COMES NATURALLY #151
Copyright © 2004 David Steinberg
Article shared with full credit and no commercial purpose
under the fair use educational provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law and International
treaties.
LAP DANCING IN SAN FRANCISCO AND THE EVOLVING FACE OF SEX WORK IN AMERICA
or
WHY SO MANY PEOPLE LEAVE THEIR HEARTS, MINDS, INHIBITIONS, FEARS, VIRGINITY,
AND HETEROSEXUALITY IN THE CITY BY THE BAY
[A slightly different version of this column appeared in SF Weekly, September
8, 2004.]
At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 5, three undercover vice squad officers walked
into San Francisco's the nearly empty New Century lap-dancing theater and
were, they say, all openly and unapologetically solicited for sex almost before
their eyes had adjusted to the darkness. On May 18, an identical scenario
unfolded at the Market Street Cinema. Nine dancers and three club managers
were arrested during the two raids. The dancers were charged with prostitution,
the managers with "keeping a house of ill repute."
It's not clear why, after years of turning a blind eye to long-standing sexual
activity in the clubs, the vice squad decided to raid the theaters. The timing
was especially odd given that San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong and
Vice Squad Lt. Joe Dutto had recently met with District Attorney Kamala Harris
and agreed to postpone police action at the clubs until issues related to
"abuse of the dancers, police misconduct during [past] arrests, and selective
enforcement" could be addressed, according to a press release from the DA's
Office.
San Francisco Chronicle columnists Philip Matier and Andrew Ross suggest the
vice squad may have dumped the politically delicate prostitution issue into
Harris' lap to get back at her for not seeking the death sentence for an alleged
cop killer in a recent, widely publicized murder case. Veteran sex-work activist
Carol Leigh thinks the raids were prompted by an article, five months earlier,
in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, that described sexual activity in the clubs,
including allegations by some dancers that they were subject to "coercion
and assault" in the clubs' private booths. Vice inspector Rich McNaughton
says police wanted to check the prosecutorial resolve of the Newsom-Harris
administration around sex-work issues. "Not knowing what the new D.A. was
going to do with these cases, we felt we had to test the waters," he says.
Whatever the police motivation, Harris set all political delicacy aside when
she announced, a month after the raids, that she had no intention of prosecuting
any of the people who had been arrested. "Prostitution and regulatory violations
at the clubs raise complex issues involving worker safety, exploitation of
women, equity, and fair notice," she said in a statement dismissing the arrests.
Until she had time to examine these issues more carefully, she said, she was
not about to invest her office's time or money on anything as inconsequential
as lap dancing. She announced the formation of an "Adult Clubs Working Group,"
co-chaired by her office and the office of the city attorney, to examine issues
related to the lap-dancing clubs and "develop enforcement options" for the
future.
While Harris is not going so far as to publicly support decriminalization
of prostitution in San Francisco, she has said for the record that 1) her
primary concern about the lap-dancing theaters is the safety of the women
who work there, not the sexual nature of their work, and 2) she intends to
"prioritize murders, rapes, and narcotics crimes higher than whether people
are paying for consensual sex in the theaters' private booths."
Twenty-five years after nude dancers first came down from the stage to sit
with amazed customers at San Francisco’s Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre,
hundreds of lap-dancing clubs comprise a network of entertainment and commerce
that is a significant part of the sexual culture of every major American city,
and many minor ones as well. The tenor of lap-dancing clubs varies from elegant
to sleazy; working conditions run the gamut from pleasant to abominable; income
for dancers can be anything from extravagant to minimal. Lap-dance privacy
within the clubs goes from nonexistent to near-complete, and the degree of
sexual contact slides from none to playful wriggling to surreptitious touching
to full sexuality -- depending on local laws, law enforcement priorities,
club policies, individual dancer preferences, even time of day.
