Until prostitutes have equal protection under the law and equal rights as human beings, there is no justice. – Robyn Few
Last Thursday, sex workers all over the world were saddened to hear of the death (after a long battle with cancer) of the charismatic and tireless Robyn Few, founder of the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA. When the day finally arrives on which sex work is recognized in the majority of the world as work like any other, hers will be one of the names remembered as instrumental in achieving it.
Robyn L. Spears was born in Paducah, Kentucky, on October 7th, 1958, to Virginia Owen Spears; she had an older brother and a younger sister and lived in the small community of Lone Oak, Kentucky. She attended Lone Oak Elementary and Lone Oak Middle School, but dropped out and ran away from home either during or after her 8th grade year, when she was 13 years old. The causes of her leaving are not clear, but whatever they were she later reconciled with her mother and in fact died while visiting at her home. Like so many runaways she soon turned to survival sex work, and though she later received vocational training to be a materials tester for concrete and tried a few “straight” jobs such as drafting, she was never satisfied with these and became a stripper soon after turning 18. As she says in the video below (recorded in Chicago in July of 2008), “I loved it so much; it was so empowering to be able to get up on the stage…I came alive, and for me being paid to dance and to show my body [that] I was so proud of anyway…it was just an amazing experience.”
After stripping for a while she started working in a massage parlor, then later escort services and a clandestine brothel; in her late 20s she married one of her clients and had a daughter, but after her divorce in 1993 (after which she retained her married name, Few) she moved to California and began to take college classes with the intent of earning a degree in theater. She became interested in marijuana and AIDS activism, but the bills had to be paid so she returned to escorting in 1996 and soon became a madam. Like so many of us, she never told anybody about her sex work; her activism was directed toward other causes until fate decreed otherwise.
The events of September 11th, 2001 engendered a heightened climate of paranoia, and the enactment of the PATRIOT Act soon made an unprecedented level of funding available to any government agency which could make even a remote claim to “fighting terrorism”. And though then-Attorney General Ashcroft had been strongly rebuked by Congress for devoting more FBI agents to the “Canal Street Brothel” case in New Orleans than to counterterrorist operations, he had learned his lesson and justified later whore persecutions with flimsy “anti-terrorism” excuses. Robyn’s agency was accused of having “terrorist suspects” as clients and she was arrested in June of 2002, then convicted of “conspiracy to promote prostitution” and sentenced to six months house arrest (during which the trial judge allowed her to continue her activism). After her arrest, she was angry to discover that both neighbors and supposedly “enlightened” activists treated her differently once they knew she had been a prostitute; she threw herself even harder into medical marijuana activism, but began to think about how people’s ignorant attitudes and the oppressive anti-sex work laws could be changed.
Her inspiration came a year after her arrest, in the form of the US Supreme Court decision Lawrence vs. Texas: Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion that “state laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of [the overturned Bowers vs. Hardwick decision’s] validation of laws based on moral choices,” and though the other justices tried to pretend otherwise Robyn knew that Scalia was correct, and that the court had opened a door for sex workers’ rights. So after a Berkeley, California high-school teacher named Shannon Williams was arrested for prostitution in August, Robyn gathered a group of sex workers to protest outside the courthouse at Williams’ arraignment in September. Unfortunately (but understandably), Williams wanted the whole mess to go away as soon as possible and so had no desire to become the “poster child” for prostitutes’ rights. Robyn of course backed down, but the fire had been lit; with the help of her partner Michael Foley and sex worker Stacey Swimme (whom she had met earlier that year at a medical marijuana protest), she founded SWOP-USA the following month.
The organization was modeled on SWOP Australia, and Rachel Wotton (who now specializes in sex work with the disabled) was instrumental in securing permission for the American group to use the name and helping to set things up. Within a few weeks the new organization was contacted by Dr. Annie Sprinkle for assistance in arranging the very first Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers, and for the next year Robyn worked furiously to contact politicians and get the attention of the media so as to let them know that sex workers were not going to quietly accept persecution any more, and were mobilizing like those in many other parts of the world to demand our rights. But after the failure of “Proposition Q”, a ballot measure she wrote which would have established de facto decriminalization in Berkeley, Robyn and SWOP settled in for the long haul and committed themselves to the slow, arduous task of reversing centuries of stigma and decades of oppressive legislation.
Shortly after the two shorter videos were recorded at the International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harms in Warsaw, Poland (May of 2007), Robyn was diagnosed with cancer; she continued to work tirelessly for the cause all through her chemotherapy, and though the disease appeared to have gone into remission in January of 2010 it returned by July of 2011, and this time proved terminal. She died on September 13th, 2012 while visiting her mother, and there will be a memorial service on what would have been her 54th birthday (October 7th, 2012) at the Milner and Orr Funeral Home in Lone Oak . I never had the pleasure of meeting Robyn, but as you can see from the personal accounts on her website and the many expressions of grief all over the internet, those who did speak without exception of her warmth, her strength, her good humor, her courage and her plain human decency. And though it’s an oft-used phrase, there is no other which sums up the way everyone in the sex worker rights community feels about her passing: she will be sorely missed.
(I am indebted to the Sin City Alternative Professionals’ Association (formerly SWOP-LV) for information and links, and also to a group of Robyn’s school friends from Lone Oak, who contacted me Sunday morning and filled in a number of vital details I could not find anywhere else. If anyone reading this can correct an error or omission, please email me with the info.)
