'Proud to be whores'. Prostitutes demonstrate in Paris in 2008. philippe leroyer/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
Gail Pheterson began organising with the sex workers of COYOTE in San Francisco in 1984 during a sabbatical year at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley. While in San Francisco she designed an alliance project of whores, wives and dykes that transformed into a network of Bad Girl Rap Groups. Co-facilitated with Margo St. James, Scarlot Harlot/Carol Leigh, Priscilla Alexander, Sharon Kaiser, E. Kitch Childs, Gloria Locket and others, the Bad Girl Rap Groups were open to "any woman who had ever been stigmatised as bad by her work, colour, class, sexuality, history of abuse, or just plain gender".
Upon her return to Europe, she co-founded the Red Thread and Pink Thread, two interwoven Dutch organisations of sex workers and allies, with Margot Alvarez, Ans van der Drift, Martine Groen, Violet and others. She also co-organised with Margo St. James the First World Whores’ Congress in Amsterdam and the Second World Whores’ Congress at the European Parliament in Brussels, and co-founded the International Committee for Prostitutes' Rights.
Gail Pheterson edited the transcripts of the Whores' Congresses for publication in A Vindication of the Rights of Whores (released in Spanish under the title Nosotras Las Putas) and published a series of essays titled The Prostitution Prism (also in Spanish and French), including her most known and widely translated essay, ‘The Whore Stigma: Female Dishonor and Male Unworthiness’.
