CatsMTL

Bad Girls Gone Good: Rejecting the “Good” Whore Performed

Bad Girls Gone Good: Rejecting the “Good” Whore Performed

By Zero and Kit Keli

Pleasers and mini shapewear dresses exclusively occupying strip club stages and hidden street corners is a time of the past. The aesthetics and signifiers of SWers in popular civilian1 culture are increasingly taking hold of the fashion, film, and performance industries. Additionally, in the context of civilian pole dancers, an industry that was virtually non-existent twenty years ago has now become a central figure of contemporary women’s fitness classes. Other performers, such as those in circus, appear to be interested in sensual and scantily-clad performances. 

What does this “representation” mean for SWers, who, despite increased visibility, remain without basic workers’ and human rights? In the context of whorephobia,2 these attempts at representation remain appropriative in nature. In other words, contemporary civilian populations can use SWer aesthetics as social signifiers while bypassing the legal and social stigma, marginalization, and violence that comes with association to the sexual labor of sex work. Clear platform heels and lace bodysuits—accessories which historically guaranteed sneers and jarring looks in public—are now signifiers of “cool” girls, or more precisely, the “good” whores.

The concept of “good” whores versus “bad” whores stems from the same Madonna Whore Complex (MWC) 3 binary that plagues women. In the same way that the MWC creates feminine hierarchies based on differing levels of purity, the idea of “good” whores versus “bad” whores creates what is called the whorearchy, classifying some SWers as pure and others as impure. These hierarchies, whether those afflicting women or whores, operate from subjective standpoints and will differ between social groups and classes. For example, within some religions, a woman who has sex before marriage will likely be considered impure, while under the whorearchy, a prostitute who has unprotected sex for money will likely be considered impure in some sex-working circles. 

The civilian woman has found a way to appropriate the socially acceptable aspects of sex work–sexiness, independence, and femininity, to name a few–through the signifiers of SWer dress and dance. By playing the whore, the civilian woman offers polite society the newfound position of “good” whore, that is, a woman who will never negotiate her sexuality for profit, but will exploit the whore’s aesthetics for her own social gain. In this way, the cosplaying whore offers a means of redemption for the “bad” whores (the SWers); an example of what they could be if they stopped whoring and began to use their sexual capital in ways that are socially acceptable, for instance, becoming a devoted wife, who only fucks her husband like a whore. The “good” whores are rewarded at institutional and social levels for their work in assimilating the “bad” whores into polite society, by being allowed to remain honest and open about their behaviours without fear of repercussions.

 

Systemic Oppression of SWers

Firstly, it’s essential to establish that SWers face various forms of oppression, regardless of their position under the umbrella term “sex work.” Strippers, who often occupy a more privileged position within the industry, nonetheless face institutionalized marginalization. Street-based workers, by contrast, bear the brunt of this oppression.

The passing of Bill C-36 in 2014 and its subsequent reforms, such as section 213 under “Stopping or Impeding Traffic” of the Canadian Criminal Code4, highlights that the Canadian government is intentionally targeting street workers by forcing them to move their work to more hidden areas, such as industrial zones, and therefore more dangerous areas. The movements of street-working women are surveilled and criminalized through many means, with this reform being but one example. Additionally, the adoption of the Nordic model—which criminalizes clients—makes safety measures such as client verification and screening increasingly difficult for full-service SWers, as Johns5 frequently wish to keep anonymity in the face of criminal activity.

Though they often aren’t vulnerable to all the same types of oppression, it is not uncommon for erotic dancers to also face forms of systematic marginalization. Authors Celeste Ivy and Melina May expose the ways that local governments use zoning, urban planning, and business licensing regulations as a guise for “sanitizing” the city of its sex-working communities in so-called Montréal (tiohtià:ke).6 For instance, the purchase of new strip club permits is forbidden in the city, ensuring the progressive decline of clubs over time. These regulations allow cities to effectively and discreetly eradicate, not only strip clubs, but red light districts as a whole, and consequently SWers themselves.

The ways in which the present-day Canadian government uses systemic oppression–explicitly and implicitly–to marginalize a plethora of different SWers is unequivocally clear. These attacks on sex-working communities are only reinforced through civilian populations, such as circus performers and pole dancers, who wish to dress up and play the part of the SWer, without ever facing the lived realities of SWers.7

Circus and Pole Dance in History

The sex-working roots of pole dance, and even circus, are non-negotiable. Although pole dancing has various roots in Celtic, Indian, and Chinese cultures, the dance form–in the context of erotic dance–originates from the creative use of the tents’ central pole structure in circus performances by belly dancers.8  The dance became known as “hoochie-coochie” and was often performed by belly dancers, namely, Little Egypt.

The name Little Egypt embodies a plethora of women who have used it as a stage name, but two women in particular are responsible for the legacy behind the name and dance: Ashea Waba and Fahreda Mahzar.9 Waba and Mahzar, though not the first of their kind, were similarly influential on the sex work industry as their striptease performances were foundational to the practice that would eventually evolve into professional stripping. 

Waba, notably, was involved in a highly controversial incident known as “Seeley’s Dinner” in 1896, which became the central focus of the media and a consequent trial at the time, and was arrested on several occasions for performing “offensive” dances.10 Although Waba was a highly successful and wealthy woman by the time of her death, she faced oppression in the form of media sensationalism, ridicule, and penal persecution for her performances throughout her life. Waba and her taboo striptease were emblematic of the violence and marginalization that strippers would come to face in contemporary times.

Additionally, during the vaudeville era of circus performances in particular, the worlds of sex work and circus were much less divided. A section of the circus grounds was commonly reserved for burlesque-stripping performances (where strip club culture partially originated from), while another area was reserved for women to find men for full-service sex work.11 At this time, there was much less of a separation and stigma between SWers and performers.

When considering the origins of pole dance in striptease and circus acts, it becomes clear that sex work has been intertwined intrinsically with pole dance at its roots and throughout history. Since modern fitness pole dance originated from strip club pole dance, it is therefore also inextricably linked to sex work and cannot and should not be meaningfully separated from it.

The Whore in Popular Media

In 2024, Sean Baker’s film Anora captivated a broad audience while portraying what some consider an honest stripper tale. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture, among many other awards, making it one of the first of its kind: that is, a prestigious award-winning film whose protagonist is both a full-service SWer and a stripper. When considering other stripper and SWer representations in recent popular media, we see that Anora does not stand alone.

Baker’s film comes hand-in-hand with a variety of other popular cultural references to sex work. To name a few, Garage’s recent pole dance advertising campaign, popular fashion brands selling garments traditionally associated with SWers/strippers, and celebrities adorning these outfits themselves. Naming all of these examples could fill a book by itself, but some household brand names that come to mind are Poster Girl, Shein, and the retailer SSENSE. As for celebrities, it’s common for A-listers such as Kylie Jenner, Doja Cat, and Lady Gaga to sport shapewear dresses and platform Pleasers or Hella Heels at red carpets, photoshoots, and concerts. 

For most SWers, listing these examples here may feel redundant, as the image of celebrities in nightclubs and on red carpets in their Pleasers with fishnet bodysuits has been seared into our collective consciousness. Even better, the exorbitant prices of the teeny high-fashion branded one pieces–that look like what we would wear to work–have already been mocked and scoffed at in the locker rooms of hundreds of clubs. However, the “representation” of SWers and their garb in popular media is an important turning point to record, as despite this increasing representation, SWers continue to have little to no rights as workers or humans.

This appropriation in popular media has an effect on both civilians and SWers. As we are seeing an influx of “visibility” in popular media, we’re also seeing it in popular culture, most commonly in areas of dance and performance. Not only has the garb and story of the SWer been taken and reappropriated, but so has the dance. Two notable examples come to mind, circus performers and pole dancers, who seem to be increasingly interested in sensual performances. This appropriation stands dull, both physically and ideologically, beside the continued systemic oppression of SWers and their everyday realities.

Pole Dancers

In the last twenty years, pole dancing—a historically taboo and evocative dance—has entered the mainstream. This trend is confirmed by the numerous civilian women who have become online personalities and influencers through their pole dancing fitness accounts, alongside the continuously skyrocketing number of in-person pole dancing fitness classes. Kerry Allen notes this sudden influx in her piece Poles Apart, in which she records that “The Miss Pole Dance UK website states that between 2005 and 2007 the number of dance schools offering pole dancing fitness classes grew by 4200%.”12

Self-proclaimed independent erotic artist Anna-Liisa, for example, has over 160 000 followers on TikTok and has successfully created a lifestyle brand out of sensual pole dance. Anna-Liisa is more often than not seen in a micro bikini, tights, and Pleasers in her content.

Scouring Anna-Liisa’s Instagram, TikTok, Patreon, personal website, and other sites connected to the sensual dancing collective she founded reveals little to no mention of sex work. 13 The only semi-easily accessible mentions of sex work come from story posts on Anna-Liisa’s Instagram highlights section about discounted tickets for SWers and condemning whorephobia at her events. Regardless of these passive mentions of SWers, Anna-Liisa has failed to engage in any discussion regarding the sex-working roots of pole dance and the ever-present stigma against modern SWers and strippers.

Anna Liisa’s website states that “her mission is to claim space for authentic femme sensuality within the performance and theatre world by bridging the gap between technical pole dance and true female sexuality.”14 Her Instagram helps to define the core of her pole dancing as “exploring how to move in ways that feel good and that simultaneously transpire an aesthetic story for yourself or somebody watching.”15 

Despite an alleged mission to integrate feminism in her work, Anna-Liisa remains overwhelmingly quiet on issues concerning the workers upon whom she built her pole dancing brand. In addition, the labelling of her pole dancing as “technical” implies that pole dancing as a stripper lacks the level of sophistication that her hobbyist pole dancing maintains. Defining striptease, pole dance, and heel dance as an “aesthetic story,” particularly in the face of refusing to advocate for, or acknowledge, SWer struggles, emphasizes Anna-Liisa’s ignorant appropriation of historically and currently marginalized working-class people and their dance. 

Although Anna-Liisa is one example of the appropriative tendencies of pole dancers, she is emblematic of a much larger trend of whorephobia and a misunderstanding of feminism in the pole dance community. Allen discovered in her research that pole dancers in the UK typically “displayed confused and ambiguous understandings of the concept of feminism.”16 In addition, the pole dancers that Allen interviewed and studied typically distanced themselves from the sex-working roots of pole dance:

The women in this study positioned pole dancing as something respectable often by describing it in comparison to other activities which were seen as ‘worse’ than fitness pole dancing, or less respectful, suggesting, for example, ‘it’s not like I’m taking my clothes off (Amy). Much of both the advertising of these classes and also the ways in which the women I interviewed describe pole dancing is by stressing what pole dancing is not. It is described as something unlike the ‘ordinary’ aerobics class, yet also unlike what is described as the ‘sleazy’ pole dancing which occurs in lap dancing clubs. Fitness pole dancing is instead positioned by my respondents as something which is separate from both of these spheres and which retains a superiority or distinction from both the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘sleaze’.17

We see here that there is a contemporary trend of civilian women appropriating the signifiers of sex work for social gain, allowing them to appear sexy in social contexts without being legally or socially persecuted for being a whore.

These whorephobic ideals culminated in the 2010s with the popularity of the hashtag #NotAStripper among pole dancers, who deliberately distanced themselves from SW, due to the stigma attached to the work, while appropriating the very dance of SWers. Searching #NotAStripper reveals a post from X user Danielle Orellana that states, “No, I’m not a stripper. Anyone can take their clothes off. But pole dance takes discipline, determination, strength of body and mind, and HARD WORK.” 

Whorephobia presents itself clearly in many aspects of the pole dance community, but is particularly evident in the refusal to acknowledge SW roots of pole dance or other “sensual” dances, ignorance of SW struggles, and pole dancers’ adamant distance from association with SWers. Pole dancers’ deliberate erasure and condemnation of SWers is incoherent with their common goals of feminism, as they exclude a population of largely working-class women from their “feminism.” The whorephobic ideals that civilian pole dancing women perpetuate are demonstrative of a desire to maintain status within feminine hierarchies.

Circus Performers

As modern fitness pole dancing has increased in popularity, the dance form has found its way back to the circus industry. From observational experience an increase of circus performers have become pole artists. On another note, there is less funding towards the arts and as circus companies are facing budget cuts, there is more pressure on succeeding as their odds decrease. Many companies lean into making shows sexy as producers and directors often think it is what would be desired by audiences, and easier to sell to the general public. Sex sells.  

Despite increases in sexy performances within circus communities and companies, there is plenty of stigma directed towards SWers, and more specifically strippers. Many circus artists come from a pole dance background and once in circus, often play the role of stripper and SWer, while having no connection to SW and the SWing roots of pole. For example, Bernard Cabaret Gourmand—a bar with aerial circus performances—recently opened in tiohtià:ke (Montréal), where girls are often hired to put on Pleaser shoes and lingerie; another indisputable appropriation of SWer’s dress particularly in the context of no sexual labor.  

Some directors and people in roles of power in the circus industry hold a reputation for coercing performers into sensual or sexual roles, characters and outfits while not receiving sufficient compensation in return. Circus artists are often coerced into showing more skin, moving more sexually than they feel comfortable, whereas, as strippers, the performance exchange is a similar dynamic yet, generally within each dancer’s boundaries as they are willingly consenting to do their work, knowing they will receive substantial pay in return. Refusing to pay circus artists fairly for sexual performances is not only an industry malpractice but may also be a product of the circus industry’s whorephobic tendencies.

Companies such as the Seven Fingers and Cirque du Soleil have hired women to play the part of the whore despite a clear disconnect from the many diverse realities of SWers. Often the performers are doing beautiful, technical, and energetic work, yet it’s a precarious line because they are representing SWers who aren’t in a place to represent themselves. While the performers are also often playing a role or character that misrepresents the SWer or is only represented in a show with a fetishized or unbalanced intent.  

Parallel to this, there is a culture of shaming people in circus who perform in more sensual and sexual attire, and who do more splits, as this movement is often associated with sexual movements, and seen as easier than more power type movements. There is a fine line between performing while being cute, and looking too slutty from the civilian perspective, something we also see among the pole dancing community.

Many circus artists also shame SWers, more specifically strippers. Those within these communities of circus and pole fitness often make whorephobic comments towards those who chose and perform sexual services.  

