Hang Me For It.

Happy May Day, everybody! In May of 1886, the Haymarket affair happened in Chicagoland, with Louis Lingg being the most photogenic:

"... I despise you, I despise your order, your laws, your force propped authority. Hang me for it."

"... I despise you, I despise your order, your laws, your force propped authority. Hang me for it."

Although I am currently in the process of transitioning out of dancing, my heart will always be very connected to the strip club industry. One of the most common questions I get asked in the workplace by customers is: What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

Let me tell you.

Becoming a stripper was the second best decision that I have ever made in my life. I have never regretted it, and never will. As an alternative to the poverty wages in many other industries available to me, stripping has given me enough money and free time to achieve almost all of my childhood dreams, the ability to pay for car repairs at a moment's notice, veterinarian bills for countless companion animal medical emergencies, the ability to visit all 48 of the connected United States, backpack in Western Europe, eat from the finest vegan menus on Earth, donate to causes I care about, spend months hiking along the Mississippi River, take Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes, learn how to choke out men with my bare hands. It has given me the free time to spend days and weeks reading and writing. Being a stripper has exposed me to the realities of labor organizing, be them tragedy or triumph. Being a stripper has taught me to be strong, stoic and graceful in the workplace while everyone around me wants me to fall apart. Being a stripper has taught me more about human psychology than one would ever learn in a classroom, and more about countering male domination than any women's studies degree ever could. It has taught me how misleading the media is. I've paid off my student loans from that useless English degree. I've maintained my algebra skills, as I divide hours by dollars by VIP booths and stage rotations, figuring out bills as I multiply twenties, adding in time constraints and deadlines. I've been exposed to all kinds of music that I may have never heard, and learned how powerful song lyrics can be. I've met people from all over the world and motivated them to admit their deepest secrets to me in their most candid of moments. I've been paid hundreds of dollars to remove soiled menstrual products from my body and give them to customers. I've learned to be not only shameless about my body, but proud. I've met countless washed up celebrities. I've learned how to spin very fast around a high metal pole, and had the privilege of watching other pole dancers with an artistic expertise more striking than any Mozart symphony or Michelangelo painting. I'll always be thankful for what stripping has done for me, a proletariat, within a late capitalist society. It was always the best option. Yeah, I've been pretty damned lucky, and I'm gonna miss it.

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To the individuals who think it's funny or cool to shame someone simply for being a stripper-- it is because you are an astonishingly stupid person. If you are a woman who thinks you are better than a stripper, you can fuck off too. If you are a stripper who has ever experienced problems from people who do those things, just understand that the world is full of very stupid people. You are much smarter than them, and they can fuck off, no matter who they are.

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This will probably be my last May Day as a stripper before joining an AFL-CIO organization. This is partially because I am being forced into an early stripper retirement from all of the blacklisting and harassment related to stripper labor rights. I have no rose-colored misconceptions about my new career choice. In all likelihood, I will make less money, work more hours and experience disrespect in ways that mirror my current occupation. Sadly, I know of no modern or desirable anarchist utopia that would save me from my current snafu or give me the standard of living that I am accustomed to. Most anarchists who I have met in life were not enjoyable company.

So much of being a stripper is about rebellion-- rebellion from submitting to misogynist slut shaming, rebellion from all the stigma, rebellion from being expected to submit to a man's requests for physical contact, rebellion from a traditional 9-5-- rebellion from the eight hour work day.

Often times in my adult life, I have had an eight hour work week. Sometimes in my adult life, I have eight hour work months.

Being pro-worker but anti-work, I'm going to sit this one out today folks, while enjoying my favorite take on work by Bob Black:

 

 

Are Strippers Ever Non-Employees?

Earlier posts on the site suggest that dancers who work in clubs are always employees, because the nature of a club atmosphere and because dancers are integral to the business. Later posts suggest that if a club takes away enough Economic Realities rules, perhaps a true "lease holder" relationship is possible.

My advice to dancers suing their clubs, is that arbitrators and juries will not like ideologues who believe the former. They may think you are a wingnut. When testifying, you will be asked about this. It is up to you how you want to accurately navigate answering this question.

If you are working at a new club that knows about your past litigation, the club will intentionally allow you to do whatever you want, to create the idea that you are a contractor/lease holder, and that their club is different than the others you have sued. Clubs have done this to me, so that lawyers won't risk representing me. After time goes by, the club will either terminate me or encourage dancer-scabs to harass and assault me so much that I leave because it is too dangerous to stay. As time goes by, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a job in the industry while maintaining mental/emotional well-being. 

We Are Dancers (WADUSA.org) and Codi Schei are investing much of their energy into promoting the idea that every dancer should be a "small business" and not an employee. Codi Schei, as mentioned in a previous post, is a bougie Downer's Grove person. She does full service sex work and has worked in clubs that misclassify dancers, as well as clubs that are brothels. I consider Codi Schei a Trojan Horse to the issues of Stripper Labor Rights. My advice to dancers new to labor rights, is that it's totally OK for you to not want to work in a brothel or not want to be around a bunch of scabs who don't understand misclassification. Groups like SWOP would disagree with dancers like me on that issue, but fuck 'em.

Lusty Lady Lounge is still the only stripper workplace to have successfully unionized. Most people from Lusty Lady will tell you that however many rules a club takes away on the Economic Realities Test, dancers will always be employees. I may have interpersonal problems with my West coast associations, but still understand how powerful their writing can be. Thanks, Lusty Ladies, for showing what can be possible when educated dancers come together against oppressors and stand up for themselves. Here is a great guide for newcomers:

No Justice No Piece

Meet Greg Flaig

Greg Flaig is a loser from Ohio who works as a "consultant" for strip clubs.

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For those unfamiliar with union busting, companies will often hire a "consultant" to do just that. Greg Flaig is a strip-club-specific union buster. He likes to spread lies and misinformation about me in Ohio and surrounding states, so that other dancers become afraid of me and want to kill me. Some of Greg Flaig's business behaviors are illegal though, so his consulting group is getting sued. I am also happy to announce that I am suing him, because the type of conspiracy that he is engaging in is illegal. Clubs that Greg Flaig has consulted are also getting sued for misclassification and illegal termination.

I don't shut down clubs, I don't video tape dancers at work, and I don't have a secret spy come in to record clubs for me. If you ever meet Greg Flaig, know that he is a lying piece of shit. If I get murdered in Ohio or surrounding states, please understand that there is a possibility my blood will be on Greg Flaig's hands.

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Your Club Won't Shut Down.

One major source of the harassment and threats that I receive from dancers, is the notion that stripper labor rights will shut down clubs.

Misclassification or other stripper lawsuits do not shut down clubs. The reasons clubs shut down are usually related to IRS or vice raids. Stripper Labor Rights is unrelated to those issues.

A classic union-busting tactic that businesses often use, is to say that they will shut down if labor conditions are improved. Gullible workers fall for these kinds of tactics, and accept their unsavory working conditions, because they think that's their only option to continue providing for themselves and their dependents. Strippers are often very gullible subservients to their bosses, in the most intimate of ways.

There are all kinds of worker rights obstacles in the strip club industry that aren't always as prevalent in other industries, so union busting and misclassification are a lot easier for business owners to get away with.

I'd really appreciate it if my coworkers of past, present and future would stop worrying that their club is going to close down because of me. I'd really like the threats and harassment to stop. The people who tell you those lies are taking advantage of your naive ignorance to union busting. They want to align me with right wingers or radical feminists who try to shut down clubs, and use this as a red herring to the issues of stripper labor rights.

