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It’s the 1990s in San Francisco, and Antonia Crane is a dancer at the legendary peep show, the Lusty Lady. In the dressing room and the mirrored ‘Fishbowl’ where the dancers perform in six inch heels, a revolution is brewing.
The dancers are sick of putting up with workplace injustices, or customers filming them without their consent. And they’re about to take on the system and fight to become one of the first unionised strip clubs in the United States.
Antonia Crane is an author, activist, sex worker and PhD candidate at USC. You can read more about her life in her memoir, ‘Spent’.
The other books mentioned in this episode are ‘Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry,’ by Professor Siobhan Brooks, another Lusty Lady alum; and ‘The Ethical Stripper’ by Stacey Clare. Antonia also recommends 'Neon Girls: A Stripper's Education in Protest and Power' by Dr. Jennifer Worley.
The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.
For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hey listener, this episode we're going back to
1990s San Francisco and a peep show called the lusty lady is the story of some incredible dancers who stuck it to the man and
Along the way, there'll be some bad language
It's nighttime in San Francisco and Antoneer Crane is dancing in a fish ball
Literally, it was just visually like kind of a circle with glass and on the corners of the fish ball
Where the one way mirrors or the one way glass where customers could see us, but we couldn't see them
Antoneer moves her body slowly to the music on either side of her or other dances
Twisting and grinding in stilettos their silhouettes
Multiplying in the reflective glass. It was hip-to-hip shoulder-to-shoulder with like seven people next to me
This is the lusty lady a peep show and a San Francisco
Institution plans calm and pay a few quarters to sit behind the glass and watch the new dancers inside the fish ball
But today something is wrong
One of the other dancers star gets Antoneer's attention. She said see that little red
Red light blinking there
Star points to one of the corner booths
Your butthole is being filmed right now move over. Oh my god
Antoneer moves downstage away from the little red light and
Stars strides over to the corner booth and blocked the glass with her body
She yells at the guy over the booming music and tells him to turn the camera off
This isn't the only time someone has tried to film the dancers without their knowledge or consent and they're sick of it
They would sneak it in under their jacket
And they would go into the booth which was a private booth your naked body like closer than you and I are right now to our screen
That's how close they were to your body filming it. Mm. It was just like oh hell now
That moment lit a fire in Antoneer once she's carried with her ever since she spent decades
Advocating for the rights of sex workers and strippers and fighting for their stories to be heard
And it all started here at the lusty lady
Antoneer knew something needed to change but she couldn't do it alone
She and the other lusties as they called themselves banded together
They stood up for one another when the outside world didn't believe in them
Together this incredible group of women and femmes
Transformed the lusty lady they won hard-fought victories that are still having an impact today
Plus they did it in six-inch heels and a selection of incredible wigs and I call that some truly iconic girlfriend's behavior
I'm Anderson field and from the teams at novel and eye-harp podcasts
This is the girlfriend spotlight where we tell stories of women women
Today
Antoneer pickets the lusty lady
Antoneer Crane has so many different talents that it's hard to know exactly how to describe her
So I'll let her do it
My favorite way to describe myself is basically a queer homicidal
fierce fighter
activist writer
PhD candidate at USC. I'm a lover. I'm a fighter and
I'm a queer sex worker and writer amazing. I didn't mean for that to rhyme, but it's I mean as a writer it comes naturally, right?
Antoneer is very very cool
Today she's wearing these big statement glasses and a tight red knit sweater with tattoos poking out of her sleeves
She's just completely nailing that riot girl turned academic look and I am here for it
But back in the early 90s she was still that artsy punk kid just 20 years old and living in California
Would you be able to kind of paint a bit of a picture of what your life was like in San Francisco before you started at the lusty lady?
