The sex work lobby exploits strippers

Exploitation, in the debate about strip clubs, is treated as a given and an open question simultaneously. Someone is being used, and someone else is doing the using: we’re certain of this, even if we haven’t yet figured out the precise shape of the power dynamics. Is the dancer who simulates sexual intimacy in exchange for cash a seductive girlboss, taking advantage of men’s weakness, or is she a supplicant victim? If the latter, is she more misused by the men who pay for her services, or the club owner who takes a cut? Is the stripper depleted in body? In soul? In earning potential?

And what are we to make of the fact that “exploitation” can mean many things at once? If stripper and customer exist in symbiosis, both taking advantage and being taken advantage of all at once, what then? Exploitation can be a means of self-advancement. It can be morally neutral. It can be mutual. It might, in fact, be none of our business...