People in other parts of the country laugh at San Franciscans for thinking
they're the most evolved sexual citizens on the planet, but San Francisco
has a long history of leading the nation in matters of sex, sex work, and
sexual openness. Kamala Harris' decision to refocus the concerns of law enforcement
-- from moral indignation over lap dancing to the protection of lap dancers
-- has all but decriminalized prostitution that happens in a private booth
at a strip club, rather than on the street. The decision reflects a largely
unpublicized consensus among politicians, neighborhood groups, strip club
owners, dancers, and customers on the value of private sexual entertainment
to San Francisco. The decision also has the potential to influence the policies
of other cities as they craft their own responses to this latest addition
to the American sex-entertainment palette.
* * * * *
Lap dancing came to San Francisco in 1980 when Jim and Artie Mitchell decided
to have dancers at their O'Farrell Theatre sit, nude, on the laps of guys
in the audience, for tips. The innovation put a whole new face on sexual entertainment
in the city. Suddenly, for a $1 tip, guys in the audience could sit with,
roll around with, and (to some ill-defined extent) touch the nude bodies of
their revered fantasy objects. The "fourth wall" of theater -- the imaginary
barrier behind which an audience separates itself from the action of a play
-- had been torn down. Fantasy and reality were one.
The Mitchell brothers didn't invent lap dancing. That distinction goes to
New York's Melody Theater, which pioneered the idea of strip shows with audience
participation, both on- and offstage, during the 1970s. But when the Mitchell
brothers brought lap dancing to their extravagant San Francisco sex-show palace,
the idea took off as it never had in New York.
It wasn't long before the Market Street Cinema copied the O'Farrell's new
form, followed by many of the city's other strip clubs. As is so often the
case, the rest of the country was alert to what was happening sexually in
San Francisco. Within a decade, lap dancing had established itself from coast
to coast as a new, often predominant, form of sexual entertainment.
As substantial tips for lap dances supplanted wages and stage tips as the
core of dancers' income, San Francisco club owners realized they could stop
paying dancers wages -- and proceeded to do just that. "Our dancers work entirely
for tips," announcers proclaimed over club loudspeakers, encouraging the audience
to fill the salary gap by being generous with the women wriggling on patrons'
laps. What else was transpiring between customers and dancers varied widely
-- from club to club, dancer to dancer, seat location to seat location, and
mayoral administration to mayoral administration.
In the early 1990s, the clubs began charging dancers "stage fees" -- fees
dancers paid the clubs for each shift they worked. At first the fees were
minimal -- $10 or $15 for an eight-hour shift. There was grumbling about the
clubs taking a cut of tips, but over time dancers adjusted to the new policies.
In 1993, however, when some clubs hiked stage fees to $25 per shift, dancer
resistance grew strident and organized. One group of women -- led by Dawn
Passar, a fine art photographer and tirelessly energetic dancer at the Market
Street Cinema -- formed the Exotic Dancers Alliance and began to file protests
with the San Francisco Labor Commission. Dancers, the Alliance argued, were
employees, not independent contractors as club owners claimed. As employees,
they insisted, they were entitled to hourly wages, and to the basic protections
of California labor laws -- laws that prohibit employers from harassing workers,
firing workers without cause, charging workers for the "right to work," or
taking a share of workers' tips.
The Labor Commission ruled in the dancers' favor in late 1995. Clubs were
ordered to pay dancers wages, and to stop charging stage fees. Dancer Carla
Williams was awarded $52,600 for back wages, stage fees, and penalties.
Dancers in other parts of the country began filing claims with their own labor
commissions. Court rulings in Oregon, Alaska, and Texas all affirmed that
dancers were indeed employees rather than independent contractors. Dancers
who sued for return of stage fees and back wages almost universally won their
cases.
In San Francisco, meanwhile, Ellen Vickery and Jennifer Bryce, two ex-dancers
at the O'Farrell Theatre, pursued a class-action suit against the theater
in the name of more than 500 ex-dancers, eventually winning a monumental $2.85
million judgment.
