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Search form Search. Rather than ignore the centuries-long relationship between sex work and queer liberation, we should embrace it, writes editor at large Diane Anderson-Minshall. Join us in fighting for our future.
Support our journalism. One-time Monthly. Join the Fight. When I was 8 years old, my mother got divorced from Bob Number 1. There were three Bobs in succession; my father was her only non-Bob husband, and they divorced when I was 2. It was the s, and my mother and I moved into an apartment complex a few doors down from my aunt Sam, in East Los Angeles.
My aunt Sam's real name was Gladys, but nobody called her anything but Sam. Sam was a sex worker. Not a thousand-dollar-a-call-out escort, but a poor, plain working woman, out on her own as a young street walker.
She used drugs, she went to jail for prostitution, and she was the black sheep in a family of black sheep. She was bisexual and seemed in charge of her own life.