Entitlement

I receive regular harassment, death threats and assaults from other women who are scabs or scab sympathizers-- the kinds of people who are uneducated about the beautiful history of labor struggles. One word that these ignorant scabs and scab sympathizers use when describing me is "entitled." If I leverage independent contractor perks, these ignorant people will call me entitled. If I suggest that a workplace is misclassifying, and perhaps a union with recognized employee status should be respected, I am also called entitled. These kinds of people expect me to complacently go along with being misclassified. These kinds of people are usually other women in the industry.

I want other dancers to understand what you are entitled to under each classification. I don't want you to ever let a scab or a scab sympathizer make you feel bad for being entitled to your rights. Some of the best people in history succeeded because they knew their worth, but who were called "entitled" by other people who did not care about worth.

If you are truly an independent contractor, you are entitled to leave or enter your workplace whenever you wish. You are entitled to not be infantilized by your business partner, which is the club, by having them keep your money all night. You are entitled to treat your services like a business, set your own prices, and decide how to perform those services within the confines of the law. You are entitled to wear whatever you want. You are entitled to so much freedom if you are an independent contractor, freedom that will help you run your life like a personal business. You are entitled to tell the club owner what misclassification is, without experiencing negativity. You are entitled to exercise every factor on the Economic Realities Test that defines what a contractor or lease holder is. You are entitled to so much, and worth so much.

If you are a misclassified employee, you are entitled to a lot too. You are entitled to Title VII protections. You are entitled to form a labor union. You are entitled to a living wage. If you work full time, you are entitled to many benefits that current laws deny part time employees. You are entitled to stand up for yourself if your rights are violated. If you are misclassified, you are entitled to your back wages and other stolen fees. The checks that you will receive is money that is yours, money that you are 100% entitled to. Any woman to say you are greedy because you want your money is a really sad person who should not be influencing other women in any way.

You are entitled to all of these wonderful things, because there were entitled people of the past who fought for all of us. Entitled people like Jimmy Hoffa, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Samuel Gompers, Joe Hill, Frances Perkins, Timothy Healy, William B. Fitzgerald, Timothy Murphy, Michael J. Quill, just to name a few. In their day, they too experienced threats and criticism for being "entitled." How dare one tell a business how to operate? How dare one not just leave and go someplace else? How entitled.

For so long, strip clubs have felt like the entitled ones. They have a workforce that isn't always respected in society, a workforce that has been laughed at when bringing labor issues to agencies like the EEOC or NLRB. They have a workforce that so-called feminists often scorn, or tell them to just quit their jobs if they hate it so much. They have a workforce that is left out of labor rights, because the stigma that being a stripper carries is not acceptable. Because of this stigma, society has pushed dancers into the shadows. Entitled strip clubs have felt comfortable calling dancers contractors, but controlling them like employees. Entitled clubs have felt comfortable firing dancers who stand up for their rights, be them contractor or employee rights. For so long, women have accepted lower wages in the regular workforce, and told to feel thankful for bread crumbs. For so long, strip clubs have felt entitled to break labor laws. It has happened for so long, that to be a woman with the audacity to shamelessly stand up for those rights will result in threats, violence, and being called "entitled." People have lived so long with an accepted reality that favors entitled strip clubs, over dancer rights.

I'm entitled to what I have and so much more. I'm going to keep being entitled, and I know that other modern labor advocates will also continue to be entitled by fighting for correct worker classification, a higher minimum wage, shorter work weeks, benefits for part time workers, protections for contractors and so-called "lease holders," and a more strict way of protecting those who stand up for themselves. Yeah, you're goddamn right I'm entitled.

 

Full Nudity in Nebraska

The right to get fully nude in the adult entertainment workplace, without cited for prostitution, harassed or intimidated, is in jeopardy in the state of Nebraska right now. This is an area of law that labor activists and club owners are able to agree on.

I suggest that club owners in Nebraska look into the state of Oregon's nudity ruling, which allows dancers to be fully nude in clubs that serve liquor. It is a freedom of expression and human rights issue.

While I have many reasons to hate Larry Flynt, one issue that the Mohney and Flynt families and I agree on is that abolitionists who try to control nudity are causing harm to workers who choose to be nude.

Political figure Theresa Thibodeau, of Nebraska, is harming consensual workers when she makes false statements about liquor and nudity. If she really cared about the lives of strippers, she would be focusing her energy on misclassified employees and unions. Instead, she has an odd obsession with nudity that is not helping anybody. Her actions say more about her own psychological issues than those of other people. Please contact her and let her know that she should shift her focus from regulating nudity to misclassification and worker rights:

Phone: (402) 471-2714
Email: tthibodeau@leg.ne.gov

Lease Agreements

Since so many strip clubs are losing misclassification suits, one route that some of them have taken is to rename their misclassified employees "lease holders." The clubs treat them the same way they would as misclassified employees, but pretend like the dancers are "leasing space" to work instead. It's the same independent contractor bullshit, but with different etymology. The term is still pretty new to me. I haven't seen any losses of lawsuits with this new name. My guess would be that there are a lot of settlements going on that aren't in the news.

I had a joyous settlement with Silk Exotic Madison last year when they fired me as a "lease holder." The NLRB took good care of me. You can search for that post in the site search bar at the top of this page.

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The Nebraska club that I mentioned in a previous post also called us "lease holders." However, that place was a unique anomaly that I have no future plans to sue for misclassification. StripperLaborRights.com is gearing up for another series, this time about that Nebraska club, because the situation was so notable that it deserves it's own series. It will begin around the time that my essay about it on Whores of Yore publishes. Stay tuned for that!

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The state of Ohio does the stripper lease bullshit en masse. I learned this very recently. Unlike the Nebraska club, Ohio goes to extreme lengths to exploit, abuse and use naive dancers who don't know their labor rights. Generally, dancers in Ohio are are misclassified employees, worked like dogs and patrolled by management in ways that make me nauseous. I don't know if the water is poisoned in that particular state, but there is something malfunctioning with a lot of it's citizens that extends beyond strip clubs.

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As the Trump administration, libertarians, republicans and sell-out Democrats continue to disrupt the rights of workers that people fought and died for generations ago, the role of the term "lease agreement" in misclassification instances will probably not go away any time soon. Constant vigilance is necessary in the war on worker rights.

 

Prostitution Accusations as a Control Tactic

Independent contractors and lease holders are allowed to leave a workplace whenever they wish, or to come and go as they please. Employees must follow a schedule, shift, hourly arrangement or otherwise be dominated by times set by the business that employs them. Employees often must notify their employer when they are leaving to take a lunch break, or must only have a certain amount of time when going out to eat during a work shift. Independent contractors or lease holders are their own bosses, and legally aren't required to work any certain hours. Strip clubs rarely respect these Economic Realities differences.

One common way that strip clubs prevent dancers from leaving work early is to accuse them of being prostitutes who are going to meet with customers outside of the club. There were vague rumors of this throughout my career that I didn't pay much attention to, but the first time a prostitution accusation really bothered me was at conciliation court in early 2016.

I was representing myself against King of Diamonds in Minnesota, which I won for myself. Their attorney and I were verbally sparring, when he began saying, "PROSTITUTION," while nudging his head my way, looking at the judge. If the judge was less progressive, perhaps he would have been prejudiced by this accusation and ruled in favor of King of Diamonds. Their lawyer knew about this stigma and prejudice; that's why he did that to me. It really bothered me that someone would accuse me of prostitution at King of Diamonds, not because I want to further stigmatize full service workers, but because I was so cold and assertive with customers, that to think I would do that at King of Diamonds is an absurd misrepresentation of who I am. I regularly had customers walk out of dances and complain because I wouldn't let them touch me. It was very dishonest and inaccurate for that King of Diamonds attorney to accuse me of doing "PROSTITUTION." That is part of the reason why winning that case was so wonderful.