We see here that since the vaudeville era, the relationships between circus, pole fitness and SWers has evolved into separate industries. Circus and Pole communities reflect one another in their overall negative outlook on SWers, having once been connected and cohesive.

Are you a Good Whore or a Bad Whore?

Refusing to recognize the lived experience of SWers, lives of which are more often than not precarious and highly stigmatized—especially in the case of more marginalized workers such as people of colour or trans folks —reveals that the recent representations, by way of SWer clothing, dance, and stories, namely among pole dance and circus performers, are merely forms of appropriation. 

In putting down and ignoring the oppressed SWer—while claiming her dance and dress— the civilian woman gains social merit and higher status within feminine social hierarchies. Pole dancers themselves, as mentioned above, actively balance between a feminine identity associated with “sleaze” and a feminine identity associated with “ordinary,” so that they are perceived just right in social contexts.18 Kerry writes:

[Pole dancing] women felt a pressure to position and balance themselves, manage impressions of themselves, and work hard at their identity in order to position themselves on the ‘respectable’ part of this continuum, somewhere in the middle, this being regarded as the most appropriately feminine identity and in line with cultural expectations of femininity. 19 


In this way, civilian women occupy the position of “good” whores, that is, engaging in socially acceptable displays of sexiness and femininity, while the sex-working woman occupies the position of a “bad” whore, which carries stigma for “selling” one’s body and perceived social deviancy. The concept of “good” whores versus “bad” whores is highlighted–however intentionally or not–by Allen’s research as she and her interviewees position recreational pole dancing as different or not “ordinary” yet, without the “sleaze” attached to the pole dancing that strippers do.20 In this sense, civilian fitness pole dancers have reappropriated the dance and dress of the “bad” whores, and modified them into generally accepted social practices under the guise of feminism, community, and fitness.

The civilian woman is rewarded at an institutional and social level for reappropriating the SWer’s “bad” behaviours into newly adapted and “good” socially acceptable behaviours. This reward is evident in these women often being celebrated for their efforts of empowerment,21 and the ability to continue to use institutional benefits without fear of any form of systemic or social oppression. Allen’s research on the pole dancer and performer Kate demonstrates this privilege, as she can be honest with her son about what she does and perform at large public events:

Kate performs pole dancing at events including balls and dinner-dances, where she is hired to perform a pole routine on the stage. Kate has a young son, and she described in her interview how she had explained to him her occupation as a fitness pole dance instructor and as a performer at events by presenting it as something respectable, in comparison to working in a lap dancing club…Kate described that she performs pole dancing at ‘really quite respectable events’ and ‘occasionally I get the odd like ‘woooooo’ as I come on stage, because they think I’m gonna do something else, and then I do like a dancey performance and it goes down well’. By contrasting this to the pole dancing which takes place in lap dancing clubs, Kate aims to demonstrate her own respectability, but by doing this emphasises her perception of the disrespectability of both strippers and their male customers.22

It is evident that pole dancers or circus performers who engage in more sensual performances do not face the same risks that SWers do when claiming income, crossing borders, or seeking clientele, just to name a few. This is clearly demonstrated by Kate, who pole dances at “respectable” events and is therefore regarded as moral and good. It is undeniable that these performers casually play the whore from a position of extreme privilege, all while undermining the experiences of modern SWers. In this sense, recreational fitness pole dancers, along with sensual circus performers, have exacerbated the concept of “good” whores versus “bad” whores and contributed to a growing social sense of whorephobia and the whorearchy.

Conclusion

Increased visibility and representation—when it can be called so—of SWers and their aesthetics in popular culture is not synonymous with decreased whorephobia at legal or social levels, and, alternatively, often takes the form of appropriation. As we know all too well, contemporary SWers remain marginalized at an institutional level, from federal laws down to city zoning permits. Socially, the SWer remains an undesirable, despite their dress and dance becoming a contemporary signifier of the “cool” and “unique” civilian woman. This is a trend notably perpetuated by circus performers and modern fitness pole dancers, who rely on the SWers styles for their performances while typically distancing themselves from association with sex work and SWers. 

When the civilian woman appropriates the SWer’s style and movements, she does so for social and institutional gain. Socially, she is rewarded for finding a balance between the regular and the taboo, while institutionally, the cosplaying whore faces no repercussions for her actions. The civilian woman is rewarded for her efforts in assimilating the SWer into polite society, that is, transforming the SWer into a free whore. She takes the acceptable aspects of SW that give her social merit, such as independence, sexiness, and charm, while removing any connection to sexual labour or its profits. She has discovered a way to tame the whore and is honoured for it.  

Though the civilian performer who takes inspiration from SWers will remain forever opaque in the eyes of some SWers, there remain ways in which these performers can imitate more mindfully. Namely, these performers can advocate for the rights and recognition of SWers as workers and humans, while making it clear to their students and audiences that if they have a problem with sex work, they are not welcome in these spaces. Teachers and studios in particular could make concerted efforts to offer discounted or—even better—free classes to their sex-working students. However, we all know the often performative nature that “activism” takes when disconnected civilians attempt to partake. To illustrate this, we present McDonald’s Canada’s land acknowledgement section of their website.23 

Alternatively, or in conjunction, SWers should advocate for systems that do not allow these hierarchies—such as the whorearchy—to persist. In the meantime, SWers and their allies must show up and out in the struggle for SWer rights as humans and workers. SWers should continue to disrupt the dominant and arbitrary understandings of “good” women and “good” whores, the same understandings that stigmatize and oppress our racialized, queer, and other marginalized comrades. We must remain increasingly wary of attempts at representation in popular media and culture, lest they further this concept of the “good” whore and perpetuate whorephobia against our more marginalized comrades. Simply put, we must reject being forcibly squeezed into a patriarchal-capitalist mold and refuse to be neatly assimilated into the very system that oppresses us. We want to keep whoring on our own terms!

1. Non-sex-working population. ↩

2. The hatred, disgust, or fear of SWers among civilian populations, or internalized in sex-working populations. ↩

3. The Madonna Whore Complex is a psychoanalytical phenomena in which men see women as either angelic Madonnas or degenerate Whores. ↩

4. “Everyone is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction who, in a public place or in any place open to public view, for the purpose of offering, providing or obtaining sexual services for consideration.” ↩

5. The client purchasing the services of a SWer, may also be called a trick. ↩

6. Celeste Ivy and Melina May. (2024). The Power Wielded by Cities: Striving for Local Resistance, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/cities-cats ↩

7. Not to say that every SWers experience is inherently bad or violent, but rather that increased social stigma and legal persecution, among other forms of marginalization, creates a difficult work and living environment. ↩

8. Nikki Cagle. (2013). Evolution of the “Hoochie Coochie” Show from 1893 to the Modern Sex Industry (unpublished master’s thesis, Morehead State University). ↩

9. Katherine Vecchio. (2019). Little Egypt: A Critical Biography (unpublished master’s thesis, City University of New York). ↩

10. Ibid. ↩

11. A. W. Stencell. (1999). Girl Show: Into the Canvas World of Bump and Grind, Toronto: ECW Press. and Rachel Shteir. (2004). Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show, New York: Oxford University Press. ↩

12.  Kerry Louise Allen. (2011). Poles Apart? Women Negotiating Femininity and Feminism in the Fitness Pole Dancing Class, p. 10, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/poles-apart ↩

13. When this article was written the information on the mentioned pole dancer was gathered from their social media accounts and websites, some of which have since been deleted and are no longer as easily accessible. ↩

14. Anna-Liisa. (n.d.). About – anna-liisa. Anna-Liisa. Retrieved November 28th, 2024, from https://annaliisa.net/about ↩

15. Anna-Liisa. [@annaliisa____]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram profile]. Instagram. Retrieved November 28th, 2024, from https://www.instagram.com/annaliisa____/?hl=en ↩

16. Kerry Louise Allen. (2011). Poles Apart? Women Negotiating Femininity and Feminism in the Fitness Pole Dancing Class, p. 19, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/poles-apart↩

17. Ibid. ↩

18. Ibid.↩

19. Ibid. ↩

20. Ibid. ↩

21. See Cami Arboles, a Harvard graduate who became an internet personality from posting a video of her in a grad cap and gown while pole dancing. Arobles represents one among many pole dancers who have made acclaimed internet brands from pole dancing. ↩

22. Kerry Louise Allen. (2011). Poles Apart? Women Negotiating Femininity and Feminism in the Fitness Pole Dancing Class, p. 169-170, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/poles-apart ↩

23. Not to say that all land acknowledgements are made in bad faith, or not important, but rather to highlight the irony in McDonald’s participation in them and the sometimes performative nature of them (thank you folks at the Drug User Liberation Front).↩

CatsMTL

Why are we striking? Q&A

Why are we striking? Q&A

Since launching the call to strike, we received several questions and criticism, particularly regarding our demand for a worker status. Since we feel it’s important to answer these legitimate concerns, we’re going to explain our views regarding this important matter.

Independent Contractors vs. Employees

CATS operates from the understanding that since strippers are already subject to employer regulations, and oftentimes abuse, they should receive the benefits that employees receive, which in turn allow them to fight against managerial abuse. Specifically, the benefits that unionized employees receive. That being sick leave, parental leave, paid time off for work related injuries, a livable wage, among many other standard worker rights. As it stands now, SWers who work under some form of management, i.e. strippers or parlour workers, occupy an extremely precarious position. These workers, who are without a semblance of workers’ rights, have to go along with whatever management throws at them, or risk losing their job.

We believe that our management uses the bar fee and our ambiguous worker status of “independent contractors” as a means of wage theft. While we either pay to work, or have a portion of our earnings taken from us, we do unpaid labour for our management. This labour includes but is not limited to cleaning, entertaining clients, and stage sets. These are all examples of labour that SWers do at our own expense. At the end of the day there are many nights (increasingly so), in the example of a strip club, where dancers come in, work an 8 hour shift, speak with many clients, do multiple stage sets, leave without earning any money, and still pay a bar fee of $25-$100 to be there. The bar fee and our status as “independent contractors” is exploitative, plain and simple.

If we are recognized as workers, we will lose our flexible schedules and accommodations. Employers will have even more leeway to discriminate.

Being recognized as workers doesn’t mean we’ll lose our freedom, quite the opposite! Right now, our schedules and work pace are dictated by the need to earn enough to pay the bills. In fact, you’re not able to call in sick if you haven’t made enough money and the 1st of the month is coming up. You’re not able to take breaks when you haven’t made a cent all evening and you’re in the red. Research from the website Bedbible showed that a dancer’s hourly income is only $20 USD, or about $27 CAD. According to IRIS, you need to earn an hourly of $28 and work full-time to live decently in Montreal. The ability to work whenever you want is therefore very relative. 

Furthermore, nothing obliges employers to guarantee flexible schedules: more and more workplaces are imposing shifts on weekdays, penalties for coming in late, and requiring dancers to stay until 3 a.m. One bar even requires you to book your shifts several months in advance. 

True freedom means access to paid time off. To achieve this, we shouldn’t compare ourselves to the worst jobs, but rather to unionized workplaces. Unionization allows for the negotiation of various employee benefits: sick leave, flexible time off, parental leave, and so on. It is also possible to have paid breaks. Employees do not have less control over their work pace; on the contrary, time theft is commonplace.

Furthermore, unionization formalizes schedule management, which leads to less discrimination. There are two legitimate ways to set schedules: seniority or first-come, first-served. By establishing a transparent practice in a collective bargaining agreement, we ensure that discriminatory scheduling practices are eliminated in our clubs, as the dancers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco did by unionizing. It is also possible to request accommodations for people with disabilities or for parents. Of course, a militant and mobilized union is more likely to secure better working conditions. If schedule flexibility is important, we have to make it a union priority to make sure it stays.

If we were recognized as workers, we would face deductions from our income and be required to pay taxes.

Criminalization and informality do not exempt us from paying taxes. In fact, in practice, we are supposed to declare all the money we earn. Many sex workers already report their income, in whole or in part, despite the illegitimacy or stigma surrounding their work. The government regularly audits individuals who make cash deposits, which can lead to penalties.

While declaring income may reduce our net earnings, it also allows access to essential protections, including contributions to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP), as well as employment insurance which would provide benefits that  many workers would like to access.

Declaring income would also provide greater legitimacy in many aspects of everyday life. For example, it becomes easier to rent housing, as landlords often require proof of income; it can simplify access to certain financial services; and it allows for long-term financial planning and savings.

In this sense, being recognized as workers is not only a tax burden—it can also be seen as a pathway to accessing rights, social protections, and greater long-term financial stability. Of course, we cannot and do not encourage tax evasion, but it is very likely that employers prefer to keep cash within their establishments. 😉

If we obtain worker status, migrant colleagues will be put in an even more precarious position, as they will no longer be able to work in this informal industry.

Migrant workers are present in all industries, not just criminalized work. On the other hand, it is true that they face a risk of deportation whether we organize or not. At present, immigration laws—combined with criminal provisions related to sex work—encourage increased repression of migrant sex workers. Police surveillance is common in our workplaces and primarily serves deportation objectives. Migrant sex workers may face loss of status, incarceration, and deportation if their work is discovered. In addition, bosses exploit the precarity of their status to threaten, manipulate, and control them.

The solution is not fewer rights, but more rights. In fact, migrant worker groups themselves are calling for access to labour standards regardless of immigration status. 

Creating unions in our workplaces is also a strategy to push for decriminalization. If sex work were decriminalized, the laws governing it would shift from the realm of criminal law to that of labour law. This would allow sex workers with student visas or temporary work permits to work in the industry just as they do in other sectors.

We know that decriminalizing sex work will not instantly liberate our migrant colleagues. That is why we must stand in solidarity with them and align our demands with those put forward by migrant groups—particularly status for all and access to labour rights. By organizing in unions, we can push for demands such as ending police presence in our workplaces and organizing campaigns against the deportation of our colleagues.

If we move to an employee status, we will lose our right to refuse clients, presenting a critical safety issue.

Unfortunately in some workplaces, this is already the case. Oftentimes in massage parlours, once a client chooses a worker, the worker is unable to refuse the service, either because of a lack of managerial presence/protection or because the management threatens a penalty if the worker refuses to provide the service. The same happens in strip clubs. A familiar situation: the boss proposes that you dance for their friend. In this case, it is typically in your best interest to comply if you wish to keep your job or your good standing with management. Here, the power dynamic that is already at play, sets the grounds for the boss’s friend to push your boundaries or even refuse to pay you the amount you are due, since reporting them to the boss would inevitably put you in a precarious situation. 

