Why December 17? The Day Sex Workers Named Their Own Dead
Every December 17, sex workers light candles for people the world didn't bother to look for.
We say their names because someone has to. We say their names because the men who killed them counted on silence. We say their names because memory is a form of power. When we don't know her name, we hold a place for her anyway.
This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. It began as a vigil. It became a movement. And it started with a man who told a courtroom exactly why he chose us.
It started on the Green River
In the early 1980s, women's bodies began turning up along the Green River and in the woods outside Seattle. Many of them were sex workers. Many were young. For nineteen years, no one was charged.
Gary Ridgway was arrested in 2001. On November 5, 2003, he pleaded guilty to 48 murders. In a statement read aloud in court, he explained his choice of victims: "I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught"
He also said he knew they wouldn't be reported missing right away, and might never be reported missing at all.
Read that again. He didn't just hate us. He counted on everyone else not caring.
And for nineteen years, he was right.
Robyn and Annie answered
That same year, Robyn Few built the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA, SWOP-USA. Robyn was sentenced to house arrest on a prostitution conspiracy charge in November 2003. She organized anyway.
SWOP-USA's first major action was a memorial for Ridgway's victims (Wikipedia). With Dr. Annie Sprinkle, they held it on December 17, 2003. It was the first International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
The next day, December 18, Ridgway was sentenced to 48 life terms without parole.
Sprinkle put the reason plainly in her public letter: "Violent crimes against sex workers go underreported, unaddressed and unpunished". She wrote that there really are people who don't care when prostitutes are beaten, raped and murdered. December 17 was built to make them look.
Robyn Few died in 2012. Her vigil didn't.
From one vigil to the world
What began as one memorial in 2003 is now an international day. Every December 17, sex workers mark it alongside the people closest to us: clients, friends, families and allies.
The red umbrella you'll see at those vigils is older than the day itself. In 2001, sex workers in Venice worked with Slovenian artist Tadej Pogačar on the "Prostitute Pavilion" for the 49th Venice Biennale. They marched through the city under red umbrellas, protesting inhumane working conditions and human rights abuses. In 2005, the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe adopted the red umbrella as its symbol of resistance to discrimination.
Why an umbrella?
Because it's protection. Because red is impossible to miss in a crowd of black. Because it's shelter we hold over each other when no one else will.
A day of mourning. A day of resistance.
On December 17, we hold two truths at once. It is a memorial. It is a protest.
It's a memorial because we grieve the workers taken by predators, by police, by prisons, and by violence the law made easier. And for the last 10 years, we have included those names that we lost that year to the violence of discrimination, stigma, and the silent and deadly forms of institutional and societal neglect that keep our lives in constant jeopardy.
It's a protest because the violence isn't random. It runs on the same logic Ridgway confessed to: no one will come looking for us. It happens in alleyways. It happens in courtrooms. It happens in policies written without us. Criminalization keeps us from calling the police. Stigma keeps families from reporting us missing. The headlines make the killer the story.
On December 17, we hold two truths at once. It is a memorial. It is a protest.
It's a memorial because we grieve the workers taken by predators, by police, by prisons, and by violence the law made easier. It's a protest because the violence isn't random. It runs on the same logic Ridgway confessed to: no one will come looking for us. It happens in alleyways. It happens in courtrooms. It happens in policies written without us.
Criminalization keeps us from calling the police. Stigma keeps families from reporting us missing. The headlines make the killer the story.
This year, we're already holding a place for a woman whose name we don't know. In October, a man set fire to Fuji Super Spa in Cahokia Heights, Illinois. Federal court documents say he targeted it because a worker he was angry with worked there. One employee died. When we wrote about her on October 30, she still hadn't been publicly identified.
She is not the first name we haven't known, and she won't be the only one. Every year, the list we read on December 17 carries entries with no name at all. Unidentified. Jane Doe. A city and a date. We read those lines out loud too, because someone loved her, even if no one reported her missing.
Mourning is not the end of the story. Our grief becomes a strategy: for decriminalization, for peer-led safety, for money that goes to us instead of to the people who arrest us. Many of us have been lighting these candles for more than two decades. Our sorrow has never faded. Neither has our resolve to find justice and peace from persecution. The burden is heavy. Some years we think we see progress. A law changes. A headline gets it right. Someone finally listens.
And still, we are misunderstood. Still, we are stigmatized. Still, we are blamed for society's ills.
So we come back every December 17. Tired. Grieving. Still here. Twenty-three years after the Green River, the world still acts like it can't see us.
We were never invisible. We were never voiceless. We remember. And we fight.
Tell us how you're marking December 17
Every week until December 17, we'll share events from our community. Register your event here!
Event name and host
Date, time, and time zone
City and venue, or the online link
Whether it's public or invite-only
If your event needs to remain private for safety reasons, tell us. We'll list it without a location, or not at all.
Say Her Name
On December 17, we read aloud the names of sex workers we've lost to violence: to predators, to police, to prisons, and to a world that looked away.
Some names are known. Some we hold a place for.
Use this form to tell us about someone you'd like remembered. You can share as much or as little as feels right.