In rural Minnesota, there is a club with fliers on the walls, forbidding dancers from leaving early, explicitly accusing them of going home with customers if they don't work their entire shifts. When I saw these fliers, it was interesting to me the way the club was using old fashion prostitute-shaming to aid them in violating the Economic Realities Test. Strip clubs are rife with hatred and shame for full service workers, so accusing dancers of this is really helpful in violating labor law. Strippers are notorious for ganging up on and accusing other strippers of doing full service work. It was fascinating to me that this club was leveraging that stigma. Strip clubs want to keep all of their workers on a shift the entire time, so that customers are happy with a variety of women to look at. But, strip clubs don't want to classify their employees correctly. This particular club did fire dancers for leaving early at times, including one dancer who had a baby and subsequently couldn't always stay a whole shift, due to heavy postpartum bleeding.

Recently during a jury trial for another Minnesota club, a very cruel, elderly, female former manager of mine successfully convinced the jury that I was a prostitute who was leaving early to meet with customers, and that she sometimes didn't let me leave early because she was worried about my safety. That wasn't true at all. I asked to leave early so I could surf the internet or go to sleep alone. She never cared about my safety at all. This manager would regularly threaten to fire or actually fire dancer employees for not doing what she ordered us to do. I audio recorded her not letting me leave early, so she had to come up with a way to get the jury against me. She couldn't deny the recording or her violation of Economic Realities. She succeeded at getting the jury to sympathize with her-- the jury thought I was a prostitute, and that my manager was completely justified in not letting me leave early. The jury didn't seem to care about misclassification at all. The scarlet letter of Prostitute had been branded on me by this vile, pitiful, miserable old woman, and respect for labor law was disregarded.

Most recently, I started working at an Ohio club with an owner and manager who didn't know about my history. On my second night working, I tried to leave early, because I was tired and wanted to go to sleep. The owner came up to me and began accusing me of things while looking inside my purse and pulling out a piece of paper with assigned dance prices on it. I had to draft a letter to them, informing them that I knew my rights. The results at work have been interesting so far, and I will cover them in a future post.

Late last year, I worked at a club in Nebraska that was terrified of getting sued again. I have never seen a workplace more lenient about letting dancers leave early. It was wonderful. I could go to sleep whenever I wanted, without getting accused of being a prostitute or threatened with termination. If I wanted to work for two hours, I could do that. If I wanted to work for ten hours, I could do that too. Their club operated just fine that way. Of course, I don't thank the owner of the club for that-- I thank the dancer who came before me with the courage to sue the fucker, and the woman attorney who served his ass on a platter in beautiful Eastern Nebraska.

 

Please Do Your Jury Duty, Liberals!

Hey Liberals, Leftists and anarchists-- I need to talk to you about something.

All my life, I have been surrounded by you people. You often victimize yourself over bullshit and state that you feel oppressed about things that aren't actually oppressive. I understand the need for constant vigilance, and I know micro-aggression is real. I know the government and system is really bad, but there's one thing that I and other marginalized groups really really need from you.

We need you to do your jury duty. We need your logical reasoning skills in a jury dispute for issues of civil rights, labor rights, women's rights and for justice. When you skip jury duty, you are potentially giving up your seat to a fucked up person, like a self-hating woman who wants all sex workers to die, or a cop, or three needle dick virgins in their 30's who don't give a shit if a club owner misclassifies and exploits strippers. These things actually happen, and court appeals are so exhausting. So please, take the day off of work, drive downtown, experience temporary inconvenience in your liberal/leftist/anarchist life, for the sake of marginalized people who end up in court. We really need you. You may understand some day if you are ever at the mercy of a jury, but most of you will never experience it yourselves. It is so much easier to sit at home and virtue signal.

Let me tell you how jury selection takes place too, so you can increase your chances of being picked. A group of people sit in a few rows. Some of them will be removed by the plaintiffs and defendants.

Questions are asked of the jury. The people who answer questions at extreme ends of an issue are weeded out or removed by the plaintiffs and defendants. For example, if you say something like,

"My roommate was a stripper and there's no way I can be unbiased because I know how clubs treat dancers."

or

"Of course I would be on her side! I can't not support that girl!"

You will automatically be removed from the jury pool, even before the trial begins. Bigots who hate strippers are good at keeping their mouths shut during jury selection. Generally, stupid people and right wingers sit blankly during jury selections, so sometimes there's no way to know to remove these people.

In order to stay in a jury pool, the chances increase if you appear completely blank, unbiased, undecided and brain dead.

You want to help marginalized people, don't you liberals? I've read your tweets and facebook posts. You care about Black Lives Matter, innocent people on death row, battered women, exploited workers and sex worker rights. Go to jury duty. Sit with a poker face during jury selection. Remember that the bad guys on the other side are trying to figure out your political biases so they can get rid of you and fill the jury with ignorant, murderous, exploitative pieces of shit. Remember that there is somebody in that court room who needs and depends on you, for all of the issues that your disingenuous hashtags promote.

Lesser of Many Evils

Every once in a while, a dancer will contact me because she has found the website through google. We will begin talking about clubs that poorly treat dancers. Sometimes, a dancer will then tell me that she found a club where the owner "isn't as bad" and "can be a lot worse." She then will begin to defend the owner, as though he is a great person for not being as exploitative as the next guy. Sometimes, she will praise his low house fee or tip out costs. That is really foolish. It's ok to be rude to them or to hate all of them. It's ok to not trust a one of them. Women are very conditioned to be sympathizers. It's inevitable that they would minimize the exploitation in one club that isn't as bad, like a battered woman might marry a second time, to a husband who isn't as bad as the first. I encourage dancers to avoid this mentality and call it out when it comes up. It's OK to be really negative if the situation calls for it, if customers or staff are horrible in small or large degrees. Here is an encouraging video for you:

A Brief History of We Are Dancers USA

Long ago in NYC, a stripper named Rachel Aimee started a group called We Are Dancers.

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Rachel Aimee believed that it should have been up to dancers to "decide" whether or not they were independent contractors. With that mindset, Rachel Aimee showed that she did not understand the Economic Realities test, which is used to determine whether or not someone is an employee or an independent contractor. With that mindset, Rachel Aimee displayed her ignorance to the fact that people could be completely deluded about their own exploitation, by thinking they are independent contractors while being totally controlled by their oppressive bosses.

Rachel Aimee did not sue strip clubs herself, and mostly participated in We Are Dancers to socialize with other dancers, including scabs. A brave and risk-taking stripper who did sue clubs, named Hima, disagreed with Rachel Aimee about classification. Another brave and risk-taking stripper, named Daisy Anarchy, hates Rachel Aimee. While Rachel Aimee was creating scene-oriented cliques, Daisy Anarchy was taking on the city of San Francisco and attempting to reform labor law in the clubs, while she received death threats and feared for her life. Rachel Aimee is cowardly and lame, so she didn't do any of the cool stuff that Daisy Anarchy and Hima B. did. Here is Daisy Anarchy:

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Eventually, Rachel Aimee had kids and stopped dancing. We Are Dancers was inactive for a while.

In 2013, I started going to SWOP Chicago meetings to talk about stripper labor rights. Sadly, I was the only stripper who attended the meetings. Everyone else at the meetings did some other kind of adult entertainment. I had nobody to empathize with about the specifics of strip clubs. One person in SWOP Chicago, Serpent Libertine, told me about her friend Codi, who was a dancer.