If we look at how sex work is being regulated in other places, we see the potential for what an employee status has to offer! In Belgium, where sex work was decriminalized in 2022, a new legal framework was passed in 2024 which gives sex workers employee contracts with concrete rights and protections. This includes 1) the right to refuse clients without financial penalty; 2) 6 months compensation if you happen to be fired for refusing a client; 3) the right to terminate your contract at any time; and 4) the application of a labour law which encourages the prevention of psychosocial risks at work.

Quebec’s labour law has recently taken steps in a similar direction: as of October 2025, Bill 27 imposes new obligations on employers to protect the psychological health of their employees with the same rigour that they would their physical health. Employers are now obligated to identify and prevent “psychosocial risks” in the workplace. These risks include: “work overload or imbalance between effort and reward; lack of autonomy or support from supervisors or colleagues; lack of recognition or organizational injustice; psychological harassment or workplace violence.” 

If we take this into consideration, with the framework that Belgium has put in place, we have reason to believe that an employee status would actually provide us more protections and rights than what we currently have, as these conditions would allow us not only to refuse clients but also ensure that we would not risk our jobs in doing so. 

If we demand more rights, we will enter into a constant power struggle with management.

That’s the point! As it stands right now, management does what they want, when they want, and we comply so that we can keep our jobs. That’s not freedom, it’s exploitation–and the current power imbalance makes it possible. The thing is, we have power as a collective, we just haven’t seized it yet. That’s why we must organize. As sex workers, we can be fired for the most ridiculous reasons. It’s either having no protections at all or having some protections by organizing with our co-workers.  It’s a constant battle, and it’s scary, but we believe we have more to win than to lose! 

Note about CATS “Enforcing” Strike and Demands

We won’t spend too long on this but we have received critiques for “enforcing” our demands in workplaces other than our own. We want to remind folks that we are not cops and we are not management. We don’t hold authority over anybody. We are your coworkers and neighbours. We are sex workers who are actively organizing in our own workplaces. You are not obligated to do anything with us, in fact we have absolutely no means of enforcing that in the first place. We are, however, strongly encouraging those who are ready to fight workplace abuse to take a stand with us, as we show our strength in numbers. 

Some folks may not be ready for action, and that is completely understandable. As SWers we stand at the intersection of many forms of oppression and often lead lives that are precarious, making political action very difficult. However, CATS will be around whenever folks are ready to take action against their oppressors and take actions.

In solidarity!

CatsMTL

The Illegitimacy of Sexual Preferences as a Hiring Criteria

The Illegitimacy of Sexual Preferences as a Hiring Criteria

By Cherry Blue
Visual by Texas

Almost everyone – except some “happy hookers” – agrees that there is to a certain extent discrimination in the sex work industry. It comes in many forms, grouped under two broad categories: discrimination against SWers in general society, and discrimination from the managers in the industry. There is much to say about the risks and the stigmatization SWers experience in a system where this line of work is not recognized. For instance, there is the risk of being fired from another job, the possibility of losing custody of your child,  the lack of recourse if a client refuses to pay, and especially the fact that there is neither legal right nor protection for sex work.1 This stigma also stems from a long history of structural oppression which discriminates against SWers by degrading them and confining them in the fictitious role of culprit or victim.

However, I want to focus more specifically on the question of abuse from employers. The frequency of these abuses remains linked to the broader stigmatization of sex work. Because of this vulnerability, SWers are subjected to discriminatory criteria during the hiring processes in strip clubs, massage parlors, or escort agencies.2 SWers may then be outright refused a job or subsequently fired based on lookist, racist, fatphobic, ageist, and transphobic standards of attractiveness.

According to Deborah Hellman, discrimination is bad when it is degrading towards those who are subject to it, as it shows a lack of respect for the moral standing of others who are then considered as lesser. Moreover, the discriminating person must occupy a position that grants them a certain power over those they’re degrading. Discrimination rises from structural conditions intrinsically linked to systems of oppression, which generates a series of social significations. The meaning of those systems is often outlined to the advantage of their beneficiaries: hierarchies are presented as “rational” by the oppressors in order to justify their position at the top.

 

Employer Abuses during the Hiring Process: Nicholson’s Case

The story of Chanel Nicholson is paradigmatic of what occurs in the industry. In 2021, she sued the owners of a strip club in Houston on the grounds of racial discrimination during the hiring process: “the clubs enforced a ‘quota’ system that limited the number of Black women allowed to work. Once the quota was filled, additional Black women were denied the opportunity to perform solely based on their race”.3 The dancer argued this was a recurring systemic problem in the industry. The lack of regulation in a context of criminalization leads to the normalization of these situations like the one denounced by Nicholson.

Nicholson’s story checks both of Hellman’s boxes: Black SWers are viewed as having a lesser moral status. This degradation is itself tied to the employers’ power status in a society where the rights of those SWers are not recognized. Employers can then decide they need to meet specific “quotas”, which puts many communities at a disadvantage based on degrading grounds, without any possibility of recourse. Of note, the justice system has not held Nicholson’s employers accountable following her lawsuit. Access to these establishments is limited for non-white women, who are reduced to an “exoticism” that must remain almost invisible. This morally reprehensible direct discrimination infringes on the rights of people who wish to work in these places. Unfortunately, it is a common practice, even if it is not always explicit. Along the same lines, many employers only want to hire one or two less-slim people per establishment, or want few or no older workers, thereby reducing them to mere, seldom-requested kinks.

Work Discrimination and Qualifications Based on Reactions

Sarah C. Goff conceptualized a prevailing form of discrimination in the workplace, which she calls “taste discrimination”. Taste discrimination is defined as the act of hiring persons based on prejudicial preferences or ignorance on a group of people in regards to how profitable they are.Work Discrimination and Qualifications Based on Reactions In recognized professional settings, this type of discrimination appears indirectly in the form of implicit biases, since it is illegal to directly discriminate against specific groups of people. However in sex work settings, taste discrimination is more overt because employers directly discriminate and show explicit biases towards certain groups, like in Nicholson’s case.

Some employers justify their hiring process on meritocratic grounds – they argue that the most competent people should have access to the positions they’re most qualified for. Yet Hellman criticizes this meritocratic ideal, stating it stems from the employers’ personal interest, which is ethically unjustifiable. Degrading discrimination can still be perpetrated, with employers taking advantage of their position of power to draw distinctions that are historically charged with meaning.

Another justification employers bring up is qualification based on the clients’ reactions, implying that customer preferences play a decisive factor in evaluating a candidate’s qualification. The merit of potential employees is thus measured according to this assessment. This reaction-based logic is crucial to understand the decision-making process of employers in the sex work industry. Employers make discriminatory hiring decisions based on their pseudo-rational analyses of client preferences in the hopes that this will bring in more clients and increase profits.

But do the clients’ problematic preferences really need to be satisfied? If these preferences discriminate against historically oppressed members of certain groups, this type of discrimination generates cumulative harm against them. One of the particularities of the sex work industry is that it bases almost all skill criteria on the appearance of workers in regards to the sexual preferences of clients, as if these preferences were uncontrollable or even innate. The sex work industry is systematically lookist, racist, fatphobic, ageist and transphobic, but we believe it is possible to transform these biased preferences to make them more inclusive.

The Structural Aspect of Sexual Preferences

In all work environments, beauty privilege is associated with greater economic success. People who do not conform to beauty standards, on the other hand, are often at a disadvantage in hiring situations. The refusal to submit to certain beauty standards comes at a significant price, hence why SWers have to comply with these standards. However this is a double-edged sword, since outside the industry SWers are frequently hypersexualized and subjected to slut shaming. As such, the misogyny behind lookism implies a double cost, whether women conform to beauty standards or not. This duality is comparable to the problem of fetishization, which can be as dehumanizing as exclusion.5

Amnia Srinivasan argues that personal preferences are, in fact, rarely personal.6 Given the repeated preference of clients for ‘beautiful’ slim white women under the age of 25, it is hard to deny the existence of dominant trends in these sexual preferences, which are not innate but socially constructed. The social dimensions that shape those desires are not trivial and must be analyzed. The sex work industry is a reflection of larger structural problems, which are the product of long histories of oppression. While lookism, fatphobia, racism, or transphobia are not equivalent, they each shape clients’ sexual preferences in distinct ways and unjustly restrict access to sex work.

A frequent counter-critique of the malleability of preferences asserts that they are uncontrollable, arising from an irrational and mysterious force. A similar critique draws from an essentialized form of Darwinism, maintaining that lookist preferences naturally assure better reproduction. Employers may invoke these presuppositions to defend their discriminatory employment choices. Yet, our preferences can evolve over time as we gain experience and change our values system. So, it is not true that desires are set in stone, and if the “offer” is more diversified in the sex work industry, it could incite clients to broaden their scope of preferences. Through this exposure, Sherri Irvin encourages “aesthetic exploration”, enabling the expansion of tastes and the fight against oppression.7 Notably, post-pornography and movies that adopted the female gaze have this subversive purpose.

The dominating sexual preferences are often based on problematic stereotypes, which imply that the members of certain groups are universally attractive or unattractive. Discrimination by employers and clients often replicates these preferences. The decision-making power they share arises from a structural layering of historical injustices. This implicit collaboration among individuals with shared interests is not merely a remnant of a violent past but is continually reproduced within the industry.

  Are anti-discrimination laws a solution?

As such this hiring process can seem justified due to its “rational” economic calculations responding to the market demands of client preferences. But it is still a morally reprehensible, degrading form of discrimination that results in unfair actions, which tend to be even more degrading when carried out by people in positions of power. According to Hellman, it is governments and institutions that wield a greater responsibility to address discrimination rather than individuals, especially when the latter don’t have access to the dominating structures. However, this does not mean that we should not individually engage in a form of critical self-reflection on our own biases.

Still, applying anti-discrimination laws in the private sphere remains difficult and likely intrusive, since nobody wants to be compelled in their private sexual life. Those in positions of public authority, i.e. establishments where sex work occurs, should however be regulated through anti-discrimination laws prohibiting businesses from discriminating against workers from specific groups. It would function as a regulatory coercive force over employers’ decisions, should decriminalization legally recognize these establishments.

That being said, anti-discrimination laws are limited by the interconnection of the private and public spheres. Why rely exclusively on anti-discrimination legislation, when such laws cannot penetrate the private sphere and may be regarded with contempt as an imposition restricting freedom? Like in other fields, discrimination may take more nefarious forms when legislation attempts to prevent it. For instance, indirect and structural discrimination are harder to prove than “quotas” directly restricting the amount of employees from a specific group, like in Nicholson’s case. A greater pluralism in terms of sexual preferences, promoted by popular education, could have an impact on the private sphere and the public sphere alike, institutionally or structurally, whereas the scope of anti-discrimination legislation is more limited. Both approaches could, of course, be implemented in tandem, with anti-discrimination laws helping to legitimize the notion that SWers are entitled to rights. Decriminalization plays an essential role in that regard: “As long as sex work is not recognized as legitimate work, it will remain difficult for sex workers to gain the same recognition and legitimacy granted to other workers”.8

Beyond legislation, we can also rely on the efficacy of unionization and the collective agreements it allows. Unions have significantly enhanced employment opportunities for marginalized groups in Canada overall, especially in sectors where labor is formally recognized9. However, SWers have not yet had access to a union allowing them to fight back against employment discrimination, with the exception of two strip clubs in the United States. After a long legal battle, the Lusty Ladies union succeeded in repelling a discriminatory policy at their club, which only allowed for one black woman to work per shift. This goes to show how effective collective agreements can be against discriminatory hiring processes. 

Anti-discrimination laws and unionization alone cannot guarantee a systemic reconfiguration of clients’ sexual preferences, but in addition to promoting greater fairness among different workers in relation to employers, they would expose clients to greater diversity in strip clubs, escort agencies, and massage parlors. For instance, collective agreements require that legitimate criteria be used for scheduling, eliminating the possibility of implicit or explicit bias against certain groups. This pluralistic exposure could, over time, influence social preferences toward greater malleability. While not addressing all injustices within the industry, these measures appear promising in at least countering the pervasive and odious discrimination entrenched in the status quo.

 As Srinivasan suggests, “feminists need not be saints. They must only […] be realists”.10 This realistic outlook must include the acknowledgement of intersectional complexity. In a misogynistic society, womxn are all oppressed, but they’re not all equally oppressed. The same goes for SWers – they are all oppressed in a whorephobic society, yet not all are oppressed to the same degree. Solidarity must go further than the destigmatization of sex work by acknowledging the prejudicial nature of lookist, racist, fatphobic, transphobic and ageist structures shaping sexual preferences. It is these preferences that influence the employers as to what kind of SWers they want to hire. Whether institutions produce these preferences, or preferences give rise to institutional inequalities, the chicken-or-egg question is largely irrelevant – as long as the cycle is broken.

1. Joseph Courtney, Morna Ballantyne. (2011). «Le travail du sexe: raisons pour lesquelles c’est une question syndicale» dans Luttes XXX: Inspirations du mouvement des travailleuses du sexe, p. 132.↩

2. While not technically a hiring process, since this type of work is not recognized, the reasoning remains the same, hence why I decided to use that term.↩

3. ReShonda Tate. (2025). Former exotic dancer takes fight for justice to the Supreme Court.↩

4. Sarah C. Goff. (2016). Discrimination and the Job Market, p. 302.↩

5. Tom O’Shea. (2021). Sexual desire and structural injustice, p. 588.↩

6. Amnia Srinivasan. (2021). The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, p. 88.↩

7. Sherri Irvin. (2017). Resisting Body Oppression: An Aesthetic Approach, p. 12.↩

8. Maria Nengeh Mensah et Cynthia, M.-N. et Lee, C. (2010). «Petites et Grandes Discriminations des Travailleuses du Sexe Au Québec Plaidoyer».↩

9. Joseph Courtney, Morna Ballantyne. (2011). «Le travail du sexe: raisons pour lesquelles c’est une question syndicale» dans Luttes XXX: Inspirations du mouvement des travailleuses du sexe, p. 131.↩

10. Amnia Srinivasan. (2021). The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, p. 171.↩

CatsMTL

Militant Inquiry: Exploring the Digital Brothel

Militant Inquiry: Exploring the Digital Brothel

Research, analysis, and writing by Francesca and Melina May

The digitalization of sex work has accelerated in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic1. SWers use the Internet in many ways; several move across both the physical and digital spaces of their work. For example, an escort might use the Internet to screen clients, book appointments, and at the same time perform on a webcam site. Alternatively, a dancer might use social media to be visible to her clientele and to share her work schedule.

