The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E18: Antonia Pickets the Lusty Lady

0:00This is an i-hop podcast Guaranteed Human This is Danielle Fischel from Podmeats World if you're like me and have kids between the ages of two and eight You know that not all apps are created equal my four and six-year-old will just explore like little screen time Magellans clicking any and every button until I've received ten notices of apps and in-game coins. They're trying to buy In reality, I just want something that still gets them excited But also has them using their brains and that is why I love lingo kids It's an absolute blast and perfect to keep them engaged in thinking It's a world of interactive games music. They'll want to sing along to and stories that spark their imagination It's high energy vibrant and it keeps them actively playing rather than just zoning out and ignoring my pleas to come to dinner Whether it's a rainy afternoon or a weekend morning It's the fun they're looking for and the quality you want Lingo kids everything kids love see why millions of families love it

1:05Download the lingo kids app on your phone or tablet now for free Tyler Reddick here from 2311 racing another checkered flag for the books time to celebrate with Chamba jump in at Chamba Casino dot com let's chamba no purchase necessary VTW group boy we're prohibited by law CC and C21 plus sponsored by Chamba Casino You're listening to a podcast So you're doing something else too like maybe scrolling home listings on redfin Saving places you like without thinking you'll get them because that's what house hunting has become But redfin isn't built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents Which means when you find a place you love you've got a real shot at getting it redfin helps turn saved listings into real addresses Get started at redfin dot com own the dream Ryan Reynolds here for mint mobile. I don't know if you knew this But anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying

2:08It's not just for celebrities So do like I did and have one of your assistance assistance switch you to mint mobile today I'm told it's super easy to do at mint mobile com slash switch up front payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available Taxes and fees extra default terms at mint mobile dot com Do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at car max and shop your way And if you want to browse with confidence get pre-qualified online But no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget for luxury cars to family rides Car max has options for almost every price range Including more than 25,000 cars priced under 25,000 dollars. So hey want to get started Just head to car max dot comfort details and get pre-qualified today want to drive car max Hey listener, this episode we're going back to 1990s San Francisco and a peep show called the lusty lady is the story of some incredible dancers who stuck it to the man and

3:14Along the way, there'll be some bad language It's nighttime in San Francisco and Antoneer Crane is dancing in a fish ball Literally, it was just visually like kind of a circle with glass and on the corners of the fish ball Where the one way mirrors or the one way glass where customers could see us, but we couldn't see them Antoneer moves her body slowly to the music on either side of her or other dances Twisting and grinding in stilettos their silhouettes Multiplying in the reflective glass. It was hip-to-hip shoulder-to-shoulder with like seven people next to me This is the lusty lady a peep show and a San Francisco Institution plans calm and pay a few quarters to sit behind the glass and watch the new dancers inside the fish ball But today something is wrong One of the other dancers star gets Antoneer's attention. She said see that little red

4:17Red light blinking there Star points to one of the corner booths Your butthole is being filmed right now move over. Oh my god Antoneer moves downstage away from the little red light and Stars strides over to the corner booth and blocked the glass with her body She yells at the guy over the booming music and tells him to turn the camera off This isn't the only time someone has tried to film the dancers without their knowledge or consent and they're sick of it They would sneak it in under their jacket And they would go into the booth which was a private booth your naked body like closer than you and I are right now to our screen That's how close they were to your body filming it. Mm. It was just like oh hell now That moment lit a fire in Antoneer once she's carried with her ever since she spent decades Advocating for the rights of sex workers and strippers and fighting for their stories to be heard

5:19And it all started here at the lusty lady Antoneer knew something needed to change but she couldn't do it alone She and the other lusties as they called themselves banded together They stood up for one another when the outside world didn't believe in them Together this incredible group of women and femmes Transformed the lusty lady they won hard-fought victories that are still having an impact today Plus they did it in six-inch heels and a selection of incredible wigs and I call that some truly iconic girlfriend's behavior I'm Anderson field and from the teams at novel and eye-harp podcasts This is the girlfriend spotlight where we tell stories of women women

6:20Today Antoneer pickets the lusty lady Antoneer Crane has so many different talents that it's hard to know exactly how to describe her So I'll let her do it My favorite way to describe myself is basically a queer homicidal fierce fighter activist writer PhD candidate at USC. I'm a lover. I'm a fighter and I'm a queer sex worker and writer amazing. I didn't mean for that to rhyme, but it's I mean as a writer it comes naturally, right? Antoneer is very very cool Today she's wearing these big statement glasses and a tight red knit sweater with tattoos poking out of her sleeves