Codi never attended any of the SWOP events that I attended, and never helped me whatsoever when I was just getting into stripper labor rights activism. She worked at an extremely fucked up club just outside of Chicago city limits, called Polekatz. Codi was also active on StripperWeb.com, under the name Daffnie. I begged for Codi to help me with stripper labor rights or do something, ANYTHING to help me in any way, but she would not. Apathy for workers and people often extends to other species as well.

Millions of animals are killed in shelters every year because of selfish, narcissistic breeders and buyers. Codi Schei is one such selfish, narcissistic buyer. She purchased a micro-pig from a North Chicagoland breeder, even though she could have adopted a bunch of dogs for the same price, or donated her money to a pig sanctuary. Here she is with her designer pig:

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Codi Schei is from the upper middle class Chicago suburb of Downer's Grove, while I am from Romeoville.

Seemingly out of nowhere last year, Codi Schei began revamping Rachel Aimee's We Are Dancers. She is now active on social media, advertising her group. Codi Schei isn't actually supporting litigious strippers who take risks and have to deal with death threats, joblessness, homelessness, blacklisting, hunger, despair, physical violence and trauma. That is because virtue signalling with memes and hashtags is more important to people like Rachel Aimee and Codi Schei. Not only is Codi Schei not doing anything to support suing strippers, but she is social media friends with scabs from Seville, as well as a scabby blog called Survive The Club. Like Daisy Anarchy was disgusted with Rachel Aimee for her disingenuous behavior, I am disgusted with Codi Schei for her disingenuous behavior.

History repeats itself, and here at StripperLaborRights.com, we hold the edge of strip club litigation, strikes and more.

The Airport Lounge, Milwaukee

I get accused of filing lawsuits for financial or personal gain, by morons mostly. It's a completely untrue accusation. One example of how this accusation is untrue is the time I reported The Airport Lounge in Milwaukee to the Wisconsin labor department.

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In the Spring/Summer of 2017, I ran out of strip clubs in Minnesota to work at. While the state of Wisconsin is mostly known as a place with grotesque strip clubs where customers put their hands on dancers, there are a few exceptions that I sought out. I wanted to stay close to Minnesota, but not deal with contact clubs. Airport Lounge in Milwaukee was one club in Wisconsin I found which did not permit customers to touch dancers. Unfortunately, it was very slow in there, so I left after only a few shifts. There was no dramatic termination or departure, and I probably won't bother to take them to small claims court for the few hundred dollars that they stole from me in the form of unpaid wages and mandatory fees. But, I did report them to the Wisconsin department of labor for an audit. This was at no advantage to me personally, but will hopefully make for a better working environment at Airport Lounge for future dancers.

While working my few shifts at Airport Lounge, I audio recorded most of it. Below is a list of questionable practices and policies I encountered during my stay:

-- Church ladies are allowed into the dressing room, where they distributed scripture and anti-abortion literature, with titles like "Healing from Sexual Sin"

-- Mandatory house fees, pressure to tip the staff and cuts of dance money

-- Mandatory stage rotation with music selected by the DJ

-- A bouncer who referred to dancers as "bitches"

-- A bouncer who threw quarters at one dancer on stage and stated that he was attempting to get the quarter in her "pussy"

-- A bouncer who meandered around the dressing room while dancers were in various forms of undress, where he discussed how attractive he thought he was

-- At the end of the night, all dancers were required to get on stage together and stand around for a set

-- The owners wife told me that I had to dance for her friend, who was seated on stage for his birthday

-- The owner's (unsightly) wife dancing on the stage in her street clothes

-- Stoned staff, obviously high on cannabis or opiates

-- Dancers not being allowed to leave until a shift ended

It was an abnormally terrible club, even by strip club standards. In my experience, Wisconsin is the worst state in the entire USA for a dancer to work. I genuinely wondered how The Airport Lounge stayed in business when it was so slow and so poorly run. The owner and his son, two Southern European immigrants, sat in the corner most of the time, directing their managers to tell dancers what to do.

The Wisconsin labor department does not allow me to know how the investigation is going, because it is confidential. After I stopped working there and reported them, I mailed all of my recordings, journal and evidence to the correct places and moved on. It would be great to know if anything has changed at Airport Lounge since last Spring/Summer when they were audited.

 

Daisy Anarchy and Zipporah Foster

I usually don't use this website for missed connection types of posts, but there are two OG litigious strippers who I haven't been able to track down. It would be wonderful to talk to either one of them.

Daisy Anarchy did a lot of stripper labor rights activism in the 90's. She received death threats and went into hiding for a while. Her internet presence exists, but there isn't anything current. I have no idea how to get into contact with her. If you are reading this and have any idea (with the exception of a certain NYC filmmaker who I don't want contacting me), I would love to be put into contact with Daisy.

Zipporah Foster was a Portland stripper who sued clubs around the time that I graduated college. I was so young then, and did not know what her lawsuits were about. Here is a link to one of the newspaper articles about her cases: click.

I hope that Zipporah is doing well. I know she didn't win at least one of her cases. We never worked at the same clubs together, but it would be wonderful to speak with her. I can't find her on the internet and don't think her facebook is current.

Communication with other people who have been through similar traumatic experiences can be very healing. Both Daisy and Zipporah seem to be uninvolved with the current stripper rights scene. Both Daisy and Zipporah are more than welcome to contact me.

VCG Class Action Update

The Denver strip club scene isn't all hobbyist pole competitions and pot heads. I've already mentioned the VCG class action that I joined last year. Class actions usually take much longer than individual lawsuits, so it's ongoing but optimistic.

I'll be engaged in 2018 Colorado lobbying efforts to change arbitration law, to ensure that future workers in the state aren't as exploited by corporations, be them strip clubs or other businesses.

A few months ago, my Colorado attorney Mari Newman did a great article with Law Week about the class. I'm so happy to be a part of it. Here's the link: click.

The Seville Series: Final Thought

A brave young man once said that life serves the risk taker. With that sentiment in mind, I told my attorney to skip mediation and go straight to arbitration. Less than a year before that, I had resolved matters with two other clubs-- Hustler and Deja Vu-- rather than go to arbitration. I thought since I won King of Diamonds, maybe arbitration with Seville would result in a win. I also didn't think Seville was offering as much settlement money as they should have been. It is for these reasons that arbitration happened. Life did not serve my risk taking in this instance.

If there was not an arbitration clause in the contract, I might have had the good sense to settle. I would have been informed ahead of time that Melanie, Serafina and Jessica were going to testify. Making an informed decision with regards to evidence is very important when deciding to settle, but arbitration does not allow for a discovery period.

Then again, jury pools full of sex worker hating prejudice and misogynists could have ruined a court trial too if it came to that. If it came to that, at least an appeal would be possible.

Frank Abramson is not a judge, and arbitration is not a constitutional way of resolving injustices. Sadly, Frank Abramson was the person with power to decide the outcome of my Seville matter. Sadly, we live in a world where unconstitutional policies and practices are abundant.

Abramson had pathways to rule in my favor. For example, he could have kept in mind that Melanie Christiance was the manager's wife with a biased and privileged experience. He could have considered the inconsistency of her testimony. He could have considered the fact that I was frequently at Seville and never met Serafina Richman. He could have thought about how so much of Jessica Gilbert's testimony was consistent with my arguments, despite her attempt to help Seville. He could have spent more time listening to my recordings. Maybe his love of Melanie Christiance's investments got in the way of all of that. I don't really know. Frank Abramson buys season tickets to the Vikings games, and I cannot fathom why someone would do that either. If I looked through the Minneapolis obituaries tomorrow and saw Frank Abramson's name, I would feel nothing but savory satisfaction that he no longer breathes.