Thank you for this… (Please check your emails.)
i first heard of swop through Marc Jacobs,who made a graphic tshirt depicting strippers to support the cause of swop las vegas.he had just opened his las vegas boutique and was looking for a charity to support.he is one of the few celebrities that support sex workers rights openly and i suspect this has a lot to do with his pornstar ex boyfriend.as for Robyn im deeply saddened about her death,which confirms my beleif that bad things mostly happen to good people.
Thanks, Maggie. When I read bios and obits of sex workers doing such great work as activists, it always saddens me that no mention is made (can be made) of their achievements in their chosen primary work: personal services to customers. Of course, this happens in private, but my guess is that it’s where they have done and do their best to make a difference in someone’s life. At least I think it’s where they deserve recognition, praise, and gratitude in the first place. I imagine that a woman of the human stature of Robyn Few was a great dancer and whore, committed, caring, loving, fun, sexy. Turning her own life around must have made her aware of the human needs of others. I think that it must have been quite a privilege to be her customer. Sex workers don’t get into the profession to become activists, but to be there for clients, usually strangers, and give them a special, inimitable experience. Their activism is an unjust and unfortunate “additional commitment” to what they chose to be in the first place.
It’s unfortunate that we’ll have to wait for Utopia until customers of women like Robyn will express in public their gratitude for having been with her and experienced her talents and personal attention. That will be the moment when the activism of her and you and a multitude of other sex workers will have achieved its goal. I never met her, but I do like to thank her — and through her the multitude of other anonymous sex workers — for all the joy she shared with her individual clients despite the harsh and repressive realities of life.
we met Robyn in South Africa earlier this year, she dropped off a suitcase of clothes and shoes to donate, and met with activists here. we are so grateful she came and that we got to meet (and sing and dance) with her. (SWEAT and Sisonke in cape town, south africa)
she remains a hero of the sex worker rights movement!
great story………it will be a long time before enlightment is in america…….. but for meny of us it is now. She was a very good speaker
Excellent bio of Robyn. I learned last week that she is from Paducah, which is where I have some family as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if they all know each other. Small world. Amazing woman, one of a kind!
We are all thinking about the gap Robyn will leave in the sex worker rights movement and the times we had with her when she visited us in New Zealand soon after our sex work laws had changed for the better. We presented her with a pounamu, a special greenstone, which we note she would often be wearing as she advocated publicly for decriminalisation. Robyn created opportunities everywhere and managed to meet our then Prime Minister Helen Clark while here. She was fantastic fun, and we all enjoyed our time with her. We send our thoughts to her family, friends, and her fellow activists, who, like us, will miss her sorely.
At the very end of semi-silly movie called “The 13th Warrior” a wounded and die-ing, 10th century Viking War-Chief tells the only literate person around that he so badly wanted the true story of his life and exploits to be recorded. somehow.
Maggie; you totally get it. Brave warriors deserve to have their true stories told and re-told around the camp-fires; maybe forever. That is not the same thing as eternal life but it is a start.
She sounds like a really amazing woman. Thanks for writing compiling all this, Maggie
I am not sure if I will get this put exactly right, but here it goes anyway. There really is a virgin/whore dichotomy in that the life experiences of a virgin (at marriage) and a high partner count woman iare nearly irreconciliable. It is so not the same.
My sympathy with the whore side of the scale is completely based on pragmatism, in the sense that really smart, good-looking high value women- nearing the end of an elite education are not going to be virgins. At all.
Thanks Maggie,
As so often happens you don’t hear about these folks ’til they’re gone. But at least they’re memorialized by gatekeepers like you.
I met her one time 8 years back. She was a remarkable woman and will be missed.
[…] Robyn Few by Maggie Mc […]
Thank you, Maggie, for your wonderful bio of Robyn. I knew Robyn well, met her in August 2004 when I began working as a volunteer helping out with her Measure Q in Berkeley. She and I were very close for the next several years, the month we spent in New Zealand was a highlight of her life, and of mine, as well. We were hosted by Catherine Healy of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, who posted above. The pounamu that Catherine gave to Robyn and mentioned above (the special greenstone which Robyn would often wear as she advocated publicly for decriminalisation) can be seen around her neck in the photo at the top.
She was simply one of the most amazing people I ever had the pleasure to meet, a woman of incredible strength, indomitable spirit, and unrivaled courage. I will forever treasure the time I spent with her.
Thanks so much for this wonderful tribute. I know that there are many other activists walking in Robyn’s grace-full footsteps, long may her inspiration and legacy survive.
Thank you very much for this, Maggie. It is enlightening and important for as many of us as possible to know the history of the movement. Beautifully written!
I knew nothing of Robyn Few, but as I was watching that first video, I soon was thinking, “I like her!”
It will happen, and if there is an afterlife, she will get to see it happen.
Thank you for letting those of us who didn’t know Robyn, even through media, know about her. She’s worth knowing about.
I know Robyn slightly – I am also from Paducah, KY and know her family. I didn’t know she was a sex worker activist. It was quite a surprise to see that small town mentioned here!
Goodbye Rockin Robyn, you will be in my thoughts and prayers for the duration;the ten years we spent together passed by at lightning speed in retrospective,proud of you!You have did well in standing up for so many human beings….{aka Neal}
[…] in which she slanders veteran sex worker activists Maxine Doogan, Norma Jean Almodovar and the late Robyn Few, founders of the Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project (ESPLER), the […]