“Carol defined sex work as a labor issue, not a crime, not a sin.'
Frederic Larson/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
A former sex worker, Leigh devoted herself to campaigning on behalf of those in the “sex work industry,” a term she coined as the title for a panel discussion she attended at a feminist anti-pornography conference in 1978, according to an essay she wrote.“Carol defined sex work as a labor issue, not a crime, not a sin,” Marquez said. “It is a job done by a million people in this country who are stigmatized and criminalized by working to support their families.
“Ultimately, Leigh argued that until sex workers are included in the conversations about feminism, sexuality and legality -– conversations from which they have historically been excluded -– sex workers will remain fragmented rather than collective, and stigmatisation will abound,” said a tweet Thursday from SWARM , which describes itself as a sex worker-led collective founded in the United Kingdom in 2009.
Leigh was deeply involved in advocacy for and aid to sex workers both in the United States and overseas and her concerns ranged from decriminalization to poverty, drug use and HIV.
Born in New York City, Leigh had a bachelor’s degree in creative writing when she moved to San Francisco in 1977. She began working as a sex worker to earn money but her focus changed after she was raped by two men at a sex studio in 1979, she told SFGate in a 1996“The fact that I couldn’t go to the police to report the rape meant that I was not going to be able to protect other women from these rapists,” she said. “And I vowed to do something to change that.
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