7:21She's just completely nailing that riot girl turned academic look and I am here for it But back in the early 90s she was still that artsy punk kid just 20 years old and living in California Would you be able to kind of paint a bit of a picture of what your life was like in San Francisco before you started at the lusty lady? It was a gritty time in San Francisco There were a protest in the streets every weekend whether it was food not bombs or a protest against domestic violence against women. I was really broke a lot of my friends were really broke back in 1992 I was doing a lot of drugs I was also at Mills College and I was studying what we called back then women studies And to survive in San Francisco, I thought, you know, hey, I'm just gonna work in the lap dancing clubs and Take down the patriarchy one lap dance at a time and a lot of my dyke friends were doing that and it was You know back then it was performance art Yeah, and you'd walk into the clubs and get hired on site and

8:24See these women doing these incredible acts just together or separately and just it was definitely in the air feeling that We could use our bodies in a way that was empowering and that our bodies were a sight of revolution in The lap dancing clubs and to near-made friends from all walks of life But the working conditions left a lot to be desired It was a very exploitive environment We would go to work and be charged to work and they would call it these fees and the fees and the fines would have different titles These fees they had no caps. I'd go to work and it would be $80 and then the next for four hours Then I'd go to work in the next thing. It would be $180 for four hours in the same place correct Wow, and if you wanted to work and get on the schedule, you had to pay these exorbitant fees In 1995 Antonia took a break from dancing because she was recovering from addiction And a lot of the clubs people were taking drugs out in the open and she wanted to avoid the temptation

9:25But then a friend recommended she tried the lusty lady. It was less frantic It's like working in a factory You have a locker kind of like a gym you you clock in In a in a time clock from the wall and at the lusty lady they have the audacity to put you on a schedule and they have the audacity to To give you a paycheck, which is unheard of yeah kind of in the sex industry This could be the stability that Antonia needs to get back into the dancing scene a friend drops her off at the club Antonia strides past the glowing neon sign of a naked woman outside and into her audition Soon she's clocking in for her first shift behind the glass walls of the fishbowl and that glass It's another thing that made the lusty lady different from the other clubs There's a separation between you and the client and So there was less of a I call it high impact hustle High impact hustle is just that it's your body and their body and you're negotiating the space and it's really fast and furious

10:30Whereas if it's behind glass, there's that separation kind of like The difference between being a bartender and being a stripper There's a wall between you and the other person. Yeah, it reminds me of I used to work for like nine years as a singer in clubs and stuff and I used to hate it when I turned up at a venue and The stage was just floor level Because it meant that all the punters could come right up to you and the amount of times I had like You know guys being real sneezes and stuff with me and kind of breaking past my barrier of like I'm here performing and you're not meant to touch me was because I was on floor level But as soon as you put me on even a small stage They knew the bound was there, you know, yeah, I felt way safer and more comfortable and like I could just perform You know, I didn't have to think about anything Absolutely, I mean that floor show and the the space between you and another person Especially with sex work. It's a constant negotiation and it's an art form as well

11:32That also meant and this is the important part also of the barrier is that it made me closer to my co-workers When they dance side-by-side in the fishbowl or get changed in the locker rooms Antonia and her colleagues get to know each other we would talk about What was going on that day in our lives and You know what I was going on with the customers and what they were doing and how we felt about it Was it just like lovely to have the camaraderie of the rest of the work is around you? It was absolutely lovely You know, remember I was newly sober before that I was hoovering mountains of meth And when I got sober I put on 35 pounds in three months and was healthier than I had had ever been Maybe and I was next to these phenomenal women who had savings accounts and skateboards and pets and Some of them had kids and some of them had partners and a lot of us were members of actor That's the AIDS coalition to unleash power an activist group that was founded in the late 80s It was just one of the causes Antonia and her colleagues got involved with so it was this um

12:35Really incredible combustible collection of people in San Francisco Who were kind of I think primed to be activists. I mean it sounds like a really incredible Collection of women. It was was it all women at the lusty lady? Yes. It was all exclusively women or a fems In any kind of performance you have to create an identity for your own stage persona And it sounds like Antonia and her friends at the lusty lady had a lot of fun with it I think that sex work is really drag And so we had a look at a tremendous amount of wigs and personalities at the lusty lady And I was bald at the time and I wasn't the only person who was bald at the time and so Everyone was very funny about their drag and had like these wild different wigs and different looks And you could have a lot of different personalities So you could come with one wig and be one name and come with another wig and be octopussy Or Sicilian or valvita and have like a totally different look

