my name is sally anne & i am one of the many victims of this organization. the first thing yall need to understand about the cupcake girls is that they aren’t “sexworker-positive” by any stretch of the imagination.

in true bait-and-switch fashion that puts even the notorious “8minutes” to shame ( and using all the drama of THAT concept ) they will lure women to them with promises of help. their MO = that they show up at clubs bearing their overrated cupcakes. then they will ask if you need anything in the way of assistance.. assuming you say that you do in fact need emergency aid of some sort, you can expect to have to meet with them at a later time to fill out a form in which they demand your full name, address, birthday and social. most women who actually comply b/c they are desperate for help

the ONLY assistance that can be had from cupcake girls is referrals to community resources. they will farm you out to public social & human services organizations and private charities.

cupcake girls method of assisting women is based on the premise that women in the sex industry are too stupid to google. lets play devils advocate and say that’s true. you STILL can get those exact same “resources” just by visiting any county or municipal social services agency and get the same list for free. in addition : most churches & civic organizations maintain a list of “resources”. if cupcakes has it available, you can get it from elsewhere.

most importantly: there is no direct assistance for “emergency housing/ food/ transportation” or any of the sort

yes, i know, i know : “but they helped kamylla and held a fundraiser for her attorney’s fees” . cupcake girls jumped on the *kamylla bandwagon* during a time of intense publicity surrounding that case. kamylla was a immigrant mother who was arrested for prostitution in texas. cupcake girls has never held a fundraiser for a sex worker in their own backyards ( las vegas, nevada and portland, oregon ) because doing so wouldn’t benefit this organization. they literally piggybacked onto the kamylla hype & publicity and used her case in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the sex worker community on social media

the fact is that not before – and certainly not SINCE – kamylla have the cupcake girls held a fundraiser for anyone’s legal needs. this : in spite of the fact that the las vegas metro police arrest some 3,000 women a year on sex-for-hire charges. arguably : many are also immigrants, mothers, disadvantaged and marginalized. but you are going to have one rude awakening if you think cupcake girls will hold a fundraiser for YOU if you case isn’t splashed all over the media. the cupcake girls will “help” you if its something to be gained by them, some advantage on their end otherwise your out of luck, child.

those women who end up jaded and actually post negative comments on social media sites – if cupcake girls knows who they are ( cross-referencing them via their intake form ) they will call the authorities just to notify them that your a sex worker and give your address for good measure

fair warning : stay away from their support group and “free counseling” . they do NOT keep your information confidential. at least one woman complained that cupcake girls notified her probation officer she was using substances, this she claims is information she disclosed during support group. other ladies have had child welfare called on them, yet others have stated that cupcake girls takes the worldview that the entire sex industry is “trafficking”. therefore ; if a lady has a boyfriend or husband that man is assumed to be her “pimp” and this information is reported to the authorities, causing the family to be broken up. so many ladies are outright TERRIFIED of them.

i could go on and fill up a whole page w/ my comments. rather I recommend you review their ratings at https://www.ratethatrescue.org/wp/organizations/the-cupcake-girls-las-vegas/

to learn more about the hell i experienced from them see my blog >>

http://paperless-me.thoughts.com/posts/beware-of-the-cupcake-girls-fraudulent-vindictive

It sounds like Red spent significantly more time with the Cupcake Girls and invested more energy in creating discussions with and researching them than the average stripper they might come into contact with during their volunteering. That is to say, if somebody from the Cupcake Girl’s target population who really took the time to get to know the Cupcake Girls well came away with such a very different view of them than you have, we can certainly assume they’re not projecting themselves any better to the strippers with whom they have much more limited contact.

If the Cupcake Girls don’t look to a stripper like they look to you, and if the Cupcake Girls want to help strippers, they need to do more work to present the version of themselves that you see, especially considering that most of the time, they’ll have to communicate that version of themselves with far fewer interactions and in-depth conversation than Red provided. The answer to this different in perception isn’t that Red should’ve gotten to know them better (nor should any stripper be required to do so — they’re the target population for this organization, they shouldn’t be asked to do any work on the organization’s behalf). The question is, why after interviewing, interacting with, and interviewing the Cupcake Girls was Red not able to know the version of them that you do? It’s not on strippers to get to know the Cupcake Girls better — it’s on the Cupcake Girls to take this information, learn from it, and present themselves more accurately in the future.

I never felt Judged, condemed, or unsafe with them.
I have taken advantage of their resoures that have
Changed my life and daughter for the better.
Forever grateful perla

I think Red (and Tits and Sass!) does/do appreciate the Cupcake Girls’ work. Personally, I think that connecting people who are workers in a field where they don’t get health insurance with health care they can access easily is particularly valuable. But what Red was saying here–and I agree with her–is that if Joy H and the Cupcake Girls in general worked more closely with sex workers’ rights organizations, and were more in tune with sex workers’ own perspective on their work and what we want–such as helping us fight the clubs to not charge stage fees and protesting other similar exploitative practices, and listening to us when we distinguish between labor problems and things that are endemic to the sex industry, you all would be much more effective.

Thanks Caty! I’ve playfully been known as “the other Joy” in CCG…so I just wanted to make sure she was not tagged with my personal opinions. You know Caty, as I reflect on that interview my quote was pulled from I was sharing a lot of my personal frustrations with the christian organizations (or missions) that you mentioned, or even the christians that separate themselves from this industry as a people group. I’m not personally a fan of the – enter a strip club to tell dancers that “Jesus loves them” or the bible handout approach. The main thing I’ve always loved about CCG is they go in with hearts of connection and service, they go into clubs to say “you are beautiful and I care about you and I’d love to be here if you want me to be”. Do they hit it out of the park with every lady in need, every time? Hell no. In some cases they are at the mercy of community partners to meet the needs of each women. But from what I observed during my time serving I saw volunteers spending countless hours finding shelters out of state for a woman having her life threatened. I saw months where volunteers spent more time packing & moving industry women than they did with their husbands. I saw tears…buckets of them, at the funeral of a dancer who took her own life. Joy Hoover is a lover of justice and the organization looks to do right by women in the industry. And sometimes the extent of their service is being a friend over a cup of coffee and a cupcake. Thank you for letting me share my personal side of all of this.

Hey, Joy C, I’m not saying you and Joy H aren’t different people! And thanks for reading and coming to share your story with us, by the way. But what I am saying is that originally the difference wasn’t indicated on the website or in the Cupcake Girls’ comments, so Red made that mistake in good faith. Anyway, there’s now an editor’s note in the first mention of the Joys that we put there about a week ago that makes the distinction.