Today in Absolutely Horrible: SC Stripper Shot At Strip Club Denied Worker’s Comp

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September 6, 2012

The strippers at Tits and Sass have gone on record as being, in general, in favor of independent contractor status for strippers, because we like working at will, not having to be on a rigid schedule, having the ability to travel and work when the whim strikes, not turn over most of our money to the club, and taking Schedule C deductions. There have been a lot of lawsuits filed by strippers seeking to get paid back wages from clubs, and what usually happens is they are determined to be employees (because, honestly, most clubs do treat dancers like employees, mandating shift times and other controls over work), they get paid a small settlement, and the strippers still working at the club or clubs named in the suit inevitably wind up paying more to the club than they did before.

However, the one time we’d actually WANT to see a court determine that a dancer had employee status, as, again, almost inevitably happens, the South Carolina Court of Appeals finds her to be an independent contractor. The reason she was seeking employee status? To collect worker’s compensation after she was SHOT IN THE CLUB in 2008. This is absolutely horrible.

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Stop AB1576: Compulsory Condom Use Won’t Make Porn Performers Safer

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Cyd Nova

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May 20, 2014

astopab1576 — (Photo pf Chanel Preston by Mickey Mod)

Tomorrow the California Assembly’s Appropriations Committee will vote on AB 1576 , a bill that would mandate condoms for all penetrative sex acts in porn. It also requires porn companies to indefinitely carry medical records for each contractor they shoot, and the vague language of the bill leaves room for Cal-OSHA to also mandate barriers, including protective eyewear and gloves, as well as disposable plastic covering for sets, so that performers can enjoy fucking on a Saran Wrap-covered couch.

This legislation presents itself as advocacy for sex workers’ healthcare, despite a majority of adult entertainment workers opposing it loudly and clearly. The bill’s sponsor, representative (and former minister) Isadore Hall and major supporters the AIDS Healthcare Foundation have refused to take the voices of the community into account, instead collaborating with such organizations as Pink Cross, a Christian ex-porn performer nonprofit.

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Blast From the Past: The San Francisco Stripper Wars

By

Kat

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July 6, 2011

This isn’t so much a blast from the past (although, I was shocked to learn that 1997 was fourteen years ago) as it is déjà vu (no, not the place with the three ugly girls). I randomly came across an old issue of Hustler last week because I had a part in an indie movie that takes place in the nineties and it was a prop. It contains an article written during the first round of stripper employee-status and back wages lawsuits that started in San Francisco, focusing on the legendary Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater.

It was an interesting read despite the opening sentences: “Six nude nymphs rise into the air. Writhing together, they kiss and giggle, licking one anothers’ perfect pussies, nibbling nipples, tickling and fondling pert breasts.” What else do you expect when you have to sandwich something substantial in between a photo editorial of a woman whose “favorite pastimes” are “tanning, exhibitionism, and masturbating” (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and an illustration of Abe Lincoln with a raging boner? I learned a few things, most notably that very little has changed. The independent contractor vs. employee debate is just as relevant as ever.

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The Racism of Decriminalization

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Nada Zenith DeCat

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March 28, 2019

“Place of Power.” (Painting by author from her finite gestures series)

Since I began writing this piece, both Scarlet Alliance and SWOP NSW have issued an apology to migrant sex workers for their part in the SEXHUM research. This is an unprecedented move in the right direction for peer organizations. I hope that there will be more attempts in the future to empower migrants and POC, including Aboriginal sex workers, toward self-advocacy. I also hope that in the future, such a statement and its denunciation of non-peer-led research will be initiated by organizations without the need for heavy internal and external pressure from migrant sex workers first. Indeed, I hope that no statements like this are necessary in the future because this complicity with typically unethical outsider-led research will cease to occur in the first place.

As sex worker activists we love pointing fingers at the anti-trafficking industry, whorephobic art and media, and researchers with save-the-whore complexes. Yet, the sex worker activist movement itself is similarly stigmatizing towards migrant POC sex workers. Our movement has promoted the New Zealand decriminalization model for decades without being critical of New Zealand’s criminalization of migrant workers. The global sex workers’ rights movement heralds decriminalization at all costs, while often overlooking the racism involved in its partial implementation. The argument is that decriminalization of sex work will end stigma and benefit all workers equally. However, POC migrant sex workers (PMSW) still experience stigma, raids, and racism within the purported decriminalized sex worker heavens of New South Wales, Australia and New Zealand.

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Nicholas Kristof’s Sweatshop Boner

By

Robin D

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July 14, 2014

(Image by Scott Long, courtesy of Scott Long)

The Cambodian garment industry’s factories often serve as the canonical example of sweatshops. Women toil away in them for long hours with low pay and awful, unsafe working conditions. There are regular mass faintings due to poor ventilation, chemicals such as insecticides and shoe glue, long hours, and lack of access to health care.

There are about 650,000 Cambodian garment workers, and 90% of them are women. The current Cambodian minimum wage is US$80 per month, though the lower end of a living wage in Cambodia is twice that, at US$160. Many Cambodian garment workers have organized themselves and are working to institute change through collective bargaining and by pressuring companies looking to improve their brands’ image. Local unions have even secured support from a number of international corporations, and these corporations and unions (as part of IndustriALL Global Union) were able to meet peaceably with government officials on May 26th. At issue were a new trade union law, mechanisms for setting wages, a demand for a US$160 per month minimum wage, and the fates of 23 garment workers who were arrested in January for protesting working conditions and pay. Unfortunately, a strike that was planned for the previous month failed. Still, protests continued.

The 23 workers were arrested as part of a violent government crackdown on January 3rd that left at least four dead and 80 wounded. There were similar protests and crackdowns the previous November, when police shot and killed one protester and wounded nine. There was another protest the previous September over mass dismissals of workers on strike and intimidation measures including the presence of military police during inspections.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, however, practically idolizes Cambodian sweatshops. Kristof has recently come under fire for disseminating false stories about sex trafficking that were fed to him by the Somaly Mam Foundation and Mam’s “rehabilitation center” AFESIP in his columns, in the forward to her memoir, and in his 2012 “documentary” Half the Sky. Information about Mam’s fraud, however, had been published in the Cambodia Daily since 2010, and it is highly unlikely that Kristof was unaware of this fact. Her fraud and its horrific consequences for local sex workers were hardly a secret among sex worker rights activists in the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Work Projects.

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