Margo St. James: I enjoyed it very much. I enjoyed the mobility, I enjoyed the money, the freedom that it gave me to move around.
Olivia Allen-Price: St. James was an activist who made sex work a labor issue. She argued that it was a job like any other – something you did to pay the bills. And these workers deserved the same safety and health care protections as anyone else. Standing just beside her in that early fight was another activist in the movement…
Carol Leigh: I’ve been a prostitute and a prostitute rights advocate for more than 10 years.
Olivia Allen-Price: Her name is Carol Leigh but she’s probably best known by the name “Scarlot Harlot.” She took a flamboyant approach to fighting the stigma around sex work. And she spoke openly about it in a way that sometimes took people by surprise.
Carol Leigh: People always ask how did a nice girl like you ever get started in this line of work? But, you know, there’s a popular misconception. Actually, prostitutes are very very nice. That’s part of the skill that we need in order to keep our clientele.
Olivia Allen-Price: Today on Bay Curious, we’re shining a light on Carol Leigh – who is credited with transforming how sex workers talk about the profession and so much more. I’m Olivia Allen-Price and you’re listening to Bay Curious – the show that explores the hidden true stories of the San Francisco Bay Area. Stay with us.
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Olivia Allen-Price: Carol Leigh was an activist in San Francisco who fought for the legitimacy of sex worker rights. Reporter Steven Rascón brings us Carol’s story.
Steven Rascón: I met Carol over Zoom in 2021. She was 70 years old at the time, and told me about how she grew up in a socialist family in New York.
Carol Leigh: My mother on Long Island. She was an avid feminist. We kind of became feminists in the early seventies at the same time together.
Steven Rascón: Carol was a graduate student at Boston University studying creative writing. She wanted to be a poet. She also prided herself on being a feminist, she loved how the movement called for equal opportunity for women. How it demanded they not be objectified. But for Carol it wasn’t a perfect fit.
Carol Leigh: There were problems within feminism that I hadn’t really understood, In regards to sexual expression and sexual identity.
Steven Rascón: At this point Carol wasn’t doing sex work yet. But she was drawn to it.
Carol Leigh: Now I had been curious about prostitution, but still as a feminist, I did feel like it was a capitulation to men. Cause you know, we would give them blow jobs. And they didn’t even have to be nice to us. I thought that sounded like a bad thing. And then I had all kinds of stereotype visions of what the experience was like, of course, it being degrading.
Steven Rascón: Eventually, she would give in to her sexual curiosities. First, in small doses.
Carol Leigh: When I was, uh, mid twenties, I danced at the golden banana in Peabody, Massachusetts on amateur night.
Steven Rascón: The Golden Banana. A small strip club. Carol dressed up in lingerie and did a silly burlesque number.
Carol Leigh: It was fun and I loved it.
Steven Rascón: The audience of mostly businessmen also loved her “lusty little comedy” bit, as she called it. Then in 1978, Carol moved to San Francisco. She wanted something different from the east coast. But the city was expensive and Carol was strapped for cash.
Carol Leigh: And I basically didn’t have much money. I always tried to live hand to mouth, I worked as a waitress.
Steven Rascón: Carol worked a number of odd jobs but nothing seemed to stick. So she asked about the massage parlor scene. She saw storefronts in the Tenderloin neighborhood that said “sex, massage, girls” she walked into one– a massage parlor called The Hong Kong.
Carol Leigh: Sleazy massage parlor. I knew they sold sex because they weren’t selling ambiance.
Steven Rascón: She says that’s when she gave a blow job to her first client. She wrote about the experience in her memoir: Unrepentant Whore: The collected works of Scarlot Harlot. She writes “he was a guy in his mid 30’s”– cuter than most of her boyfriends. Then on her way home, she says she saw her reflection in the train car window, looked at herself and said proudly, “Now there’s a prostitute.”
Carol Leigh: I was working amongst women from all over the world. I was fascinated with how they dealt with prostitution.
Steven Rascón: Carol got to know her co-workers. Over time, the negative stereo-types she’d heard about sex work and those doing it, started to fade.
Carol Leigh: I met women who seemed like they were robust and rebellious and funny, and this is not what I expected.
Steven Rascón: Carol liked the flexibility of the job. She worked during the day and focused on her writing at night. And she wanted to meet other workers. And get involved with issues that mattered to her…
Carol Leigh: So the first thing I did probably within a week or two was look for Margo.
Steven Rascón: Margo as in Margo St. James – a big name in the community who started Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics or COYOTE for short – the activist group for sex workers.