13:35That's marketing Yeah, for real. Yeah, it was it like Mondays you got octopussy, Tuesdays, you got Yeah, exactly. I love that As she settles in at the lusty lady in 1995 Antonia is finding her feet She's making money and she has a new set of kick ass colleagues and friends But it's not all plain sailing Antonia begins to notice something she doesn't like about how the club is run If you were one minute late you didn't get your raise that week One minute one minute. Oh my god When it comes to hiring and firing or allocating shifts the problems run even deeper There were some things that were happening that were really um that were not okay with us There was something called private pleasures, which was Separate from the fishbowl. I'll say it was down the hall And only certain people would have shifts in private pleasures They would not allow women of color and black women

14:37Uh To have as many shifts in private pleasures You could make a lot more money from working in the private pleasure section So women of color didn't get the same opportunities to earn as the white dances And they also tokenized People according to race and would have like only a one or two or three Black women on a shift and those women would have to always um cover each other's shifts Right because you're the same person Exactly So that was organized in a really fucked up way and then also body type so If you were small breasted you would have to find another small breasted person if you were thicker you'd have to find another thick person And of course the skinny white women with boobs had the most shifts and they had the most um ability to To cover their shift if they were sick or needed surgery or needed to travel There was definitely favoritism There was definitely a hierarchy According to beauty standards racist beauty standards and Abolus beauty standards and ageism and things were according to that hierarchy at the time

15:40And we were having open conversations about that at the time See open Brooks one of the other dancers urged the bosses to change their racist policies They made some noises about rotating black dancers through the schedule more But then they held a staff meeting to ban political literature in the dressing rooms Because the lusties were such a tight-knit community they shared their complaints with each other When they were hip-to-hip dancing in the fishbowl or after work getting dinner The straw that broke the camel's back per se was the filming Antoneer is standing in the fishbowl Her friend star has just pointed out the glowing red light of the camcorder And she is pissed We were just like what the hell no, absolutely not I'm not going to be recorded and be put on some sort of DVD being sold somewhere in some shady-ass Back garage basement without my knowledge or consent And there's nothing wrong with doing porn. It's just that this is this job in this place

16:44This is what I'm being paid for here Star was next to me. She was 19 at the at the time. She stormed off stage It went and talked to the show director and said um, we don't like being filmed And of course the manager show director said you can go work somewhere else. They always say that Yeah, you don't like it here. You can go work somewhere else. It's like no, no, no, no, no. I work here And so Star came back to stage and said I'm gonna change things around here And I said okay I After the break the lusties get organized This is Danielle Fischel from Pod Meets World If you're like me and have kids between the ages of two and eight you know that not all apps are created equal My four and six-year-old will just explore like little screen time Magellan's

17:49Clicking any and every button until I've received 10 notices of apps and in-game coins. They're trying to buy In reality, I just want something that still gets them excited But also has them using their brains and that is why I love lingo kids It's an absolute blast and perfect to keep them engaged in thinking It's a world of interactive games music. They'll want to sing along to and stories that spark their imagination It's high energy vibrant and it keeps them actively playing rather than just zoning out and ignoring my pleas to come to dinner Whether it's a rainy afternoon or a weekend morning It's the fun they're looking for and the quality you want Lingo kids everything kids love see why millions of families love it Download the lingo kids app on your phone or tablet now for free Tyler Reddick here from 2311 racing another checkered flag before the books Time to celebrate with chamba jump in at chamba casino.com. Let's chamba. No purchase necessary

18:50BTW group boy we're prohibited by law cc and c21 plus sponsored by chamba casino Texting privacy policy in terms of conditions posted in texting terms. US texting rolls you for a criminal to be a text marketing That's just message. You didn't raise me a flyer place. Stopped out visit ISSA online for details tired of the nine to five grind looking for something different That's flexible fulfilling and pay as well. How do you like to get paid to work out now? You can with ISSA the global leader in personal fitness certification There's a huge demand for certified personal trainers right now and once you get ISSA certified they guarantee you'll get a job Trainers can make as much as one hundred dollars an hour Yes, I said one hundred dollars an hour and with ISSA you can be certified in as little as six weeks You do everything at your own pace and one hundred percent online pursue your passion in specializations like yoga Nutrition or strength training get certified and live your life on your terms work at a gym start your own business or Side hustle whatever works for you just don't wait get your free personal training evaluation kit today Get certified in as little as six weeks and ISSA guarantees you'll get a job text train to thirty two thirty two thirty two thirty two thirty two thirty two