Before computers entered homes and the widespread use of the Internet, SWers relied on other means to advertise their services. From tart cards2 posted in UK phone booths to classified ads in local newspapers and the Yellow Pages, SWers have always seized upon existing tools to promote their services.  

Alicia, an activist at the SWAC who worked in the industry in the 1990s and early 2000s, recalled how she and her colleagues used to place their ads in the Journal de Montréal. In just a few characters, without photos, and for $60 per publication, they would list their landline number and stayed home waiting for the phone to ring. Clients who stumbled across their ad in the daily paper would contact them and make an appointment. She remembers that in 2009, during the Québecor Média lockout3 that lasted more than two years, SWers’ activity dropped drastically, forcing some to move online — a whole new universe at the time. Alicia recalls how this transition changed workers’ practices. Suddenly they had to take photos, write enticing descriptions that went far beyond the 60 characters allowed in the newspaper and navigate a digital maze.

The era of print ads ended abruptly when Bill C-36 criminalized the advertising of prostitution in Canada in 2014. A few months later, the Yellow Pages and local newspapers announced they would stop running both online and print ads under the “escort services” section4. For many SWers, this marked the end of an accessible and familiar tool to directly reach local clients. From then on, many were forced to transition online. While there may have been a hundred ad sites at the time, as Alicia testified, today only a handful of sites dedicated specifically to escort services promotion remain. But their survival is constantly threatened. The exclusion and surveillance of SWers extended online. Laws like SESTA/FOSTA (Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act/Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act)5, combined with censorship policies imposed by credit card companies and social media platforms, push SWers off the Internet and make access to their means of work more precarious.

As explained by community organizer with the Immigrant Workers Center, Mostafa Henaway, “the more distance you have from the ground and the activism, your analysis becomes more obscure, less rigorous and sharp. When you’re grounded… it enriches both the research and the activism”7. Put differently, our methodology of research is not neutral: we are on the side of workers, and this shapes our findings and constitutes a political choice in itself. It was important to us that we didn’t rely on technology or algorithms to tell us how these platforms were impacting our community because; as explained in Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry, the experiences of workers are the foundation for the resistance and counter-organization that we seek8.  In order to actualize this, we chose to conduct interviews with users of these platforms about their experiences and working conditions. These interviews provided a clearer understanding of sex worker’s needs and the challenges they face on these platforms.

Why a Militant Inquiry?

Since the fall of 2023, SWAC has been conducting militant inquiries, with massage parlor workers and strip club dancers. This text follows in that vein. Our research identified a wide spectrum of online platforms6 used by sex workers, including content-hosting and subscription sites. Our study, however, concentrates specifically on platforms designed for advertising in-person services and their associated client review boards. We selected these because they are most relevant to the in-person community and, we believe, have the most potential for local organizing.

Given the global reach of these platforms, we did not restrict participation to geographical location. Our call for interviewees resulted in six participants. Of the six individuals we interviewed, we had one from Bas-Saint-Laurent, one from France, and four from Montreal. By speaking with a geographically diverse group, we gained comparative insight into multiple platforms’ benefits and limitations. Informed by critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw’s, Mapping the Margins9, we took into account that identity shapes experience, particularly for those marginalized by facets of their identity like race, class, gender, sexuality, or disability. Recognizing that our participants’ identities could significantly influence their experiences on these platforms, we felt that it was important to collect specific demographic data from all individuals, including information on whether they identified as BIPOC, disabled or neurodiverse, or LGBTQIA2S+. All participants identified as white, neurodiverse, and queer, and none cited their identity as impacting their experiences on these platforms. We share these demographics to be transparent that our inquiries’ findings, drawn from a limited group of participants, may not reflect the full spectrum of experiences or needs among sex workers.

After the demographic survey, we asked questions organized into six categories: platforms used, work arrangements, client relations, surveillance, and resistance. “Platforms used” gathered data on the specific platforms workers used, the costs of these platforms, if any, problems encountered by workers, and platform policies regarding mandatory identity verification. This section helped us identify the most commonly used platforms among participants: the verified advertising site Tryst, used by 5 of 6 participants. Montreal’s Indy Companion, an advertising platform created by and for sex workers, was second, with 3 of 6 participants actively using it. Three platforms tied for third place with 2 of 6 participants using them: the classifieds site Leolist, the review board Montreal Escort Review Board (MERB), and the directory Escorte Intime. Nine additional platforms were mentioned, each by only one participant. As such, they will be omitted for lack of relevancy. The following analysis will explore the interplay between these specific platforms and the listed categories in greater detail.

Platforms – the Modern Pimps?

These platforms have modernized the role of the pimp; if they primarily served to mediate communication between sex workers and clients while profiting from the exchange they facilitated, the role of platforms is essentially the same. Moreover, despite creating the illusion that these workers are freelancers, these platforms retain complete control over how we work and how we are disciplined. This practice aligns with a broader trend in the gig economy, where big platforms, such as Uber, leverage this illusion as a mechanism for worker exploitation. In this section, we aim to analyze the relationships between platforms and sex workers.

No SWers, No Platform

From our interviews, we can conclude that sex workers generally have to pay in order to promote their services on platforms. These fees take several forms: monthly or yearly subscriptions, one-time payments to access certain features such as putting an ad at the top (“bumping”), or premium memberships that grant greater visibility. On Tescort, an ad site in France, sex workers must pay €100 per month to list their services; on MERB, a Montréal-based site for escorts, massage parlors, and agencies, registration fees can reach up to $285 per month for individuals. For independent escorts, these expenses are meant to increase their visibility online and improve their chances of finding clients.

The sex industry is not unique in this “pay to work” model. Uber drivers and delivery workers also have to pay licensing fees or commissions to platforms in order to access the market, and they bear the costs of their own equipment, transportation, and Internet. For the platforms, this revenue strategy is intentional and involves profiting off the backs of sex workers without assuming the financial responsibilities of an employer, including salaries and operational costs. 

By contrast, clients access the ads for free and browsing is accessible to anyone online. On the platforms used by our respondents, clients can scroll through profiles and refine searches according to geographic and physical criteria (breast size, eye color, height, etc.), but also by availability, price, or type of services offered. Some platforms, such as MERB and Sex Model, also include forums where clients can rate and comment on escorts. As several participants reported, clients may critique either physical appearance or services, often with explicit and graphic descriptions, and often without the escort being notified or their consent. These public reviews can seriously harm an escort’s reputation and jeopardize their income. On some platforms, it is possible to delete negative comments, but only by upgrading to a “premium” account and paying more. When it comes to discriminatory or abusive comments, moderators are either absent or wholly inadequate. As testified by one participant, after they reported transphobic comments, the platform did nothing.

Another major issue concerns the payment methods imposed by platforms. Due to payment processors, like Visa and Mastercard, refusing to service sex workers10, some platforms require transactions in cryptocurrency, a currency that is difficult to access and requires specific technological skills. Furthermore, in a context where sex work remains criminalized and stigmatized, sex workers constantly risk being banned and having their funds seized by payment processors. One respondent, for example, had her PayPal account shut down, losing all the money she had accumulated there.

On top of these direct costs, workers must also perform countless invisible tasks to create and maintain their ads: organizing and paying for photoshoots, selecting photos, writing catchy descriptions that embody a “persona,” updating ads with new availabilities and photos, building websites, staying active on social media, regularly bumping ads, etc.

Some escorts interviewed believe that an improvement to platforms would involve abolishing subscription fees altogether. One participant went even further: instead of charging workers, platforms should pay them for the content, visibility, and economic value they create. As they put it: “these platforms would not exist without us.”

Power of SWers - Agency and Autonomy

Power and agency are central to sex work, an industry many enter to gain autonomy in their lives, sometimes from difficult relationships or financial circumstances. However, the agency sex work provides is frequently compromised by pervasive stigma, discrimination, and a lack of workers’ rights, creating an ultimately false sense of freedom. This dynamic is highlighted by the substantial power these digital platforms wield over sex workers, particularly by controlling their personal information, account access, and even their communication. This occurs in a variety of different ways, and is often impacted by the platforms workers use. 

According to our participants, workers are primarily frustrated with review board forums like MERB, where, as mentioned, intimate information about their lives and appearances is frequently shared without consent or the ability to remove it. As noted by two participants, MERB is known for its users leaving harsh critiques of workers, which cannot be removed by anyone except the poster or the platform itself. One participant mentioned that a friend of hers was only able to get a review taken down after contacting MERB and proving that she had never met the client. For many workers, it serves as a space for clients to air their complaints to other potential customers, rather than just communicating directly with the individuals that they are hiring. Unfortunately, it’s also a space where clients are sometimes incredibly mean and judgemental of workers, specifically their physical appearances. 

Clients known as “hobbyists,” who approach hiring sex workers as a pastime, are often responsible for leaving these reviews, fostering and reinforcing a culture of “sampling” every worker. According to our interviewees, this has created power imbalances between workers and clients, wherein workers may feel pressure to perform in certain ways or break their own boundaries to avoid receiving a bad review from clients after the fact. On occasion, clients will leave bad reviews after workers refuse to lower their prices, remove condoms, or perform sexual acts that were not agreed upon. One participant even noted that sometimes clients will tell her that they’re a MERB member, “as a threat”.

Given that these reviews directly affect workers’ livelihood, two workers advocated for the power to remove reviews, arguing that they should not be subject to non-consensual discussion on the platform. The case of one worker, who only learned of MERB and her own reviews through a client, illustrates a critical ethical failure. These publications, with tangible consequences for income and safety, are particularly unacceptable given that MERB simultaneously profits from sex workers by selling them advertising space on the same platform. To mitigate its unethical practices, MERB and similar forums could grant workers the ability to remove threads about them. This would provide them greater control over their branding and self-image, creating significantly better working conditions for workers using the platform.

Reports of frequent deplatforming11, shadow banning12 , and general censorship were additionally raised by four participants. In a similar vein, Uber workers often face sudden account deactivations, effectively being fired without explanation.13As one participant shared, she was removed from a diverse list of platforms, ranging from social media (Facebook, and all of her Instagram accounts), payment processors (Paypal), sex work designated platforms (Tescort), and even a platform used for crowd funding (Le Pot Commun). One worker expressed frustration with the language censorship on Seeking (a dating website formerly known as Seeking Arrangements), which is often used for sugar dating, despite the platform itself strictly forbidding it. This prohibition is enforced via automated content detection, wherein any direct messages that contain acronyms describing sexual acts or explicit discussions of sex for money are censored by the platform. This can happen without the users’ knowledge and can result in an immediate ban.

These instances of deplatforming, shadowbanning and censorship are often cited by platforms as an issue of breaking community guidelines, or misusing their services. In reality, SESTA/FOSTA legally mandates the censorship of sex workers on websites hosted on American servers. The stated intentions of SESTA/FOSTA were to both reduce online pornography, as well as sex trafficking facilitated through all platforms. The results of SESTA/FOSTA were exactly what sex workers feared: increased physical risk and more precarious working conditions. These testimonies demonstrate the legislation’s sadly predictable consequences.

Many of our participants expressed a desire for the decriminalization of sex work, which is likely the most effective measure in protecting against online censorship as a result of SESTA/FOSTA. This is because the laws conflate sex work with sex trafficking, pressuring platforms to remove all related content. This conflation between trafficking and sex work fuels sensationalist media coverage and contributes to the stigmatization of workers. The inception of SESTA/FOSTA has also prompted widespread online censorship of sex workers to protect platform providers. Until decriminalization is achieved, SESTA/FOSTA will continue to reinforce deplatforming, shadowbanning, general censorship and increased surveillance of sex workers.

Security Issues: Are you a Leolist Gambler?

Security issues, namely scammers and identity verification, were another significant concern for participants. As many participants highlighted, scams are frequent on these platforms, especially Leolist and Tryst. Two participants mentioned that they felt that the majority of people using Leolist were scammers, impacting both workers and clients. A common tactic scammers use is to send fake emails to workers, also known as phishing. These emails contain links that, if clicked, compromise the security of a workers account. One escort recounted how her account had been hijacked: her photos and ad were stolen and linked to a new phone number. Despite making a complaint, the platform took no action, again reinforcing the lack of control that many workers feel. Additionally, moderators are not on the side of sex workers, who often have to fend for themselves. In this case, the escort contacted the impersonator directly through the number on the ad, to which the scammer then tried to sell her own account back to her, for three times the price she had originally paid. 

According to participants, scams are also a frequent issue for clients. This is supported by the recent MERB forum entitled Are you a leolist gambler?, one of many threads on the platform where customers discuss the scams they’ve experienced on various platforms. Here, clients refer to Leolist as “a minefield”, where they often must wade through more than ten pages of listings, many of which appear fake or use stolen photos of celebrities and Instagram models to find a legitimate advertise14. One participant highlighted how this creates a culture of distrust between worker and client, making the essential processes of vetting and negotiation more difficult. This issue is only furthered by the frequent misconception that a verified MERB status alone constitutes adequate vetting, and many clients’ desire for anonymity. The outcome of this is a counterproductive cycle where workers struggle to vet clients for safety, and clients, afraid of being scammed, resist the vetting process.

However, scamming is not the only security threat sex workers face on these platforms. They also must navigate the difficult process of identity verification, which is mandatory to be a verified member of a number of these websites, including Tryst and Leolist. According to participants, Tryst requires an annual verification of all workers, including a video call with platform administrators, as well as a photo of an identification card. On Leolist, workers are required to send a minimum of five photos with a sign that shows the current date. However, as Leolist itself notes, the platform administrators do not manually verify that workers have followed all of the steps to become verified, specifically whether or not they’ve taken photos in different positions15. The intention of verification is to appear more trustworthy to clients, but as clients themselves have noted, this doesn’t mean much, as “many of the ads on LL [Leolist] with “verified” pictures still seem obviously fake”16.

