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Lusty Ladies tells a story of a daring, feminist, and queer community who helped put sex worker movements on the map with their radical labor and cultural activism.
Since 2011, I have been conducting an oral history project documenting the community of the Lusty Lady theater. The Lusty Lady was a historically significant, commercial sex franchise that operated in San Francisco and Seattle for 30+ years. Through archival research, cultural productions of workers, and oral history interviews with former employees of the Lusty Lady theater, a historically significant and recently closed commercial sex franchise in Seattle and San Francisco, I investigate how people in the sex trades have dramatically altered our way of talking and thinking about sexuality and commerce.
Oral history is an interview-based method for documenting and interpreting the memories of people and communities as they reflect upon past events. Scholars and activists use oral history to address absences in traditional historical records and document the perspectives of marginalized communities. I have been an oral historian for over a decade.
I have spoken with many former employees about their time at the Lusty Lady and the impact that its closure had upon them. As a former "Lusty," I know how important it is that we take the lead in preserving and writing our histories. These interviews are a core component of the research for my book, Lusty Ladies: Sex Work and Sex-Positive Politics, 1970-2013.
To participate in the oral history project, email me at: lustyladyoralhistory@gmail.com |
Jayne Swift is a public and feminist scholar. She writes, researches, and lectures about sexual labor and economies, politics, and cultures.
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