My main issue with this argument is that there aren’t really legal venues for full service sex work, so when dancers (and I am one) criticize extras girls for selling out of our legal venues, we ignore how hard it is (especially post-sesta/fosta) to sell full service sex work.

“Ideally, non-extra strippers would work in one place, and extra strippers would work in another, and no one would be confused.”

The other place you’re thinking of is called a brothel. (or a dungeon… etc.) My point is that they ARE different places, which should be for different types of business.

Some clubs condone extras girls until the vice squad comes.

I dunno if the cops want that to be known.

Eh, I’m with you right up to “giving other dancers a bad name.” Strippers get a bad name because sex work is stigmatized, period, and if neither lap dances nor handjobs were frowned-upon ways to make a living it wouldn’t be an issue. I’m a non-extras girl too, and my parents were also worried about my work environment. I don’t tell them about how, occasionally, I find my income dipping when there’s an influx of extras girls, or how I’m fending off more gropey hands and boundary-pushing BS from customers, because I feel like I’m handling myself okay and that is just not a frustration I need to share with them. But I think my parents’ worry came from the ideas that all sex workers, including strippers who don’t provide extras, must be woefully exploited or that they must have damaged me somehow or failed to give me enough support to “avoid” stripping, rather than from the mere fact that extras girls exist. Fortunately, they’re getting over it.

That said, my club’s liquor license is up for review right now. I don’t think that’s a situation the extras girls created — I think it has more to do with the local businesses wanting us out, and they’ve been playing this game with us for many years — but if an undercover cop or someone from the liquor board walked in at the wrong moment we’d all be fucked. We could get screwed for a number of other reasons — dress code violations that are related to the license, the truly stupid number of sales techniques considered solicitation here whether or not they include even the *implication* of sexual services, etc. — but historically, around here, when those are the reasons cited for a club getting closed down, the club has ALSO been notorious for extras.

And I have noticed a pretty direct relationship between who’s on the schedule in any given night and customer behavior. I still think what the customer chooses to do is on his shoulders, ultimately, but I think it helps a lot when the other girls are standing firm with me on what is and isn’t for sale in this joint. When I’m schmoozing with my regular and another non-extras girl, he tries to get away with a little and we both smack his hand and tell him he’s being naughty and he’ll get us in trouble, and then he scales back a little. We order another round of drinks and collect our “asshole tax” — the apology money we get when he realizes he’s crossed a line. When I’m sitting with the same guy and the new girl who’s doing extras . . . he tries to stick his fingers inside my thong and attempts to french me when we say goodnight. Yes, clearly, the biggest issue here is HIS rapey behavior . . . but when the dancers present a united front, it really helps with reducing pressure and enforcing boundaries. I know it’s just my experience, but it’s something I’ve been experiencing for a while now.

I am a stripper, have never done an “extra” and can say with certainty that I never will. I work in Detroit, which is one of the worst cities in the country in terms of extras. I’m surrounded by extras girls at work and still manage to be a top earner here. I have to hustle harder, and devote all my work time towards making money, but that’s what every top salesperson should expect to do.

There’s a difference between working at a brothel or escorting vs doing extras in a strip club. When you do extras at a strip club, you are ruining the strip club’s economy for dancers who are doing their job legally. As far as being jealous of an extras girls stack of money, that’s laughable. If I wanted their money so badly that I’d be jealous over it, I’d be doing what they do for money. Plus, I work in Detroit, where the extras girls have to constantly undercut each other to compete with each others’ low prices. The going rate in Detroit for extras is so low that my $500-600 average makes me a top earner, including the girls that do extras. To assume that a girl has to turn to extras to make money is just ridiculous. I know how to do my job.

@Roxy – You’re brilliant. Well thought out and couldnt agree more.