A stripper, performance artist, activist and writer has spoken out about the "stigma" faced by sex workers and says banning Bristol's clubs would "erase many years of activism". Stacey Clare, who has long-fought for sex workers’ rights as her core mission, spoke to Bristol Live ahead of a decision on the city's sexual entertainment venues (SEVs).
From becoming a prominent voice for sex workers in the media to her grassroots activism as a founding member of the East London Strippers Collective, Stacey has aimed to highlight a community that she believes has long been ignored. Recently, she appeared at the Bookhaus in Bristol, hosted by the Bristol Sex Workers Collective, for an event to promote her newest book The Ethical Stripper.
The book details Stacey's decades of experiences and tales that she hopes can provide a nuanced insight into the sex industry, while ultimately rejecting notions of shame and stigma. The Ethical Stripper also discusses the exploitation against sex workers by analysing regulation and licensing both at home and around the world, in the hope of debunking myths and misconceptions around sex workers and sex work.
READ MORE: Decision expected in July on fate of Bristol's SEVs
In Bristol, the proposal to withdraw licenses for sexual entertainment venues (SEVs) has stirred an ongoing debate amongst both supporters and dissenters, each calling for a decision said to be best suited to empower the livelihoods and safety of those working in the industry. For Stacey, who sat down with the Bristol Sex Workers Collective during her Bookhaus appearance on June 1, the real power lies with those who can make those policy decisions.
As she continues to network with strippers around the country, she hopes that the demands of sex workers can be listened to and for a necessary dialogue to be initiated by those in charge, in order to spark progress. She said: “If there was a message to get across, it would be ‘what do you think would happen when you shut down strip clubs?’
"'Do you think male violence will be reversed? Do you think this will make any kind of impact?’
“I think that Bristol Sex Workers Collective have done a brilliant job in establishing that there are nightclubs in the area with far worse records with the police, in terms of violent incidents. During COVID, when all the strip clubs were shut down and had no impact whatsoever, we know that gendered violence was increased because people were trapped indoors.
“It’s a conversation that needs to happen but it also needs to be happening with the people who are in the conversation. It’s great for me and the Bristol Sex Workers Collective to get together in a bookshop at a grassroots level.
“But I’d like local authorities to know that by closing down our strip clubs, they are erasing many years of activism for us. In order for us to establish workers’ rights and to stand up to workplace abuses and sh***y customers, we need to have legal workplaces for example [like] in New Zealand when they decriminalised sex work in 2004.”
The long-awaited Bristol City Council vote on a proposed ban on SEVs is expected to take place on July 28 following a public consultation. A draft new policy drawn up by council officers more than 15 months ago suggested introducing a 'nil cap' on lap-dancing venues across the city for the first time.
'The stigma is really entrenched'
Stacey believes through offering her own personal knowledge of the industry while addressing the system put in place for sex workers, the conversation surrounding sex work can finally be both an empathetic and rational one. She said: “We risk so much by being identified as a sex worker and some people have more to lose, particularly people with kids and families, or those with a mainstream presence.
“The stigma is still really entrenched in society and there’s an element of protection - just wanting to preserve our private lives. I could have written this book as an autobiography and I actually wrote a list of other strippers’ autobiographies as an example of it being its own popular genre as a sort of kiss and tell, expose, and the classic Belle de Jour.
“But I said specifically at that point that there’s something much important at stake here. Sex workers’ lives aren’t a form of entertainment and we are humans with a lot on our plate. The systemic structures around how sex workers and strippers are continuously represented mean that our lived experiences are only based on what people want to hear, when it’s salacious and titillating.
“So I didn’t do that but there are stories from my working life that I do tell that are a bit salacious, but I always try to put that into context and explain that particular moment or story happened within an economic and political context around the strip club.” Stacey further explained that her journey working in the industry hopes to shed further light on why conditions have been set that way.
She feels laws such as the 2009 ban on touching customers in clubs started as an “attempt to clean up the industry” but ultimately gave unprecedented power to managers and club owners - leading to the lack of recognition of workers’ rights. Stacey added: “There is a set of reasons why people are pushed around and coerced the way they are because of economics, it’s about money.
“The fact that lap dancing has been turned into this grubby act that’s been licensable and defined by the law is just ridiculous. I mean if I sit on a guy’s lap, I’m a grown woman. I should be allowed to decide whose lap I sit on and whether I charge for it or not.
“But if you can imagine tons of workers working in competition with each other in a quite an economically toxic environment where they’re being farmed for their earnings and being financially exploited, guess what? Their workers’ rights aren’t being recognised and if they don’t like it then they know where the door is, as far as managers are concerned.”
Since the release of The Ethical Stripper on March 3, public discourse surrounding the book has varied from criticism which disregards all forms of sex work as ‘sanitised and repackaged as empowerment and choice’ to reviews that see The Ethical Stripper as ‘an extraordinary blend of memoir, polemic and reportage’.
However, Stacey believes that irrespective of personal opinions, going forward, the stories and experiences of sex workers can be humanised for a chance challenges the status quo and bring about real change. She said: “The last five years or even longer, particularly on social media, there’s been an explosion of sex worker voices who were finding their community.
"The more sex workers who are inspired to write books or make movies or produce podcasts, the better. I write in the book that the definition of oppression is having our narratives controlled and taken from us.
"An example of that is Hustlers [2019 American film starring Jennifer Lopez] and the irony of that is that by law you’re not allowed to profit from a story if you’re a criminal. But the journalist who wrote the story became a viral sensation which was turned into a film by using someone else’s story."
Stacey encouraged sex workers to use their own voice to speak up, adding: “Sex workers deserve, most of all, to be empowered and empowerment comes in many guises but it’s really down to the individual and what feels empowering for them. I would implore and invite sex workers to tell their own stories and use their own voices.
“I’d love to see a Netflix series like Pose which is centred around the actual lived experience of sex workers that is intelligent and integral to the production. So it is gradually happening and it won’t be long until we see more.”
Read next:
All of the restaurants, bars, cafes and pubs that have closed in Bristol this year
Hopes high that drink-spikers in Bristol will finally be prosecuted
Bristol City Council is hiring a new 'night-time economy champion'
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