Margo St. James: Well, my goal is, of course, is complete decriminalization of sex for human beings, just because we’re getting paid for our time doesn’t mean it has to be, uh, uh, you know, something you go to jail for.
Steven Rascón: Margo had strong relationships with the press and with local lawmakers. Carol remembers seeing Margo at her first COYOTE meeting. She says Margo used her quick wit to cut through the hypocrisy of the issues. But it was Margo’s sex positive attitude as a feminist that really inspired Carol.
Carol Leigh: From knowing Margo and knowing her message. I saw that there is another feminism and she made feminism make sense to me.
Steven Rascón: Carol continued going to COYOTE meetings. And at one of those meetings she met Annie Sprinkle, a sex worker living in New York at the time.
Annie Sprinkle: Oh my God, so Caro Leigh. We became friends in the late 70s through COYOTE and Sex Worker Rights and through Margo St. James.
Steven Rascón: Carol and Annie bonded over a lot. They were both Jewish girls from middle class families. They loved art, film and theater. And for them sex work was a means of financial stability.
Annie Sprinkle: We were independent and we chose to do it. Nobody forced us to be prostitutes. We chose to do it.
Steven Rascón: They both had started doing sex work in massage parlors. And they both noticed the same issues…
Annie Sprinkle: I worked in a massage parlor for three months. But of course the place got busted…
Steven Rascón: Massage parlors were easy targets for undercover police stings because of how public they were. If a worker solicited an undercover cop at one of these parlors, they could be arrested. But Carol and Annie noticed this didn’t do anything to stop consensual sex workers. All it did was give them a criminal record. Typically someone who was arrested would go back to a different parlor.
Annie Sprinkle: We knew that criminalizing sex work was just basically wrong. We were all aware that what we were doing was dangerous.
Steven Rascón: Eventually Carol and Annie started working independently with their own roster of clients, as call girls. They often exchanged notes about clients at COYOTE meetings to know who was trustworthy and not a cop.
Steven Rascón: In 1978, the same year she joined COYOTE, Carol became a spokesperson for the group. She was an outspoken and proud sex worker. It was a vulnerable position but she thought it was important to share her experience.
Carol Leigh: I was always going around and trying to present a sex worker’s point of view at different locations with COYOTE.
Steven Rascón: One day, she went to a talk led by a group of feminists about how the porn industry took advantage of women.
Carol Leigh: And There was a workshop about the “sex use” industry.
Steven Rascón: The group referred to it as the sex use industry because they felt all women in the sex trade were being oppressed. Carol was familiar with this argument. She noticed the name of the workshop and spoke up.
Carol Leigh: And I looked at that and I thought, wait, if we’re a feminist, we should be defining it. Not by what the men do, the men use, the services, but by what the women do, women do sex work.
Steven Rascón: “Sex work” Nobody had ever referred to (it) as sex work then. But Carol made the case.
Carol Leigh: We always felt that it was work //You show up for your job, you have a schedule and you do it just like you would a manicure or something like that. It was just work.
Steven Rascón: She knew most people wouldn’t agree with her because they saw what she was doing as a moral issue not a labor one.
Carol Leigh: I understood that those who are opposed to prostitution. Were resisting, seeing it as work, So I felt like that was one difference that I wanted to highlight, so I coined the term “sex work”.
Joya Corey: sex work, yeah. I had not heard the term before, before I met Carol.
Steven Rascón: This is Joya Corey, an acting teacher in the Bay Area. Carol wasn’t just being a spokesperson for COYOTE at the time. She was also working with Joya and taking her acting classes. Carol loved making art and dabbled in all kinds – painting, guitar, writing. And she loved poetry most of all. A friend of hers said she spent almost every day of the week at coffee shops reading her poems for small audiences. But Carol had bigger ambitions. She wanted to make her poems into a play.
Joya Corey: She told me about it and said would you like to direct it? It was about her career as a call girl.
Steven Rascón: Joya didn’t know anything about the life of a sex worker then but she was interested. So they got started on the play. It would be a one-woman show and Carol would play a character she created called “Scarlot Harlot”
Joya Corey: I thought it fitted her better. That name fitted her better than Carol. Carol’s like a vanilla name and Scarlet was not vanilla. She was anything but vanilla.
Steven Rascón: Carol dyed her hair deep red for Scarlot. And wore red lipstick to match. Her curly hair gave her an extra inch or two of height.
Joya Corey: She had that luscious kind of full body. She was tall, she was a fairly big woman.
Steven Rascón: She spelled Scarlot as Scar-LOT as in lots of scars. She was like an alter ego. A high femme, uninhibited version of Carol. Shameless. Bold.