Unfortunately, these verification requirements also introduce new problems to workers. The main issue is an increased risk of phishing scams, which one of our participants attributes to the lack of real human moderators on these platforms. Aware that sex workers must comply, scammers exploit these procedures to make their victims feel more easily targeted.   According to this participant, scammers will send deceptive emails on the topic because they know that they are more likely to be opened. Additionally, and most alarmingly, identity verification bolsters the systematic collection of sex workers’ personal data and contributes to their overall surveillance. This proposes a profound threat to workers, many of whom depend on anonymity for safety, while being contradicted by a lack of verification of clients, who have the power to be, and frequently are, physically or emotionally dangerous to workers. 

Our participants were clear in their desires for change on advertising platforms where scamming occurs frequently, like Tryst and Leolist and there were several ways they believed this could be achieved. They suggested a stricter moderation of clients and less invasive surveillance of workers. One participant suggested increased verification of customers, even just the collection of their emails for security purposes. Two participants recommended that having a supportive customer service agent who respects the work would be much more helpful when handling scams. One of them argued that a sex worker would be best for the role, as no one knows better the experiences and needs of sex workers than the members of our own community. Leolist, alongside workers and clients, would benefit from stricter moderation, because without it, sex workers must take on the task of moderation themselves, which is sometimes impossible.

Similarly, participants demanded platform-facilitated blacklists, a need heightened by the censorship imposed by SESTA/FOSTA, which prevents sex workers from communicating openly on most platforms. As of right now, blacklists are primarily facilitated by local sex worker rights organizations, for instance Montreal’s Chez Stella, or through small, independently organized communities. However, this leaves lots of room for bad clients and scammers to fall through the cracks, with sex workers ultimately facing the repercussions. This problem is only worsened by the isolation of independent sex work, which often prevents workers from finding communities where this information can be circulated. However, platforms could facilitate sharing this information, and make it easily accessible to their users. Participants contended that platforms have an obligation to provide blacklists, especially considering that, as of right now, workers pay for these services. This is not just a helpful feature, but a service workers are entitled to for their safety. 

Organizing Against Platforms

Platforms have formalized the isolation of workers within today’s digital capitalism. In our interviews, almost everyone we spoke with mentioned a feeling of loneliness, even estrangement. Unlike physical workplaces, such as massage parlors or strip clubs, platform work does not provide a shared space where sex workers can interact with one another. Their workplaces — hotels, incall and outcall locations — are scattered throughout the city and generally temporary, which significantly reduces opportunities to build connections with colleagues. Additionally, some participants expressed regret that their unstable and variable schedules, inherent to independent work, make coordination and meetings with colleagues even more difficult.

Despite these challenges, our interviews also reveal avenues of resistance and mutual support. Informal online groups on WhatsApp, Facebook, or Signal are used to share safety tips, experiences with clients, and warnings about scams. For example, a worker from Bas-Saint-Laurent recounted being alerted via a Signal group about counterfeit $100 bills circulating.

Interviewees also highlighted the importance of community initiatives such as Projet Jasmine, hosted by Médecins du Monde in France, which compiles escort site blacklists and makes them accessible to all sex workers, as platforms often require payment to access this information. In Montreal, some participants mentioned the community organization Stella, which provides health services and opportunities for community gatherings.

SWAC was also named as a crucial space for sharing experiences, strategies, and organizing. However, mobilizing colleagues online can be challenging. As Uma Rani, economist at the International Labour Organization explains in the podcast Platform Predicament – Making Sense of a Datafied Future of Work, the very functioning and nature of platforms “makes it more difficult for unions or cooperatives to reach these workers and organize them. This is an additional obstacle the labor movement must overcome.”17. Yet history shows that struggle pays off: after three years of mobilization, Uber drivers in Victoria, British Columbia, obtained the country’s first union certification, thanks to a provincial law recognizing their employment relationship with Uber.18

The survey also highlights the illusion of freedom inherent to independent work. Sex workers, like many gig workers, are told they are “their own bosses,” yet their autonomy is constantly undermined by the opaque governance of digital platforms, which dictate their visibility, access to clients, and even the parameters of their personal security. While organizing against these platforms may be challenging, one participant suggested we focus our efforts on local infrastructures, such as MERB, where organizing can actually take root and have tangible effects. Building connections with other gig workers, for instance, drivers, delivery couriers, and content creators, could also strengthen these efforts and forge alliances across independent and precarious labor sectors. Whoreganizing has always been a space for creativity and experimentation; we hope this inquiry can lay the groundwork for a deeper understanding of sex workers’ experiences on these platforms and contribute to strategic thinking around organization and resistance.

1. Emily Coombes, Ariel Wolf, Danielle Blunt & Kassandra Sparks. (2022). Disabled Sex Workers’ Fight for Digital Rights, Platform Accessibility, and Design Justice, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/fight-for-digital-rights ↩

2. Tart cards are small printed advertisements historically used by SWers in the UK and other countries to promote their services. They are typically displayed in public places, such as phone booths, shop windows, or lampposts. Each card usually includes a name or alias, a phone number, and sometimes a brief description of the services offered. ↩

3. The lockout of Québecor Média employees (2009–2011) was one of the longest and most publicized labor conflicts in Quebec. It profoundly disrupted the production and distribution of print content. The conflict has opposed management against the union, Syndicat des travailleurs de l’information du Journal de Montréal (STIJ), which was demanding better working conditions amid profound transformations in the media industry, particularly with the digitization of the press. ↩

4. Triple-X Workers’ Solidarity Association of B.C. (2015). Press Release: Yellow Pages Ceasing Escort Advertising, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/yellow-pages-shuts-out ↩

5. To learn more, see Adore Goldman and Céleste. (2022). Crusade Against Pornography, From Yesterday to Now, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/crusade-porno ↩

6. Simply, platforms orchestrate the production and exchange of products and services by optimizing relationships among a network of actors – consumers, advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers and even objects. ↩

7. The Capacitor Collective. (2025). “Immigrant Workers Centre Montreal: Interview with Sarah Jean Salman” Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry, p. 46 ↩

8. Ibid. ↩

9. Kimberlé Crenshaw. (1993). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039 ↩

10. For a deeper understanding, see Adore Goldman and Céleste. (2022). Crusade Against Pornography, From Yesterday to Now, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/croisadeporno ↩

11. According to community organizer Danielle Blunt’s report Deplatforming Sex: a roundtable conversation, “deplatforming” is when an individual user or an entire category of content is removed from one platform entirely. Because of legal and social stigma, sex workers are routinely deplatformed from online spaces, including both mainstream social media and even sex work facilitating platforms like the ones we’ve discussed. ↩

12. According to Blunt and her team in Hacking//Hustling’s report Posting into the Void: Studying the Impact of Shadowbanning on Sex Workers and Activists, a “shadowban” is a form of content moderation wherein a platform hides an individual user’s posts from the rest of the community. This makes content the platform deems inappropriate, high-risk, or low-value invisible to others, while still allowing the account to remain active and generate ad revenue for the platform. A shadowban is typically not disclosed to the user and is often publicly denied by the platform or dismissed as a technical glitch. ↩

13. Workers First Union. (s.d.). Uber Deactivation Guide, retrieved from https://www.workersfirst.nz/my-industry/uber-deactivation-guide ↩

14. MERB.cc. (2025). Are you a leolist gambler? retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/leolist-gambler ↩

15. Leolist.cc. Verified Pictures, retrieved from https://www.leolist.cc/user/verified ↩

16. PERB.cc. (2019). What the F%#K does “verified” mean on LL?, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/verified-leolist ↩

17. Bot Populi. (2021). “Épisode 1: Platforms the Origin Story, Platform Predicament – Making Sense of a Datafied Future of Work”, retrieved from https://botpopuli.net/episode/platforms-the-origin-story ↩

18. Pivot. (2025). Syndicalisation des chauffeurs Uber en Colombie-Britannique, une victoire difficile à reproduire, retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/syndicalisation-uber ↩

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Poem by Paprika

Poem by Paprika

Hello to you, beautiful sex worker. Whore. Working girl. Courtesan.

Who appears on the sidewalk, on adult classified websites, who dances on a stage in stiletto heels.

Who travels from one city to another. Who crosses borders.

 

Hello to you, beautiful sex worker.

Who demands freedom beneath a red umbrella.

Who negotiates condom use even in times of austerity.

Who collectively takes part in the mobilization of whores for the recognition of their rights!

 

Hello to you, beautiful sex worker.

Who lives under systemic injustice.

Discrimination. Stigmatization. Racism. Colonialism. Whorephobia. Transphobia.

The Violence of carceral feminists and laws that facilitate our exploitation and kill us.

 

Hello to you, beautiful sex worker.

Who lives under systemic injustice.

Solidarity to you. I know you exist and I see you.

I feel the strength of the resistance from feminist sex workers.

Billy Lux
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Neurodiversity and Sex Work

Neurodiversity and Sex Work

By Nina La Cigale

Various occupations gathered under the umbrella of sex work share a common feature: they exist on the margins of society. We do not write our lives in black and white – we live between the margins, within enigmatic and misunderstood grey zones.

Yet, most neurodiverse people, before they’ve even crossed the invisible line into erotic work, are accustomed to feel out of step. Does sex work happen to be more accessible than so-called straight or vanilla jobs? Are neurodiverse people better equipped than their neurotypical counterparts to deal with the unforeseen circumstances and the demands of a job one learns through experience? What challenges do neurodiverse people face, and by what means do they face them?

Since I write this text from my point of view as a dancer, most of the examples I give come from this line of work. I still took care to include other forms of sex work in my reflection.

Why can sex work be better adapted to neurodiverse people’s reality than a straight job?

Flexible Schedule ++

Most sex workers have the freedom to make their own schedule. In many strip clubs, the only requirement for dancers is to work a “slow” shift (Sunday to Wednesday, generally) to be able to work the more lucrative weekend shifts. Once they’ve worked a slow shift, dancers can usually cancel their other shifts if they need to, without consequences, or show up during a day they’re not booked and still work. The flexibility can vary a lot from a club to another.

Generally Sufficient Income for Part-Time Work

The income of SWers is usually sufficient enough to provide for their needs by working 2 to 4 days a week. This seldom is the case in other lines of work.

Low Risk of Being Fired – There Will Always Be Clients

The risk for dancers to lose their job is much lower than in straight jobs. In strip clubs, the most frequent reasons for firing are: selling illicit drugs, fighting with other dancers or clients, overcharging, or even refusing to pay the bar’s fees.

Punctuality is not one of the causes for firing dancers except in one club known for its very strict rules. At worst, a dancer who misses a slow day will be suspended the next week. We’re also allowed to be rude or to firmly establish our boundaries with unpleasant clients. The customer is not always right.

Room for Mistakes

We don’t have to be experts at dancing from the get go. When I got started, I didn’t know how to do pole – I was frankly terrible on stage and very awkward in how I approached clients. I wasn’t making much money, but that was my problem, not the bar’s. Some bars fire dancers temporarily  if they are clumsy on stage – however they’re easily able to work elsewhere and come back once their skills have improved.

What Are the SWers-Specific Challenges

Sensory overstimulation

SWers who do in-person work (escorts, masseuses, dancers) are exposed to a lot of stimuli. Touch, smell, sounds, lights. This can become rapidly overwhelming for anyone, particularly for neurodiverse people with an added sensibility to stimuli. In the bar where I work, the music is loud, the lights intense, and sometimes there is a lack of ventilation. Clients can either have too much perfume or questionable hygiene, leading to an unpleasant olfactory experience.

Precarity/Instability

Stable income does not exist in the sex work industry. Clients can cancel, massage parlors can be dead empty, and strip clubs also. Moreover, since SWers don’t have access to CNESST, employment insurance or sick leave due to illness or injury – physical or psychological – they do not get paid.

Lack of recourse in case of mistreatments from clients or bosses

SWers have little recourse when they’re subjected to violence from clients or bosses. Bad clients can be banned from agencies, massage parlors or clubs, but outside of this measure, there’s no reparation following an aggression. Some establishments care about the safety of their workers, others don’t. Independent workers are also very vulnerable to physical aggressions. 

How do neurodiverse people adapt their work to their condition?

Earplugs

When working at the club I always wear Loop Engage earplugs to dampen the music’s intensity. I’m still able to listen to conversations well and I’m much less tired as a result. Many of my coworkers do the same. It’s an accommodation we allow ourselves. And we can also ask the DJ to not turn off the stroboscopic lights while we perform on stage.

Regular breaks and vacations

Burnouts can happen quickly to neurodiverse people, but even more in the line of sex work, which requires a great deal out of them: presence, vigilance and energy. Fortunately, sex workers are generally able to take breaks frequently. For instance, I know colleagues who work three weeks out of four. Personally, I tend to work all the time and take breaks only when I’m sick, which led me to burnout this summer. I decided to take approximately a week off out of eight, while taking into account the more lucrative and the quieter weeks to better take care of my mental health.

Masking

One factor my autistic colleagues have highlighted to me is that they’re so used to mask their neurotypical traits to conform to what’s considered “normal” that in the end they’re doing the same thing for sex work – and all the more so at the club, where the codes are even clearer. Once they know how to play the character, they know what to expect. Yet, the energetic cost of masking remains high and requires a longer recovery time for neurotypical sex workers. You don’t come out unscathed from performing constantly.

Neurodiversity among Clients

Many clients are socially awkward who experience difficulties with interpersonal relationships.

Dealing with SWers allows them to live an erotic experience in a setting with clear rules where they have room to express their needs without fear of judgment.

The Downside

Sex work is a double-edged sword for neurodiverse people. On one hand, they find a form of freedom and flexibility that are rare on the job market. On the other hand, sex work comes with a certain precarity and a lack of protection. Collectively, we would gain in organizing and fighting for a form of collective insurance to help compensate for this precarity, whose shadow is always looming.

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Strippers on Strike for the Abolition of Bar Fee

Strippers on Strike for the Abolition of Bar Fee

By Adore Goldman et Kit Keli

P132-2-D092-007, (s.d.), Ville de Montréal - section des archives, Patricia Ling, (P132-2-D092-007).

On May 5th, the Sex Work Autonomous Committee (SWAC) organized a militant assembly of sex workers (SWers) on workplace organizing. This well-attended meeting generated a lot of enthusiasm among participants. However, one clear takeaway emerged: it is necessary to clarify our strategy if we want to move forward and bring more colleagues into our unionization project.

