The door to the dressing room was missing. Or it was just open. If you were a customer with the right angle, you could peek into the single bathroom stall that also had no door. I sat through interviews in those rooms, surrounded by men who held every key. The music. The schedule. The money.
We danced. Or we cleaned. We were the foundation, sure, but we were also disposable.
I remember one manager yelling at me as I walked out. “You’ll be back,” he shouted. He knew I would. The pay was too good to ignore. In the late nineties, making $5 an hour at a restaurant felt like a victory. By the early 20000s in a bigger city? I was clearing $25 an hour waiting tables. Some dancers pulled in hundreds a night after the house took its cut. It wasn’t just money, though. It was invisibility. I learned quickly that discretion was survival. You don’t talk about strip clubs outside the strip club.
The Double Life Of Betrayal
Fifteen years passed. My fiancé cheated. I needed a place to scream, to heal, to be understood. I found it in online communities for betrayed wives.
They didn’t want me.
Once they found out I’d worked in the industry—once they realized I was a sex worker—my grief was deemed illegitimate. Their logic was sharp and cruel: because I was a prostitute, my pain didn’t count. I was complicit. I was part of the problem. So they attacked me. They blamed sex workers more than their husbands. It was easier than facing the complexity of infidelity.
I blocked them. All of them. I couldn’t bridge that gap if I didn’t close the door on them first.
Marriage As Invisible Labor
Let’s get uncomfortable. Marriage is often the ultimate form of sex work. In our patriarchal structure, the deal is simple: men are breadwinners, women provide sex. If a husband breaks his end of the bargain? He’s penalized with separation. Or silence. Until the 1970 nonconsensual marital sex was considered legal. Now? Most states recognize spousal rape. But loopholes remain. Annulment still exists for non-consummation in places like California.
Does sex inside marriage have to be work? No. But the expectation is there. The exchange is real.
Yet we treat it as sacred. Weddings are a billion-dollar industry. Marriages offer housing, alimony, tax breaks. We elevate this version of female labor while shaming the explicit exchange of money for sex. It’s a hierarchy. One group of women is “pure.” The other is “profane.” Both are trading intimacy. Neither is free.
The Economics Of Shame
Why do we criminalize the sellers while the buyers walk free?
Men hold the money. They hold the power. Sex workers hold the risk. Punishment. Danger. Death.
The exchange rate is skewed because the law favors the buyer. When we look at porn, when we look at search trends, we see a society obsessed with male pleasure. Virginity is a prize for women, a stigma for men. Boys create fake nude images of classmates. Meanwhile, adult women are arrested for selling their own bodies.
If we decriminalize sex work, we stop pretending that marriage is “work” and strip clubs are “sin.” They are both markets. Both involve negotiation. Both involve power imbalances. But only one is protected by the state.
Decriminalization Is Safety
The American Civil Liberties Union has been fighting for decriminalization for years. California passed the Safer Streets for AllAct in 2022. It decriminalized loitering for sex work. Good. But it’s not enough.
We need to fully embrace the idea that consensual adult sex is legal. Free market. No police. No stigma.
Think about the safety. When sex work is illegal, payments go through generic merchant accounts. Your spouse sees a cryptic charge on the bank statement. They don’t see the neon-lit name of the club. They don’t know what’s happening. Decriminalization brings transparency. It reduces the black market. It shrinks the sex trafficking industry that thrives in shadows.
Right now, the majority of women are single moms. Forty percent of births are to unmarried women. Women head eighty percent of single-parent households. Their poverty rate is skyrocketing. The median income for women is 83% of men’s. They need money. Some turn to OnlyFans. Some turn to strip clubs. Some turn to marriage. All of them are trying to survive a system that undervalues their labor.
The Bottom Line
We are rallying for bodily autonomy. We want the government off our bodies. But we can’t claim that autonomy if we’re still policing each other. If married women blame sex workers for cheating husbands, we’re letting men off the hook. We’re letting them have it both ways.
Men get the purity of the wife. And the availability of the worker.
We need to stop the blame game. Vote for decriminalization. Protect all sex workers. Stop pretending that one form of intimate labor is noble and another is trash. It’s all labor. And when we marginalize sex workers, we endorse a sexist status quo.
The bots are coming. They’ll probably be recognized as legitimate workers before we are. Let’s hurry.
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, RAINN offers confidential support. Call 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
