Hi everyone, welcome back to Doing It, the Sex and Relationships podcast where sex has never been so nerdy with me, your host, Hannah Witten.

This week, I am joined by the brilliant author and activist Stacey Claire.

Stacey is a retired stripper, writer, theatre

performer, activist and co-founding member of the East London Strippers Collective, or the

ELSC. Her book, The Ethical Stripper, chronicles her journey into stripping,

alongside a rigorous analysis of sex industry regulations and legal regimes.

She runs community events, works with unions to improve the strip club industry and puts on

life drawing events with the East London Stripper Collective.

I am so excited to have Stacey on as a guest as she brings so much expertise to conversations

around the ethics of sex work

and first-hand insight into why harm reduction for strippers needs to be at the heart of that conversation.

Stacey talked to me all about why she named her book, The Ethical Stripper, and how she wants the term to invite people in to have conversations

about the ethics of sex work and working towards

harm reduction for strippers rather than the unhelpful and unproductive debate about whether

stripping is good or bad. Stacey also shared about how strippers have long had misclassified

professional statuses and talked about recent cases that have changed the industry

so that strippers have workers' status.

We also talked about how more and more strippers are signing up to unions and how sex workers'

rights are part of a broader workers' rights movement.

We spoke about the UK Licensing Act of 2009, which forced many strip clubs to shut down and

made the industry far worse, with less job opportunities, worse workplace conditions, and higher

financial strain on strippers.

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