The Oldest Profession

The Oldest Profession is a one woman, 75 minute, mad dash through 10,000 years of history from a sex workers perspective.

Kaytlin Bailey offers a new angle on the world’s oldest profession, reframing the story of western civilization. Weaving history, stand-up comedy, and lived experience in a fast-paced and profoundly moving hour-long solo show, punctuated by a projected slideshow.

Alternating between her own family history, lived experience, and contemporary observations, we meet many canonized characters from history, and trace the evolution of the sacred whore. Traveling through time from the Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis, Venetian Renaissance, the woman’s suffrage movement, to the the origins of the emergent sex worker rights movement, Kaytlin educates us, with narrative storytelling and comedy, how sex work is in fact the oldest profession.

This show is for adults who want to laugh while they learn about a historically stigmatized community in a funny, approachable, and safe way. The show appeals to academics, comedy fans, history nerds, and sex workers alike, but also appeals to conservative dads, informed moms, libertarians, progressives, feminists, and folks in the LGBTQ+ community.

Kaytlin Bailey

Kaytlin Bailey is a globally recognized leader in the sex worker rights movement, a stand-up comic, podcast host, and the Founder & Executive Director of Old Pros, a non-profit media organization that uses storytelling to advocate for sex worker rights. She hosts The Oldest Profession Podcast where each episode focuses on an “old pro” from history, contextualizing that figure in their own time and connecting their story to the ongoing struggle for sex worker rights.

oldprosonline.org