Who we are
Our Mission
Strippers Are Workers is a dancer-led organization that fights to empower the dancers of Washington state so that they can strip safely, positively, and lucratively. By abolishing harmful industry regulations and practices and creating dancer-centric community, resources, and legislation, SAW can keep stripping low barrier entry and accessible to a marginalized and stigmatized group of people who seek upward mobility.
Our Vision
To sustain a strong community of dancers, fight for dancer-led legislation, hold clubs to an equitable standard of practice by keeping them accountable for discrimination and exploitative working conditions, and destigmatize the industry through community engagement and education.
The Strippers Are Workers campaign was launched in 2018 by a group of dancers who…
successfully organized to win the first stripper-led law in WA state, HB 1756, which created a “Know Your Rights” training for dancers and gained safety minimums for clubs, such as having panic buttons and customer black-lists. We have represented dancers in the WA state L&I Dancer Advisory Committee, spearheaded the creation of a legislative report to win new rights for workers, helped dancers navigate unemployment and other resources during the pandemic, and created a growing movement of hundreds of dancers in WA to win new rights in the workplace. Today we are fighting for more dancer-led legislation and providing information and resources on relevant dancer issues including topics such as: safety, policy, legal, and self care/mental health.
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Our Commitment
We believe that sex work is work, and sex worker’s rights are worker’s rights. All dancers have the right to strip safely, positively, and lucratively and are the most qualified group to inform changes, regulations, and policies pertaining to the industry. Nothing about us, without us. To empower strippers and stop exploitative industry practices, SAW will end the alcohol prohibition and pass anti-discrimination practices, mandatory employee training minimums, eliminating back rent, capping work fees, and more security minimums through state legislation. Beyond state legislation, SAW will change zoning laws that limit healthy industry competition and will eliminate harmful local ordinances that criminalize dancers’ work.
We will fight the stigma against strippers, sex work, and sex workers that perpetuates harmful and dehumanizing prejudices that enables exploitative industry practices, poor working conditions, and lack of basic protections and rights as humans and workers. We destigmatize stripping and sex work through community organizing, creating dancer-led policy, community-based education, and offering resources and support to dancers in Washington.
Organizing through an intersectional lens is essential to equitably and wholly represent strippers, because strippers, like all sex workers, are: Women, Black, Indigeneous, and people of color, LBTQ+, people with disbailities (both physical and mental), single mothers, and those coming from adverse backgrounds such as poverty, abuse, and criminalization of substance use and sex work. Historically, marginalized and discriminated people have utilized sex work to seek upward mobility and liberation in a sociopolticial climate that seeks to stigmatize, dehumanize, discriminate, and disempower them. Fighting to keep stripping accessible and to make the industry equitable is to fight for the rights of marginalized and diverse people.