GRWM to do a shift at the strip club

A 40 minute performance lecture - with Private Survey

The audience is instructed to fill out a short anonymous survey inquiring:

1 . What are your general feelings towards sex work?
a. Positive
b . Neutral
c. Negative
d. Confused

2. Have you ever participated in the sex industry?
a. Yes, as a provider/seller
b. Yes, as a paying consumer
c. Yes, but I didn't pay for it (ex: visiting a Tube Porn site)
d. No

3. Do you think you are above paying for sex/better than someone who pays for sex?
a. Yes
b. No

The results are read at the beginning of the lecture, to allow the audience to get a general sense of what their neighbors thoughts are on the subject of sex work.

The lecture starts while I'm dressed in street clothes which I began to slowly strip away while discussing terminology related to the sex industry: sex work, whorephobia, whorearchy, prostitution. I then performed a reverse strip while I went over various artifacts that are utilized in every shift as a stripper: thong, pasties, bra, pleaser heels. Once dressed in full stripper realia, I spoke about the various ways I need to pay to work and every single person I need to "tip out" and the end of my shift. I briefly discussed provider/client parasocial relationships.

This performance lecture was my attempt to bring closer the mysterious, distant, and fearful notion of sex work. I theorized that most of my audience members would be familiar with the requirements and expectations of having a job. The grim reality of a capitalist society is that humans are valued through their work. This concept is informative for my process of demystifying and humanizing sex workers. I feel that most
people do not understand the world of sex work because of the heavy stigma and shame that surrounds it. As one of the largest industries globally (pornography outpaces the NFL, NBA, and MLB in profit revenue) and as world economies take a downturn, more and more people will turn to sex work to make ends meet. I want to bring more awareness to the public with the intention that empathy and compassion can start to overcome the stigma and shame.

I built much of this lecture around my decade's worth of professional experience in the industry and I feel very secure in my evidence and ability to speak on these topics., and how they're couched in a transaction and exchange. I speak on the archive, the history that each object of interest holds. I speak on the meaning of possessing each object. I speak on its impact in popular culture and how that informs it's use within the sex work industry. The bounds of the labor requirements and the bearing of the socioeconomic factors. The roles of career responsibilities as predicated by capitalist patriarchy.

I want my audience to walk away inspired but also with burning of questions in their mind. Not just about how they treat other people but how they perceive their own selves, their bodies, and their gendered roles in society. This I believe is where potentials to shift are born and where we can grow into greater compassion for ourselves and others.