That’s why we will attempt here to lay the groundwork for a campaign that could serve to organize the various strip clubs in Montreal around a common strategy: demanding the abolition of the bar fee1 system. We chose to focus on strip clubs because that’s where both of us work. However, we believe that similar demands could be adopted by massage workers to unionize as well.

The bar fee has historically been a tool used to suppress stripper organizing, and therefore it must be abolished. To achieve this, we will present our strategy for attaining this goal, which culminates in a strike, a tactic that has been central to all strip club unionization efforts to date.

The Little History of the Bar Fee

The bar fee is seen by many dancers as a symbol of freedom. You pay to work, and in exchange, you’re the master of your own schedule. But this is becoming less and less true — if it ever was. Many bars now require new dancers to work a weekday before they’re allowed to work weekends. You don’t get to choose your hours and you’re often required to stay until closing time, at 3 a.m. One club in Montreal even demands that dancers book themselves several months in advance. Calling in sick is also difficult in many bars.2 We’re far from the idea of self-employment where you can work whenever you want.

The reality is that we’re clearly trapped in an employer/employee power dynamic, and the bar fee model benefits only the bosses. Indeed, they have every incentive to bring in as many dancers as possible each night to maximize their profits. As for our safety, our employers show very little concern and leave us to handle it on our own.

Some clubs have really high bar fees, meaning that when you start working, you’re already in the negative sometimes of a hundred dollars, with the sometimes required additions of late fees, tipping out, and stage penalties. Over one month, it’s thousands of dollars that goes in your employer’s pocket and not in yours.

Strip clubs haven’t always worked this way in Canada and the United States. Tracing how they’ve changed helps us understand that the bar fee was a response to workers’ struggles, informing our future strategies of abolition.

We spoke with Nicole Nepton, who worked in strip clubs in Quebec and Ontario in the 80s and 90s and was active in advocating for SWers’ rights. Back then, dancers were still salaried: they earned an hourly wage and did table dances for $5, keeping the full amount. Contrary to what one might think, schedules were also flexible, sometimes even more so than they are now. “If it didn’t work for you, you just left!” she recalls.

At the turn of the 2000s, dancers’ organizing forced management to adapt. In 1997, San Francisco’s Lusty Lady became the first strip club in North America to unionize. After this historic win, the dancers launched a unionization campaign across the U.S. and bought the establishment to turn it into a worker-owned cooperative.

It’s no coincidence that the bar fee model emerged around that time, allowing management to sell spots at their clubs under the guise of increased freedom. According to our research, it began creeping in during the early 2000s. A colleague who has been dancing for 20 years explained that at first, it was just a flat fee paid to the bar that replaced tipping on drinks. Eventually, the owners took it over and added mandatory tipping for the doorman and DJ as well. By 2004, a dancer named Cindy was already describing these changes in a written piece, mourning the “good old days”3 of hourly wages. She wrote:

There are too many of us working at the same time in the same club, we have no base salary, we are forced to pay to work, and we have no access to social protections like labor standards, workplace health and safety commissions (CSST), unemployment insurance, etc. Our profession is badly misunderstood and our conditions could definitely be improved. Tell me, when is the unionization of nude dancers going to happen?4

Twenty years later, we think just like her it’s high time we take unionization into our own hands and abolishing the bar fee should be one of our core demands.

Going on the Offensive

We propose that abolishing the bar fee be the cornerstone of a unionization campaign in Montreal strip clubs. This way, we can form autonomous unions within our own clubs, but also have a shared demand that unites us in our struggle against management across different workplaces.

It’s also an offensive strategy. Rather than constantly reacting to management’s abuses, we can act according to our own agenda. We’ll have the strategic advantage of being prepared ahead of time and controlling the timeline.

This is also a first step toward bringing back the hourly wage that our predecessors lost. The goal is to break free from the illusion of self-employment and hold employers accountable not just for wages, but for everything that comes with them: workplace safety, hygiene standards, basic rights like sick leave, etc. A union would also allow us to clarify and secure the schedule flexibility we want. With a strong union and a collective agreement, we can negotiate the terms we want and prevent rules from changing arbitrarily based on the boss’s mood.

If this seems hard to imagine, it’s because worker struggles have been weak in recent decades, and major unions have chosen a strategy of compromise, always dampening workers’ demands for better conditions. But that doesn’t mean we can’t create autonomous unions that do things differently, adopting a posture of radical rupture rather than serving as mediation between the grassroots militants and the employer. Or to say things differently, a union that is grassroots in and of itself.

Don’t Act Alone

In our view, the first step for SWers who want to unionize in their workplace is to start acting collectively. That doesn’t mean there has to be full consensus; waiting for that would block any progress. Talking politics at work will inevitably create tension. But action requires a critical mass, even if it’s still a minority, that can scare management.

The first step is to find allies. At first, just two or three people may be enough. The goal is to form a small committee to launch the campaign. To feel less alone, we propose that SWAC serve as a space to talk strategy and share mobilization tools (flyers, posters, etc.). From there, you’ll be ready to speak to your coworkers about our demands.

Not acting alone is essential, because as soon as you start talking about unionizing in a workplace, you expose yourself to backlash. By organizing together from the start and connecting with workers in other workplaces, we ensure that solidarity actions can be taken in the event of retaliation. This is our best protection against employer pushback. Both strip clubs that unionized in the U.S., the Lusty Lady and the Star Garden, have seen the more militant workers fired for their actions. While stressful for the targeted workers, it was that very injustice that created solidarity and led to the first collective agreements, furthering the goals of the movement.

Dessin par Misss Bisous

Preparing for Job Actions

We recognize that everybody’s union is going to have varying capacities for different levels of action so, in preparation, workers must collectively decide what job actions are best for them. Preparation for actions will always be unique in each case while rarely following a linear timeline such as that suggested below, but they tend to follow a formula such as this: 
    1. Invite workers to a union meeting to discuss grievances and propose possible actions to solve these issues.  
    2. Allow some time to rally more support from allies and workers who are on the fence, create mobilization material, and organize support systems for militant workers. 
    3. Call another meeting to vote on: 
    4. which action to take, and 
    5. yes or no to the action; consider deciding the date for this meeting during the first meeting while everybody is together.
    6. Vote!
    7. Prepare a plan for the job action as you voted for it; consider possible reactions from management in this plan, and how to combat them, while finalizing your demands.
Before reaching the point of an action such as a strike, workers may wish to try different methods of action, including negotiating with their employer. Beware of announcing unionization plans without any plan to act on them to ensure that your boss has less time to replace militant workers with scabs5 in the meantime. However, organizing efforts cannot be kept too under wraps to avoid possible tensions with workers who are on the fence and may accuse you of secrecy and plotting without them.

Collective Negociation

Negotiation with management has its own risks that should be considered. Namely, militant workers must ensure that they never speak to management individually or in small groups. This only leaves these workers vulnerable to targeted firings or abuse from management as an attempt to stomp out union activity. 

However there are other options, which may not harness the same leverage as a strike but can still be considered by your union. 

  1. Petition/Signed Letter- Militant workers can write a petition or letter calling for the abolition of bar fee and have workers sign it in support, dancer names would be sufficient. The letter or petition should ask that a response be posted in the locker room or other common area within X amount of days, and threaten to strike if the demands are not met within this delay. An ally –preferably not recognizable by management– to the effort can then deliver a copy of this letter and signatures for the union to the club’s mailbox or other. This strategy is more effective with significant worker support for the union as the boss will subsequently have a list of all the militant workers’ names, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and maltreatment.
  2. Surprise Meeting- Confronting your boss without warning can be an effective strategy, but it must be carried out with a large number of the present work force on shift to ensure success. Be prepared to argue your case as a collective. Threatening to walk-out on the shift can be essential leverage in this confrontation. The unionized dancers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco triumphantly used this strategy to demand the rehiring of a wrongfully fired dancer. This strategy also identifies militant workers, leaving them subject to maltreatment from management.

Given the risk of revealing the militant workforce, unionized workers should carefully and collectively consider attempting any sort of negotiation with management especially in the context of more socially marginalized folks who may be subject to greater risks of managerial abuse. 

However, in the case of an escalated response from management to a more “reasonable” or “acceptable” type of union action, such as a signed petition, workers who are on the fence about union activity may be swayed to support the union. This is to say that collective negotiation may be more useful as a point of mobilization for workers. Some workers may be hesitant to dive head-first into an action such as a strike, but after being reminded of the abusive nature of management once again, may come to the union efforts with a fresh wind of energy and support.

Negotiation could work, but it will likely not be effective without first building leverage through more offensive actions. It is always a possibility; however, given the history of most union negotiations, we recognize that this is simply not a realistic outcome, especially in the context of an abusive industry such as the sex industry. Instead, collective negotiation should be considered following an action, such as a strike, that incentivizes the boss to negotiate and provides you with needed leverage in negotiations.

Striking as an Effective Strategy

A strike is when unionized, whether autonomously or formally organized, workers refuse to work as a means to harness leverage for job negotiations with their employer. Very simply, a collective of workers deciding not to show up to work until their demands are met is considered a strike. Although striking is often considered controversial among formal unions, it is ultimately a very effective strategy when workers are well-prepared and autonomous. It was an essential step in the unionization of both The Lusty Lady and Star Garden.

In the case of sex work and autonomous unions, most large unions do not represent or recognize us as workers; this provides the bittersweet advantage of avoiding bureaucratic loopholes in Canada’s and Quebec’s labour law which allow bosses to force their workforce back to the job. This ambiguous position provides strippers the unique opportunity to strike with essentially no recourse from labour laws. 

Taking the product or service away from the employer is the crucial leverage guaranteed by a strike while in negotiations with management. As the dancers from The Lusty Lady in San Francisco put it “[Your boss is] totally powerless if the ‘product’ he’s trying to sell is outside the club carrying signs instead of inside bumping and grinding”.6 If clients really came to the strip club just for a drink, they would be at a regular bar.

While mobilizing – otherwise known as organizing, or more simply, the steps before the strike – beware of being overly vocal about action plans too early. At a certain point, you will have to share your plans with less-militant workers in efforts of further solidarity, but this runs the risk of exposing your strike plans. Therefore, it is good practice to avoid threatening something such as a strike too far in advance. The element of surprise ensures that your boss will not have the time to hire scabs to replace you. Coordinating strike plans with the unions of other clubs in the city is another strategic method of fighting against scabs while fostering city-wide solidarity. Find your allies and don’t talk to the DJs, waitresses or other employees who are not dancers about your plan. Be careful of people who have a tendency to snitch. 

However your strike may play out, there is an undeniable edge in striking as an informal or autonomous union, an edge that should be taken advantage of!

Other Methods of Direct Actions in the Workplace

There are many variations of the traditional strike, some of which may look appealing to your union, or may be useful in conjunction with your strike. These actions require a dedicated show of support from the dancers and your allies for efficacy. Your union may consider picketing, a slow-down, sick-in, and/or whistle blowing in conjunction with your strike. For more details regarding these specific actions please see The Exotic Dancers’ Union’s No Justice, No Piece! A Working Girl’s Guide to Labour Organizing in the Sex Industry7 and/or the Industrial Workers of the World’s (I.W.W.) website8 .

Conclusion

The abolition of bar fees would be instrumental in the effort for strippers’ worker rights in Canada, while bringing Canadian dancers closer to our predecessors who received hourly wages on top of dance fees and tips. The abolition of an ever-increasing bar fee has the potential to enact significant material change for strippers, which is essential in combating the economic precarity that can come with the sex industry. We are calling for the clubs of so-called Montréal, Québec, Canada and the US to establish autonomous unions collectively and call for the abolition of the bar fee. 

With autonomous unions that work outside of Canada’s and Quebec’s union and labour laws, we firmly believe that the most effective means of achieving this demand would be by striking. Strippers have a unique opportunity to effectively shut down their clubs and attain the negotiating leverage typically guaranteed by a strike, without recourse from the constraints of labour laws.

This piece serves as a call to action for strippers in the coming months to organize around the common demand of the abolition of bar fee. In solidarity and power, working girls, unite!

1. Bar fee is a flat rate that dancers pay to work in a club. The custom also requires that you tip the DJ and the doorman.↩

2. Cherry Blue. (2025). Inquiry: Working Conditions in Montreal Strip Clubs, SWAC Attacks!, Fifth issue.↩

3. Cindy. (2004). À quand la syndicalisation des danseuses nues au Québec, Travail du sexe.↩

4. Ibid.↩

5. Workers hired to replace the striking workforce, effectively eradicating the leverage gained by striking. Scabs can also be called strikebreakers.↩

6. Exotic Dancers Union SF. (1998). No Justice, No Piece! A Working Girl’s Guide to Labour Organizing in the Sex Industry, p.33, self-published.↩

7. Ibid.↩

8. Industrial Workers of the World. (2016). A Worker’s Guide to Direct Action.  ↩

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Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights – A review

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights – A review: A manifesto for angry hookers

by Cherry Blue

Photo: It was a good day, Céleste Dérosiers, photo by Tanata

For many of us, a real cornerstone for the politicization of SWers, Revolting Prostitutes1 by Juno Mac and Molly Smith is one of the few books on sex work of relevance and nuance. I set out here a survey of the first three chapters that highlights certain key points. Instead of denying it, the authors acknowledge the violence in the sex industry and make the case for a total decriminalization of sex work as the first step towards improving the living conditions of SWers.

Symbolism vs. reality

In the first instance, they make a distinction between the professional dimensions of sex work and their stereotypical representation. They argue that most abolitionists – anti-prostitution activists – seek to build an argument based on metaphorical associations with sexuality and its monetization, without considering the importance of working conditions for the practice. Such moralizing positions take many forms, but the myths undergirding the imagined “prostitute” often prove to be dangerous and disconnected from reality. The prostitute is usually represented as dirty and corrupt, which gradually denies her of her inner worth (p. 11). This odious stereotyping can easily be attributed to a political agenda that seeks to be rid of those exchanging sexual services for money or shelter, notably through “rescue industry” discourse, according to which every SWer is a victim to be saved and therefore in the same bracket as orphaned children and abandoned animals (p. 9).