It was a gritty time in San Francisco
There were a protest in the streets every weekend whether it was food not bombs or a protest against
domestic violence against women. I was really broke a lot of my friends were really broke
back in 1992
I was doing a lot of drugs
I was also at Mills College and I was studying what we called back then
women studies
And to survive in San Francisco, I thought, you know, hey, I'm just gonna work in the lap dancing clubs and
Take down the patriarchy one lap dance at a time and a lot of my dyke friends were doing that and it was
You know back then it was performance art
Yeah, and you'd walk into the clubs and get hired on site and
See these women doing these incredible acts just together or separately and just it was definitely in the air
feeling that
We could use our bodies in a way that was empowering and that our bodies were a sight of revolution in
The lap dancing clubs and to near-made friends from all walks of life
But the working conditions left a lot to be desired
It was a very exploitive environment
We would go to work and be charged to work and they would call it these fees and the fees and the fines would have different titles
These fees they had no caps. I'd go to work and it would be $80 and then the next for four hours
Then I'd go to work in the next thing. It would be $180 for four hours in the same place correct
Wow, and if you wanted to work and get on the schedule, you had to pay these exorbitant fees
In 1995 Antonia took a break from dancing because she was recovering from addiction
And a lot of the clubs people were taking drugs out in the open and she wanted to avoid the temptation
But then a friend recommended she tried the lusty lady. It was less frantic
It's like working in a factory
You have a locker kind of like a gym you you clock in
In a in a time clock from the wall and at the lusty lady they have the audacity to put you on a schedule and they have the audacity to
To give you a paycheck, which is unheard of yeah kind of in the sex industry
This could be the stability that Antonia needs to get back into the dancing scene a friend drops her off at the club
Antonia strides past the glowing neon sign of a naked woman outside and into her audition
Soon she's clocking in for her first shift behind the glass walls of the fishbowl and that glass
It's another thing that made the lusty lady different from the other clubs
There's a separation between you and the client and
So there was less of a I call it high impact hustle
High impact hustle is just that it's your body and their body and you're negotiating the space and it's really fast and furious
Whereas if it's behind glass, there's that separation kind of like
The difference between being a bartender and being a stripper
There's a wall between you and the other person. Yeah, it reminds me of I used to work for like nine years as a singer in clubs and stuff and
I used to hate it when I turned up at a venue and
The stage was just floor level
Because it meant that all the punters could come right up to you and the amount of times I had like
You know guys being real sneezes and stuff with me and kind of breaking past my barrier of like
I'm here performing and you're not meant to touch me was because I was on floor level
But as soon as you put me on even a small stage
They knew the bound was there, you know, yeah, I felt way safer and more comfortable and like I could just perform
You know, I didn't have to think about anything
Absolutely, I mean that floor show and the the space between you and another person
Especially with sex work. It's a constant negotiation and it's an art form
as well
That also meant and this is the important part also of the barrier is that it made me closer to my co-workers
When they dance side-by-side in the fishbowl or get changed in the locker rooms
Antonia and her colleagues get to know each other
we would talk about
What was going on that day in our lives and
You know what I was going on with the customers and what they were doing and how we felt about it
Was it just like lovely to have the camaraderie of the rest of the work is around you?
It was absolutely lovely
You know, remember I was newly sober before that I was hoovering mountains of meth
And when I got sober I put on 35 pounds in three months and was healthier than I had had ever been
Maybe and I was next to these phenomenal women who had savings accounts and skateboards and pets and
Some of them had kids and some of them had partners and a lot of us were members of actor
That's the AIDS coalition to unleash power an activist group that was founded in the late 80s
It was just one of the causes Antonia and her colleagues got involved with so it was this um
Really incredible combustible collection of people in San Francisco
Who were kind of I think primed to be activists. I mean it sounds like a really
incredible
Collection of women. It was was it all women at the lusty lady? Yes. It was all exclusively women or a fems
In any kind of performance you have to create an identity for your own stage persona
And it sounds like Antonia and her friends at the lusty lady had a lot of fun with it
I think that sex work is really drag
And so we had a look at a tremendous amount of wigs and personalities at the lusty lady
And I was bald at the time and I wasn't the only person who was bald at the time and so
Everyone was very funny about their drag and had like these wild different wigs and different looks
And you could have a lot of different personalities
So you could come with one wig and be one name and come with another wig and be octopussy
Or Sicilian or valvita and have like a totally different look
That's marketing
Yeah, for real. Yeah, it was it like Mondays you got octopussy, Tuesdays, you got
Yeah, exactly. I love that
As she settles in at the lusty lady in 1995 Antonia is finding her feet
She's making money and she has a new set of kick ass colleagues and friends
But it's not all plain sailing
Antonia begins to notice something she doesn't like about how the club is run
If you were one minute late you didn't get your raise that week
One minute one minute. Oh my god
When it comes to hiring and firing or allocating shifts the problems run even deeper
There were some things that were happening that were really um that were not okay with us
There was something called private pleasures, which was
Separate from the fishbowl. I'll say it was down the hall
And only certain people would have shifts in private pleasures
They would not allow women of color and black women
Uh
To have as many shifts in private pleasures
You could make a lot more money from working in the private pleasure section
So women of color didn't get the same opportunities to earn as the white dances
And they also