19:52Train to thirty two thirty two thirty two It's tax season and by now. I know we're all a bit tired of numbers But here's an important one you need to hear sixteen billion dollars That's how much money and refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud Here's another one one and four honest hardworking tax-paying Americans has been a victim of identity theft But it's not all grim news Life-lock monitors millions of data points per second for your personal information and alerts you to threats You could easily miss on your own if your identity is stolen Life-lock's US-based restoration specialists will fix it backed by another good number the million dollar protection package In fact restoration is guaranteed or your money back don't face identity theft and financial losses alone There's strength in numbers with life-lock identity theft protection for tax season and beyond Visit lifelock.com slash iHeart and save up to 40% your first year That's 40% off at lifelock.com slash iHeart term supply

20:55I'm here with spinquest where you can play and win from the comfort of your own home With hundreds of slot games and all of the table games you love with real cash prizes Right now $30 coin packs are on sale for $10 for new users It's all at spinquest.com. That's spiN Q-U-E-S-T dot com spin quest is a free to play social casino avoid where prohibited visit spinquest.com for more details You After the showdown in the fishball Antonya and her friends aren't about to let the customers get away with violating their privacy anymore So they take matters into their own hands Star said I'm gonna change things around here And then she started to talk to the other dancers and started to

21:55Say well, let's let's post up pictures. Let's make a Xerox copy of a sign that says No cameras like a camera with a line through it And post it on the one-way booths. This doesn't seem too wild to me I mean after all it's just like the sort of poster that you get in any theater or cinema And you'd think that the lusty ladies management would want to stop the filming as well But things don't go to plan The show directors would tear those posters down. Why would they just tear them down Because of the irrational fear of workers having any power I really think that's what it is. I mean, what else is it? It's totally irrational for sure They're used to stepping all over us. It's quite aggressive. It's a taboo. It's aggressive It is it's aggressive. The message is clear the bosses aren't going to step in to stop the filming But tearing down the signs doesn't stop the lusties from organizing. It fires them up So the dancers start meeting at a Chinese restaurant next door to the club to strategize

22:58And they start talking to the other employees at the lusty too We had a thing called support staff and they were artists and they were Dies who worked at the front desk And they would buzz us downstairs and they were security and they would also escort us from the dressing room to the private pleasures Which was down the hall Now that's a really good opportunity to talk about working conditions They were also frustrated by The clientele bringing in cameras and making a mess and acting out and they were also frustrated with management And so we actually were able to Get them on board with our movement The dance is hold a mating with the support staff to hash out plan We said well here are our grievances and here's what's going on and Everyone had a lot of ideas about the things that they were frustrated with in the workplace And after discussing it We realized that if we brought these grievances To management we were just all going to get fired

23:58They need protections to stop the bosses from being able to retaliate against them We decided that we had unionized I can't imagine how nerve-wracking that decision must have been If they succeeded in unionizing they could negotiate a new contract with the bosses and properly address the issues at the lusty lady But if this went wrong they could all lose their jobs If they went public they also risked outing themselves as strippers and sex workers at a time when that was extremely stigmatized There had never been an official recognized union of strip club workers in the USA before But as Antonia points out Sex workers have always fought for their rights We just don't often hear about it It's not common knowledge Because there's a lack of scholarship around it and there's a lack of sharing that scholarship I've always kind of bought into the idea that sex workers are this marginalized Labor group that are on the margins of society and

24:59And kicked to the shadows and That is true in a sense, but also if you look at history We have always been here We have always been at the beating heart of society And labor and at the forefront of feminism We are the oldest profession and we've always organized with each other And built coalitions And I think the scholarship just needs to catch up In that meeting the workers at the lusty lady decided to take a risk They were determined to stand up for what was right A lot of people are like, well, we'll get fired If we say anything, we'll get fired, we'll get fired Well, guess what? You're going to get fired You're going to get fired anyway If you have no protections, you're going to get fired So the contract will get you protections And when you're organizing, you have protections They knew they had a fight on their hands So the lusty's decided to look for support We joined with SCIU Which is a giant union here SCIU stands for the Service Employees International Union