In response to these preconceptions, many SWers portray their work in terms of “sex positivity” and empowerment. Those who emphasize the role of pleasure in their work, though, are in fact articulating a defensive response to stigma, while only the most privileged can afford to choose their clients and find enjoyment in the work (p. 13). This position ends up harming SWer communities by not representing the experience of the less privileged, casting a veil over precariousness and the demands of those who wish to obtain better working conditions. Further to this, these assumptions create the illusion that customers and workers share the same interests (p. 32). But the person selling sex needs the transaction more than the customer, which makes workers more vulnerable. In the end, SWers unhappy with their current conditions end up feeling stuck between the “happy hooker” who enjoy certain privileges, and the abolitionists who seek to deny their rights (p. 36).

The dangers of carceral feminism

Both pro-decriminalization and anti-prostitution feminists often articulate their positions by drawing on legacies of violence. Anti-prostitution feminists assert that the best possibility of justice against male violence is found in carceral feminism. This school of thought supports putting forward a set of punitive laws, because “exited women come to be regarded as the ultimate symbol of female woundedness, with the criminalisation of clients as feminist justice” (p.13). However, this ignores the police violence – material and historical – against women and racialized people. This is particularly true for migrant SWers, who are criminalized and at risk of deportation if they need to report sexual abuse. “For sex workers and other marginalised and criminalised groups, the police are not a symbol of protection but a real manifestation of punishment and control” (p. 16): laws are not just symbolic, they have a demonstrable impact on police power – its violence and use of profiling.

Some might argue that the Nordic model – criminalizing the purchase of sexual services – only targets clients and not SWers. In which case, this model would not harm the latter group. But any approach that aims to reduce money changing hands in the sex industry makes those who offer sexual services take on the consequences of lower demand – and this is true both in terms of their working conditions and their income (p. 54).

Pushing back on lazy assumptions: whoring is working

The arguments that abolitionists make often involve obfuscating the professional aspect of this practice: “Don’t say sex work, it’s far too awful to be work” (p. 42). Labor and awfulness are positioned as antithetical; if sex work is strenuous, it can’t be work. This argument forgets that waged labor is generally a form of exploitation; bosses profit from the work of their employees by paying them less than the income that they generate. Thus, it is unreasonable to consider any and all work, including sex work, is morally good by default (pp. 45-46).

Both bad clients and abolitionists seem to think that there are no limits placed by SWers in the sexual act, as if the latter put themselves at the disposal of all the wishes of the client, who is able to do whatever he wants with their bodies. Although it would be shocking to say the same thing about a massage therapist, we don’t mind perpetuating this false account of sex work. The authors quote an escort named Nikita: “Part of believing me when I say I have been raped is believing me when I say I haven’t been” (p. 45). They explain that in today’s society, penetration is always assumed to be an act of domination. If the act of penetration is always already perceived as degrading, sex work will inevitably be framed negatively and misogynistically. We have much to gain from modifying our shared assumptions about penetration, which is not intrinsically a “denigrating” act for the person who is penetrated.

An economic necessity

It can also be dangerous to fail to recognize the economic and material factors that motivate SWers. The idea that, because they are too weird and broken (p. 48), SWers are incapable of making good decisions for themselves not only robs them of their agency, but prioritizes punitive reforms over a feminist utopia. Smith and Mac cite the example of a court in Sweden that took custody of a SWer’s child away from her abusive father, who eventually killed the child’s mother (p. 47).

Although it is true that SWers are more likely to have experienced sexual trauma/abuse at the hands of their family, those that have chose to pursue sex work do so not because of some “permanent damage” that leads to self-destruction, but because of the economic precariousness that is more widespread among victims of such abuse. Other jobs offered to women, especially those without qualifications, are generally underpaid. Women are more likely than men to be unemployed or underpaid. Faced with these obstacles, sometimes the only viable option is sex work: “Anti-prostitution campaigners should take seriously the fact that sex work is a way people get the resources they need” (p. 52). This scenario plays out with higher frequency for racialized women and LGBTQIA+ people, resulting in their overrepresentation in the industry.

The problem of borders

Mobilizing to defend the rights of SWers must involve consideration of the situation for migrants. In 2021 in the United States, the anti-sex trafficking budget amounted to more than 1.2 billion USD – mainly for “information campaigns” and not to help survivors – while in 2013, the budget for SWers rights was 10 million globally (p. 59). Since SWers are considered to be offenders as well as victims, the U.S. government prevents anyone who has sold sexual services in the last ten years from entering the country, in the same bracket as spies, Nazis and terrorists (p. 81). Crossing into the U.S. is always anxiety-inducing for a SWer: border agents can search their phone for evidence without needing any proof or warrant.

In the world of sex trafficking, it is important to distinguish between kidnapping and voluntary migration. The scenario in which a young white girl is kidnapped and abused in another country is ultimately very rare. Most sex trafficking involves people looking to immigrate and pay smuggling networks to do so, often facing sexual exploitation since being undocumented means having few to no rights. We should not place blame on these migrants and instead change the system that prevents them from migrating legally and accessing the same rights as those with citizenship.

Fuelled by stories perpetuated by the media and popular culture, some argue that there is a system enslaving young white girls today that is even more serious than the slavery of African Americans. However, this falsehood is very dangerous and distracts us from the fact that “the direct modern descendant of chattel slavery in the US is not prostitution but the prison system” (p. 76).  Indeed, there are more African Americans incarcerated in the United States than there were slaves in 1850. Moreover, the appropriation of the term “abolitionist” by so-called anti-prostitution feminists, in reference to the fight to abolish slavery, is an attempt to gain moral legitimacy via the suggestion that the two struggles are equivalent. However, anti-prostitution groups are generally made up of white conservatives, whereas those impacted by criminalization are often African Americans (p. 78).

Ultimately, the root of the problem is that borders “make people vulnerable, and that vulnerability is what abusive people prey upon” (p. 64). In other words, the criminalization of undocumented migrants directly creates the market for sex trafficking. The nation-state finds a scapegoat (in this case the trafficker) to distract people from the actual problem: borders and the prison system. So it is important to keep in mind that the distinction between sex trafficking and sex work should not encourage the belief that the arrests of trafficking victims are any more justifiable; we must be critical of borders and the role they play in migrants’ precarity. This forms the essential disagreement between carceral feminists and pro-rights feminists: “We disagree not only on the solution, but on the problem: for carceral feminists, the problem is commercial sex, which produces trafficking; for us, the problem is borders” (p. 83).

The distinction that is often made between sex work and sex trafficking provides ready evidence that our solidarity is too often granted solely to SWers with citizenship. It is all too easy to avoid the question of sex trafficking: this blindspot allows us to ignore the gray areas that threaten to delegitimize us in the eyes of society at large. However, there needs to be space for migrant SWers within our struggle if we want to improve rights for all: “There is no migrant solidarity without prostitute solidarity and there is no prostitute solidarity without migrant solidarity” (p. 86).

The authors believe that politicizing a SWer takes about two minutes. They live or come into close contact with situations of injustice and oppression, which motivates them to get involved in political organizing. Unfortunately, only a handful of activists can afford to be public with their demands and are granted more of the credit for their actions. We should always be alert to the voices of all SWers, regardless of their backgrounds or modes of communication. Disgruntled whores, precarious whores, migrant whores; you are not alone.

1. Juno Mac et Molly Smith. (2018). Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Right, Verso.↩

CatsMTL

The Virgin and the Whore: Workers In Struggle Against Labor Invisibility

The Virgin and the Whore: Workers In Struggle Against Labor Invisibility

Interview with Leopoldina Fortunati

By Adore Goldman and Melina May

Paint by Zero

Leopoldina Fortunati is a workerist1 activist, feminist-Marxist, and sociologist. In the 70s, she was actively involved in the groups Potere Operaio and later Lotta Feminista in Italy. Active in the International Wages for Housework Campaign, she wrote the book The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital2 . In this text, Fortunati works with Marxist concepts to show how the reproduction of labor power is structured within the family, as well as outside of it, through sex work. We wanted to ask Fortunati about her analysis of sex work in The Arcane of Reproduction and its relevance to current struggles. Here is what she had to say.

A&M: In The Arcane of Reproduction, you show how the domestic labor of housewives within the capitalist family creates surplus value by reproducing labor power. Indeed, cleaning, washing, caring for children, cooking – all this unpaid labor provided to the worker and to future workers – is appropriated by Capital. Thus, the capitalist saves on the reproduction of their labor power. Women, therefore, find themselves both subject to the capitalist and dependent on men’s wages to survive. Of course, this model has become more complex with women entering the labor market and the creation of social services, but the majority of social reproductive labor is still performed by women, and work within the family remains essential to the reproduction of the labor force.

 

In your analysis, what is the role of prostitution in the process of reproduction, and how does it relate to the unpaid sex work within the capitalist family? Are there historical links between the struggle of sex workers and the struggle for wages for housework?

Leopoldina: To begin with, I have always said that prostitution has a function on a productive, social, and political level. On a productive level because it is the same process that exists in households. The only thing that changes is the payment, but a payment for which women pay the high cost of social contempt.

The entire history of monetization predates capitalism by several centuries, back to the Roman Empire and even Ancient Greece. Prostitution arises with monetization. A friend of mine in Washington is currently researching this history. In their research, it’s clear that this process, for the first time, allowed women to build a dowry. Because monetization put the marriage market in crisis, it was [initially] adolescent women who were about to marry who prostituted themselves for a period of time in temples to earn money. 

If we return to capitalism, there has always been great pride among the working class regarding the money earned in factories. It was money earned through blood and sweat. It was considered a sin for women to do sex work, to be proud of the money they earned. So, we understand that even if the material productive process of organizing domestic labor and the process of prostitution is exactly the same, there is this small detail that acts as a key to pit women against each other. It is a monetization that has always been used against the lack of monetization of domestic work. Of course, on the political and social levels, the two spheres, while identical, are set up to be played against each other.

For me, it was really clear when we started feminist struggles that the first fight to undertake was to be united because unity among women is fundamental. If we accept being divided, if we accept having these two spheres in opposition, we will never achieve anything. I must say that in the early 70s, the need to restore unity in the women’s struggle, to not accept being pitted against each other, was very clear, and there was a tremendous struggle during those years. For example, prostitutes in France occupied a church to protest the living conditions they were forced to endure 3. In my region, [Padua, Italy], there was a network of prostitutes’ committees fighting for independence, for autonomy in managing their bodies and their money, that is, to destroy the figure of the pimp. So, we always fought together. We were in the same mobilizations, meaning they even came to our mobilizations, those of the committee [for wages for housework], etc.

It has been different for feminist movements in general. Feminist movements have always had a lot of problems, in the same way that they now have problems with trans people – particularly trans women. It’s terrible. There have always been problems in the political vision of feminist movements in general because they thought that their struggle was different, and that naturally led to nothing. Simply to the weakening of each other’s struggles.

In our networks, we were fully aware of the necessity of this unity of struggles and of understanding how to organize a political program that united us. For example, the struggle for abortion rights was something we all had in common, as well as the struggle for the right to contraception, the struggle for the right to decide our sexuality, and the struggle for wages for housework.

The struggle for wages for domestic work was important, even for sex workers, because it is important for women to have money at home. Otherwise, they are always in competition downward, because if there is nothing [for the sexual labor done at home], naturally, even when you decide to do sex work, the prices are low. Whereas, if there is money, you have more possibilities to negotiate.

A&M: Among your observations, you explain “the apparent antithesis between productive labor and reproductive labor.” 4 In this system, Capital presents reproductive work (both sexual and social) as a natural force: the reproduction of male labor power is framed as a personal service rather than employment. You write: “[…] women’s struggles have faced greater difficulty in exposing the mechanisms of exploitation, precisely because of this specific complexity of women’s relationship with capital.”5 Unlike paid labor, where the worker directly receives wages from Capital, the housewife exchanges her reproductive labor with Capital through the intermediary of the worker. This creates the isolation of housewives and, consequently, an additional challenge in organizing with others who perform the same work.

Similarly, in the sex industry, many of us work alone, isolated from our colleagues, and when we do have some semblance of a workplace, the criminalization and surveillance of it make organizing particularly difficult.

Moreover, nowadays, technologies play a predominant role within our households, social services, and our sexualities. As you write:

 

The power of men as a social group has been reassembled through these technologies, which function as tools of reproductive labor, enabling the direct penetration of capital into the immaterial spheres of individual reproduction.

 

For sex workers, technology has become indispensable: a significant portion of the work has moved online, through the use of social media, advertising platforms, or erotic content sales platforms like OnlyFans.

In your research, you explore, among other things, the impacts of technology on sexualities. How do these technologies mediate gender relations, particularly through the use of the Internet and other information technologies? What parallels can you draw between the organizational challenges faced by housewives and those encountered by sex workers? How can these challenges be overcome?

Leopoldina: Working in isolation is increasingly the norm. It’s either the brothel, like in the factory, or the profession, which resembles the condition of housewives, meaning each of us works at home or on the streets. But alone!

It’s clear that digital technologies have a significant impact on women: they push them backward in terms of communication. We’ve regressed after the advent of computers and the Internet. Men are still more knowledgeable than us because computers belong to their tradition.

A second factor is the terrible social isolation caused by all these technologies, especially in the home, where it has worsened. There are many families who sit around a table to eat, and each person is on their mobile phone. They are present and absent at the same time.

Work platforms have modernized the role of pimps. They are the [new] pimps. They are the ones profiting from women’s labor. They have modernized it through technology, but it’s the same role. They take the money, and since there is intense isolation, there’s no longer the physical security that pimps used to guarantee in some way. This marks a shift in the organization of sex work. We’ve gone from the division of labor in sex-factories to isolation. Now, it’s much harder to organize and act collectively because we don’t know where to find one another. On the other hand, we are controlled by these platforms. At the same time, if they were shut down, many would be impacted because they depend on them; these platforms hold significant power over the control and management of sex work.

At the same time, there is a sort of normalization of sex work because it is more accepted through technology and is treated differently, culturally and socially, within civil society. This issue needs to be studied seriously because there are academic articles that address these technologies but fail to understand the political significance of what is happening. How do you get in touch? How much money does the platform keep, and how much does it give you? In other words, it’s about studying the details of the contract.

A: It seems to me that there’s also something interesting regarding who works for these platforms, especially those who are directly employed, likely mostly male programmers. In comparison, we earn our income through the platform, which takes a share of that money, but we have no labor law protections.

Leopoldina: So, there is a lot more social isolation because a significant part of sex work has become immaterial and online. Massages and a few other activities continue. We need to understand the proportion of workers engaged in online versus offline work, as I don’t know, but I get the impression that many young people prefer online work because there’s no physical contact: it’s simply a narrative they create in front of the camera.