tokenized
People according to race and would have like only a one or two or three
Black women on a shift and those women would have to always um cover each other's shifts
Right because you're the same person
Exactly
So that was organized in a really fucked up way and then also body type so
If you were small breasted you would have to find another small breasted person if you were thicker you'd have to find another thick person
And of course the skinny white women with boobs had the most shifts and they had the most um ability to
To cover their shift if they were sick or needed surgery or needed to travel
There was definitely favoritism
There was definitely a hierarchy
According to beauty standards racist beauty standards and
Abolus beauty standards and ageism and things were according to that hierarchy at the time
And we were having open conversations about that at the time
See open Brooks one of the other dancers urged the bosses to change their racist policies
They made some noises about rotating black dancers through the schedule more
But then they held a staff meeting to ban political literature
in the dressing rooms
Because the lusties were such a tight-knit community they shared their complaints with each other
When they were hip-to-hip dancing in the fishbowl or after work getting dinner
The straw that broke the camel's back per se was the filming
Antoneer is standing in the fishbowl
Her friend star has just pointed out the glowing red light of the camcorder
And she is pissed
We were just like what the hell no, absolutely not
I'm not going to be recorded and be put on some sort of DVD being sold somewhere in some shady-ass
Back garage basement without my knowledge or consent
And there's nothing wrong with doing porn. It's just that this is this job in this place
This is what I'm being paid for here
Star was next to me. She was 19 at the at the time. She stormed off stage
It went and talked to the show director and said um, we don't like being filmed
And of course the manager show director said you can go work somewhere else. They always say that
Yeah, you don't like it here. You can go work somewhere else. It's like no, no, no, no, no. I work here
And so Star came back to stage and said I'm gonna change things around here
And I said okay
I
After the break the lusties get organized
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After the showdown in the fishball
Antonya and her friends aren't about to let the customers get away with violating their privacy anymore
So they take matters into their own hands
Star said I'm gonna change things around here
And then she started to talk to the other dancers and started to
Say well, let's let's post up pictures. Let's make a Xerox copy of a sign that says
No cameras like a camera with a line through it
And post it on the one-way booths. This doesn't seem too wild to me
I mean after all it's just like the sort of poster that you get in any theater or cinema
And you'd think that the lusty ladies management would want to stop the filming as well
But things don't go to plan
The show directors would tear those posters down. Why would they just tear them down
Because of the irrational fear of workers having any power
I really think that's what it is. I mean, what else is it? It's totally irrational for sure
They're used to stepping all over us. It's quite aggressive. It's a taboo. It's aggressive
It is it's aggressive. The message is clear the bosses aren't going to step in to stop the filming
But tearing down the signs doesn't stop the lusties from organizing. It fires them up
So the dancers start meeting at a Chinese restaurant next door to the club to strategize
And they start talking to the other employees at the lusty too
We had a thing called support staff and they were artists and they were
Dies who worked at the front desk
And they would buzz us downstairs and they were security and they would also escort us from the dressing room to the private pleasures
Which was down the hall
Now that's a really good opportunity to talk about working conditions
They were also
frustrated by
The clientele bringing in cameras and making a mess and acting out and they were also frustrated with management
And so we actually were able to
Get them on board with our movement
The dance is hold a mating with the support staff to hash out plan
We said well here are our grievances and here's what's going on and
Everyone had a lot of ideas about the things that they were frustrated with in the workplace
And after discussing it
We realized that if we brought these grievances
To management we were just all going to get fired
They need protections to stop the bosses from being able to retaliate against them
We decided that we had unionized
I can't imagine how nerve-wracking that decision must have been
If they succeeded in unionizing they could negotiate a new contract with the bosses and properly address the issues at the lusty lady
But if this went wrong they could all lose their jobs
If they went public they also risked outing themselves as strippers and sex workers at a time when that was extremely stigmatized
There had never been an official recognized union of strip club workers in the USA before
But as Antonia points out
Sex workers have always fought for their rights
We just don't often hear about it
It's not common knowledge
Because there's a lack of scholarship around it and there's a lack of sharing that scholarship
I've always kind of bought into the idea that sex workers are this marginalized
Labor group that are on the margins of society and
And kicked to the shadows and
That is true in a sense, but also if you look at history
We have always been here
We have always been at the beating heart of society
And labor and at the forefront of feminism
We are the oldest profession and we've always organized with each other
And built coalitions
And I think the scholarship just needs to catch up
In that meeting the workers at the lusty lady decided to take a risk
They were determined to stand up for what was right
A lot of people are like, well, we'll get fired
If we say anything, we'll get fired, we'll get fired
Well, guess what? You're going to get fired
You're going to get fired anyway
If you have no protections, you're going to get fired
So the contract will get you protections
And when you're organizing, you have protections
They knew they had a fight on their hands
So the lusty's decided to look for support
We joined with SCIU
Which is a giant union here
SCIU stands for the Service Employees International Union
Today, it represents almost two million workers in all sorts of jobs
From healthcare to window washes and janitors
The lusties wanted in
But it wasn't going to be easy
The head of the SCIU said now
And why was that?
