Kaytlin Bailey, a stand-up comedian, on Friday performed her show “Whore’s Eye View,” an hourlong show racing through 10,000 years of history — from a sex worker’s perspective.

Bailey is the founder and executive director of Old Pros, a nonprofit media organization that advocates for sex worker rights through storytelling. She hosts the Oldest Profession Podcast, which profiles stories of sex workers and activism throughout history. Her show was held in the Appalachian Collegiate Center.

She came up with a framework for the show in December 2019. During a residency at the Barbershop Theater in Nashville, Tennessee, she worked with a team to develop it further.

“I’ve been obsessed with sex worker history for a really long time,” Bailey told Pipe Dream. “I wrote my college thesis on brothels in Charleston between 1890 and 1920, and I’ve been studying sex workers really ever since then.”

Her show mixed stand-up comedy with historical accounts of sex work and social stigmas with personal stories from her own time as a sex worker. The show addressed history from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Catholic Church’s stance on prostitution. At the end of the show, Bailey opened the floor for questions and comments.

“Combining my sort of issues, specific knowledge on not just the history of sex work, but also on sex worker policy, with my stand-up comedy skills, I’ve created something in the ‘edutainment’ category,” Bailey said.

Bailey shared her own history with sex work and gaining acceptance from her father. Theresa Kadish, who is teaching a class called “Sex and Social Media” this semester, said that most people, whether they are aware of it or not, know a sex worker, adding that it is “high time we have a different attitude toward them.”

“Modern capitalism asks people to sacrifice their bodies, and that sex work is particularly evocative because it refers to something that’s so intimate to us,” Kadish said. “But the sacrifices that sex workers make are not actually that much larger or more intense than the sacrifices that many honored members of our society make.”

Kadish said that Bailey is a guest speaker for the class, an elective taken by students minoring in digital and data studies. It explores sexual cultures and identities online, including discussions about online sex work.”

“This performance is absolutely part of that,” Kadish said. “Like, encouraging students to imagine life from a different cultural perspective and to understand people’s activities and behaviors from an emic perspective, right? Like from a perspective that is within the culture that it is trying to understand.”

Kadish, who met Bailey at the New England Sex Workers Summit, said the show was supported by the B-Healthy Initiative, the Digital and Data Studies program, and the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department. The flyer listed the Q Center and SHADES, a student organization for queer students of color, as co-sponsors.

Ultimately, Bailey aims to remove shame around sex work and promote conversations about women in the industry. She implores her audiences to continue learning about sex workers and identifying with their stories to continue the conversation around destigmatization.

“I think it’s part of our cultural narrative that having sex for money is like one of the worst things that a person can do, and I really want to challenge that,” she said. “I believe that sex workers are part of a proud legacy as entrepreneurs and entertainers and philanthropists and also as advocates.”