At 27, Hirano has worked at the Crazy Horse, New Century, and Boys Toys theaters. She recently left the clubs to set up an independent outcall stripping service. Hirano is also a writer, photographer, and filmmaker. Her bitingly funny film, 1-900-ASIANPRINCESS -- the story of an outcall stripper who turns the tables on three obnoxious and potentially abusive customers -- was a hit at the third San Francisco Sex Worker Film Festival last year.
When she left the strip-club scene, Hirano became one of the few dancers to sue her past employers to retrieve back wages and stage fees. She negotiated a settlement of $18,000 in back fees from the Crazy Horse Theater, and an additional $1,200 settlement for three shifts she worked at Boys Toys. She plans to use her settlement money to attend graduate school. "It's like a tax refund," she says, "money I paid out that then got refunded to me."
David Steinberg
Lap dancers protest.
David Steinberg
Sex-work activist Carol Leigh.
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Hirano, who did not engage in sexual activity when she was working at the clubs, confesses that she initially had negative feelings about dancers who did sex work there. "I didn't want to have anything to do with any woman who was doing more than dance. I didn't understand why you would do that, when you can just sit on a guy's lap, touch his hair, and make good money. I used to think all sex workers were dysfunctional, that the best thing was for everyone to get out of sex work as soon as possible, that the more sex work you did, the more fucked up you were inside. I saw sex work as an addiction. 'Am I always going to be naked? Is this the only way I can make money?' I understand it differently now. Everyone has their own limits and boundaries, and they're all valid.
"I had to address my internalized stigma when I decided to go to the Labor Commission to get back my stage fees. Why would you think, as a stripper, that you could get justice? But the Labor Commission is used to these suits. They don't treat you as anything less than if you were working in a garment factory. They're not judgmental. They don't initiate enforcement, but they're responsive to dancers when they bring in their complaints.
"We have internalized so much social stigma associated with sex work, even as strippers. Once I realized where all this anger and hatred was coming from, I became proud of myself instead of hating myself. Sex work is a wonderful way to survive. It's all about asserting control and power. Women have always known how to use their bodies for survival.
"Learning how to marry a rich man is nothing more than nuclear-family-model sex work."
The face and form of sexual entertainment and sex work evolve over time, not unlike nonsexual cultural expressions, shaped by changing social and economic conditions, shifting mores, and the creative ingenuity of opportunistic entrepreneurs and the broad range of people who choose work that puts their bodies on the line for sexual arousal or fulfillment.
True to its tradition, San Francisco has for the last 25 years been in the vanguard of the particular sexual form called lap dancing -- by introducing lap dancing to national consciousness, by developing physical environments that allowed the blending of lap dancing with sexual interaction between dancers and customers, and, most recently, with a district attorney's bold redirection of official concern about this sex-entertainment hybrid from questions of moral imposition and indignation to more practical matters relating to the health, safety, and working conditions of sex workers.
How this will play out over time -- in San Francisco, and in the rest of the country as well -- is far from settled. The local political reactions to Harris' decision not to prosecute lap-dancing arrests have yet to emerge.
Vice inspector McNaughton says that police will continue to enforce prostitution laws in lap-dancing venues. Harris' new Adult Clubs Working Group has yet to make its recommendations. A poll of San Franciscans by the David Binder Research Group, commissioned by the Sex Worker Outreach Project last month, showed "overwhelming support" for decriminalization of prostitution in the city, according to project coordinator Robyn Few.
Just as Gavin Newsom's decision to give same-sex marriage the blessing of City Hall catapulted public awareness of that issue to a broad new plateau, so has Kamala Harris' stance regarding arrests for sexual activity in lap-dancing clubs dramatically shifted the framework for public discussion of sex work in San Francisco. Whatever happens next will send legal, cultural, and political shock waves far beyond the boundaries of a small but sexually adventurous city by the bay.
David Steinberg can be reached at eronat@aol.com.