Because stigma
Respectability politics, they didn't want strippers
To be part of SCIU
And just really
You know, we were left at
The dancers had to jump through a series of hoops
Just to prove that they were even eligible to unionize
A lot of strippers are hired as independent contractors
Rather than employees
Which makes it a lot harder to legally unionize
The lusty lady was different
The dancers were officially employees
They got a paycheck and everything
But to begin with, it was still hard to get the bigger unions to back them
So the dancers teamed up with an advocacy group
Called the exotic dancers alliance
And got to work convincing their local SCIU chapter 790
To let them in
Local 790 said yes
They would have been stupid to not accept us
And we would have made a huge stink about it
And so we were like, no, no, no, no, no
We are union, you are local
So we became SCIU local 790
The exotic dancers alliance
We had our list of demands
And we met with management
And they started calling mandatory meetings
They cried
And they said, please don't do this
It was just the emotional blackmail
It was literally just emotional blackmail
They put us against each other
They made the union sound like this terrible entity
That was out to get us and rip us off
And they made it sound like
Having a union was going to turn management against us
And make our jobs harder
That unions are racist, that unions are exploitive
That you're going to be writing this big check to the union
It is really divisive
And it's using the language of social justice
In order to divide and conquer the workforce
And to pit people against each other
But what happened with us
Is that we were such a close-knit group
That once they started doing that
It just made us angrier and stronger
Because we just knew it was bullshit
In the summer of 1996
The lusties line off at the club
To vote in their union representatives
And officially launched the exotic dancers union
We had members of SCIU
Sit at the table and it was just like a traditional ballot box
Where you fill out a card
And you put it in the envelope
Each ballot cast is a landmark step
For workers' rights in the sex industry
We were the first
Strippers to unionize in the United States
It was a powerful moment
Then newly elected shops do as they're announced
These are the people who represent the workers to management
Those people were Sorcia, Velvet, Tory, Poly, Star, and Decadence
And Jean also, they just wanted to say their names
And now the fight really begins
The dancers need to negotiate a contract
If they actually want to change things around here
We wanted anti-discrimination policies that had teeth
We wanted no cameras
We wanted more freedom and fluidity
About changing our shifts with anybody we wanted to
We wanted more people of color
We wanted more regular raises
We wanted just basically
Have an anti-discrimination policy
That was current and modern
And aligned with our culture
Now they have the formal protection of a union
They can ratchet up the pressure on their bosses
The open Brooks falls a racial discrimination claim against the club
And the dancers take direct action to protest about their working conditions
One thing that we did is no pink day
And so like if you're working in a pencil factory in your finding against your boss
One thing that you want to do is you want to slow down production
Like pump the brakes on production
So what we did is we had no pink day
And so what that means is we covered our bodies
And we covered our
Nether regions
With skirts
Yeah
While you were dancing
Yeah we covered our junk
And so that was no pink day
So we refused to show our junk
And I think that's just really creative
Yeah and like genuinely sort of outrageous
From what people were expecting right
Yeah the audacity
Yeah
Of live new dancers to cover their junk wall dancing
And we wrote on our hands, you know, unfairly repractices
It showed it in the mirror through the glass
Cool that's punk
The lusties are letting the world know that they're not happy
And it causes a star
I have the San Francisco Chronicle clip in front of me
And it says North Beach strippers unite
And this is from August 14th
1997
Dancers could be the first in the country to unionize
It goes without saying that the bosses did not appreciate this
And it wasn't long until they struck back
Antonea says they started firing people just for being late
They started being
Trigger happy with firing people
You're supposedly allegedly have protections
If you're unionizing
So it's retaliatory
But they'll use oh you were two minutes late
And then one woman named Summer
Who was a single mother was fired
So we walked out
together
Antonea and the lusties were not about to let this ship fly
They strode out of the club
And management locked the doors of the lusty lady behind them
Coming up, the fight for rights gets dirty
This is Janna Kramer from Windown with Janna Kramer
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I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you
Antonia and the other dancers
are locked out of the lusty lady
But they're not about to give up their fight
Just to get back in
Luckily, Antonia's friend Star
Has a plan to get them another source of income