A big change was in the wind. "There is definitely a trend favoring employee
status over contractor status," admitted attorney Nanci Clarence, who represented
the Mitchell brothers in the Vickery suit. "Any club without awareness of
the legal landscape is wearing blinders."
* * * * *
At the beginning of 1996, three factors converged, completely changing the
nature of San Francisco lap dancing. First, the Labor Commission ruling forced
the Market Street Cinema to begin dealing with dancers as bona fide employees.
Second, San Francisco's flamboyant new mayor, Willie Brown, and radical new
district attorney, Terence Hallinan, took office, bringing a decidedly more
sex-positive and sex-work-positive perspective to City Hall. Finally, neighborhood
groups in downtown San Francisco -- aware that the city's Task Force on Prostitution
was about to issue a report urging the city to "immediately stop enforcing
and prosecuting misdemeanor and felony [state prostitution] laws" -- undertook
a vigorous campaign to protest prostitution on the streets.
It's anyone's guess how important each of these factors was in what happened
next, but in January 1996, the owners of the Market Street Cinema redesigned
their club, constructing a number of private booths -- small rooms with chairs
and upholstered platforms, protected from prying eyes by dim lighting and
curtains -- while raising the fees they collected from dancers from $25 to
$120 per shift.
In an interview, Habib Caruba, a Market Street Cinema owner, argued that the
new fees were not a share of dancers' tips but the club's share of lap dances
sold by dancers on commission. Nevertheless, he noted ominously, dancers whose
"commission sales" delivered less than $120 a shift to the club would face
review, suspension, and potential loss of their jobs.
The new rationale for collecting fees from dancers was eventually ruled just
as illegal as stage fees, but by then the Exotic Dancers Alliance had become
moribund, dancer protest had receded, and the new arrangement -- raised fees,
private booths, and all -- had become accepted protocol citywide.
By installing private booths, the Market Street Cinema simultaneously increased
its take from dancers, penalized dancers (dancers alleged) for their victory
at the Labor Commission, provided a way for dancers who were willing to be
more sexual with customers to earn enough to pay the inflated fees, and moved
a portion of the city's sex work indoors and out of the range of neighborhood
complaints.
Other clubs followed the Cinema's lead, creating private spaces of varying
forms and raising fees charged to dancers to as much as $360 per shift. The
private areas at the O'Farrell Theatre had comfortable couches, curtains,
and lights to announce which spaces were occupied. The cubicles at Centerfolds
contained nothing but a chair and were not curtained at all.
Perhaps not coincidentally, as the booths came into use, the vice squad stopped
checking clubs for illegal sexual activity. Perhaps also not coincidentally,
there was, according to San Francisco prostitute-rights activists, a noticeable
increase in police activity against prostitutes working the streets.
How much of this arrangement was a deal among club owners, city officials,
and police? How much of it came about by tacit understanding? How much of
it was pure coincidence? Willie Brown's prior legal representation of Market
Street Cinema then-co-owner Sam Conti raises at least some hypothetical eyebrows.
Whatever the political mechanism, a new era of sexual entertainment and sexual
commerce had been inaugurated for the City and County of San Francisco.
* * * * *
This new system -- while working to the clear benefit of club owners, neighborhood
groups, and sex workers interested in doing business inside the clubs -- also
had (and still has) its detractors. Dancers who found themselves at clubs
with private booths, but who did not want to engage in sex with customers,
were angry at having to pay huge new stage fees. Many felt they had to choose
between working at clubs without private booths and dropping out of the lap-dancing/stripping
scene entirely. Others were angry that their victory in overturning the independent
contractor artifice had been used against them.
Since 1996, activist, ex-dancer, and organizer Daisy Anarchy has been the
principal voice of these dancers' discontent. For eight years, Anarchy --
mother of an 13-year-old daughter and fiery campaigner for women's and prostitutes'
rights -- has vociferously protested both the increased stage fees and the
sexual activity that takes place in clubs with private booths. Her position
is a delicate one: protesting sexual activity in the clubs while simultaneously
supporting prostitution more generally as a legitimate sexual activity worthy
of decriminalization.