26:01Today, it represents almost two million workers in all sorts of jobs From healthcare to window washes and janitors The lusties wanted in But it wasn't going to be easy The head of the SCIU said now And why was that? Because stigma Respectability politics, they didn't want strippers To be part of SCIU And just really You know, we were left at The dancers had to jump through a series of hoops Just to prove that they were even eligible to unionize A lot of strippers are hired as independent contractors Rather than employees Which makes it a lot harder to legally unionize The lusty lady was different The dancers were officially employees They got a paycheck and everything But to begin with, it was still hard to get the bigger unions to back them So the dancers teamed up with an advocacy group Called the exotic dancers alliance And got to work convincing their local SCIU chapter 790

27:04To let them in Local 790 said yes They would have been stupid to not accept us And we would have made a huge stink about it And so we were like, no, no, no, no, no We are union, you are local So we became SCIU local 790 The exotic dancers alliance We had our list of demands And we met with management And they started calling mandatory meetings They cried And they said, please don't do this It was just the emotional blackmail It was literally just emotional blackmail They put us against each other They made the union sound like this terrible entity That was out to get us and rip us off And they made it sound like Having a union was going to turn management against us And make our jobs harder That unions are racist, that unions are exploitive That you're going to be writing this big check to the union It is really divisive And it's using the language of social justice In order to divide and conquer the workforce

28:04And to pit people against each other But what happened with us Is that we were such a close-knit group That once they started doing that It just made us angrier and stronger Because we just knew it was bullshit In the summer of 1996 The lusties line off at the club To vote in their union representatives And officially launched the exotic dancers union We had members of SCIU Sit at the table and it was just like a traditional ballot box Where you fill out a card And you put it in the envelope Each ballot cast is a landmark step For workers' rights in the sex industry We were the first Strippers to unionize in the United States It was a powerful moment Then newly elected shops do as they're announced These are the people who represent the workers to management Those people were Sorcia, Velvet, Tory, Poly, Star, and Decadence And Jean also, they just wanted to say their names

29:05And now the fight really begins The dancers need to negotiate a contract If they actually want to change things around here We wanted anti-discrimination policies that had teeth We wanted no cameras We wanted more freedom and fluidity About changing our shifts with anybody we wanted to We wanted more people of color We wanted more regular raises We wanted just basically Have an anti-discrimination policy That was current and modern And aligned with our culture Now they have the formal protection of a union They can ratchet up the pressure on their bosses The open Brooks falls a racial discrimination claim against the club And the dancers take direct action to protest about their working conditions One thing that we did is no pink day And so like if you're working in a pencil factory in your finding against your boss One thing that you want to do is you want to slow down production Like pump the brakes on production

30:09So what we did is we had no pink day And so what that means is we covered our bodies And we covered our Nether regions With skirts Yeah While you were dancing Yeah we covered our junk And so that was no pink day So we refused to show our junk And I think that's just really creative Yeah and like genuinely sort of outrageous From what people were expecting right Yeah the audacity Yeah Of live new dancers to cover their junk wall dancing And we wrote on our hands, you know, unfairly repractices It showed it in the mirror through the glass Cool that's punk The lusties are letting the world know that they're not happy And it causes a star I have the San Francisco Chronicle clip in front of me And it says North Beach strippers unite And this is from August 14th 1997

31:10Dancers could be the first in the country to unionize It goes without saying that the bosses did not appreciate this And it wasn't long until they struck back Antonea says they started firing people just for being late They started being Trigger happy with firing people You're supposedly allegedly have protections If you're unionizing So it's retaliatory But they'll use oh you were two minutes late And then one woman named Summer Who was a single mother was fired So we walked out together Antonea and the lusties were not about to let this ship fly They strode out of the club And management locked the doors of the lusty lady behind them Coming up, the fight for rights gets dirty

32:12This is Janna Kramer from Windown with Janna Kramer We've all been there You're trying to get dinner started Or just need 10 minutes of peace to finish a phone call You want to give your kids something to do But you want it to be good content Well that's where lingo kids comes in It's an app for kids 2 to 8 that focuses on pure interactive joy It turns their time into an adventure When they're exploring and playing in a safe space built just for them You get a moment to breathe And they get an experience they're actually excited about It's the kind of win-win every parent needs Lingo kids Everything kids love Give your kids the play they love Download the lingo kids app now on your phone or tablet And it's free Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing Victory Lane Yeah, it's even better with Chamba by my side Race to chamba casino.com Let's Chamba No purchase necessary VTW Group void work prohibited by law CT and C's 21 plus sponsored by Chamba Casino Texting privacy policy in terms of conditions posted in texting terms.us