I think she's like 5, 10
And she attracted more um
Submissives, right
So she had this client of hers
Who wanted, what did he actually want
I mean, that's maybe um
Maybe a topic for an essay
But it's gonna say a whole new podcast for that
Yeah, a whole new podcast
But anyway, so she was like, hey, I have this client come and meet me
We're gonna go meet in this place
He's gonna meet us in a Jeep
And take us out to his construction site
And he wants us to pose in mud
And he paid us several hundred dollars a piece
To go meet us in San Rafael
Which is like 20 minutes outside of town
We all piled in his Jeep
Okay
Now, when I do that today, no, I would not
But this is 1996, 1997
And we just were unafraid
I don't know, there was just something about the 90s
Where I was just like, sure, I'll get in the car with you
And drive in the middle of nowhere
I have eight badass women with me
What is he gonna do?
Like, he's outnumbered
I mean, to be fair, he is outnumbered
To be fair, he was outnumbered
I mean, we could have all taken him
We were all tough ass bitches, right
And so
We're in the middle of nowhere
In this construction site, it's all mud
And we're all rolling around and posing
He wanted us to pose in mud and take photos of us
And I think of that as our portrait
Our family portrait
Of us completely covered in mud
With our arms around each other
And stacked on top of each other
And appeared in a bid
That's our lesty lady family portrait
Oh, I love that
Yeah, and then I remember spending the next two days
Washing mud out of my ears
While she's locked out of the lesty lady
Antonya picks up shifts at the other lap dancing clubs in the city
The other strippers would just roll their eyes
And shrug their shoulders and kind of laugh at us
But they really?
They didn't other strippers
Yeah
Yes, they did not get it
Antonya isn't bothered by the skeptics
Their movement is gathering momentum
They rallied the local community
And other local unions
And staged a two-day picket outside the club
We handed out condoms
We handed out contraceptives
We were dressed to the nines on the picket line
And then
One colorful thing about our group
Was our willingness just to have fun
And just turn the picket line into a party
They hold up signs that say things like
Do not enter unfair to labor
And bad girls like good contracts
They also had some really incredible chance
Like two, four, six, eight
Don't go into masterbay
stunning
And how did the normies in the street respond
To all of this
When they were alone, they would hop
When they were with their girlfriends or wives, they wouldn't
Yes
Surprise, surprise
Yeah
But generally walking by, people were really supportive
Dancers also filed a lawsuit
Under the Unfair Labor Practices Act
Which was supposed to bar employees
From firing and suspending workers
Without legitimate reason
And it works
We got some of her job back
Oh wow
And so you just went in and you demanded
Someones to get her job back
That was our demand
Is that we needed to get her
Her job back
And we did that
And we just literally were
Very fierce
With our if anyone got fired
We walked out
It's clear talking to Antonya
Just how to term in she and the other dancers were
And the more the bosses crack down on them
The more resolved they became
We had a vow of
We didn't engage
With the emotional blackmailing
It made us angrier and more solid as a group
The contract negotiations were fierce
And they dragged on for months
I remember hearing about it
From decadence
Our shopstours
About how they would stay up all night negotiating
And I remember we would go and have sit-ins
Where they were negotiating
And just sit and wait
About what they accomplished that day
I remember it being exciting
More than anything
I was just like wow
This is really intense
This is cool
And just feeling really proud
Just feeling proud of my co-workers
And proud of their ferocity
In April 1997
The exotic dancers union
Finally came to an agreement
With the lusty ladies' management
The new contract won them a pay rise
Sick leave
An enter on my glass
A ban on video cameras in the club
And the ability to switch shifts with any of the dancers
Not just the ones that looked like them
It actually got us a lot
It served as a blueprint for other workers
It got us a seat at the table in labor
It has created many thinkers
And ferocious labor rights individuals
In the sex industry
Back then there was a lot of stigma
And we were really behind
And we were really like
Not open about our sex work
As much
But I think that changed it
I feel like that was the turning point
Whereas like oh, guess what
All workers honorable
Sex workers honorable
We deserve rights
We deserve
An anti-discrimination policy
We deserve the right to organize
And talk back to the boss
To celebrate that victory
The work is through a very lusty lady party
It's what we call play day
Where we open up the rooms
And the dancers kind of walk around the area
And we
We give lap dances kind of out of the open
And we celebrate and we're all on costume
And we have like
Food
And I remember just being like this really fun
Like we got our contract celebration
Yeah
So I do remember that moment
Just it being like a really celebratory moment