M: Yes, even when you do in-person work, you’ll have a whole online job to do to promote your services, then feeding your escort persona by doing social media, etc.

Leopoldina: And then there’s the idea that you, you’re free, you can do it whenever you want, whenever you have free time. Whereas [in-person] sex work has specific hours, it’s in the evening when people aren’t working or during times when people are on their work break.

There is also a lot of unpaid digital sex work. It’s built into the physiology of the internet. And many people don’t know the difference between activity and work; they think it’s a matter of personal expression. Above all, there’s a lot of confusion among young people, who do a lot of unpaid sex work, thereby creating massive competition.

And another important thing is that many states are shifting to the right. The right is about God, family, and social order. For example, there have already been terrible signs regarding abortion in the United States, but also everywhere else. There’s a step backward in this area, and I expect it will also impact sex work. That’s why we need to be even more united, all of us in the same political program, in the same struggle, etc. Because otherwise, we risk being really really weak.

A&M: In our workplaces, it is common to have colleagues who hold salaried positions in social services, such as teaching and healthcare. For many of us, sex work serves as a supplementary job to another that doesn’t pay well enough. The widespread lack of recognition for reproductive labor, whether it is performed at home, in massage parlors, or in hospitals, weakens the most marginalized populations and exposes those who perform it to exhaustion and various forms of violence.

 

In your opinion, how does the fight for wages for housework represent an important and necessary point of convergence today to unite women in struggle?

Leopoldina: This goal is fundamental, even for sex workers, because otherwise, they face competition. That’s why, afterwards,  there’s a general weakness among women everywhere, whether in sex work or in jobs outside the home. We are always in the lowest-paid, most precarious professions, and so on. Naturally, who is the ideal person to accept crumbs instead of real money?

And so the issue is this: if someone organizes something, others must support them. That is, if you organize political initiatives, for example in front of massage parlors, we need to come and support you, and you need to support us, for instance, if we organize a women’s strike. In this way, the struggles of one become the struggles of the other, that they are united with each other politically. And gradually, they must become part of the political program of the network at the international level.

A&M: It’s a way to maintain autonomous struggles while bringing them together.

Leopoldina: It’s very important for each group to undertake their own struggles, but what’s equally important is that these struggles are part of the same program and that others support them.

Glossary:

Workerism: Workerism is an Italian Marxist current, active mainly in the 60s and 70s. This tendency advocates for workers’ autonomy from political parties and trade unions, prioritizing instead the organization of workers’ committees within factories.

Labor power: Labor power is the commodity that a worker sells to the capitalist, the only one they possess. It is their physical capacity to work. Labor power is a unique commodity because it is the only one capable of creating value. 

Surplus value: In the Marxist tradition, surplus value is the value created by a worker that the capitalist appropriates. For example, in an 8-hour workday, a worker may produce a value equivalent to their wage during the first 4 hours, while the remaining 4 hours generate surplus value, which the capitalist pockets. Marxist feminists have argued that domestic labor and sex work, by reproducing the commodity “labor power,” are also sources of surplus value, as they are essential to the functioning of the capitalist system.

Capital, capitalist: Capital refers to an accumulation of money that generates more money. The capitalist is an individual or entity that owns the means of production and employs workers to generate surplus value. 

Reproductive labor: Refers to all activities and services that serve to reproduce human beings as well as “labor power,” such as childcare, domestic work, sex work, and elder care, whether this work is paid or unpaid.

Monetization: The process by which money – in the era of gold and silver – is introduced as a means of paying for a commodity.

1. For all underlined words, please refer to the glossary at the end of the text to better understand the Marxist concepts. ↩

2.  Leopoldina Fortunati. (1995). The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital. Autonomedia ↩

3. She makes reference here to the occupation of the Saint-Nizier church by the sex workers of Lyon in 1975. To learn more: Lilian Mathieu. (1999). “Une mobilisation improbable: l’occupation de l’Église Saint-Nizier”, Revue française de sociologie, vol. 40, no.3, p.475-483. in Luttes XXX, Inspirations du mouvement des travailleuses du sexe, 2011, Les Éditions du remue-ménage. ↩

4. Leopoldina Fortunati. (2022). Production et reproduction: l’apparente antithèse du mode de production capitaliste, Revue Ouvrage ↩

5. Ibid.↩

6. Leopoldina Fortunati. (2023). Les femmes et la communication numérique: où en sommes-nous?, Revue Ouvrage ↩

CatsMTL

Explore Bibliotherapy

Explore bibliotherapy: Understanding therapy through books

By Erika
Translated by Adore Goldman

Bibliotherapy, or therapy through books, is a therapeutic approach that uses reading to help individuals in their journey through various psychological, emotional, and/or personal difficulties.1 This method aims to initiate an internal process through directed reading, allowing the readers to find resonance in the stories and better understand their own experiences.2 It seeks to fill a gap by creating an echo between the text and personal lived experiences. According to Marcel Proust, bibliotherapy is a “curative discipline,” capable of stimulating psychic and emotional vitality, thus suggesting its potential to awaken inner resources in readers.3

In this sense, reading becomes a regenerative force and an essential aid in restoring psychic and emotional vitality.4 For some people, reading is primarily an intimate moment, a tête-à-tête with the book and with oneself.5

Reading also helps overcome difficulties, with a long list of benefits. Reading meets a variety of needs, whether they be for repair, qualification, self-affirmation, confirmation, glorification, projection into the future or past, sublimation, exploration, identification, education, disidentification, depersonalization, and more.6

Why bibliotherapy?
The reasons and goals of the approach

The initiative of bibliotherapy, specifically by and for SWers, takes on its full meaning within the context of SWAC’s annual magazine. The books and (auto)biographical references offered aim to foster a sense of community and reduce the loneliness SWers may experience, whether caused by geographical or psychological isolation. Thus, this bibliotherapy not only addresses readers’ individual issues, but also serves as community cohesion.

The books proposed will be presented with a summary to help better understand my personal reflections, in which I will share the emotions and impacts these readings had on me. My goal is not only to convey the content of these works, but also to show you how they made me feel. This approach seeks to not only introduce the books, but also create a more intimate connection, showing how these stories resonate in my own journey. I hope these shared experiences touch you, provide comfort, inspiration, or simply a moment of connection, thereby bringing us closer and strengthening our sense of community and solidarity as SWers.

Who am I?
What experiences shape my reflections?

I am a cisgender, heterosexual, middle-class white woman from the South Shore of Montreal. I am a psychosocial interventionnist engaged in the field of sex work, with three years of experience working at a community organization that is dedicated to improving the living conditions of SWers. My ongoing academic background, a certificate in feminist studies, another in critical sexuality studies, and a bachelor’s degree in sexology, allows me to approach issues facing SWers from an intersectional perspective. I have contributed to various research projects related to the community, with COCQ-SIDA. Additionally, my personal experience of ten years in the sex industry, including two years in an escort agency and eight years as a part-time independent escort, enriches my understanding of the realities of SWers. This combination of academic, professional, and personal experiences provides me with both theoretical and practical insights into sex work issues, while remaining grounded in real-world realities.

Reading to reconnect
Towards a community bibliotherapy

Ninguna mujer nace para puta, María Galindo and Sonia Sanchez, 2007

SUMMARY: The phrase originated in Bolivia and spread to Argentina. “No woman is born to be a whore” is the slogan on a banner carried by María Galindo and Sonia Sánchez during protests and debates. It is also the title of this book, in which these two figures of contemporary Latin American feminism analyze, from the perspective of the whore, the political, ideological, and philosophical processes that push prostitutes out of public life. This deep immersion into the world of prostitution offers the reader new analytical concepts. The authors openly denounce all the profiteers of this system: the “prostituters” (the state and patriarchy) and the parasites (unions, churches, and NGOs). By defining “the street” as a political territory, they propose new ways for SWers to form connections, organize and rebel.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: I found this book particularly enlightening from a cultural perspective, as it offers a glimpse into the reality of SWers in Latin America, a context I was unfamiliar with prior. What struck me most was the way the authors highlight the role of government institutions and the state in maintaining the precarity of sex work. They rightly emphasize that despite minimal government aid, such as food and condom distribution, the state fails to provide real opportunities for education and training, further exacerbating SWers vulnerabilities.

The authors do not only emphasize and denounce profiteers, they also offer ways to transform this reality. By defining the street as a political territory and encouraging organization and rebellion, María Galindo and Sonia Sanchez provide powerful tools for empowering Bolivian SWers. This constructive and militant approach resonates deeply with me because it exhibits our ability to act and advocate for the rights of our community. Ninguna mujer nace para puta is thus a source of inspiration and a call to action for more recognition and better working conditions for all SWers.

Yogi Stripper, Marie-Claude Renaud, 2023

SUMMARY: “It wasn’t just the money that made it enjoyable. All this desire focused on my little self intoxicated, poorly nourished ego… in addition to the sensory, sensual, and sexual pleasures that reached levels never before explored.” The ups and downs of an improbable double life. From her beginnings as a stripper in countryside bars to her success in Montreal’s largest clubs, Marie-Claude Renaud reveals the behind-the-scenes of this sultry world, frankly and without judgment. With spontaneity, she opens up about her difficult relationships with addiction, food, her body image, and recounts her tumultuous explorations of psychedelic drugs. Finally, having found relative peace in yoga, she also discovers a certain hypocrisy to the yogi community, which she does not hesitate to denounce! Honest, captivating, funny, and highly sincere, Yogi Stripper invites us into a life governed by an irresistible need for freedom.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: The author immerses us into the backstage of her double life with great sincerity, revealing the ups and downs of her journey in the world of Montreal’s strip clubs. What particularly struck me was her refreshing honesty when it came to her approach to managing her addictions and her relationship with psychedelic drugs. She openly shares her challenges with drug use, both in her personal life and through her work, offering a rare and valuable insight into this reality.

Marie-Claude Renaud does not shy away from addressing the bodily pressures one can feel in the industry, which can affect our body image and eating habits, describing how these aspects can influence our well-being. Her story, both frank and impactful, is filled with emotions and humor, making difficult subjects more accessible and less taboo. The way she explores her internal contradictions and personal discoveries, especially her experience with yoga and the hypocrisy she encountered, adds an extra dimension to her testimony.

Yogi Stripper is an inspiring read that offers an honest and liberating perspective on the challenges we may face in our work. The book encourages self-reflection and personal growth, while addressing often hidden aspects of our professional reality with lightness and authenticity.

Balance ton corps : manifeste pour le droit des femmes à disposer de leur corps, Bebe Melkor-Kadior, 2020

SUMMARY: This book is the manifesto of Bebe Melkor-Kadior, an Afro-feminist sex worker, who argues for body freedom and unashamed sexuality. After the #MeToo movement and the liberation of speech around female sexuality, new voices of pro-choice feminism are rising. Bebe Melkor-Kadior is one of them. At only 24 years old, her extensive experience as a sex worker and her inclusive vision of feminism led her to develop her life philosophy: the great principles for being a slut, a sharp critique of our “prude society”, a plea for sex education for young people and the emergence of positive masculinity. Throughout the text, the author lays the foundations for her ideal world: a society where sex is no longer taboo but a topic like any other, taught in schools to create enlightened citizens. A tangible testimony that shapes a new feminist thought, challenging and of its time.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Bebe Melkor-Kadior’s manifesto offers a refreshing and bold perspective on sex work, sexuality, and feminism. Her Afro-feminist approach brings a crucial intersectional dimension often overlooked in mainstream discussions on these topics. The author skillfully weaves together sex education, positive masculinity, and a sexually liberated society, offering an innovative vision that will resonate with many SWers. Her proposal for a society where sex is no longer taboo, instead a topic like any other, is both stimulating and necessary. Her vision of positive masculinity is a fascinating aspect of the book. She explores how challenging mainstream toxically masculine behaviours can improve gender relations and help destigmatize sex work.

What makes this book particularly appealing to SWers is the way Bebe Melkor-Kadior directly addresses the realities of the industry. She provides a candid, non-judgmental look at sex work while advocating for greater recognition of our rights. Although her vision may sometimes seem idealistic, it inspires one to imagine and work towards a world where sex work is recognized, respected, and integrated into our social fabric like any other profession.

Devenir perra, Itziar Ziga, 2009

SUMMARY: Itziar Ziga grew up in a neighborhood in the Spanish Basque Country, surrounded by toxic clouds and neon green wastelands. She loves feather boas, sometimes dresses up as a trucker, and refers to herself as a bitch. This book exudes a contagious freedom and enthusiasm. It is a testimony of joyful activism marked by cross-dressing and street performances, and carries the brutal demands of those who remain on the margins of a society that condemns them.

Prefaced by Virginie Despentes and Paul B. Preciado, Devenir perra is both a collective portrait and an autobiographical essay. Itziar Ziga describes the experience of a subversive femininity, hyperbolic and humorous. Prostitution, veiling, sexuality, trans identity, and social precariousness are themes that run through the text, in a resolutely intersectional and anti-assimilationist approach.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: This is a true literary punch that promises to shake and inspire SWers, alongside anyone who challenges societal norms. This book is a bold, uncompromising celebration of subversive femininity and queer activism. The intersectional framework of the book is another strong point. By weaving together themes like trans identity, social precariousness, and marginalized sexualities, Itziar Ziga creates a rich and complex portrait that reflects the diversity of experiences within SWers’ communities.

For SWers seeking a read that validates their experiences while pushing them to reflect and act, Devenir perra is a must. It is a manifesto for those who remain at the margins, and a call to pride and solidarity.

Bibliographical references

Bebe Melkior-Kadior. (2020). Balance ton corps: manifeste pour le droit des femmes à disposer de leur corps. La Musardine.

Itziar Ziga. ( 2009). Devenir perra. Editorial Melusina.

María Galindo and Sonia Sanchez. (2007). Ninguna mujer nace para puta. Lavaca.

Marie-Claude Renaud. (2023). Yogi stripper. La Mèche.

1. Ouaknin, M.-A. (2016b). «Chapitre II. À l’ombre des mots en fleur», Dans :, M. Ouaknin, Bibliothérapie: Lire, c’est guérir (pp. 47-53). Paris: Le Seuil.↩

2. Ibid↩

3. Ibid↩

4. Ibid↩

5. Ibid↩

6. Ibid↩