Dear Sasha,
I was wondering, if we were to unionize dancers and sex workers in general and a bar organized so-called amateur nights, would that raise an issue regarding labour relations? [brefbreak]
Would the performers be scabs? Just curious to hear you opinion.
Syndicaleux
Dear Syndicaleux,
A couple of centuries ago the term scab did apply to people who refused to join a union, but in contemporary parlance, scabs are people who refuse to join colleagues in a strike or who cross picket lines during a strike.
As I understand it, “we” don’t unionize workers they unionize themselves. Still, amateur activities/nights exist across the board in other industries without much impact from card-carrying professionals and their unions: karaoke competitions, reality television shows that feature recreational talent and so on. No doubt these things cause some controversy and aggravation amongst professionals, but they are a reality of the performing arts.
What you might be getting at is the idea that if dancers (let’s stick to that job for now, since it currently exists within a structured “legal” framework) attempted to unionize, would their bosses try to fuck with their efforts? Yes, my dear, they would. And they have. When the Lusty Lady in San Francisco unionized in the mid 90s, workers faced the typical opposition from their employers. After their success (can’t we all just see someone named Brandy Rae standing on the makeup counter in the dressing room in a spangled G-string holding a union sign?), the Lusty Lady workers wrote up advice to other strippers interested in unionizing. Here is some of it:
“Expect management to lie, manipulate history and ‘the facts.’ If you work for unsavoury sleazeballs, their behaviour probably won’t shock you. But if you’re accustomed to cordial honesty from your employer, it may be hard to get used to routine deceipt [sic]. Ignorance is bliss. People don’t like to think that they’re being lied to, manipulated, deceived, and the organizers sometimes come off as paranoid lunatics constantly screaming at people to open their eyes. Go gently here, especially when you’re talking to loyal management favourites or new dancers unfamiliar with the dispute. In our case, management went on a hiring frenzy and during the campaign hired a new dancer every two or three days in an effort to destroy our majority. They held mandatory meetings with the new dancers and lied to them about why we decided to organize.”
Workers at the Lusty Lady had a particular interest in unionizing, it seems. They are waged peepshow dancers who do not work for tips, so the title of “independent contractor,” one that is often applied to strippers so management can circumvent certain work standards, is especially weak here. All they have is their paycheque – and for live sex work, it’s pretty meager. There also seems to be more of a lefty political climate in this club than in others – it’s a right of passage for female types in the queer community to show their tidbits at the Lusty – and queers, bless them, cannot be involved in anything that has to do with sexuality and employment without starting a revolution. This same group of aca-whores ended up purchasing that Lusty Lady as a co-op in 2003.
“Although worker ownership is a rare and ideal situation, it is not without its challenges,” says the Lusty Lady website. Unlike traditional management structure, you have a constant opportunity to impact, change and reinvent your work experience. While this is ultimately fantastic, it also leads to a fair amount of additional work and can be the bone of some very serious contention.”
No kidding. Call me old-fashioned and maybe a little crazy, but I’d sooner work for a bike gang again than a group of Bay Area socialist hos. Being a politically conscious sex worker involves a lot more than just swivelling around for bucks. Holy balls, how are they dealing with this current crop of fragrance-sensitive dykes? (I came up in the era of body sprays. The dressing room was a perpetual haze of Vanilla Cucumber Strawberry Parfait). And did they have to clear out a storage closet so people could process and get massages and hugs if they were being triggered? Do Caucasian strippers earnestly announce that they are on First Nations territory before every performance?
For being bold enough to stand up to the Man and mollify the Womyn, congrats are in order to the Lusty Lady. Remaining enthusiastically open for business in this age of the internet and its just-a-click-away clits is an achievement in itself. The Lusty celebrated its induction into the Service Employees International Union 15 years ago last week.
Here’s a bit of a history of the Lusty. And a film on the club’s labour disputes.
Community Notes
I knew Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel Are You My Mother? was going to be brilliant. She is clearly someone for whom artistic process and intellectual excellence are near-military imperatives. The text is a little cerebrally elaborate at times, but I have a soft spot for the dyke tendency to fetishize rigorous thinking – it’s like the furtive system they’ve developed, along the lines of gay men tapping their feet under bathroom stalls, to communicate desire. As long as it makes sense it’s not like being intellectually gangbanged.
And Bechdel makes sense – her desire to find sense in her life is clear, even if her personal methodology can be hard to follow at times. There is something about being a social outsider that makes you look for meaningful patterns in everything as you seek out signs of yourself in the world. You don’t fit in. So who does?
The story begins with nostalgic, comic vulnerability, in a title pilfered from the children’s book Are You My Mother? (A line from the original: “I have a mother,” said the baby bird. “I know I do. I will find her. I will. I WILL.”)
In Bechdel’s case the title implies something more like: What is this relationship all about? Is this what I have to work with, and if so, how do I live with it and love you? And more importantly, not where are you, but who are you? The novel is filled with personal dream analysis, frayed family connections, life lessons from therapy and the minutiae of love relationships, all building to a quiet resolution. The dignity Bechdel preserves after so much intimate divulgence is a feat in itself.
As she writes in the final pages, “At last I have destroyed my mother and she has survived my destruction.” Her mother gave Bechdel feedback as she wrote the memoir (and made her critical thoughts about the genre very clear). Bechdel overturns so many ideas of what a mother is, yet she’s able to hold her own mother – who she truly is and what she gave her – in reserved appreciation. She dives into a quagmire of demanding ideas and theories about motherhood and comes out holding the golden ball.
