Only do what feels good

Hobo Stripper writes one of my favorite blogs. She's so wholesome and sensible and upbeat, she makes being a lesbian stripper living in her van in the middle of winter in Alaska seem like the most natural thing a girl could do. In Stripping: Eliminating Bad Experiences by Rejecting Bad Customers, she makes the point that

It’s not healthy to do things that make you feel bad. It is healthy to set boundaries and express your anger right away instead of stuffing it or letting it build up.

This is sensible (and wholesome and upbeat). We're social animals and a lot of our self-view comes from other people. If, to use one of her examples, people keep trying to lick your nipple when you've made it clear the nipple is off limits, after a while you start to get the message that your boundaries aren't important, and you don't deserve to be treated better. And when you feel this way about yourself, you start to feel that way about everyone else, along with feeling a boatload of resentment. And if you feel resentful towards the world, and feel that other people's boundaries aren't important, it starts becoming OK to cross your own moral boundaries in dealing with other people. By "moral", I don't mean the sort of conventional morality that would close down all the titty bars. I mean your own morality that you have inside yourself, the things that you know for yourself are right. Things like not lying and not stealing. If the world is populated by assholes, then lying to them and stealing from them doesn't seem like such a bad thing.

One sentence summary: Emotional abuse corrupts morals.

But let's suppose that you're a single mom who's stripping because it's the only way you can support the kids and have time to be a mom for them. It's the end of the month, the kid's medical bills have emptied the bank account, and the rent's due. A customer lets you know that women over thirty are too old. Female value is inversely proportional to age. Do you do what HS did, walk away from the customer, and thereby walk away from the rent money? Or do you let him corrode your mind so you can keep a roof over your kids' heads?

The traditional feminist critique of sex work is that it is inherently corrosive. But in the case of stripping, I think the problem lies in the way strippers are paid. Barring fraud, porn performers and prostitutes will always get paid for working. But in theory, a stripper can dance all night and not get paid. Strippers are essentially sales people. Most sales professionals get some combination of salary plus commissions. As long as they can hold their jobs, they're guaranteed their salary. Strippers get tips instead of salaries. In many cases, they also get commissions on specialized dances with set prices. If they can sell a fixed price lap dance or couch dance, they are guaranteed a large commission for their work. Otherwise, they get tips, which are entirely at the customer's discretion.

A successful stripper with a large bank account can walk away from an abusive customer without regret. A stripper who has minimal living expenses can do the same. But strippers who aren't as skilled in separating customers from their money, strippers who for one reason or another don't have a cash cushion, and strippers who support other people are in a different position. If you need cash immediately, and your earnings are entirely determined by your customers' whims rather than the amount of work you do, then you are at the mercy of your customers.

Grace Undressed describes the effects of a bad night with abusive customers in a post titled Mcdonald's Money.