Throughout writing The Seville Series, I have worried about the fact that I am giving ideas to other clubs on how to win a case. Some of the tactics I have described are now being used by other clubs to exploit and mislead dancers. However, getting the information to dancers is more important and will be advantageous to strippers who may want to litigate in the future. It is helpful to know what to look out for.

In the wreckage that The Seville Series has left, Jeremy Chase has deleted and revived his facebook account a couple times. He put his twitter account on private and changed the privacy settings of his facebook. As of writing this, he is using the pseudonym “Eagan Svensk.”

I can go on forever with posts and analysis for The Seville Series, but there is other ground to cover and other developments in stripper labor rights beyond Seville. If there are any future updates with regards to Seville or Jeremy Chase, they will be posted.

I have corrected typos on The Seville Series where I have found them and will be transferring any Joel-related issues to Joel Wheelock Watch. If you have any questions or concerns with The Seville Series, feel free to leave an email with your name and contact information, rather than troll me.

After Seville fired me, I went to Deja Vu, who fired me after three weeks when they realized who I am. In late 2016, I started working at a club in a more rural part of Minnesota, with dancers who I attempted to form alliances with. I tried to be more socially interactive than I had been at previous Minnesota clubs. In a couple of instances, I tried to get them to hang out with me outside of work. This was because I understood that it is important to socialize outside of work to have allies in a labor struggle. I often wonder what would have happened if I just would have hung out with Jessica Gilbert a time or two outside of work, rather than being evasive about her invites.

In national Minnesota news during The Seville Series, senator Al Franken was outed as a sexual predator and subsequently left his job. It was interesting to read all of the social media posts denying the truth. I wasn't surprised at all that liberals in Minnesota would vote for such a guy and support him even after his victims outed him. Rapist Bill Clinton is still very popular among liberals. I bring this up, because so many people from Seville are from the left end of the political spectrum and identify with the very leftist ideals that I promote on my website. For example, Melanie Christiance's daughter Mickayla Bakke is a freshly graduated, college educated social justice warrior who has put up a crappily written website in hopes of destigmatizing the sex industry. On her pitifully produced site, she interviews Megan Chase about stealing customers from dancers. The site generally says great things about Seville, without ever mentioning the labor struggles of dancers or calling out the sexual predators in her own social circles.

My advice to dancers who are interested in labor rights is to be suspicious of people like the Seville crowd, and don't trust the corporate media. If you notice patterns or that something isn't quite right, investigate deeper and trust your instincts. It is likely the liberal institutions that claim to be progressive are actually very similar to their conservative counterparts.

Losing a strip club lawsuit is depressing, because it means the oppressor has won. Future dancers will probably continue to suffer, while people on The Seville Series keep their jobs. There is a poem I like to think about while dancing in an unpleasant strip club environment. It is called Invictus and was written by the 1800's English poet William Ernest Henley. He was not thinking of a strip club while writing it, but it is fitting and keeps me going in times of sadness. It is helpful to remember the first two stanzas for litigious or striking strippers who want to be resilient and stay on the war path:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

The Seville Series: JOEL WHEELOCK

Mickey in her drink, finger in her pink, finger in the blunt, two fingers in her stink”

Joel Wheelock is man of many song lyrics. He is Seville's Sunday and Monday night DJ. The above quote is from one of the rap songs that he wrote for his latest album, which he distributed around the Seville dressing room while I worked there. “Mickey” is a vernacular term for psychoactive drugs that have historically been given to women without their knowledge or consent. This verse describes a woman taking a Quaalude, while being vaginally and anally penetrated by a man smoking a blunt. That sounds like something Bill Cosby would do. In the age of #MeToo, this is the kind of behavior that Joel Wheelock raps about. This is the kind of lyricist that the Seville workers find socially acceptable.

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Joel Wheelock did not succeed at being a marketable rapper or wordsmith. It is possible he will get more publicity from being featured on this website than anywhere else. Around his 40th birthday, bloated and tired, Joel took the title “rapper” off of his twitter profile, and simplified it with the humble title of “Midwest DJ.”

Joel Wheelock can be identified by his blue eyes and long, dirty-blonde locks, which are usually in a pony. Sometimes he wears his hair down, and sometimes it's braided. He often has a short layer of facial stubble covering his jaw. Underneath all his blubber, Joel has statuesque bone structure rivaling that of the mythological Thor.

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Joel Wheelock grew up in East Bloomington, Minnesota. He is an alumni of Bemidji State University. He came from a musical family in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. His granddad was Prince Nelson's band instructor. As a boy, Joel thought he would be a musician too. To his family's dismay, asthma kept him from tooting the trumpet. To his disappointment, his defunct feet prevented him from being a drummer. DJs often emerge from histories of failure. Being a DJ is kind of like having a cool avatar on internet profiles, even though the person behind the avatar might look nothing like the illustration. Playing other people's music and receiving praise for it is what DJs do.

There were aspects about Joel that I really appreciated. Sometimes in strip clubs, DJs will not take my song requests. For example, DJ Steven Jaye limited my requests to “genre.” Other DJs will claim that they don't have access to most songs. Others are just so rude and irritated with my particulars that I don't even bother. In contrast to that, Joel took my song lists enthusiastically, which I hand wrote on notebook paper and delivered to him at the start of almost every shift we worked together. He stored them safely in his backpack.

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After Seville fired me, I gave my NLRB affidavit to Chip Chermak, before requesting a transfer because of Chip's unprofessional behavior, as discussed in previous entries. The Seville case was transferred to an attractive young woman named Martha. Deja Vu fired me three weeks after Seville did, as discussed in previous entries. Martha took my Deja Vu affidavit after they fired me, so I was in the NLRB office a few different times while the Seville investigation was happening. In several ways, the investigations overlapped. One day, I mentioned something about song requests to Martha. She replied;

“Brandi, your SONG LISTS!” Her eyes penetrated mine and we briefly giggled, as though we were both in on some grand joke together. During an NLRB investigation, the parties are not to be informed about what the other side has brought in as evidence. She had some basic follow-up questions with regards to song requests in strip clubs. I explained to her the nuances of DJs accepting requests in various clubs, and I answered all of her questions truthfully. Songs are just a normal part of any strip club atmosphere. My song lists never came up in any hearing or court proceeding from the defendant. That would be crazy. Most strip club DJs would say that songs are just a normal part of doing the job. In fact, they might even say something like,

"I'm just doing my job!" That was why it was so funny that Martha asked me about my song lists, as though they were an integral part of the investigation. What kind of loon would bring a stripper's song requests to the attention of the National Labor Relations Board?

Joel Wheelock is a paranoid guy who has occasionally made social media posts about carrying a gun wherever he goes, to let everyone know that he is armed and dangerous. Sprinkled throughout Joel's social media and rap songs, there is talk of his “haters.”

Joel Wheelock blocked my facebook and twitter around September of 2017, when The Seville Series debuted. I have never messaged him and wasn't aware that he knew about my social media accounts. I can only guess that he did it preemptively, knowing that a storm was brewing. Since then, he has sparsely posted anything about his life, aside from advertising his DJ business. It is as though he has been trembling all along while The Seville Series has risen in fame, knowing that his time would come.

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While I appreciated Joel taking my song requests, he did many other things to inflict pain upon my psyche. He is one sadistic brute. Any DJ torment that came before or after my time working with him is child's play compared to his torture. I have never known another strip club DJ like him in my life. He has a long history in Minneapolis, with a rich list of enemies. The breadth of his atrocious behavior exceeds what The Seville Series is about. Therefore, he gets his own tab. As you can see in the top left corner of this page, I have added the new tab called “Joel Wheelock Watch.”

