You could call it horizontal education if you wish, but about 25 sex-industry workers went to college during the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival May 4: a class for, ahem, working girls and guys to polish their on-the-job skills.
"We are still illegal," instructor Kimberlee Cline was quoted as saying before her 20-minute demonstration for the class. "If we want to be treated as business professionals, we need to act ethically within the industry."
The San Francisco Chronicle said the class was the first time the festival featured anything resembling a career satisfaction seminar for sex workers. And those who stayed the daylong course even received G.S.W. diplomas—graduates in sex work, the paper said.
"My own personal experience has been negative and positive, as with any job," said Tucson, Arizona, mother of two Kymberly Cutter to the Chronicle, saying she went back to prostitution to augment her income.
She told the paper it was also part of her "personal self-discovery" and that her 7- and 9-year-old children know what she does for extra income.
Festival organizer Carol Leigh told the Chronicle Cutter's hometown plus Portland, Oregon; Montreal; and even Taipei, Taiwan have similar events.
The Sex Worker Film and Video Festival has shown over 150 films since its premiere in 1998. The films, organizers said, focus on prostitution and prostitutes' rights, global sex work, sex work as a labor issue, sex workers as heroes and heroines, and other issues.
Films featured at this year's festival included Sheila Malone and Annie Sprinkle's Amazing World of Orgasm, Louisa Achille's The Naked Feminist, Kristie Alshaib's Other People's Mirrors, and Jill Morley's Stripped, among others.
