Ava Adore

Obs: Terminology: Sex Worker.

Not all sex workers are strippers. Not all strippers are sex workers.

Some in the industry joke that the only people who deny strippers are sex workers are the strippers. With a feminist mind, I ask you to examine that statement, that joke. That the butt of the joke lies in a woman’s ability—or seeming ‘disability’—to know what she is. To ‘know her place.’ To make her own self-aware decisions.

I resent being told I live in a fallacy bubble because I don’t identify as a sex worker. I sell sexuality—not sex. I am no more a sex worker as only a stripper than your usual actor, musician, model; those professions who also sell sexuality, sensuality. Elvis, Jimmy Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, Angelina Jolie, Adriana Lima…

Would you call the Victoria’s Secret Angels sex workers?

By definition, ‘sex worker’ means “those in the sex industry that actually provide such sexual services, as opposed to management and staff of such industries.” It can be argued we all work in the sex industry, just as a strip club dj works in the sex industry, but you would not say the dj engages in sex work.

The question becomes: do strippers engage in the work of sex? Myself, I argue no; and again, I argue this for myself and from my views. Others under the sex worker umbrella, from porn stars to escorts to cam folks to phone sex operators, all focus on the act of sex, whether visual, aural, or participatory.

I do not focus on sex, the act of sex, as a stripper. Sex is suggested, but no more than MTV music videos or on dancefloors or movie scenes. Intimacy is suggested, but no more than at a local pub or bar on ladies’ night. Sex work explores sex-as-performance; stripping, if anything, explores dance-as-sex.

This is both a new and relatively-not-new development; stripping is documented at least to the 1890s in Europe with cabarets and revues, though Sumerian myth has it go to Inanna as she descends to the Underworld, Kur. Sex work and stripping have always co-existed, though their overlap depends on the time period.

There are blurry lines between stripping and sex work—the engaging of ‘extras’ has made that line blurry because I see the performing of extras as a form of sex work: it is a sexual service. But stripping, shedding clothes to music, does not involve ‘sex work’ except in the cerebral realm.

We are no more sex workers than masseuses are doctors of physical therapy. Sure, the tools we use may overlap, but the overall arsenal is different. Perhaps prostitutes give lap dances, as we do; perhaps masseuses and physical therapists both give massages; and yet, the intent—where, to whom you go, and why—differs.

I have no issue claiming camaraderie with sex workers. I believe I can be a sex worker ally without being a sex worker, just as I can be a trans ally without being trans. I can be in the sex industry without being a sex worker; I can be in the queer community without being genderqueer.

This is why I disengage from including myself in the term ‘sex worker.’ I do not disengage from the term ‘sex worker’ because of distaste; again, I support those who do consider themselves sex workers; no, rather I disengage because, to me, it offers a sense of false advertising.

Isn’t the work, the challenges, of a sex worker different than that of a stripper? It gives me a sense of comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they’re both fruit, and yet…

If I say I’m a sex worker, and yet I perform nor provide no sexual services for clients—whose expectations, then, am I to live up to? My client, who thinks he understands what sex work means and what that makes him entitled to as options, or me, who wears the term but waters down its meaning?

If a phone sex operator is in essence a dirty talker, and a stripper talks dirty during a lap dance, is that the same? Or is the language different? Or is context everything? And who can be trusted to read the context: the performer or the client? Whose rights in this contract? This is why this debate is heated.

I do not own ‘sex worker’ as a term for myself because I find it suddenly places expectations on me that I am not comfortable fulfilling, against my choice. Though I do believe a person can be both a sex worker and a stripper: of course, why not? What I rail against is the idea that they are one and the same.

I do not like for it to be assumed that I am a pro simply because I’m a stripper. It is this confusion I dislike, this bait-and-switch. Which also deserves analysis:

Why do I dislike being mistaken for a pro, if I have no issue with pros and the only difference is that I have personal issues which prevent me from choosing that path? I dislike it because of how I am treated. And If I dislike how I am treated when mistaken for a pro, then I have experienced how pros are treated.

That is important to recognize.

Which is where one of the other sides of this debate come to play: if ‘sex worker’ is widened as a definition, will it elevate all involved under that umbrella to more fair treatment? Or, as some fear, will it drag us all down with it?

I do not believe anyone should be treated so poorly, be targeted as victims because of their stigma and marginalization and perceived (lack of) worth. I do believe prostitution should be legalized, made safer, and decriminalized (excluding child prostitution, sex trafficking, etc).

That being said, I acknowledge that some strippers may choose to own the phrase and view themselves as sex workers, and I won’t deny them that distinction. For that argument, read Story’s considerations. Some strippers own it as civil resistance.

The term “sex worker,” first coined in the 1980s, lent and air of legality, authority, and legitimacy to those who participated in these professions. That is a big deal: acknowledging it as work, just as a butcher, a baker, does work. It seems simple, this distinction, but it is not.

The fight for fairness, for sex work to be viewed as less stigmatized, less marginalized, and in time, legal for professions which are not, is a valuable fight. Words are powerful. Many discriminated groups reclaim words, work with words. ‘Sex worker’ is no different.

And yet. We have sex work advocates who do not perform sex work. Allies and advocates who fight that fight without wearing that term. Supporters who are not sex workers. Husbands, wives, families. Are they to be ‘sex workers,’ too, if only in terminology?

These are questions I think every thinking stripper should consider and answer for her-, him-, or zirself. I don’t believe there is a right answer. But for me, I do not consider myself a sex worker. I do not consider strippers sex workers until one tells me that is the phrase ze chooses for zirself. I think we all deserve that same respect.