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The Do List

Comedian Kaytlin Bailey Revives the Forgotten Histories of Sex Workers

'The Oldest Profession' comes to San Francisco on International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
Janea Melido
A woman holds a microphone in front of a projected image of a Renaissance painting.
Kaytlin Bailey's one-woman show combines comedy and sex worker history. (Sriya Sarkar)

Kaytlin Bailey didn’t originally set out to become a sex worker rights activist. She just wanted to be funny.

But in 2018, under the first Trump administration, the FOSTA-SESTA bill passed, criminalizing the online assistance, facilitation and support systems sex workers relied on to stay safe. Bailey, a New York–based stand-up comedian and former sex worker, felt compelled to use her platform to speak out against the law’s devastating impact.

“I believe that if you can make people laugh, you can make people listen,” Bailey said. “Comedy has a long history of that, and it’s a great way to cut through a lot of noise.”

Since then, Bailey’s career has expanded well beyond the stand-up stage. She is the founder and executive director of Old Pros, a sex worker–led nonprofit focused on advocacy through storytelling; the host of The Oldest Profession podcast; and the writer and performer behind a series of one-woman shows.

Her most recent one-woman show, also called The Oldest Profession, comes to San Francisco on Dec. 17, at the Lost Church. The 70-minute solo performance is a narrative sprint through 10,000 years of sex worker history as it has manifested globally, dating back as early as ancient Mesopotamia. Bailey brings her trademark irreverence to this hybrid of history lecture, comedic monologue and cultural critique that explores and revives the marginalized stories of sex workers.

A woman holding a microphone as she speaks on stage.
Bailey performing her previous one-woman show, ‘Whore’s Eye View,’ in Orlando. (Ashleigh Ann Gardner)

Before doors open for the performance, the Lost Church will host a free community event honoring sex workers who’ve passed away. The gathering is part of the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, founded by San Francisco–based sex worker activists Annie Sprinkle and Robyn Few, who also founded the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOP-USA).

“There’s a lot of examples of sex workers coming together and organizing and making their voices heard in San Francisco, which is why I’m so excited to be bringing this show there and performing it in front of people that do this work,” Bailey said.

Throughout her career, Bailey has witnessed the “pendulum swing both ways” with regard to attitudes toward sex work. She recalls that when she first started out in the early 2000s, a time steeped in fat-shaming and slut-shaming, pop culture icons like Christina Aguilera seemed to promise a new era of freedom.

“It once felt inconceivable that Roe v. Wade could be overturned. It felt like opportunities for women were always expanding,” she said.

Yet progress has proven fragile, and many of the legal and cultural barriers from decades past persist and have intensified under the current political climate.

The first Trump administration’s nomination of three conservative Supreme Court justices shifted the Court’s balance and set the stage for the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. This shift in reproductive rights reflected a larger pattern of restricting sexual autonomy — a reality that sex workers, in particular, continue to confront. For the next generation of feminists, Bailey urges expanding rights and resources for sex workers, and not mistaking prohibition for protection.

“I believe that we will work towards a future with less sexual violence and less gender-based violence, not by policing anyone’s sex life harder, but by giving more people, including the most vulnerable people, more access to rights and resources,” Bailey said. “Criminalizing our work and criminalizing our livelihood just isn’t how you get there.”

Bailey’s one-woman show, The Oldest Profession, comes to the Lost Church (988 Columbus Ave., San Francisco) on December 17. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., with a free community event starting at 6 p.m. Tickets and more information here.

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