Annie Sprinkle: And she was really flamboyant. She wore big hair, big costumes.
Steven Rascón: And so sassy.
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: I would really like to marry a rich producer. I think that’s really like the perfect kind of prostitution for me.
Steven Rascón: Carol had an idea for the play. She would name it, The Adventures of Scarlot Harlot and in it she would introduce audiences to the term “sex work” and what it meant to her.
Carol Leigh: I wrote a piece where Scarlot comes out and the first thing she’s kind of blind. She has a paper bag on her head. This paper bag…
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: This paper bag symbolizes the anonymity prostitutes are forced to adopt.
Carol Leigh: And then she takes the paper bag off. And her first words are “sex workers unite!”
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: Sex workers unite! We won’t remain anonymous!
Joya Corey: That was the beginning of her being a political artist.
Steven Rascón: But it wasn’t just political. Carol had fun with the play. She wrote a scene where Scarlot is confronted with the definition of prostitution.
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: Prostitution: One. 1. Trading sexual services for money or goods. 2. The act of selling one’s talents for an unworthy cause.
[Laughter]
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: Well, that definition tarnishes my reputation!
Joya Corey: She would ask the audience directly. Have you ever done anything for money that goes against your core values? Raise your hand if you have. And half the audience would raise their hand and she’d say, ah, that’s prostitution.
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: I have more money than I’ve ever had before!
Steven Rascón: People were entertained.
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: …Color tv!
Steven Rascón: And if they were paying attention, would shift their thinking about sex work.
Joya Corey: It’s really hard to do political art and make it interesting. And she did that.
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: Push button fireplace!
Steven Rascón: The play toured different small theaters across the bay area for about four years. Audiences were curious to see what the life of a sex worker was like. And Scarlot did not hold back.
Carol Leigh [archival tape]: We all know that we don’t want to confine ourselves to being sexual objects, but our sexuality is a resource for us. I think it’s very important that we start making the money from our own sexuality and put it into our own causes.
Joya Corey: Really her political proclivities were beginning to come forth, you know, to be an activist. And, in the doing of this show, The Adventures of Scarlet Harlot, she started to realize that she wanted to be an activist for decriminalizing prostitution.
Steven Rascón: Carol had aspirations of taking Scarlot off-Broadway in New York. But then, Carol writes in her book that Margo and COYOTE had warned her about a mysterious sexually transmitted disease. COYOTE started urging everyone to use condoms. Carol’s focus was turning. She writes, “The whore stigma was no longer my most pressing issue.” By 1984, the disease was more than just a rumor. The AIDS crisis was in full swing.
Steven Rascón: In the beginning, there was a lot of confusion about how the virus spread. Lawmakers across the country went into a panic and started drafting laws to criminalize people who might spread the infection in hopes of stopping it. They put sex workers in that group.
Carol Leigh: It was a very scary time for sex workers.
Steven Rascón: At this point, Carol is stuck at a crossroads.
Carol Leigh: I was always very worried about not being able to fulfill the needs I would have as an artist to develop my work and also be an activist.
Steven Rascón: She knew sex workers could be a valuable voice in educating the public on how to reduce the spread of the virus. So she put her play on hold and joined Citizens for Medical Justice, an early AIDS Awareness group.
Carol Leigh [archival tape]: The solution is like IV drug hygiene, it’s recovery programs, it’s needles. The solution to the crisis is education, it’s not punishing people because they have a disease.
Carol Leigh: I became very involved and this is really where I learned how to be an activist and organizer.
Steven Rascón: A bill criminalizing sex workers for spreading the virus was making its way through the California legislature. It was referred to as a “mandatory testing law”. It required sex workers who were arrested to be tested for AIDS. Testing positive came with criminal charges.
Group chanting [archival tape]: “You say hey, we say no, mandatory testing has got to go!…”
Newscast: The bill to force prostitutes to be tested for AIDS is now in the state senate.
Carol Leigh [archival tape]: This means that a prostitute is convicted and she is antibody positive. If she even does a hand job, she can actually be convicted of a felony.
Steven Rascón: The bill had already passed the state house in a 65-8 vote and was in committee. On the day of the final vote, Carol and members of COYOTE drove to Sacramento to lobby members of the state assembly to vote against the law. Despite their efforts, the bill passed.
Carol Leigh [archival tape]: This is inhumane, we’re absolutely shocked, we’re against all mandatory testing.
