Writer and performer Kaytlin Bailey brings her one woman show, Whore’s Eye View to the Cannon Street Arts Center. Whore’s Eye View is a mad dash through 10,000 years of history from a sex worker’s perspective, as Bailey weaves together comedic storytelling and the wisdom of lived experience.
Bailey, a 2009 graduate of the College of Charleston with a dual degree history and theater department, said she is grateful for the history professors who “indulged my curiosity and set the foundation for what has become my life’s work.”
She also spoke about the motivation behind the show as it relates to internet censorship and misinformation — like last year’s film Sound Of Freedom, the runaway hit movie about child trafficking which Bailey said is “the satanic panic and the white slave panic all over again.”
Never one to mince words or play it safe, Bailey expounded on the journey that brought her to this point: Right after graduating college, she took part in numerous field campaigns for different organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. Before too long, she focused on another passion.
“I quit everything in 2010 to do stand up comedy and move to New York.” In time, she produced the Pink Collar Comedy Tour, the CAKE Comedy Tour, the Naked Show (which is exactly what it sounds like) and created her first one woman show, Cuntagious.
“I was in the comedy scene and then Donald Trump got elected. Suddenly I felt called back to politics… Specifically when he passed into law the federal bill SESTA/FOSTA which stands for Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking or Fight Online Sex Trafficking, which was sold to the American people as a way of protecting vulnerable women and children from sexual exploitation. But of course, the law didn’t do that,” she said.
“Instead it tried to erase consensual adults from talking about sex online. I saw the immediate and devastating impact that had, not just on sex workers, but on educators, therapists and all kinds of people. It gutted law enforcement’s ability to find and prosecute predators. I recognised that this moral panic around sex work is a threat to freedom of expression on the internet,” she said.
“I was sorely disappointed that my peers, my male peers in comedy, many of them free speech advocates, didn’t see what I saw.”
This prompted her to in 2017 create The Oldest Profession Podcast, where in each episode, Bailey does a deep dive on a different sex worker from history. A year later she accepted the position as the founding director of communications for Decriminalize Sex Work, a national advocacy organization, “I spent two years talking to legislators again, before remembering that that’s not my favorite thing to do,” she chuckled.
But after talking with politicians about this issue, it became clear to Bailey, she said, that we’re “not going to get good policy on this issue unless we can change the story about sex work.”
This frustration would lead to the founding of Old Pros, a non profit media organization creating conditions to change the status of sex workers in society. Bailey stated her intentions as “reclaiming our history and our legacy as pioneers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and leaders in the arts world.”
Bailey sees the decriminalization of sex work as the only policy that reduces violence – a perspective is backed by Amnesty International, The World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and UNAids, and the United Nations focus group on women and girls.
Whore’s Eye View is a culmination of her passions. “It’s like an hour long history lecture plus a comedy show. I get very personal in the show. I’ve been writing the show for the past five years. During that time the pandemic happened, I got married and my father died. I grew up a soldier’s daughter, and I pull some very pointed comparisons between what we say about soldiers and what we say about sex workers.”
See Whores Eye View at the Cannon Street Arts Center 7 p.m. June 3 and 4. Tickets for $25 at citypapertickets.com
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