Professors and the Oldest Profession

Officials at Cal State Northridge are sounding just a little bit nervous. Some members of the public, they realize, might be uncomfortable that CSUN’s Center for Sex Research is collaborating with an unusual cast of characters to stage an academic conference next month. But how can scholars study what is sometimes called the world’s oldest profession without the practitioners themselves?

Old pro Xaviera Hollander, author of “The Happy Hooker,” is expected to be there. So is “Mayflower Madam” Sydney Biddle Barrows. And though Heidi Fleiss has been imprisoned for tax evasion, her name appears on the “preliminary” program with this caveat: “Committed, if available.” Perhaps Divine Brown could take her place.

“Part of our concern,” a CSUN spokeswoman says, “is that people will think, snicker snicker, giggle giggle.” You think so? “In reality it’s a serious academic conference, at least from the university’s standpoint.”

“The International Conference on Prostitution: An Interface of Cultural, Legal and Social Issues” will be held March 13-17 at the Airtel Plaza Hotel in Van Nuys. Plenty of interfacing is expected on the night of March 16 at the International Hookers Masquerade Ball.

“We’re not involved with the Hookers Ball,” the CSUN spokeswoman says. So please don’t blame the university for the sex industry’s social event of the season.

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Still, if CSUN sociologists James E. Elias and Vern Bullough hadn’t teamed with Norma Jean Almodovar, president of a small but not modest group called COYOTE L.A., the Hookers Ball probably wouldn’t be taking place.

Not unlike a sashaying streetwalker, Almodovar has a flair for publicity. Once upon a time this Panorama City resident was a humble LAPD civilian traffic officer, a history recalled in her autobiography, “From Cop to Call Girl.” A few years ago she ran for lieutenant governor. COYOTE L.A. is the local chapter of a group that advocates the decriminalization of prostitution; the acronym stands for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics.

Almodovar is co-chairing this conference with Elias and Bullough, respectively the director and founder of the Center for Sex Research. Prostitutes have played “token” roles in scholarly gatherings in the past, Almodovar says, but this kind of collaboration is a first.

The event is the latest in a series of academic conferences the Center for Sex Research has sponsored during its 15-year history. In years past the topics have included sexual predators, repressed memory and transgender behavior. The idea, Elias says, is to bring together interested parties, including rivals.

So a panel discussion titled “Communities Seeking Solutions for Public Prostitution Problems” is scheduled to include law enforcement officials from Ottawa, Scotland and South Africa, as well as San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terrence Hallinan. Other panelists include COYOTE founder Margo St. James and an official from the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal.

Dozens of sessions are scheduled. The Mulholland Room will host “The International Sex Work Movement” with panelists representing a dozen countries. The Balboa Ballroom will feature Cambridge University professor Richard Green’s talk on “The Law and Sexual Tourism.” The Chandler Room will feature “The Client,” during which a New Jersey man will discuss “Being a John.”

In years past, the Center for Sex Research has managed to hold its conferences without attracting much attention. “Mainly we’ve kept a low profile, and that’s been intentional,” Elias says. “We’re not looking for publicity.”

But Norma Jean Almodovar has made the most of the opportunity, aggressively courting media attention and arranging panels that tend to promote the COYOTE perspective, such as “Decriminalizing Prostitution: Only a First Step” and “Prostitution’s Feminist Potential.”

When COYOTE mentioned former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders as a possible speaker, Elias explained that the Center for Sex Research couldn’t afford her speaking fee. According to one COYOTE member, a couple of activist johns put up $10,000--and so Elders has been booked as a luncheon speaker.

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Prostitutes were the first to prove that sex sells. The conference is expected to attract more than 400 participants. The major TV networks have all expressed an interest, Elias says, “and ‘20/20’ wants to send a crew out from New York.” The conference, he says, may take over the entire hotel, with the exception of one room.

That room happened to have been booked long in advance by the Los Angeles Police Department to provide a training session for officers interested in the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program.

“With so many off-duty cops around,” a COYOTE press release teased, “the prostitutes will have little trouble finding dates for the Hookers Ball.”

Snicker snicker, giggle giggle.