On the contrary, it proved to us that she didn't need to be rescued. We thought June was so self-possessed and appealing that we began to wonder aloud about becoming strippers ourselves, and whether any of us could do it as well as she did. Perhaps this is a story that could only be told in a sex-positive city like San Francisco, where vice cops' orders are usually to bust people who abuse prostitutes rather than busting prostitutes working on private property. Regardless, when women go to strip clubs, we get to experience an erotic pleasure that is generally reserved for men alone. While it's true that some prostitutes and strippers are abused, many of them are not.
Some women make well-informed decisions when they choose sex work.
And while others are forced into the profession for sheerly economic reasons, being forced to do a job that one doesn't enjoy does not make sex work special. In many ways, sex workers are like hundreds of thousands of other women in the United States today. Poor and disadvantaged women perform undervalued labor like waitressing, sweatshop manufacturing and housework all the time but rarely do people wring their hands over it or try to save them. Often those who condemn the idea of paying for sexual pleasure have no qualms about paying a domestic to clean their toilets and windows. Looking sex work in the face invites us to question whether we should be more disturbed by the idea of buying someone for sex, or just the idea of buying someone at all.