We were originally just sharing memes and laughing together, but it quickly turned into a discussion about how we had all been treated and what our experiences were as sex workers. It was like a lightbulb went off. Strip club clientele has been shrinking for the past couple of decades, and clubs are doing everything they can to blame that shift on everyone except themselves.
They want to have a sex-positive experience that is cultured and nuanced and sexual and exciting. And so of course their numbers are down. The ways clubs shift that blame are racist.
That there is something broken in us. The joy of that Instagram group made me realize that there is no amount of joy or work ethic that lifts that burden. There is no amount of talent, there is no amount of privilege, that lifts that burden. My friends who took their own lives were not killed by depression, they were killed by a society they were unwilling to acquiesce to.
They killed themselves out of anger and betrayal. And so I said: Fuck that. We spend so much time screaming out our pain and injustice, and no one ever listens. That they would be heard and understood. I founded the LLC that became Haymarket in after another conversation with a client about what my exit plan was.
I wanted to change the sex work industry from the inside. A very basic tenet of a lot of our civil rights laws that exist is reasonable public accommodation.