I, as well as others, will contribute to Joel Wheelock Watch intermittently as time moves forward. It will not get updated as frequently as the main page, but will function as a Joel Wheelock database. At this point, it's just a side project. Over time, the Joel Wheelock Watch tab will provide information about Joel's psychological warfare tactics that he utilizes on strippers, as well as in-depth psychological analyses, first-hand accounts of his past before Seville, roundtable discussions, interviews and more content to be announced. The Seville Series is nearing an end. The home page of this site will soon resume discussing the broader landscape of stripper labor rights.

Happy Valentine's Day to all litigious, striking and rebellious strippers who are fighting the capitalist patriarchy, battling psychological warfare, enduring threats and scabs in the strip club. I love you, always forever.

<3 <3 <3

Panic by The Smiths

The Seville Series: Jessica Marlo Gilbert

On a sunny afternoon in early July 2017, I was helping a comrade of mine film a documentary about stripper labor rights. It was a week or so before my Seville arbitration, and we met up in Minnesota to get some footage. My comrade, a former dancer who sued several clubs in California, had just finished telling me about an experience she had with some former dancer friends of hers some years ago. They surprised her, by showing up to one of her hearings and testifying in favor of the club. She said she started screaming and panicking at the hearing, because of the cutting sense of betrayal that she felt.

My comrade and I were filming the star wall at 1st Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. While filming, we spotted a Seville dancer named Jessica Marlo Gilbert and her boyfriend, Chris Freitag. They were on the same sidewalk as us, walking in our direction. Gilbert had her hoola-hoop with her, as she usually did when she went into work. When Freitag recognized me, he immediately crossed over to the other side of the street, on his way to Seville. Gilbert didn't cross, but walked up to us, to ask what we were doing. I said hello and asked if she was interested in being in the film about stripper labor rights. She said, “text me!” and passive-aggressively sped away.

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I had texted Gilbert a couple of times already that past Spring, to ask if she wanted to testify at my arbitration against Seville. She never texted me back with an answer, so I figured she didn't want to. Gilbert and I had discussed stripper rights at work a couple of times before I was fired. While she agreed with me about the issues, she expressed concern about losing her job and having to go to a different club.

Prince's Paisley Park and Jessica Gilbert are from the small, upper middle class town of Chanhassen, Minnesota.

Shortly after reaching legal adulthood, Gilbert became a stripper in the Twin Cities area. She danced at clubs such as Augie's and Choice Gentlemen's Club. Because both of those establishments are known as “the ghetto clubs” in Minneapolis, Gilbert is embarrassed about them and keeps that part of her work past a secret from most people.

After Augie's and Choice, Gilbert found her way to Minneapolis's most desired club to dance at-- Seville. Gilbert relies on hoola-hooping to impress the crowd while she is on stage. When she is not on stage, she relies on the floor hosts to find her customers, who she privately dances for. She doesn't hustle very well on her own. Sometimes when I would see her sitting around Seville during her down time, she would be rocking back and forth in motion with the dub-step music that shook the walls, staring into space with glazed eyes.

Gilbert loves drugs and became badly addicted to methamphetamines before I met her. She stayed up for days on end doing meth, unable to sleep, hoola-hooping for hours at a time. This landed her in the mental institution, where she got off meth. She still loved doing drugs when I met her-- just not meth. After leaving the institution, Gilbert got a phoenix tattoo on her arm, to represent rebirth after burning to ash. She dances with the stage name Molly. Gilbert informed me that she tried every other drug except for heroin, but expressed a curiosity about heroin.

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In April of 2016, shortly after Seville hired me, I was the victim in a car accident, which gave me a concussion. Among the symptoms my concussion caused were seizures, psychedelic visions and out of body hallucinations. It was the worst, most frightening experience of my life, but also spiritually enlightening.

The first time I spoke to Gilbert was at the dinner table in the dressing room. I explained the concussion situation, but said that her hoola hooping was great and reminded me of an atom, with her as the nucleus and the green hoola-hoop lights as the electron cloud. From there, Gilbert and I discussed subjects like seizures, quantum physics, sacred geometry, the universe, centripetal force, psychedelic experiences and hooping. She expressed enthusiasm that I requested music by Tool, and informed me that she only recently heard of the band. She told me that she was afraid since she has all of these unusual thoughts about the state of the universe, governmental powers in charge were going to come after her for knowing too much. She told me that she had a hard time finding people who think about things like atoms or the universe, and asked me if I was afraid people in charge of the world were going to come after me for knowing too much. She referred to people who are aware of the world in this way as “woke.” “Woke” is a term that hip young people use, to refer to those who they believe are socially aware or otherwise in tune, with their fingers on the pulse, so to speak. Gilbert stated that she thought she was “woke,” and was happy to encounter someone else who she thought was “woke.” In my head, I was thinking about how much of a paranoid narcissist she sounded like, but I just nodded. I don't think metaphysics is much of an unusual topic to know about, so I informed Gilbert that government oppression for it was probably nothing to be concerned with. She didn't agree with me, but we cliqued enough to be workplace associates.

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Gilbert and I had other things in common, such as a mutual disdain for plastic surgery. We also liked eating edamame. She was cool to have as a coworker. She went barefoot on stage when she hooped, which was permitted by management because of her special stage performance. Every other dancer I met was pressured to wear plastic heels. Gilbert was often fixated on what she described as “the underground.” One day, she informed me that she thought the slow shift DJs like Chris Black “were more like the underground,” while the busy night DJ like Steven Jaye was not “the underground.” Gilbert's hoola-hooping was neat looking, but she did not make nearly as much money as the regular hustlers. One day, she told me that she thought dancing without her hoola-hoop would be “selling out.” I had to restrain my laughter when she told me that dancing without her hoola-hoop was “selling out,” as the whole reason most strippers work is to make as much money as possible.

Gilbert is a fan of shill Eric Sprankle, and has been known to post his quotes on her social media. For those who don't know-- Eric Sprankle is a shill in the sex worker community, who works as a therapist. He often attempts to take up space in the media and on the internet, to draw attention to himself for having opinions that agree with ours. He is not a sex worker himself. Many sex workers loathe him, for taking our narrative away from us, even if he agrees with a lot of what we are saying. I am part of a sex worker group right now that is trying to hold him accountable for it, by repeatedly contacting him and asking him why he likes to steal our narrative, but he mostly ignores it when confronted on the issue. This is one of many red flags that Gilbert is a tool.

Often times after I've had a few nice conversations with fellow strippers, they will want to exchange phone numbers, to socialize outside of work. While I thought Gilbert was pleasant to work with in comparison to the other options available, I did not want to hang out with a twenty year old with all of the issues and ideas described above. I just didn't think hanging out with her would be very much fun or interesting. She struck me as a poseur. So, in subsequent shifts when she would ask me to hang out or try to schedule something social, I made stuff up about why I couldn't get together. After a few of these instances, she stopped asking me to hang out. I was relieved. Unfortunately, some of her workplace pleasantries withdrew and I became more socially isolated. This is a common predicament that transcends many industries, workplaces and labor rights issues. How does one maintain workplace solidarity and allies, without having to waste precious free time seeing coworkers outside of work?

Gilbert's boyfriend, Chris Freitag, was a cook at Seville while I worked there. Aside from saying hello, Freitag and I never spoke. At some point, around the time when false rumors started that I was an undercover cop, Freitag stopped saying hi and began glaring at me. Like Gilbert, Freitag also struck me as a poseur. His facebook had posts about Guy Fawkes, anarchy and the anonymous movement, yet he was also a dweeb who hung out with strip club staff and made posts about not all cops being bad. It became clear to me that both Gilbert and Freitag were colossal dorks who spent a lot of time trying to be cool or “underground.” Gilbert and Freitag wouldn't know what the underground is if it stared them in the eyes and said Hello.