33:12Texting rules you for a crew Not a big text marketing message Your special day reads my apply or play Stopped out visit ISSA online for details Tired of the 9 to 5 grind Looking for something different that's flexible Fulfilling and pays well How do you like to get paid to work out Now you can with ISSA the global leader in personal fitness certification There's a huge demand for certified personal trainers right now And once you get ISSA certified They guarantee you'll get a job Trainers can make as much as $100 an hour Yes, I said $100 an hour And with ISSA you can be certified in as little as six weeks You do everything at your own pace And 100% online Pursue your passion in specializations like yoga Nutrition or strength training Get certified and live your life on your terms Work at a gym Start your own business or a side hustle Whatever works for you just don't wait Get your free personal training evaluation kit today Get certified in as little as six weeks And ISSA guarantees you'll get a job Text gym to 32 32 32 Text gym to 32 32 32 Gym to 32 32 32 When your schedule sounds like this

34:17Are you kidding me? An oil change is the last thing you have time for So driving to take five and let our text change your oil Check your tires, top off your fluids And head you back on the road, pit stop fast All while you stay in your car No putting your entire schedule on hold No upsells, no problem So you can get back to your to-do list Or not Find your nearest shop at take5.com Take 5 The stay in your car 10 minute oil change Forget whatever plans you have this weekend Because you're staying at home and playing on spin quests And there's never been a better time to sign up And right now, new users get $30 coin packs For just $10 All the table games you love With hundreds of slot games and real cash prizes That's at spinquest.com SPINQST.com Spinquest is a free to play social casino Boydware prohibited Visit spinquest.com for more details

35:18I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you Antonia and the other dancers are locked out of the lusty lady But they're not about to give up their fight Just to get back in Luckily, Antonia's friend Star Has a plan to get them another source of income I think she's like 5, 10 And she attracted more um Submissives, right So she had this client of hers Who wanted, what did he actually want I mean, that's maybe um Maybe a topic for an essay But it's gonna say a whole new podcast for that Yeah, a whole new podcast But anyway, so she was like, hey, I have this client come and meet me We're gonna go meet in this place He's gonna meet us in a Jeep And take us out to his construction site And he wants us to pose in mud And he paid us several hundred dollars a piece To go meet us in San Rafael Which is like 20 minutes outside of town We all piled in his Jeep Okay Now, when I do that today, no, I would not

36:21But this is 1996, 1997 And we just were unafraid I don't know, there was just something about the 90s Where I was just like, sure, I'll get in the car with you And drive in the middle of nowhere I have eight badass women with me What is he gonna do? Like, he's outnumbered I mean, to be fair, he is outnumbered To be fair, he was outnumbered I mean, we could have all taken him We were all tough ass bitches, right And so We're in the middle of nowhere In this construction site, it's all mud And we're all rolling around and posing He wanted us to pose in mud and take photos of us And I think of that as our portrait Our family portrait Of us completely covered in mud With our arms around each other And stacked on top of each other And appeared in a bid That's our lesty lady family portrait Oh, I love that Yeah, and then I remember spending the next two days Washing mud out of my ears While she's locked out of the lesty lady Antonya picks up shifts at the other lap dancing clubs in the city The other strippers would just roll their eyes

37:21And shrug their shoulders and kind of laugh at us But they really? They didn't other strippers Yeah Yes, they did not get it Antonya isn't bothered by the skeptics Their movement is gathering momentum They rallied the local community And other local unions And staged a two-day picket outside the club We handed out condoms We handed out contraceptives We were dressed to the nines on the picket line And then One colorful thing about our group Was our willingness just to have fun And just turn the picket line into a party They hold up signs that say things like Do not enter unfair to labor And bad girls like good contracts They also had some really incredible chance Like two, four, six, eight Don't go into masterbay stunning And how did the normies in the street respond To all of this When they were alone, they would hop When they were with their girlfriends or wives, they wouldn't Yes Surprise, surprise

