “The firefighters helped us hang decorations,” she recalls in Allison Bass’s Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law. “They were happy as a clam that we were coming down [to the wharf.]” Some attendees were nearly naked; others dressed in white ties and tails. There were belly dancers, women in masquerade masks, and men in wedding dresses.
The event was hardly the beginning of the movement for sex workers’ rights. COYOTE had held its first convention the year prior, with financial help from the Whole Earth Catalog’s Point Foundation. They’d convinced the National Organization for Women to take up the issue. Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union were devoting energy to overturning California’s criminal codes regarding prostitution. In San Francisco, according to Bass, St. James and other COYOTE members protested outside hotels “where police were busting black street walkers while permitting white sex workers to operate inside as long as they paid off the off-duty officers.”
Still, the Hookers Ball drew a lot of attention, including from news outlets that felt little need to be respectful of sex workers. “Hookers Ball a Loose Affair,” ran the headline in Delaware’s Morning News. The event raised the visibility not only of sex work but of the politics of its criminalization. Soon, other cities were hosting their own Hookers Balls, though San Francisco’s remained unrivaled, drawing an enviable celebrity guest list.
“Of course, my goal is the complete decriminalization of sex,” a masked St. James told KPIX Eyewitness News at the Hookers Ball. When asked what she would say to those who argue that prostitution “tears at the moral fabric of our society,” St. James smiled. “Ninety-nine percent of our customers are married, and, you know, if we weren’t taking care of them and listening to their troubles, they might be beating up their wives more than they do.”
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