Thread by @eekiemout

The 40 year + contemporary sex worker rights movement has a history but most will have trouble finding it. So each year on June 2nd #sexworkers everywhere commemorate one of their movement's most vivid revolts and share their whorestories on #InternationalWhoresDay. Enjoy.

Strike headquarters was St Nizier Church in Lyon, a celebrated example of French Gothic architecture visited by thousands of tourists each year. But amongst the Churches many displays there's none that acknowledge its week-long asylum seekers who became global media sensations.

But experienced sex worker activists like Roberta Perkins from the Australian Prostitutes Collective knew about the French strike and, during the 1980's she'd recount to us young whores the story of the strike and other #sexworker protests. These were our "motivational moments".

Years later I did my best to uncover the details of the 1975 French sex workers strike so I too could share it with other sex worker activists. "Our Life" published by @ProstitutesColl is full of personal accounts by those #sexworkers who took part and I got my copy from them...

But I wanted more so I went to Lyon to try to find what became of the women and discovered that Radio France had the most amazing radio archive of the #sexworkers and the strike. Hear them in this Radio France documentary (with English subtitles). vimeo.com/139457788

I also recorded an edited English version soundcloud.com/eury99/the-sex…

I also wrote about it .....theconversation.com/sex-workers-of…

....and a link to an academic article with more detail. There were many well known feminist champions of the strike including Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Millet who visited the Church sanctuaries. vhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/1363460717741802

Barbara one of the strike leaders (seen here evicted from St Nizier church via a stretcher) was in 2014 living a simple life as an ordinary grandmother in rural France BUT she said she had no regrets and wished to be remembered neither as a victim nor a saint.

Here are some more newspaper reports about the strike from around the world ....

But nothing can compare to the huge perfectly preserved archive of the strike (and its aftermath) curated by the late Father Louis Blanc. Here he shows me his prized memento, the Police Commissioners gold ring "lost" in the struggle to expel the #sexworkers from the Church.

I can confirm that Father Blanc bequeathed his strike archive to the Lyon public library where it waits for others to reveal its many riches (thanks to French pop legend Antoine Murracioli for that tip).
And, that #sexworkers will continue to remember and revolt. Au revoir.

Poo. Always with a mistake! Here is the corrected link to the academic article The French Sex Workers' Revolt: A Narrative of Influence (full text version)
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

thanks to all the #sexworkers activists and sex worker allies who took part in the research, support, performance, production and critiques including @nicolegooch @ElenaJeffreys @JulieBates12 @PoisonPompadour