38:21Yeah But generally walking by, people were really supportive Dancers also filed a lawsuit Under the Unfair Labor Practices Act Which was supposed to bar employees From firing and suspending workers Without legitimate reason And it works We got some of her job back Oh wow And so you just went in and you demanded Someones to get her job back That was our demand Is that we needed to get her Her job back And we did that And we just literally were Very fierce With our if anyone got fired We walked out It's clear talking to Antonya Just how to term in she and the other dancers were And the more the bosses crack down on them The more resolved they became We had a vow of We didn't engage With the emotional blackmailing It made us angrier and more solid as a group The contract negotiations were fierce And they dragged on for months

39:22I remember hearing about it From decadence Our shopstours About how they would stay up all night negotiating And I remember we would go and have sit-ins Where they were negotiating And just sit and wait About what they accomplished that day I remember it being exciting More than anything I was just like wow This is really intense This is cool And just feeling really proud Just feeling proud of my co-workers And proud of their ferocity In April 1997 The exotic dancers union Finally came to an agreement With the lusty ladies' management The new contract won them a pay rise Sick leave An enter on my glass A ban on video cameras in the club And the ability to switch shifts with any of the dancers Not just the ones that looked like them It actually got us a lot It served as a blueprint for other workers It got us a seat at the table in labor It has created many thinkers

40:22And ferocious labor rights individuals In the sex industry Back then there was a lot of stigma And we were really behind And we were really like Not open about our sex work As much But I think that changed it I feel like that was the turning point Whereas like oh, guess what All workers honorable Sex workers honorable We deserve rights We deserve An anti-discrimination policy We deserve the right to organize And talk back to the boss To celebrate that victory The work is through a very lusty lady party It's what we call play day Where we open up the rooms And the dancers kind of walk around the area And we We give lap dances kind of out of the open And we celebrate and we're all on costume And we have like Food And I remember just being like this really fun Like we got our contract celebration Yeah So I do remember that moment Just it being like a really celebratory moment

41:24After a few years at the club Antonia danced her law shift at the lusty lady Now that she was secure in her sobriety She was making more money at some of the other lap dancing clubs I felt that I had left the lusty lady in really good hands And I definitely had Because they decided to become a union collective And that was the first stripper union collective Also in the United States When the owners of the lusty lady threatened to close the club in 2003 The dancers club together and bought it off them It became the first worker-owned strip club or peep show in America Antonia went on to become a writer She's currently doing a PhD at the University of Southern California And she's not the only lusty lady alum to go into academia A lot of lusty ladies have written books about this experience It was like such a professor incubator When I said these were phenomenal people I was not kidding around Yeah, yeah, I like the idea of that as some sort of like academic accelerator experience

42:27Just go dance at the lusty lady And then write a book about it and then become a PhD There's three of us literally out of like 12 of us than a PhD You should open your own school We should open our own school Yeah The lusty lady incubator school of sex work organizers Perfect In the three decades since the lusty lady first unionized Antonia has seen conditions get even tougher for strippers and sex workers The fact that the corporations and the owners of strip clubs have been allowed to continue to get away with retaliating shutting down breaking labor laws It's just been open season for corporations to just like run a muck and wreck Organizing efforts And the fact that they've just been continuing to get away with that is just criminal Even the lusty lady couldn't last forever In 2013 the club was forced to close It was really a historically important

43:28Union collective of strippers and they only won the country And so they priced us out of our rent and we lost the building and we lost our lease On the night at close the dancers held a funeral procession for the club They carried a pink bejeweled coffin through the streets to mark the end of an era But Antonia has carried on the fight that began at the lusty In 2018 she founded Soldiers of Pole which later became strippers united It's a labor organization that helps dancers unionize Antonia also runs another group called the stripper worker center We continue the fight every day is a battle I really think we need to mobilize the working class needs to mobilize more And just have faith that you know if we get everyone together That's how you change things Some of the other dancers have also gone into labor-organizing full-time Decadence who was my friend also became a labor lawyer and still is a union labor lawyer That's great When we started to organize she was talking to the lawyers and she just thought you know I'm smarter than these people

44:34And went to law school and became a labor lawyer And she's proved it And she's proved it Because sex workers are really smart During the pandemic Antonia helped run some events at Stargarden A strip club in North Hollywood to inform dancers about their labor rights In 2022 the dancers there went on strike And after a 15-month battle with their bosses they unanimously voted to unionize Another really successful thing that the Stargarden dancers did is their relationship with the media Was so incredibly positive And I just cried watching it happen Like watching them get interviewed over and over again on media outlets Seeing how media was talking about strippers and talking about their labor war and talking about working conditions like they weren't considered a joke I'm very pleased to see that you think it's better I mean allowing sex workers to tell our own stories is It's such a pleasure and an honor and it's such a fun experience

