The 1975 French sex workers’ revolt: A narrative of influence

Abstract

The 1975 French sex workers’ strike is widely acknowledged by sex workers’ movement activists as the spark that ignited the contemporary European sex workers’ rights movement. Yet, significant scholarly research has judged the strike a failure because it neither achieved law reform, nor was it able to sustain a lasting presence. How then should we understand the disparity between how sex worker activists see the occupation and the judgment of academic researchers? This research extends the analytical frame of the 1975 movement’s influence beyond the disappointment of specific policy outcomes and instead addresses the role that the movement played in challenging attitudes towards sex workers, and building a new collective identity that fed into the emerging global sex workers’ rights movement. It argues that by defining and amplifying a set of shared grievances recognisable across borders the strike was a significant cultural achievement for the sex workers’ movement and this in turn established a narrative of influence.

The Idea of Sex Work

“…8 Rights activists were also inspired by the 1975 national strike by French prostitutes to protest the police, an event that garnered international attention. 9 After 1985, rights-based activism spread to other parts of the globe and led to the formation of transnational and regional alliances of prostitute rights advocates. 10 While inspired by gay and sexual liberation movements, early prostitute rights groups explicitly championed feminist demands-for bodily selfdetermination, sexual liberation, and financial independence-as rights extending to women who sold sex.…”

Policing Commercial Sex in 1970s France: Regulating the Racialized Sexual Order

“…Moreover, white sex workers themselves referred to the discourse on North African men and interracialized sex to affirm their own belonging to French society (Shepard, 218). During the sex workers’ protests of 1975, a group of 150 sex workers organized to claim their rights and protest about arbitrary arrests, corruption, harassment, and prosecution (Mathieu, 1999; Aroney, 2018). This offered some space in societal debates for sex workers, who claimed their agency by arguing that they could reject North African clients.…”

‘Maybe I’m a quiet activist’: Sex work scholars and negotiations of ‘minor’ academic-activism

“…In the special issue of Sexualities celebrating its 20 th birthday, both Tiefer (2018) and Altman (2018) call for further engagement with activism within the journal’s pages. While the journal features compelling work on community activism (see, inter alia, Aroney, 2020; Middleweek, 2020; Ross and Sullivan, 2012), there are few articles exploring practices of activism and advocacy by academics in the context of their work and working lives.…”