SF’s Trailblazing Sex Worker Activist Margo St. James Has Died
A sex work advocate before they called it “sex work,” Margo St. James was the namesake of the St. James Infirmary and founded the old Hooker’s Ball. She also spearheaded a movement to legalize prostitution, and very nearly won a seat on the SF Board of Supervisors in 1996.
Tuesday’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting concluded with a series of phrases you do not hear at other cities’ board of supervisors meetings, like “proud prostitute and pioneer,” and “how essential that clinic is for sex workers.” These were the supervisors’ words of memoriam for Margo St. James, the “Joan of Arc” of the sex worker movement who passed a week ago from Alzheimer’s complications, according to a post from the St. James Infirmary, the clinic she co-founded in 1999. St. James’ legacy was acknowledged in an SFGate obituary last week, and she was honored with a terrific New York Times write-up today. S