After a few years at the club
Antonia danced her law shift at the lusty lady
Now that she was secure in her sobriety
She was making more money at some of the other lap dancing clubs
I felt that I had left the lusty lady in really good hands
And I definitely had
Because they decided to become a union collective
And that was the first stripper union collective
Also in the United States
When the owners of the lusty lady threatened to close the club in 2003
The dancers club together and bought it off them
It became the first worker-owned strip club or peep show in America
Antonia went on to become a writer
She's currently doing a PhD at the University of Southern California
And she's not the only lusty lady alum to go into academia
A lot of lusty ladies have written books about this experience
It was like such a professor incubator
When I said these were phenomenal people
I was not kidding around
Yeah, yeah, I like the idea of that as some sort of like academic accelerator experience
Just go dance at the lusty lady
And then write a book about it and then become a PhD
There's three of us literally out of like 12 of us than a PhD
You should open your own school
We should open our own school
Yeah
The lusty lady incubator school of sex work organizers
Perfect
In the three decades since the lusty lady first unionized
Antonia has seen conditions get even tougher for strippers and sex workers
The fact that the corporations and the owners of strip clubs have been allowed to continue to get away with
retaliating shutting down breaking labor laws
It's just been open season for corporations to just like run a muck and wreck
Organizing efforts
And the fact that they've just been continuing to get away with that is just criminal
Even the lusty lady couldn't last forever
In 2013 the club was forced to close
It was really a historically important
Union collective of strippers and they only won the country
And so they priced us out of our rent and we lost the building and we lost our lease
On the night at close the dancers held a funeral procession for the club
They carried a pink bejeweled coffin through the streets to mark the end of an era
But Antonia has carried on the fight that began at the lusty
In 2018 she founded Soldiers of Pole which later became strippers united
It's a labor organization that helps dancers unionize
Antonia also runs another group called the stripper worker center
We continue the fight every day is a battle
I really think we need to mobilize the working class needs to mobilize more
And just have faith that you know if we get everyone together
That's how you change things
Some of the other dancers have also gone into labor-organizing full-time
Decadence who was my friend also became a labor lawyer and still is a union labor lawyer
That's great
When we started to organize she was talking to the lawyers and she just thought you know I'm smarter than these people
And went to law school and became a labor lawyer
And she's proved it
And she's proved it
Because sex workers are really smart
During the pandemic Antonia helped run some events at Stargarden
A strip club in North Hollywood to inform dancers about their labor rights
In 2022 the dancers there went on strike
And after a 15-month battle with their bosses they unanimously voted to unionize
Another really successful thing that the Stargarden dancers did is their relationship with the media
Was so incredibly positive
And I just cried watching it happen
Like watching them get interviewed over and over again on media outlets
Seeing how media was talking about strippers and talking about their
labor war and talking about working conditions like they weren't considered a joke
I'm very pleased to see that you think it's better
I mean allowing sex workers to tell our own stories is
It's such a pleasure and an honor and it's such a fun experience
And I hope that more sex workers are brought to the table and feel able to freely openly speak about their honest experiences
And feel safe doing so
You know it's people being sensitive and really listening and um
It's really just about humanity
It's just about our shared humanity and when we can come together and be like you know what let's just share our humanity
Thanks so much to Antonya Crane
If you'd like to know more about her incredible life you can check out her memoir spent
Antonya also kindly recommended a couple of other books if you want to learn more about some of the themes that we've talked about today
There's the ethical stripper by Stacey Claire and unequal desires race and erotic capital in the stripping industry
That one is actually by another lusty lady alum and someone you heard about in this episode
Professor Siobhan Brooks
If you've enjoyed this conversation you can find loads more incredible women on our feed do check them out
And please do spread the word and tell your friends about us
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Next time on the girlfriend spotlight
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You
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The show is hosted by me anacinfield this episode was written and produced by Caroline Thorneum
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