COYOTE was founded in
San Francisco in 1973 by
Margo St. James, a
feminist and former sex worker, along with Jennifer James, a Seattle-based professor of anthropology. Margo St. James had previously been arrested and convicted of a prostitution offense at age 25, but overturned the conviction after studying law for a year at Lincoln University San Francisco. She chose the name COYOTE because novelist
Tom Robbins called her a "
coyote trickster" and came up with "Call Off Your Old Tired
Ethics" to fit the chosen
backronym. St. James believed that sex work should be considered labor equivalent to any other career, writing in 1977 that "to make a great distinction between being paid for an hour's sexual services, or an hour's typing, or an hour's acting on a stage is to make a distinction that is not there."
Purpose The group's purpose was "to provide a loose union of women—both prostitutes and feminists—to fight for legal change." COYOTE provided safe spaces for sex workers to meet to talk about their experiences and find support. They had "rap sessions" which used feminist
consciousness raising methods, and let the women know that they were not alone in their experiences. They gathered stories and facts about the injustices sex workers faced and launched a public education drive to highlight the racist and sexist biases of prostitution arrests. Meetings and events were advertised through underground newspapers. COYOTE organized educational programs and cultural events to raise money for other projects and held public demonstrations to protest entrapment. They also organized "whore conventions" in San Francisco (1974), Washington, DC (1976), and in Brussels and Amsterdam (1985 and 1986). COYOTE got a judge to dismiss prostitution charges against 37 women whose male customers were not arrested and they organized protests against police harassment, which they believed was one of the most critical issues affecting prostitutes. From these events, COYOTE raised a bail fund to free women from exploitative pimps and created special welfare programs and assistance services. These affiliations were possible in part due to COYOTE's wide support base, which at one point consisted of 270,000 members.
COYOTE v. Roberts In 1976, COYOTE, led by St. James, filed a lawsuit against
Rhode Island. In the case,
COYOTE v. Roberts, the argument was based on how much power the state should have to control the sexual activity of its citizens. The lawsuit also alleged discrimination on how the law was being applied. Data was submitted that demonstrated selective prosecution: the Providence police were arresting female sex workers far more often than the male customers. St. James testified in the case. Although the case eventually was dismissed when
Rhode Island General Assembly changed the prostitution statute in 1980, COYOTE and St. James are given credit as one of the reasons prostitution in Rhode Island was decriminalized, although prostitution was outlawed again in 2009. "Samantha" and Gloria Lockett were co-directors of COYOTE in the early 1990s. They had been critical of the group for focusing on "higher class" prostitutes (such as
call girls and
escorts) and
white sex workers, while ignoring the concerns of streetwalkers and ethnic minorities. ,
Norma Jean Almodovar serves as the executive director of the Los Angeles branch of COYOTE. == See also ==