45:39And I hope that more sex workers are brought to the table and feel able to freely openly speak about their honest experiences And feel safe doing so You know it's people being sensitive and really listening and um It's really just about humanity It's just about our shared humanity and when we can come together and be like you know what let's just share our humanity Thanks so much to Antonya Crane If you'd like to know more about her incredible life you can check out her memoir spent Antonya also kindly recommended a couple of other books if you want to learn more about some of the themes that we've talked about today There's the ethical stripper by Stacey Claire and unequal desires race and erotic capital in the stripping industry That one is actually by another lusty lady alum and someone you heard about in this episode Professor Siobhan Brooks

46:57If you've enjoyed this conversation you can find loads more incredible women on our feed do check them out And please do spread the word and tell your friends about us We want as many people as possible to be part of the girlfriend's gang Next time on the girlfriend spotlight Layla becomes visible My mom hugs my biological mom my dad hugged my biological mom and they went up to her and I gave her hug And then we started crying You This season the girlfriend spotlight is supporting the charity women kind worldwide They do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and movements to strengthen and grow If you'd like to find out more or donate to help them secure equal rights for women and girls across the globe

47:57You can go to womenkind.org.uk The The girlfriend spotlight is produced by novel for iHeart podcasts for more from novel visit novel.orgio The show is hosted by me anacinfield this episode was written and produced by Caroline Thorneum Our assistant producer is Lucy car our researcher is Zayana Yusuf The editor is Hannah Marshall Max O'Brien and Craig Stracken are our executive producers Production management from Joe Savage, Sri Houston and Charlotte Wolfe Sound Design mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander Daniel Kempson and Dan King Music supervision by Jacob Tyvich, Nicholas Alexander and Anna Simfield Original music composed by Luisa Gerstein and Gemma Freeman

48:58The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemkoon Willard Foxson is creative director of development And special thanks to Katrina Norville, Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcast as well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at WNB I've got you This is Janna Kramer from WNB with Janna Kramer We've all been there you're trying to get dinner started or just need 10 minutes of Peace to finish a phone call you want to give your kids something to do but you want it to be good content Well, that's where lingo kids comes in it's an app for kids two to eight that focuses on pure interactive joy It turns their time into an adventure when they're exploring and playing in a safe space built just for them

50:00You get a moment to breathe and they get an experience. They're actually excited about it's the kind of win-win every parent needs Lingo kids everything kids love give your kids the play they love Download the lingo kids app now on your phone or tablet and it's free Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day Couldn't we just to make up for things like sitting in traffic doing the dishes counting your steps You know all the mundane stuff that is why I'm such a big fan of Chamba Casino Chamba Casino has all your favorite social Casino style games that you can play for free anytime Anywhere with daily bonuses so sign up now at chamba casino.com. That's chamba casino.com There's a difference between liking a house and actually getting it red fin is built to make up that difference and close the gap between Finding and owning the home for you red fin agents close twice as many deals as other agents

51:00So when you find a home you love you're not a step behind when it comes to making an offer That means less of watching great homes disappear and more focus on the one you'll call home Redfinn helps turn saved listings into real addresses get started at redfinn.com own the dream When Kohler global design leader and luxurious kitchen and bath products Asked me to be their ambassador for timeless elegant durable cast iron. I said I'm in Soon after I was in their Kohler Wisconsin foundry Watching molten iron poured enamel applied by hand and the beautiful finished pieces ready to ship Since 1883 Kohler cast iron has been crafted by incredible artisans and seeing it first hand Give me a whole new appreciation for their craftsmanship Now I'm proud to lend my staff of approval to my favorite Kohler cast iron products for their durability Beauty and enduring style Shot my curated picks at Kohler.com as the Kohler cast iron ambassador. I say long live cast iron

52:09Whether it's slots or live dealers spinquest.com has the fun and action you're looking for with spin quest exclusives Blackjack roulette Fakera and even live dice with craps and bubble craps the games never stop So you don't have to and right now new users get $30 coin packs for just 10 bucks Play now at spinquest.com Spinquest is a free to please social casino boy where prohibited visit spinquest.com for more details This is an i-hop podcast Guaranteed human