Stripper Solidarity Is A Beautiful Thing

There's a wonderful harmony that occurs between sex workers when they see others in their particular profession being oppressed. Take the East London Stripper Collective for but one example. Recently profiled by Vice (link below), the collective was formed "to take on exploitative employment practices, provide a support network for dancers, and fight the stigma attached to the work they do."

"Right when I first started dancing, I very quickly started to see the ways dancers were being exploited," she says. "I would sit in clubs, calculate how much the bar was making, how much was taken on the door, how much the barman would be paid. I would be doing sums, and I would think,Hang on a minute. The club is making all their money from us. We are the main attraction. There wouldn't be a business model if we weren't dancing. And I really quickly saw it wasn't a reciprocal relationship."

Despite being classified as "self-employed," dancers face incredibly tough restrictions by club owners.

"If you've been working for hours, and are bored out of your nut, and you glance at your phone, you'll be fined [$30]. If you're chewing gum, another [$30]. Or you don't have exactly the right dress, same again," says Samantha, a dancer who has been with the group since its inception in April. 

"We are supposed to be self employed, but we're not really. We really get the worst of both worlds," she says.

"You get medieval levels of maltreatment and emotional brutality. I can't count the times I've been threatened with the sack for simply questioning the shift patterns, or speaking out of turn, or not having the right outfit," Clare says.

My friend Leslie runs a burlesque troupe here in Chicago, and they were invited by a strip club--which I won't name here--to come and do a run of shows at their club. After the first show, the owner terminated their contract because he didn't like what they did, after having raved about it weeks earlier. When she told me about this, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Really? You're surprised that the man who runs a strip club has dubious morals and doesn't honor contracts?" Point being, these strippers have got to take care of their own, because lord knows no one else is looking out for them. 

Via Vice