One night after work, while Gilbert and I were outside of Seville waiting for our cars, I heard her say to floor host Billy that something reminded her of “society.” I thought she was referring to her hoola-hoop, so I asked her about it at the start of our next shift. She clarified to me that she was saying Seville reminded her of society, because sometimes we have great nights, but sometimes it is slow and we have to pay our fees anyway. She explained to me that she thought the club treated us poorly, but that it was still the best club in Minneapolis, so she wanted to keep her thoughts a secret from powerful people in charge at Seville. She began talking to me about worker rights. I had never spoken to her about my lawsuits or website before, so it was great to me that she already knew about the issues. I felt kind of bad about the fact that I had my audio recorder on while she was confiding in me, but very happy to learn that Gilbert was aware of the stripper rights issue. Specifically, she stated that we were actually employees at Seville, and that the only thing Seville did to make us independent contractors was allow us to come in on whatever days we wanted. She didn't explicitly say “the economic realities test,” but she went through some of the factors in a way that demonstrated she was versed on the issue. She told me to never tell ANYONE about what she just said, then changed the subject.

I went back to the subject of stripper rights with her a couple of times after that initial conversation. I offered to join forces with her. She told me there were already people at Seville working on some stuff. When I used the term “labor,” she didn't know what I was talking about. Not having the right vocabulary for the issue was ok with me though. However, any time that I brought up the treatment at Seville, she would reiterate that she didn't want to lose her job and have to go to a different club. She'd always change the subject after that. I respected her wishes while I worked there and stopped bringing it up after the first couple of times.

Mara and Ben, the two bartenders who were harassing me, were friends with Gilbert and Freitag. After I told on them for harassing me, Gilbert stopped acknowledging me entirely, and would just glare at me. I was fired not long after that, as reiterated in previous posts. We still texted a couple of times after I was fired.

I was surprised to see her in the arbitration office last July, with Chris Freitag by her side in the waiting area. I didn't feel betrayed, as I never considered Gilbert a friend. I had been prepared by a previous generation of suing strippers. I showed no emotion in front of them. While I knew Gilbert was a pseudo-rebellious, disingenuous, drug addled moron from Chanhassen, I didn't think she was so bad as to switch sides and testify for Seville. She had established to me in previous conversations that she understood we were employees being duped by the club. My guess is that one of her floor host confidants convinced her to do it, that she did a lot of drugs that Summer, that she is so terrified of going back to Augies or Choice that she will do anything to stay at Seville, and that she is so starved for attention that she will hoola-hoop for anyone who compliments and praises her.

In Gilbert's testimony, she admitted to feeling obligated to tip staff. She admitted that the club exists because of the dancers. Both of those factors were in my favor. She lied about her work history, because she didn't want to bring up Augie's or Choice. She only named higher end clubs she worked at in the past.

Seville's attorney, Casey Wallace, attempted to make me feel sad, by taunting me that I had trusted and texted Gilbert about testifying on my side. Jessica isn't that special, so Wallace's taunts didn't hurt that much.

Gilbert brought her hoola-hoop with her for the hearing, to demonstrate skill required for her job. However, she admitted that her skill improved while she was working at Seville, which is something consistent with being an employee. Her hoola-hoop is a tool that she uses for work, so while no other dancers hoola-hoop and 99% of us did not use a prop of any kind, the instance of Gilbert's tool was an economic realities factor that swayed away from employee status.

I don't think that Gilbert's testimony would have been very effective if she was the only dancer there, but combined with Melanie Christiance's lying and random privileged Serafina Richman coming in, Seville won. Even if the sexual harassment was severe enough to win a lawsuit, it wouldn't have mattered, because only employees are protected against sexual harassment laws-- not independent contractors or lessees.

I don't think Gilbert really believes she is an independent contractor. I believe she is starved for praise from adult men who work in strip clubs, and that she loved the praise of Casey Wallace when he cheered her on for hoola-hooping in the arbitration office. She grinned like an emotionally starved latch-key child for him after he told her that he saw her on stage in nights previous to the hearing when he visited the strip club. It wouldn't surprise me if she was coaxed into testifying by being told that she could hoola-hoop for the audience.

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There are all kinds of reasons why scabs exist. In the strip club industry, it is often because of deeply rooted psychological issues, drug addiction, or a sad desire to please one's oppressor. I've never been that pathetic, so I cannot speak from personal experience on why Gilbert did what she did. I can only post her name and photo, while my own photo is on the front cover of the Star Tribune, to let everyone know what happened. I can only offer the audio recordings that I have of her, describing how she knows that she is an employee at Seville. She was only around twenty when I knew her, and Jessica Gilbert has secured her position at Seville for many years to come. If she doesn't overdose, I am sure she will continue to exchange texts with litigious strippers who don't know her past, and perhaps surprise them at future Seville arbitrations.

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The Seville Series: Serafina Richman

Prior to arbitration, I never knew Serafina Richman existed. She was the second dancer to testify. Serafina truthfully stated, during her testimony, that she never saw me before.

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Among the things that Serafina Richman testified about is that her husband is a bouncer at the Minneapolis Spearmint Rhino, that she has danced at Seville for a number of years, that she is too old to go on stage, that she doesn't have management tell her any rules to follow aside from “don't break the law,” that she barely paid a house fee and that she doesn't talk to other dancers besides her girlfriend, who she brings with her to work.

Serafina would stand out to see dancing in Seville, due to her old age, orange skin, boulder-like fake tits and abundance of tattoos. Not only does Seville generally hire very young women, but women without a lot of tattoos or aesthetics that stray very far from an untainted, old Parisian beauty ideal, as one might find in the many paintings that are hanging around Seville like a renaissance art museum. The interior decorations of Seville look more like the Louvre or Moulin Rouge than a stereotypical strip club, so Serafina's janky look wouldn't blend in.

As with Melanie, Seville lawyer Casey Wallace brought up Serafina's gaudy breast augmentation surgeries, as a way to try to prove that Serafina is an independant contractor who invested in her business.

I have no idea what connections Serafina Richman has to Seville that give her special privileges, or who her bouncer husband knows in the industry. Usually when dancers have special privileges like Serafina's, it has a lot to do with either long-lasting friendships, drug deals, the exchange of bodily fluids or the sharing of DNA. Usually when men like Serafina's husband work in the industry, there is a similar connection. The cores of strip clubs are often like the mafia.

There wasn't much else to Serafina's testimony. It was boring, quick, to the point and didn't offer a lot of information, aside from reaffirming what was already stated by people I barely knew or never met. It was obvious to me that Seville scraped up whatever aging stripper from their inner circle they could find, to crawl from the cracks of the past and defend their home, their heart, their hearth-- their club.

What I liked about Serafina's testimony is that she didn't speak on behalf of the the vast majority of other dancers at Seville, who do not have connections and privileges. I was glad that Serafina didn't lie about that like Melanie did.

The Seville Series: Melanie Christiance

When the Seville lawyers announced that they were bringing in three dancers to testify as witnesses, I nervously thought of people like Michelle Glisson or Kumara Becker. I was expecting dancers who I had negative interactions with, to come in and roast me. That didn't happen at all!

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Roger “Hunter” Christiance has been a Seville manager for many years, though I hardly ever saw him. He was usually upstairs in the champagne lounge, if he was even at work. He and his wife own a home in Clearwater, Florida, which they frequently visit. The few times that Hunter was the person to sign my permission slip to leave, he would just say something like,

“Thank you, young lady!” and smile dorkily.

