“Strip Club Argues That Lap Dancing Is Art, Wants Tax Exemption”

The Gothamist has recently reported that our pimps don’t want to pay such high taxes.

I have a lot of feelings about this.

First, I don’t know any strippers who DO pay their taxes. (Actually, that’s not true: I know one.) This point is kind of irrelevant, as the article doesn’t have anything to do with strippers getting tax breaks.

Second, strip joints are cash cows and fronts for some oftentimes crazy illegal shit. The whole point of running a strip club is that you can’t monitor how much money actually goes in and out of the place.

If the whole scene was legal and not fucked with Mafioso and other kinds of bullshit I always keep my nose out of, maybe I’d look at this as an opportunity for entertainers to actually be recognized as skilled workers. We could unionize! We wouldn’t be FINED for not showing up when we sprained our ankle and couldn’t come to work!

… and now I’m dreaming.

Trying to pass off stripping as ‘art’ for the sake of taxation won’t do shit for the ones who actually work hard, bouncing out lap dance after lap dance every night. We are still illegal, we are still judged and we are still going to be paying ludicrous house fees to the pimp who wants to pay less for the sake of ‘art.’

It’s a dark industry. This blog usually highlights the hilarity of it all, but it’s a dark place run by fucked up people. Requesting tax breaks smacks of piggy corporate personhood politics and other structures that keep the rich richer and the poor poorer.

(originally published on www.thesapphicstripper.com)