When Lola Baldwin was sworn in as a Portland Police officer on April 1, 1908, she became the first, or possibly second, female police officer in the country.

In her new role, Baldwin ran the police bureau’s Women’s Protective Division, and history has remembered her for her envelope-pushing work protecting women. A 2008 OPB article noted that many of her strategies for addressing vice and corruption in the community continue to influence modern day policing.

Portland-based sex worker Elle Stanger calls Baldwin a “mid-century SWERF,” or sex worker exclusionary radical feminist.

“She tried to outlaw women drinking in bars alone,” said Stanger, who is also the co-president of Oregon Sex Workers Committee, a group formed by sex workers in 2021 to help pass decriminalization legislation. “Her true belief was that women would not socialize in these environments when given the choice. So if they were in these environments, it must have been by some kind of horrible circumstance and that they needed rescue.”

At the end of the 2023 legislative session, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek used her veto power to nix state funding for two studies, totaling $600,000, intended to research the impact of Oregon’s laws prohibiting prostitution. In doing so, she stepped into a centuries-old debate about whether or not the world’s oldest profession can ever be entered into voluntarily — or if it is a legitimate form of work and should instead be decriminalized.

Money for the studies would have come from...

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