Your say / Strip clubs
‘Sex workers have a right to speak truth to power’
It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Bristol’s clubs and bars, that MP Thangam Debbonaire is calling to ban Bristol’s two city centre strip clubs.
Ms Debbonaire has repeatedly made herself a platform off the backs of Bristol’s sex workers to earn herself feminist gold star status. She responds only to the few who support her backwards and harmful policy and ignores the overwhelming support the clubs have from the general public.
More significantly, she refuses to engage any stripper who questions her reasoning. To Ms Debbonaire, sex workers and strippers are to be spoken about, degraded and have their bodies legislated, but they are never to be spoke to directly.
is needed now More than ever
They are empty vessels, misguided souls, who are too stupid to know how badly their chosen line of work treats them.
This attitude stinks of two things. Firstly, the idea of good labour and bad labour. Women who strip are using their bodies and their business sense to earn an income; it’s a simple equation.
We choose this work because it suits a need. Shift work can fit around childcare, higher education, or maybe – like me – you were just never cut out for 9-5 and prefer being your own boss.
Tuesday Laveau stripped at CoochieCrunch last week while seven months pregnant – photo by Kimmi Jayne Barry
It’s the same for construction workers, retail workers or anyone in the service industry. Recently, we have become aware of just how badly some service industry employers are treating their employees with stories of zero hours contracts and ‘pay to play’ work environments where food servers’ tips or even a percentage of their sales must be ponied up to management at the end of their shift.
So, why don’t these work environments bother Ms Debbonaire but the strip club does?
For one key factor, the word that makes her and her anti-stripper ilk squirm to their very core. Ready? SEX.
When you factor sex in to labour, for some people, all hell breaks loose. What I see time and time again is women who are visibly, overtly uncomfortable with a woman profiting from her sexuality.
So the only answer is to crush it, and while they’re at, they want to punish these women too, by forcing legislation that makes their work environment increasingly unsafe.
Bristol’s city centre strip clubs are by all accounts well managed with stern security. I’m sure anyone who has dealt with harassment from a creeper while working in a retail store would have appreciated having half the backup provided by strip club security.
Ms Debbonaire tweeted that strip clubs and strippers are “degrading, linked to increased rates of sexual harassment of women inside and outside clubs by men, contributing to ideas of women as objects for men’s use/purchase”.
This tweet is like anti-stripper bingo. Quoting from anti-sex worker group The Fawcett Society, whose statistics were famously found to be specious, fraudulent and debunked by the Metropolitan Police and respected academics alike?
Blaming women for being assaulted and harassed because of their chosen line of work? Repeating the notion that is is the women themselves, not their labour, that is up for sale? BINGO.
And the crappy prize is an MP who refuses to listen to not just her constituency, but also to the women whose bodies she wishes to legislate. Sex work is work and workers have a right to speak truth to power.
Tuesday Laveau is the producer of CoochieCrunch and Bristol Burlesque Festival
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