Anarchy walks this ideological tightrope by focusing on the illegality of
the augmented stage fees, which, she says, pressure women into prostitution;
on building-code regulations she says are violated by the private booths;
and on the danger of physical assault and harassment, which, she claims, exists
for women when they are alone with customers in booths. Anarchy says that
several dancers have filed police reports alleging coercion and assault in
the booths.
D.A. spokeswoman Debbie Mesloh confirms that some reports of coercion and
assault were filed years ago, when Anarchy was still working in the clubs.
But current dancers vigorously deny that the booths are unsafe, and SFPD vice
inspector McNaughton says he has no knowledge of any report of rape or assault
at the clubs being filed with police in recent years.
Many dancers and other sex workers in San Francisco's vocal and politically
organized sex-work community strongly disagree with Anarchy's objections to
private booths and to sexual activity in the clubs. When Anarchy went so far
as to advocate police intervention to arrest club owenrs for "pimping,", she
alienated sex workers who felt, nearly unanimously, that police action would
only result in harassment and prosecution of dancers without doing anything
about the stage fees. Indeed, that is precisely what happened in the recent
club raids, which Anarchy herself condemned.
"I've known Daisy for many years, and I know she means well," says sex-work
activist Carol Leigh, "but it's upsetting when we have people coming up with
repressive strategies to deal with these issues. Instead of 'not in my back
yard,' we have strippers saying 'not in my strip club.' Daisy wants to return
stripping to the old days, but we can't roll back the clock on what has become
part of the evolution of sex work in our culture.
"I'd like to see dancers speak for themselves about what they want in the
clubs. Most strippers I talk to do not want to see the private booths closed.
The city should enforce existing labor regulations and empower strippers to
come up with their own recommendations of how to improve their working conditions."
Terrance Alan is a queer activist, president of San Francisco's Late Night
Coalition, and past chairman of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission.
He is also the landlord of a lap-dancing club in downtown San Francisco.
Alan complains that Anarchy's portrayal of lap-dancing clubs as places where
women are forced into prostitution is grossly inaccurate. "These women are
more like athletes at the top of their game than helpless victims," he says.
Alan feels that a stripper caucus within his Late Night Coalition could provide
an effective political voice for dancer concerns. "Strippers are saying they
have a legitimate part in the entertainment industry. The question is how
the city can design a policy to protect public health and safety in adult
entertainment venues without discriminating against that activity. If safety
is our primary concern, it's not clear there's even a problem that needs to
be fixed. Eliminating private rooms is not the answer. There are enclosed
anterooms at Davies Symphony Hall and the Opera House. There are private rooms
in restaurants and in convention hotels.
"The Late Night Coalition believes in civil liberties and the rights of adults
to choose their entertainment. If the D.A. feels the evidence in these cases
does not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense, then that activity is
supported by the LNC.
"This is, after all, the milieu that has made San Francisco what it is for
over 100 years."
* * * * *
Nancy Banks is the main organizer of a group of dancers alternately known
as Success to Retire Into Prosperity (STRIP) and the Strippers Society of
San Francisco (SSSF) -- a group that claims to be "the real voice of current
active dancers in San Francisco," one of whose main purposes is "to stop Daisy
Anarchy." Banks says her group has more than 100 members from most of the
strip and lap-dancing clubs in the city. In addition to providing a forum
for dancers to discuss work issues and counter Anarchy politically, Banks
says, group meetings have brought speakers to talk to dancers about investment
options, real estate, 401(k) retirement plans, group health insurance, and
child-care arrangements responsive to the unusual schedule needs and social
stigma attached to working as a stripper.
"I've seen lots of beautiful girls come into the industry and not utilize
the money they make to have a powerful position in their lives, and so end
up feeling defeated. As sex workers you have so many stigmas attached to you
that you don't feel like you are capable of doing good things with your money.