Annie Sprinkle: Carol Leigh was very interested in women’s body autonomy. Whether that was abortion, or the right to a clean needle, or the right to do sex work that she felt a woman should have agency. Who she wants to have sex with. who she wants to go out with, and she should be safe.
Steven Rascón: It wouldn’t be until almost 30 years later that Carol’s activism would pay off. In 2017, the legislature repealed the law and annulled all previous convictions for sex workers affected by it. The crisis and the laws had galvanized Carol. It showed her that to win their rights, sex workers needed a voice on the larger stage. She found a way to use Scarlot to reach a wider audience.
Carol Leigh [archival tape]: I knew that I needed to be Scarlot Harlot and go around the world and tell everyone what it’s like to be a prostitute in case they wanted to know, because people usually do want to know.
Steven Rascón: So Scarlot did talk show appearances.
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: Well, pretty much I fake it.
Announcer: Corporate Call Girls on the next Geraldo…
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: [singing] Safe sex!
Steven Rascón: And she wrote music..Carol would start several organizations like the Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network and the Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival here in San Francisco. Scarlot elevated the movement. And became a role model for a new generation of sex workers across the globe.
Carol Leigh as Scarlot Harlot: [singing] The bedroom is the last frontier. Condoms leave a souvenir. Safe sex!
Steven Rascón: In 1999, Carol, Margo, and members of COYOTE started the St. James Infirmary clinic in the Tenderloin. A free clinic offering confidential medical and legal services to sex workers in the Bay Area. The clinic was the first of its kind in the country. When I talked to Carol in January 2021 she wasn’t doing as many high profile gigs. But she did tell me something else she had learned from Margo, what “her north star” was for the movement.
Carol Leigh: The prostitutes rights agenda should be determined by what impacts the most vulnerable people in our communities, those who are impacted by the laws.
Steven Rascón: Those communities today include Black and Trans sex workers, as well as undocumented workers. And they’re the groups that Carol says she spent her time with in Zoom meetings, connecting with them, listening to their unique challenges and how they navigate sex work. She did this while she was battling cancer.
Carol Leigh: I was diagnosed five years ago, stage four cancer. That seems really serious. You know I get scared of dying soon.
Steven Rascón: But she remained active in her own way.
Carol Leigh: As I get this old 70 that’s pretty old. So. I love zoom and I mean, I’m in so many sex worker groups now, and I tried to find a new role for myself, uh, or the right role, the best role now.
Steven Rascón: Carol passed away two years after our conversation.
Annie Sprinkle: I was pretty devastated when she died.
Steven Rascón: Annie and her closest friends surrounded her in her final moments.
Annie Sprinkle: and I got to go over there. And be with her body, and put some flowers on her and be there when they rolled her out in a red velvet, a red velvet body bag. And she did a really good job planning for her death, amazingly well.
Steven Rascón: And Scarlot had one more trick up her sleeve. Before she died, Carol established a trust that she didn’t tell anybody about. It included an inheritance from her mother, who supported Carol’s sex worker career from the beginning. The beneficiaries included eighty-six different sex workers and sex worker organizations in need.
Annie Sprinkle: She, in her death, became a philanthropist. And she was almost embarrassed that she had money at the end
Steven Rascón: In a letter to her beneficiaries, Carol wrote “My mother, Augusta, wanted me to use her savings to support my life and work.” Carol also left behind her poems, excerpts from her play as Scarlot, and many news articles that quoted her.
Annie Sprinkle: Scarlot Harlot is the goddess of compassion, and she always wears the latest in fashion.
Steven Rascón: Annie reads me a poem she wrote for Carol.
Annie Sprinkle: Scarlot Harlot is the gal we love the best, the finest whore in all of the West. She’s made the world a more wonderful place. All this and more. Plus she’ll sit on your face.
[laughter]
Steven Rascón: That’s so fun.
Annie Sprinkle: She was a whore mentor and a whore mother to many sex workers. She was truly the whore with a heart of gold.
Olivia Allen-Price: That story was reported and produced by Steven Rascón.
Decades after Carol introduced the term “sex worker” in her play, Margo St. James and others in COYOTE started using it regularly to describe the movement with lawmakers, the press, and public health officials.
The term found its way into studies from the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health. Today, the phrase that Carol coined has revolutionized the way the world talks about the profession.
Currently in California, soliciting sex in exchange for money may be punishable with fines and jail time. Activists continue their efforts to decriminalize all forms of sex work.
Today’s episode was produced by Amanda Font, Ana De Almeida Amaral, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Special thanks to Jen Chien, Nastia Voynovskaya, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, And the whole KQED Family.
I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a great week!
