Dancers Empowering (Some) Dancers: The Intersection of Race, Class and Gender in Organizing Erotic Labourers

Abstract

In this case study of an Ottawa-based erotic dancers' affiliation, the author centers the voices of informants while critically engaging with their discourses around, and approach to, crafting better working conditions. Informants reveal their experiences of economic exploitation, managerial control, and making compromises in light of the new industry practices. In response, they have organized to resist unfair labour conditions. Though the dancers' affiliation has created a space in which women can feel empowered and has been instrumental in crafting municipal by-laws regulating the industry, it overlooks other relationships of privilege that further complicate individual women's decision to engage in certain labour practices. Namely, women's location around varying axes of disadvantage may hinder their ability to make more meaningful choices within constraining work environments. Correspondingly it may temper the relevance of dancers' affiliations to their everyday working lives.

Keywords: intersectionality, feminist methodologies, marginal labour, sex work