We want to work with dancers to effectively use what we do every day for our
future."
Banks says that conditions have changed since 1996, that hostility between
managers and dancers is "history," and that most dancers who currently work
in clubs with private booths accept the sexual nature of work in those clubs
and the stage fees. She feels the fees are legitimate, given the benefits
that clubs provide dancers -- both those who do sex work and those who do
not.
"We're not on the streets," she says. "The managers run the clubs, make sure
we have customers. We're provided with an enclosed area, private booths, a
safe work environment, security guards, panic buttons, and managers who are
willing to work with us on areas of disagreement." She says current managers
generally support and cooperate with dancers, settle disagreements between
customers and dancers in a businesslike way, and are conscious of dancers'
economic issues -- scheduling limited numbers of dancers during slow daytime
work shifts, for example.
Banks denies there is physical danger for dancers in private booths. "It's
not like being in a hotel room with doors and locks. We have panic buttons
that light up in the manager's office when we push them. One time, I hit the
panic button by mistake, and within seconds there were four security guards
and a manager at my booth to find out what was wrong. Once guys are in the
private rooms, they're in our space, our office. If we're not comfortable
with something, we just walk out of the room."
Since the recent police raids, Banks has met with Kamala Harris and with representatives
of the City Attorney's Office, the Police Department, and the Department of
Building Inspection. It was a meeting set up by the District Attorney's Office,
says D.A. spokeswoman Debbie Mesloh. Banks says Harris was respectful of dancers'
concerns and invited input from dancers on conditions in the clubs.
Harris has also met with Daisy Anarchy, according to Mesloh. A meeting of
the Commission on the Status of Women to hear testimony from dancers and others
"regarding labor and safety conditions of exotic dancers in San Francisco"
is scheduled for Sept. 22.
"One of the top priorities for Kamala when she took office was the exploitation
of women," says Mesloh. "Is she going to prosecute sex between consenting
adults in the clubs? No. But if there's exploitation in the clubs, she wants
to address it. She also wants to place the issue of prostitution in context,
addressing not just the prostitutes, but also johns, pimps, and club owners."
* * * * *
Two issues that remain unaddressed by both police and the District Attorney's
Office are the continued collection of illegal stage fees by virtually all
strip and lap-dancing clubs in the city, and the failure of the clubs to pay
dancers wages, despite repeated rulings by the San Francisco Labor Commission,
San Francisco Superior Court, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
requiring such pay.
Mesloh acknowledges the illegality of the current situation, which she says
is under review by the district attorney. In the meantime, she says, dancers
have the option of bringing civil suits or class-action suits against the
clubs.
While dancers who bring suit for back wages and stage fees almost always win
their cases, few dancers take the clubs to court. The main reason for this,
according to dancers, is the acute social stigma associated with stripping,
lap dancing, or any form of sex-related work.
Gennifer Hirano, who holds what she calls a "moderate stripper perspective,"
feels that police intervention in lap-dancing clubs is wrong, no matter how
much sexual activity is going on. "I was horrified that women were arrested
for prostitution at the clubs," she says. "It always feels like an invasion
when institutionalized authority is brought in."
At 27, Hirano has worked at the Crazy Horse, New Century, and Boys Toys theaters.
She recently left the clubs to set up an independent outcall stripping service.
Hirano is also a writer, photographer, and filmmaker. Her bitingly funny short
film, 1-900-ASIANPRINCESS -- the story of an outcall stripper who turns the
tables on three obnoxious and potentially abusive customers -- was a hit at
the third San Francisco Sex Worker Film Festival last year.
When she left the strip-club scene, Hirano became one of the few dancers to
sue her past employers to retrieve back wages and stage fees. She negotiated
a settlement of $18,000 in back fees from the Crazy Horse Theater, and an
additional $1,200 settlement for three shifts she worked at Boys Toys. She
plans to use her settlement money to attend graduate school. "It's like a
tax refund," she says, "money I paid out that then got refunded to me."
