What The Atlanta Murders Teach About Sex Work

Summary: Sex work is work and it's past time we treat it as such. I have a friend who manages a nightclub. Specifically, she manages a strip club. It’s not one of the big, fancy, super-expensive clubs with dozens of “private” rooms you hope no one sees you entering. This one is smaller, more intimate, and more supportive of the women who work there. She doesn’t require them to weigh in, track their BMI, or any of the other sexist bullshit some clubs demand in the name of “maintaining quality.” We have another friend who has been taking pole dancing lessons for a while. This week she messaged Kat that she wanted to be a stripper and asked for any recommendations. There are several things to consider when deciding to enter the space commonly referred to as “sex work,” but the biggest was the fact that this friend had never been in a strip club in her life. Her only concept was what she’d seen on television and in movies. Kat went into full-on Momma Bear mode. If her friend wanted to be a stripper, Kat was going to make sure it was someplace safe, both physically and emotionally. She contacted our friend who manages the strip club. They made arrangements for them all to meet at the club one evening so that the would-be stripper would have a chance to see what it’s actually like on an off night, ask questions to both the managers and the other girls working there. They gave her the low-down, holding nothing back, explaining the shortcomings as well as the benefits. By the end of the night, our friend had agreed to give it a try. Now, I want us to stop right here so you can ask yourself a question. How do you feel about a young woman taking a job stripping versus, say, working in a daycare? How do you feel about us supporting her in this particular ambition? Most importantly, how would you have responded if you were the one she came to for this advice? On one level, none of those questions matter. You don’t know my friends, they didn’t ask you anything, and outside my telling you this story, it’s none of your business. At the same time, though, how you answered those questions reveals a lot about you, your attitude toward sex work and the people it employs, the way in which you judge people based on their profession rather than their humanity, and the misogyny that your brain automatically applied to that situation. The attitudes that many people feel when topics like this come up are not new, but neither are they justified and it’s time we stopped sweeping them under the rug in hopes that they’ll just go away. Why? Because when we don’t pay attention, bad things happen, people get hurt, and too often, people die. The murder of eight people at Atlanta-area massage parlors this week, and the ridiculous excuse that was given for them, raises a truck-load of issues. There’s anti-Asian sentiment that has seen a dramatic rise in the past year. There’s the gun control issue where a 21-year-old man was able to purchase a gun and use it to commit murder on the same day. There’s the matter of law-enforcement appearing to be sympathetic to the shooter, saying he, “just had a bad day.” All of those are worthwhile conversations that we cannot begin to tackle in the next 20 minutes. So, we’re going to focus on sex work, our antiquated views, the damage done by those views, and why we need to change things. Do You Like Sex, Mr. Lebowski? It would, in my opinion, take a rather warped mind to consider The Big Lebowski anything remotely close to an erotic film, but the conversation not only comes up but porn becomes a significant plot point. When we first meet the character, Maude, she is wearing a leather harness and asks the Dude,

What The Atlanta Murders Teach About Sex Work

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