I never had a problem with him whatsoever. He came off as a polite, dumb, obedient bouncer/manager with a fake orange tan, who was a bit detached from the commotion and social dynamics around him. He was the least annoying manager. The one time that I had to ask him for help with a customer who was harassing me, he grabbed the customer and said to him in a demonic voice,

“Bother her again and I'll throw you against the WALL!"

This Seville Series post isn't about Hunter, however. It's about his wife, Melanie Christiance, otherwise known as Melanie Engquist Tanke Bakke. I never met her until arbitration. She was the first dancer to testify.

As a woman in today's job market, pleasing the right man can take a gal pretty far in life. It can get one into a Miramax film, on the front running presidential ticket of a major political party, or a member of Seville's inner-most social circle, providing total Seville job security and minimal risk of termination, regardless of the rules followed.

Melanie was fortunate when she met Roger “Hunter” Christiance over a decade ago, who was to become her husband. Hunter became a floor host at Seville, where Melanie danced. Roger and Melanie became such obedient cucks for Seville swindler-owner Dino Perlman, that they stayed even after RCI bought the business. Unlike the majority of other dancers who work at Seville, Melanie gets to have special privileges while she works.

Melanie told the arbitrator that dancers can wear whatever shoes they want, without negative reactions from staff or management. She stated that she wears cowgirl boots to the stage and that everybody loves them. Not only did I never see her working, but I never saw any dancer wearing cowgirl boots. Even if Melanie was telling the truth about that experience, her treatment at Seville as a long-time dancer who is married to a high-ranking manager is still drastically different than the other dancer's.

Melanie testified about her own treatment at Seville, but also spoke on behalf of all the other dancers, or as she called them, “girls.” Liberally using the term “girls” to refer to dozens of grown adult women, Melanie testified that all of the "girls" wear whatever shoes they want, and are told that going on stage is completely optional. Melanie testified that tipping staff is optional, and that there are no negative reactions from staff when they are not tipped, toward any "girl."

While I believe Melanie's testimony that she was never bullied for not tipping staff or following the rules, it is highly likely that she was not bullied because of her marriage to Roger Christiance. It is highly likely that the other staff members knew better than to bully Melanie, and chose to emotionally batter easier targets. I was at Seville frequently, never saw her on stage or the show floor, and was surprised during her testimony when she claimed to know so much about the lives and experiences of so many young women who have probably never met her before.

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Seville's lawyer asked Melanie if she recognized me. She stared me in the eyes and stated that she had encountered me at work in the past. She stated that she saw me standing around back stage with the other dancers, complaining that there was no money to be made, and that she told me I would make more money if I wasn't standing around back stage complaining. Melanie told the arbitrator that I could have made more money if I didn't spend time behind stage talking with the other dancers. That was one of the most upsetting parts of her testimony, because what I do when hustling is to make damn sure I talk to every potential customer, with the exception of sexual predators and regulars displaying entitlement to my free time. I have a personal policy to acknowledge every new customer, regardless of what they look like, offer a dance and move on if they don't want to be bothered. I rarely spent time back stage hanging out with other dancers, and used my down time to drink coffee by myself on the show floor, to discuss stripper labor rights or to audio record instances of misclassification. There were very few exceptions to those activities in my work life at Seville. I would have remembered encountering Melanie Christiance, mostly because I never saw any older women with yellow hair, orange skin and comically large silicone breasts dancing. It would have been a notable oddity to see her there, and not something I would forget.

In a bizarre turn of events during Melanie's testimony, Seville's lawyer, Casey Wallace, asked her if she had her breasts “augmented.” While asking, he motioned to his own chest and gestured with his hands in a circular motion. Casey Wallace is from Texas, and speaks with a thick Southern accent.

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Melanie acknowledged the presence of her two jumbo, rock hard, synthetic breasts that were surgically implanted in the front of her torso, underneath her skin. Casey Wallace used Melanie's unsightly synthetic implants as an example of how she has invested in her business, as an independent contractor. He then referred to me, because I do not have synthetic breast implants. Fake breasts are unattractive and gross, so it has never crossed my mind in the 11+ years of dancing that I should pay someone to cut open my body and shove some inside me. My natural appearance fits many mainstream beauty standards and I usually sell more dances than my coworkers.

I have spoken with other women who have sued strip clubs, so I knew that attacks on the physical appearances of plaintiffs is something that comes up during legal matters, regardless of reality. For example, a dancer in Oregon who sued a club during her early 30's was accused of being too old and unattractive to make money by hustling any more. A woman of color who sued some clubs in California was described as unattractive by various white people in the industry, who were against her. Both of these women fit beauty standards, but in an aesthetics-based industry that has workers suing it, plaintiffs should expect to be bullied by their opponents about their physical appearances.

Melanie spent significant chunks of her testimony discussing her positive opinion that she had of her physical appearance. She referred to her investments as “ALL THIS,” while motioning from the top of her head downward, displaying everything with her hand. Melanie's synthetic yellow hair was something that she bragged about during my arbitration. It reminded me of a chav who might be on the Maury Povich or Jerry Springer show, describing their perceived sexiness, in order to offend their opponent. Nobody in the arbitration room called out Melanie's ugliness, or notified her that all that crap she does to herself doesn't look good. Melanie bragged about how she acquired “the looks” after dancing at Seville for a while, but didn't have them in the beginning. Here is a photo I found of her from the early 2000's:

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As a way to describe to the arbitrator how great the Seville staff is to her, Melanie Christiance stated that her relationship with them is “like family,” and that they go out to socialize together during their free time. She didn't mention that through marriage, she literally is family with Seville staff. She sneakily smirked when she stated that her relationship “like family.” Perhaps since she and I had never met before, she thought it would slip past me that she is the manager's wife. Most people don't know how much of an internet researcher I am. I knew all about Roger Christiance very early on at Seville. Melanie didn't mention the marriage until it was my lawyer's turn to question her and he asked her about it, at the prompting of a note I wrote. After admitting to the marriage, Melanie's pleasant mood changed, and her tone became snotty toward my lawyer for the rest of his questions. There were other inconsistencies that she was called out on.

Melanie told our arbitration audience that she only works a couple of days per month, and named a certain amount of money that she makes by working a few days. When she was describing how she invests in her business, she stated a dollar amount that she claimed to put into hair care each month. The dollar amount that she claimed to invest in her hair each month was higher than the amount of money that she claimed to make per month. If those numbers were true, it would be a net loss for Melanie. When called out on it, she made a vague suggestion that she has sugar daddies who pay for her hair, outside of the club. Here is a photo of the top of Melanie's head, which displays a very large bald spot:

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During Melanie's testimony, she stated that she acquired interpersonal communication skills while on the job, which she didn't have in the beginning. By admitting to acquiring skills while on the job, Melanie was describing something that an employee would do. This is a factor in the economic realities test.

The sole trait about Melanie Christiance that I found attractive was her angelic voice, which the arbitrator, Frank Abramson, was very intensely listening to as she described how great it is to work at Seville. The arbitrator seemed to be enchanted by it, as were others in the arbitration room that day. I know from personal experience that this type of voice is very valuable to use while hustling, and hustle is what Melanie Christiance did in my arbitration. She hustled for Seville; she hustled little Frank Abramson. Who knows-- maybe Frank Abramson was aroused by the rest of her too.

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Melanie Christiance is a liar, a scab and a betrayer of women. Her lies are partially to blame for all of the misclassification, bullying, battering, stealing, assaulting, terminations and abuse that dancers must endure at Seville. I have no idea how many other testimonies Melanie has taken part in or will take part in, but I have a suspicion that mine is not the only one.