Hirano, who did not engage in sexual activity when she was working at the
clubs, confesses that she initially had negative feelings about dancers who
did sex work there. "I didn't want to have anything to do with any woman who
was doing more than dance. I didn't understand why you would do that, when
you can just sit on a guy's lap, touch his hair, and make good money. I used
to think all sex workers were dysfunctional, that the best thing was for everyone
to get out of sex work as soon as possible, that the more sex work you did,
the more fucked up you were inside. I saw sex work as an addiction. 'Am I
always going to be naked? Is this the only way I can make money?' I understand
it differently now. Everyone has their own limits and boundaries, and they're
all valid.
"I had to address my internalized stigma when I decided to go to the Labor
Commission to get back my stage fees. Why would you think, as a stripper,
that you could get justice? But the Labor Commission is used to these suits.
They don't treat you as anything less than if you were working in a garment
factory. They're not judgmental. They don't initiate enforcement, but they're
responsive to dancers when they bring in their complaints.
"We have internalized so much social stigma associated with sex work, even
as strippers. Once I realized where all this anger and hatred was coming from,
I became proud of myself instead of hating myself. Sex work is a wonderful
way to survive. It's all about asserting control and power. Women have always
known how to use their bodies for survival.
"Learning how to marry a rich man is nothing more than nuclear-family-model
sex work."
* * * * *
The face and form of sexual entertainment and sex work evolve over time, not
unlike nonsexual cultural expressions, shaped by changing social and economic
conditions, shifting mores, and the creative ingenuity of opportunistic entrepreneurs
and the broad range of people who choose work that puts their bodies on the
line for sexual arousal or fulfillment.
True to its tradition, San Francisco has for the last 25 years been in the
vanguard of the particular sexual form called lap dancing -- by introducing
lap dancing to national consciousness, by developing physical environments
that allowed the blending of lap dancing with sexual interaction between dancers
and customers, and, most recently, with a district attorney's bold redirection
of official concern about this sex-entertainment hybrid from questions of
moral imposition and indignation to more practical matters relating to the
health, safety, and working conditions of sex workers.
How this will play out over time -- in San Francisco, and in the rest of the
country as well -- is far from settled. The local political reactions to Harris'
decision not to prosecute lap-dancing arrests have yet to emerge.
Vice inspector McNaughton says that police will continue to enforce prostitution
laws in lap-dancing venues. Harris' new Adult Clubs Working Group has yet
to make its recommendations. A poll of San Franciscans by the David Binder
Research Group, commissioned by the Sex Worker Outreach Project last month,
showed "overwhelming support" for decriminalization of prostitution in the
city, according to Project coordinator Robyn Few.
Just as Gavin Newsom's decision to give same-sex marriage the blessing of
City Hall catapulted public awareness of that issue to a broad new plateau,
so has Kamala Harris' stance regarding arrests for sexual activity in lap-dancing
clubs dramatically shifted the framework for public discussion of sex work
in San Francisco. Whatever happens next will send legal, cultural, and political
shock waves far beyond the boundaries of the sexually adventurous City by
the Bay.
[If you'd like to receive Comes Naturally and other writing by David Steinberg
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to David at <eronat@aol.com>. Past columns are available at the Society for
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Three books edited by David -- "Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes
of Age," "Erotic by Nature: A Celebration of Life, of Love, and of Our Wonderful
Bodies," "The Erotic Impulse: Honoring the Sensual Self" -- are available
from him by mail order. Descriptions and ordering information are posted at
<www.sexuality.org/l/davids/en.html>, <www.sexuality.org/l/davids/ei.html>,
and <www.sexuality.org/l/davids/ps.html>.]
David Steinberg
P.O. Box 2992
Santa Cruz, CA 95063
831.426.7082
eronat@aol.com
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