With each passing day, the strip club in downtown Manhattan grew a little emptier. Fewer customers were drinking premium liquor and eating steaks in the plush banquettes; fewer patrons were sitting at the edge of the blue-lit stage; fewer clients were throwing dollar bills at the dancers performing on poles or in their laps. “It felt weird. There was an air of desperation, almost,” Nico, a dancer at the club, told me. As the city slowly woke up to the spread of the coronavirus this spring, so, too, did the dancers at clubs across town, whose work necessitates being physically close to strangers: talking to them, consoling them, and entertaining them. By late March, most of New York’s strip clubs had shut down [ … ]
Sex workers often occupy a fragile space in terms of economic well-being. Many people look down on sex workers from a moral height and think that their work is dirty and wrong. They are subject to legal judgement which defines their work as being of a prurient sexual nature. Often they are seen as victims. Some see their own work as a natural consequence of capitalism. This new yorker article sheds light.
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