The Lusty Lady as a Case Study for Sex Worker Social Movements with Historian & Former Lusty Jayne Swift

For the 107th episode of Private Parts Unknown, host Courtney Kocak welcomes historian and former Lusty Jayne Swift. Swift specializes in the history of sexuality, gender, and labor in the U.S., and she’s writing a book about the history of sex worker social movements in which the Lusty Lady features prominently.

Currently, a strip club in North Hollywood called Star Gardens is trying to unionize. But there’s a classic example of stripper unionization that’s THE case study often pointed to: Strippers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady organized into the Exotic Dancers Union in 1996. The Exotic Dancers Union was affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. Eventually, the strippers bought the club and ran it as a worker-owned co-op until The Lusty Lady closed in 2013. 

Stay tuned for full episodes about the Lusty Lady and Star Gardens in the near future, but first, we’re going to lay a little groundwork and dive into Jayne’s research on sex worker social movements and how sex workers are responsible for the rise of sex positivity and sex-positive politics/feminism.

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