The Oldest Profession: A Showcase of Sex Workers Through History
This showcase is a celebration and a peek into the lives, art, and organizing of American sex workers who were active in the preceding years and at the beginning of the new millennium. As technology and government increasingly target, shift, and dictate how sex work can exist, we must be the ones documenting our lives and work. To all the sex workers who came before us, we offer our deepest gratitude and reverence. To all the sex workers of the future, may you know a world in which this profession is respected and uplifted.
Sex work is work, and it is as beautiful, fraught, and varied as we are as individuals. There is no universal sex worker experience other than the fact we must all contend with stigma, censorship, and safety on some level. Until the most historically marginalized of us–our BIPOC, trans, immigrant, disabled, queer–community members have access to the same rights and opportunities, until all of us are free from criminalization, we must organize, advocate, and fight for the full decriminalization of sex work wherever and whenever possible.
The Oregon Safer Workers Coalition (OSWC) addresses economic and health disparities among consensual adult sex workers and trafficking survivors in Oregon, centering BIPOC communities through research, advocacy, education, and harm reduction to promote safety and equity.
